Kriti Mehrotra
Susann Sills of San Clemente, California, was leading a nearly idyllic life when she suddenly passed away at age 45 on November 13, 2016, leaving all her loved ones shattered to the core. She was actually found lying at the bottom of her home’s internal stairs on that fateful morning, so her family’s hypothesis was that she had had a fatal slip and fall sometime in the hours prior. However, as time passed, as explored in CBS’ ’46 Hours: The Puzzling Death of Susann Sills,’ it came to light that her husband and the father of her children, Eric Scott Sills, was responsible for her demise.
Eric Scott Sills Was Once a Respectable and Renowned Doctor
Although not many details about Eric Scott Sills’ background or early years are available as of writing, we do know he had reportedly always wanted to pursue a career in the medical field. That’s because, as soon as he graduated high school, he enrolled at Vanderbilt University for a Bachelor’s degree in Biology and then attended the University of Tennessee Medical School. He followed this up with a Ph.D. from the University of Westminster in London, England, before really kickstarting his journey as a doctor with a residency at New York University’s Downtown Hospital.
Scott then landed a spot at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center before finishing his core education with a reproductive fellowship at the private Ivy League Cornell University. He was proud to be a part of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at this renowned research institution, where he utilized all resources and honed his skills to become the best of the best. This is how he ended up specializing in reproductive endocrinology, infertility, as well as the procedure of In-Vitro Fertilization (IVF), unaware it would lead him to Susann Stephanie Arsuaga years later.
According to reports, Scott was actually a happily married father of two and a well-renowned fertility doctor in California when he first encountered Susann as a patient in the early 2000s. She had come to him alongside her then-husband because they were having trouble starting a family. Still, things took an entirely different turn as the doctor-patient gradually became romantically involved. Yet, their connection evidently wasn’t just a fling because not long after their respective unions crumbled apart, they joyously tied the knot and later welcomed a pair of twins into this world.
Eric’s Behavior Following His Wife’s Demise Raised Significant Suspicion
It was early in the morning of Sunday, November 13, 2016, that Eric Scott Sills dialed 911 to report that he had awoken to find his wife lying cold and unconscious at the bottom of their home’s stairs. The dispatcher could hear their then 12-year-old twins in the background, too, especially as the doctor had put the phone on speaker and kept it nearby while trying to revive Susann via CPR. But alas, it was already too late — she was pronounced dead by first responders, and Scott claimed she must have fallen down the stairs during the night owing to the way she was positioned.
Scott asserted that his wife/business partner (they owned a private clinic together) was suffering from a migraine the evening before, and it was so bad that even medications didn’t seem to help. Their children backed his claim, with their daughter Mary-Elizabeth going as far as to reveal that she had set up her room for her mother so that she could sleep in peace, alone. The fact she had a scarf on her neck and a big cooking pot near her body seemingly supported this, too, as she preferred to keep such items around just in case she needed to wipe her mouth or became sick.
However, Scott and Susann’s son, Eric, telling officials that he had woken up in the middle of the night to his parents arguing in his sister’s room added a different dynamic to the investigation. That’s because the responding officers were already weary of the doctor’s assertions because they didn’t think a simple fall from the stairs would cause Susann to have the bruises she did. His claim that their two dogs probably ended up strangling his already dizzy wife by tugging on her scarf didn’t make sense to them either, especially since Eric had told them that he remembered his mother putting them into their crates before going off to sleep.
Eric Scott Sills is Serving His Sentence in Prison Today
Since there was no clear evidence of any foul play at the time of Susann’s death, officials didn’t take Eric Scott Sills into custody or ask too many leading questions to him or their kids. Even though they had noticed the bruises on his arm, the cut on his forehead, and the blood stains in Mary-Elizabeth’s room, they didn’t want to jump to any conclusions until they were certain. As per reports, it was after the 45-year-old mother of two’s autopsy confirmed her cause of death to be homicidal strangulation, with broken C3 vertebrae and throat pressure, that they really zeroed in on Scott.
The fact that forensic analysis confirmed the blood stains to be a mix of Scott’s and Susann’s didn’t help the doctor, and neither did the fact that he had changed a lot in the months since his wife’s passing. He had had a hair transplant procedure, was dressing better, was showing off on social media, and reportedly even trying to date without ever really discussing his late wife or expressing grief. Then, with the discovery that the Sills’ marriage was rocky through a few texts Susann had sent her husband and their alleged fights over her having posted a partially nude photo online following a self-dare, officials believed they had found their motive. Therefore, on April 25, 2019, nearly two-and-a-half years after Susann’s death, her husband was arrested for murdering her and then covering up the horrific crime as an accident.
Scott stood trial for the same in December, where his defense argued that it was possible for her to have accidentally passed away considering her migraine, the medicines in her system, and the dogs playing tug-of-war with the scarf around her neck. However, the evidence presented by the prosecutors was undeniable, resulting in the jury convicting the father of four of second-degree murder – they believed he killed his wife but that there was no premeditation. He was subsequently sentenced to 15 years to life in prison, so today, at the age of 59, he remains incarcerated at the supermax-security Pelican Bay State Prison in Crescent City, California. According to the California Department of Corrections Records, he will become eligible for parole consultation in December 2028.
Read More: Susann and Scott Sills’ Kids: Where Are They Now?
