Theresa Neubauer was once at paintings 5 years in the past at a Georgia college when she were given a telephone name that shocked her.
Her son-in-law — a outstanding fertility doctor who’d authored or edited a number of scientific books — had simply been arrested on suspicion of murder within the mysterious dying of her daughter, Susann Sills, 45.
Susann’s frame have been discovered on the backside of a staircase within the couple’s suburban Southern California house in 2016.
Up till that April 2019 telephone name, Neubauer stated, her circle of relatives hadn’t even identified that government had been investigating the dying as suspicious. She’d seen her daughter’s husband, Scott Sills, 59, as a person who’d misplaced his wife in a sad twist of fate, she stated, and she or he seen herself as his best friend as he raised the couple’s twins on his personal.
For extra at the case, track in to “If These Walls Could Talk” on “Dateline” at 9 ET/8 CT this night.
“I thought the police were satisfied with the investigation — that he had nothing to do with it and he was this poor single father,” Neubauer instructed “Dateline” in her circle of relatives’s first interview.
“I hadn’t thought of him as a threat in any way,” she stated. “It did not enter my mind.”
During Sills’ murder trial final yr, the prosecutor stated there have been a violent fight that ended with him strangling his wife and staging her frame at the staircase. His attorney attributed the dying to an unintended fall.
Sills was once convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced in March to fifteen years to lifestyles in jail.
At the ground of the steps
On the morning of Nov. 16, 2016, Sills dialed 911 and stated that he’d discovered his wife’s frame on the backside of the steps of their house in San Clemente, kind of 60 miles south of Los Angeles.
“I don’t have a pulse, and she’s cold,” he instructed the 911 operator, in keeping with audio of the decision.
Paramedics arrived mins later, and Susann was once pronounced useless at 6:35 a.m., her dying certificates presentations.
When Sills instructed his better half’s mother what took place in a telephone name day after today, Neubauer recalled him announcing that he’d heard a noise in a single day however didn’t trouble checking because the couple had two canines and 12-year-old twins.
“There’s always noise in the house at night — somebody’s always doing something — so it didn’t concern him,” she recalled Sills announcing. “But then in the morning, he found her downstairs.”
Sills instructed investigators from the Orange County Sheriff’s Department that he concept his wife’s dying was once a sad results of migraine medicine that can have led to her to lose her steadiness and tumble down the steps, investigator Eric Hatch instructed “Dateline.”
Neubauer believed her daughter should’ve suffered a surprising and sudden ailment — an aneurysm, most likely — as a result of she had all the time been particularly agile and sleek. She’d carried out ballet and gymnastics as a kid, Neubauer stated, and as a youngster, she’d been a cheerleader and ran hurdles.
As an grownup, Susann — who helped her husband run their fertility health facility, the Center for Advanced Genetics — even made an audition video for the truth display “Survivor.”
“She never fell,” Neubauer stated. “She didn’t even fall when she was a child.”
Neubauer stated she sought after the detectives to know the way “physically capable” her daughter was once. When she linked that information, she stated, probably the most investigators answered: “Yes, well, but accidents do happen.”
“Which, of course, is true,” Neubauer stated. “I had no reason to think they would not have done a thorough investigation. So I thought it was done and it was over.”
Another investigator searching into the dying, Dave Holloway, described their verbal exchange with the circle of relatives as conventional for a regulation enforcement investigation: sympathetic however restricted.
“We wouldn’t come right out and tell the family that it was definitely an accident,” he stated. “We wouldn’t come out and say it was definitely a murder. We would tell them that we are conducting our investigation because at some point, we may need to ask them questions and we wouldn’t want to prejudice their answers.”
A struggle, accidents and a topless photograph
That intended Susann’s family members had been unaware that investigators discovered imaginable proof early on indicating that there may well be extra to her dying than her husband’s principle instructed.
In the bed room the place she had slept the evening of her dying, the detectives discovered hair and bloodstains on a curtain and baseboard, Hatch stated. A initial post-mortem confirmed that she suffered a substantial selection of accidents, together with what looked to be defensive wounds on her hands and a ligature mark throughout her neck, he stated.
Her husband additionally had an damage that the detectives discovered suspicious — a fresh-looking laceration on his head that he’d lined with a beanie, Hatch stated. When detectives puzzled Sills about it, Hatch recalled, he stated it had took place whilst solving his automotive a couple of days previous. He denied figuring out anything else in regards to the blood within the bed room, Hatch stated.
The investigators additionally discovered proof that there could have been issues within the couple’s courting. One in their kids recalled his folks arguing the evening of Susann’s dying, Hatch stated, and textual content messages confirmed her telling her husband that she was once “trapped” and would “never be free.”
In Sills’ place of job, the detectives discovered a cryptic word — a message they later discovered was once connected to a chance Susann had made on a conservative web page that Donald Trump would win the 2016 presidential election.
When Trump received, Hatch stated, Susann fulfilled her finish of the guess and posted a topless photograph of herself at the web page. The message, which have been published out and was once sitting on Sills’ printer, was once in accordance with her photograph.
“All I’ve got to say is you must have a super cool husband,” the message stated.
“That told me that this posting had been on someone’s mind,” Holloway stated. “That wasn’t something that just happened to be up there that day.”
When investigators requested Sills in regards to the word, he denied printing it and stated his wife had most definitely put it there. The argument was once about his wife wanting to get relaxation when she wasn’t feeling neatly, Hatch recalled Sills announcing, and the texts had been about price range of their trade, in keeping with his attorney.
A protracted-awaited reason behind dying
Despite the detectives’ suspicions about Sills, the coroner was once but to resolve the purpose or approach of his wife’s dying. That procedure took a yr.
Elise Hatcher, a former Orange County prosecutor who later treated the case, attributed the lengthen to the complexity of the girl’s accidents. With gunshots or stabbings, she instructed “Dateline,” the reason for dying is apparent and it’s some distance more uncomplicated for prosecutors to record fees in the ones circumstances.
But with Susann, Hatcher stated, the case couldn’t transfer ahead till the coroner finished in depth checking out searching on the ligature marks and her neck construction.
“They’re very methodical,” Hatcher stated. “In this case, it took a very long time.”
By November 2017, that checking out was once after all whole: Susann’s dying was once a murder, Hatch stated. She’d been strangled with a ligature.
Forensic checking out confirmed that the blood within the bed room belonged to each the useless girl and her husband, Holloway stated. Stains on a blouse that Sills wore within the aftermath of his wife’s dying that he attributed to chocolate milk had been if truth be told her blood, Holloway stated, and his blood was once discovered beneath her fingernails.
While a toxicology research discovered ache medicine in Susann’s gadget, there didn’t seem to be sufficient to have an effect on her steadiness, in keeping with the file.
As the investigators labored
Susann’s family members had no concept in regards to the coroner’s findings. Nor was once her mom conscious about any issues within the couple’s courting. Neubauer stated she spoke along with her daughter weekly, and the one problems Susann’s associated with her about her husband had been minor.
“If there was a problem there, she never brought it up,” Neubauer stated. “And she was not the meek kind of person.”
After Susann’s dying, Neubauer stated, she’d remained in contact with Sills in regards to the twins and located they labored neatly in combination. For a holiday to the Caribbean with his wife’s circle of relatives, Sills up to date the twins’ passports, crammed out the entire bureaucracy for diving categories and “seemed very happy about it,” she stated.
“He did nothing to prevent them from coming out and being with us,” she stated.
For Sills, lifestyles persevered as although he weren’t the topic of a murder investigation.
Sympathetic neighbors stated they arranged prayers and meal drop-offs whilst Sills persevered to boost their twins on the house the place his wife died. He seemed on a Las Vegas radio display to speak about the hazards of a now-discontinued delivery keep an eye on instrument, and he labored on a brand new e book, “Ovarian Reboot: A Personal Journey to Hormone & Fertility Renewal.”
The detectives, in the meantime, had returned to Sills and interviewed him once more in regards to the effects from the coroner and the forensics checking out. He was once cooperative, Hatch stated, however “he didn’t have an answer. He continued to deny that he had anything to do with Susann’s death — that it was an accident or she fell down the stairs.”
Although the investigation hadn’t exposed a transparent cause, investigators believed Sills was once accountable within the murder of his wife and forwarded their findings to the Orange County District Attorney’s Office. Hatcher, the prosecutor assigned to the case, stated that by the point she reviewed the 2 packing containers of proof, it have been kind of two years since Susann’s dying.
“I felt very disturbed for the family and for Susann that it took so long to get to the bottom of it,” Hatcher stated. “But by the time I reviewed it, there was enough there.”
Hatcher stated she got here to consider there have been a violent fight within the bed room the place the blood was once discovered. That fight ended with Sills strangling his wife and staging her frame at the stairs, she stated.
His attorney, Jack Earley, maintained that Susann’s dying was once from an unintended fall and stated the ligature marks could have come from her canines tightly pulling a shawl that have been discovered round her neck.
On April 25, 2019, as Sills drove to paintings, undercover deputies pulled him over and arrested the doctor on suspicion of murder.
Hatcher alerted Neubauer to the news, and 5 years later — after Covid-related delays — she was once in court docket when her son-in-law went on trial. A jury convicted Sills of second-degree murder.
“Initially, there’s a moment of relief,” she stated, recalling what it was once like to listen to the to blame verdict. “And then after that — but there’s no Susann. And there never will be.”
