A California fertility doctor who prosecutors said strangled his wife and then tried to make it appear as if she’d died from accidentally falling down stairs was found guilty of murder Tuesday, the Orange County District Attorney’s Office said.
E. Scott Sills was found guilty of killing of his wife Susann Sills in 2016 and faces a sentence of up to 15 years to life in prison, the district attorney's office said in a statement.
He was arrested and charged in 2019.
The district attorney's office said that Sills called 911 on the morning of Nov. 16, 2016 and said his wife appeared to have fallen down the stairs.
However, evidence showed that she died of strangulation and that there were blood stains on a wall and curtains in a bedroom in the San Clemente home where Susann Sills had been sleeping, the office said.
E. Scott Sills' attorney, Jack Earley, argued to jurors that the man's wife had suffered from migraines — which is why she was sleeping in the separate bedroom — had not eaten and had taken painkillers that could have made her disoriented, the Los Angeles Times reported. He told jurors that Susann Sills fell, but it was unknown how, the newspaper reported.
Earley did not immediately respond to a request for comment to his office after business hours Tuesday evening.
Sentencing is scheduled for March 15, the district attorney's office said.
