Orange County man charged with murder after claiming he found his wife dead at bottom of stairs

Dr. Eric Scott Sills, a successful Orange County fertility specialist, told investigators he awoke early on a November morning in 2016 to find his wife dead at the bottom of the stairs of their $1-million San Clemente home.

Initially, it appeared that 45-year-old Susann Sills had fallen to her death, but prosecutors say an investigation that has spanned more than two years suggests more sinister circumstances.

Orange County prosecutors on Friday charged Eric Sills, 54, her husband and business partner, with murder in connection with her death. Authorities have not released how the woman died or how they connected her husband to her demise. He has not yet entered a plea.

Sills’ defense attorney declined to comment when reached by phone Wednesday.

Orange County sheriff’s deputies began investigating Susann Sills’ death after they were called to the couple’s home on Via Cancion on Nov. 13, 2016. The Sheriff’s Department’s homicide unit was called in to investigate because of the “unknown nature of the death,” prosecutors said this week.

Based on the investigation and autopsy, authorities determined in 2017 that she had been killed. Over the next year, homicide detectives and the district attorney’s office continued to investigate, and last month, authorities obtained an arrest warrant for the physician.

The warrant, filed in Orange County Superior Court, is sealed, which shields it from public view.

Eric Sills was arrested April 25 on his way to work. He was booked into the Orange County Jail and released four days later after posting $1-million bail, according to jail records.

Sills graduated from the University of Tennessee College of Medicine in 1992 and received a doctorate from the University of Westminster in London in 2013, according to his online resume.

The couple had been married for more than a decade and had two children. They also went into business together, according to public records.

Susann Sills, who earned an MBA from the University of Miami in 2000, was the co-founder of Center for Advanced Genetics, a fertility clinic in Carlsbad, according to an obituary published in the Los Angeles Times. Eric Sills serves as medical director at the clinic.

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