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this week's 48 Hours looks at the puzzling death of a wife of a prominent fertility doctor Dr Eric Scott Sills
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called 911 to report finding his wife and business partner Suzanne unresponsive at the bottom of the stairs
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in their California home the initial investigation into suzan's injuries found some evidence they could be
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consistent with an accidental fall however the manner of her death was later ruled a homicide by strangulation
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Dr Sills became the prime suspect in his defense attorneys arguing that the family dogs may have played a role in
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her death correspondent Tracy Smith on the unusual Theory it was a Sunday morning November
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13th 2016 when Dr Eric Scott Sills reported that his wife had tripped and fallen on the staircase after suffering
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from a migraine she's had one for three days minutes later 45-year-old Suzanne Sills was declared dead at the scene
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Suzanne had injuries to pretty much her whole body Orange County Sheriff's homicide detectives Eric hatch and Dave
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Holloway were called to conduct a death investigation the deputy Corner during her preliminary body exam of Suzanne the
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injuries weren't consistent with somebody falling down the stairs her neck had a pretty pronounced ligature
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Mark the Sill's daughter Mary Katherine told detectives her mother had a scarf around her neck when she was discovered
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that morning is it possible that she could have fallen down down the stairs and then somehow the scarf strangled her
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could have caught on a banister but we didn't have any evidence of that but in Mary Katherine's room where Suzanne had
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stayed that night to rest something raised suspicion you found blood yes in November 2017 Suzanne's cause of death
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was cited as ligature strangulation and the manor homicide Dr Scott Sills was now the prime suspect but defense
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attorney Jack early says there are two other possible culprits the family dogs Bary Kate saw the dogs pulling on
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the scarf he suggested that Suzanne fell on the stairs and that the dogs then tugged on the scarf that was wrapped
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around her neck do you honestly think that the dogs pulled hard enough to strangle her to death no that was not
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the main Theory instead early focused on another injury identified in Suzanne's autopsy a fra Ed vertebra in her neck
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which would have left Suzanne incapacitated their breathing is compromised if they're then choked it
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doesn't take much to kill them Tracy Smith joins us now quite a theory there Tracy good morning were
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they ever able to identify whose blood was in the daughter's room yes so there was blood on the
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curtains on the nightstand and on the wall and when they tested it for DNA they found Scott Sill's DNA in all three
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of those places and on the wall there was a mixture of Scott and Suzanne's DNA so investigators think maybe a fight
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happened there how did Dr Sills explain all that blood at first he said he was unaware of it and then when they
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confronted him with the DNA results he said oh he was changing a window screen and he cut
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himself wow lots of questions this is going to be quite a report Tracy Smith thank you very much you can watch
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Tracy's full report and you're going to want to it's called the puzzling death of Suzanne Sills on 48 hours tomorrow
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night 10 9 Central here on CBS and streaming on Paramount Plus