Dateline NBC - Talking Dateline: If These Walls Could Talk

Episode Date: May 8, 2024

Josh Mankiewicz and Keith Morrison sit down to talk about Keith’s most recent episode, “If These Walls Could Talk.” In November 2016, Susann Sills was found dead at the bottom of the staircase in the home she shared with her husband and their two children in San Clemente, California. Susann’s death appeared to have been a terrible accident, but investigators soon discovered evidence that led them to believe it was something more sinister. Keith tells Josh about the puzzling circumstances surrounding Susann’s death and shares behind-the-scenes details of filming the episode.  Keith also plays a podcast-exclusive clip from his interview with one of Susann’s brothers and Dateline producer Michelle Madigan joins in to answer viewer questions. Listen to the full episode of “If These Walls Could Talk” here: https://link.chtbl.com/dl_ifthesewallscouldtalkListen to “Poison,” the episode Josh mentions that also took place in San Clemente here: https://link.chtbl.com/dl_poison

hi everybody i'm josh mankiewicz and we're talking dateline today with the grumpy curmudgeonly keith morrison which i think sets the tone for the time ahead how are you mankiewicz um i'm fine uh this episode is called if these walls could talk now if you have not listened to this yet or if you haven't seen it on television uh it is the podcast right below this one on the list that you just chose from so go there listen to it or you want to watch it on tv you can do that or stream it on peacock and then come back here now uh today we're going to talk about this episode keith also has an extra clip from his interview with suzanne's Frank, that he's going to play for us. And later on the producer of this episode, Michelle Madigan is going to be here to answer some of your questions about this broadcast from

social media. All right, let's talk Dateline. If these walls could talk. It's a good title, huh? It is good. And I loved your opening lines over the the drone shots of you know suburbia with those little those little identical houses you never know what's going on inside and it turns out of course it's just a just a cauldron of passion inside them every house is the cauldron of passion isn't yours i think think totally. Yeah. So to me, one of the first questions I have is, how does this take so long? I sort of get the feeling that if this guy had been a truck driver, he might have been prosecuted a lot sooner. They took more time than Elise Hatcher thought that they should have taken. It was the previous prosecutor who was in the job before her didn't move on it.

But part of the problem was the forensics took a year to come back. The information that would tell them whether this was a homicide or an accidental fall down a staircase. Falls happen all the time. People fall down the stairs and they get killed. I understand that. And it certainly, at least at first blush, that was at least plausible. I guess I'm surprised that it took a year. I realize that life is not like an hour-long dramatic TV show in which DNA results come back in 10 seconds.

But I sort of thought that it would take less than a year to build a case. They wanted to be very careful. They wanted to be sure, especially when your defendant happens to be very careful. They wanted to be sure, especially when your defendant happens to be a widely admired and respected fertility doctor who is going about the business

of helping couples create life and has been doing so more successfully than most other people in this field for years. We really saw in this episode, I thought sort of two different sides of Dr. Sills. You know, I mean, a couple of Dr. Sills, you know, I mean, a couple of different patients, one, you know, talking about how he completely lost it and was furious at her and was yelling at her and saw, you know, you saw this side of him that she'd

never seen and that most patients never see. And then the other one is the one that prosecutors, I think, were worried about, which was this like, you know, very decent, you know, caring guy who really wanted to give patients this gift of having a child. Which I should say, 90, probably 99% of his patients would have portrayed him that way. He's a very kind man who cared a great deal about their success. And his wife was there at the office, running the office, also doing good work with him. I mean, he was Suzanne's IVF doctor? Yes, indeed. And they start dating and then they get married. That feels like some kind

of ethical issue to me. Well, it does, doesn't it? Yeah. She'd been trying to have a baby and was unable to and ran into Dr. Sills and fell for him. Although her friends would wonder, why did you fall for that guy? He's such an odd character. But, you know, she did. And they apparently got along very well. Those twins, those are from the two of them. Those are felt the relationship was fine. It was very, very deep inside that relationship where the issues had occurred. And sometimes when things are very deep and they're not discussed openly and they fester, the explosive reaction is stronger than it might otherwise be. I thought the prosecutors sort of offering up the fact that they didn't know what the motive was. I thought that's like admitting a real weakness to the case. When they say I'm not required to show motive, it could have been that he was angry about this relationship that he was having. It could have been that he wanted her out of the way so he could be with the woman.

We don't really know. But what we do know is there was a fight and he killed her. Eric says he heard his parents yelling. Was there anything that you heard about what that argument was about no eric was unable to say or didn't say later denied it but he supports his father too and later denied hearing it at all so uh the 911 call um you know we start off with him referring to her as a patient. We've got a patient here who's fallen upstairs and I don't have a pulse. And he doesn't sound frantic the way I think pretty much anybody would if they discover their wife having just fallen down the stairs and she's not breathing. You're like, I would not be able to form a complete sentence. This is a classic situation, Josh, where it would be difficult for a detective or a prosecutor to know how much to make of that. For one thing, everybody reacts differently to stressful

situations of that sort. And they, you know, they get charged with a crime because they're too calm in the 911 call. Other people are frantic and over the top. As a doctor who had, for years and years, been treating people in difficult situations, had trained extensively, not just in IVF, but in all kinds of doctoring in order to get his advanced degree. You know, he would know to treat somebody calmly and dispassionately if he wanted to have any success. Okay. He'd also know how to do CPR. Right. That was the impression that the 911 operator had,

that he wasn't doing CPR. That's not what his daughter says. That's not what, you know, that's not what he says. I mean, that's one of the first things I wrote down when I was watching your episode. I was like, as a doctor, wouldn't he know to perform CPR like right away? Wouldn't the 911 call have come with him in the midst of the compressions? Well, as long as we're talking spoilers, it clearly was a play. And the thing that told the story, of course, was the lividity.

Lividity, as you know, is the blood that coagulates in the part of your body, which is lower down after you die. The blood stops pumping. It goes to that part of your body. That part of your body turns purple. And that's that. It tells you how the body was lying when you died. And the lividity in her body was up the stairs where her head was at the bottom of the stairs. So it defied the laws of gravity.

It could not possibly have happened that way. It means the body was staged. It's just no question about it. I mean, again, this is a doctor. He's got some medical training. How is he not going to know that? He should know that. He probably wasn't thinking very clearly.

How does he think ligature strangulation is not going to show up in an autopsy? How does he think this extremely visible blood and hair in the room is not going to be seen? I mean, like, you know. There was a dispute over whether her blood was found as well as his blood in that child's bedroom. The defense argued it was just his blood. That, yes, they found her dna but she was sleeping in that room after all so of course they would so the idea is that she touches the wall thus leaving her dna she touches the curtain in the wall and then he bleeds on that and that that's

the combined dna i don't know what dna experts would say about that yeah yeah i've been doing this for a while yeah when we come back we're gonna have more from keith's interview with suzanne's brother frank so um one of the things that was very cool about this story, I thought, was that you had so much video of Suzanne when she was alive. That usually does not happen. You know, her audition for Survivor and, you know, the videos she made with her daughter. For our purposes, it's just wonderful because it's an opportunity for the audience to see what these people are really like. And we don't have to do anything.

We just let it play, which was great. Brought her alive in a very significant way. You just need to know people. You do. You need to know people. And you're obviously not going to get it from her husband. He's not talking. And I thought her, you know, the kids are not talking.

And her mom, I thought, was the strongest sort of, it was clear that she was talking to her mom all the way through. I don't know how much she was talking to everybody else in her family, but clearly like her mom remained sort of a confidant and a close friend all her life. She was a great interview. She is smart and she's attentive and she cares about things. Her mother, interestingly, lives in Florida, but she was in California where we did the interview at our little studio, the two of us sitting there together. But it was very chilly that day, California chilly, which can feel cold in the bones, even though it's California. And our studio is not heated.

She was cold. And rightly so, she was wearing pretty thin clothing. So we got a blanket, quite a large, warm, green blanket, and draped it around her. And if you look carefully at the picture of her interview, it looks like a very attractive cloak that she would have bought at some fancy store. In fact, it was a blanket that we were using. That's actually Dateline Supply. Yes, exactly right. Oh, nice. That's good to know. So you have a lot of exclusive interviews in this,

people who have not spoken before. Luckily so. The creation of the producers we work with, very effective. Let's give a shout out to the producers who worked on this. This is Michelle Madigan's show, And I thought she did a wonderful job. Queen of Orange County. Yeah, you bet. Let's hear that clip that you brought, which is from Suzanne's brother, Frank.

This didn't air in the episode, but in this little bit of interview, Frank is talking about why it was that he wanted to sit down and talk with us. Since her death, there's so little footprint out there for Suzanne, for the type of person that she was and for what she was to her family, what she meant to me and my family. And I just feel like a lot of that's been lost. It's like in some senses, you wouldn't even know that she lived anymore. History folded over her and she disappeared. Yeah, and this is important for me to do because even if this is concentrating on parts of her life that I would rather not think about or talk about or have to contemplate,

anything that can allow her legacy to exist in any kind of preserved format I wanted to be involved in. I think that's one of the reasons that people sit down and talk with Dateline, which is, you know, we're going to tell this story in some depth. It's not going to be six inches in the local newspaper. It's not going to be 45 seconds in the local newspaper. It's not going to be 45 seconds to a minute on the local news. It's going to be a much more complete telling of their life. They're going to get a fuller picture of what happened and who they were.

I think so. Although we make it clear that it's entirely up to them. They don't want to talk on television. We're not going to make them feel bad if they don't. And we're not going to chase them down the street. If they don't want to talk, that's up to them. Certainly not. And I would love to have heard from the children. I really would have. No one wants to admit that dad killed mom.

No, but I wouldn't have expected them to admit that anyway. How you could kill your kid's parent. I just do not. I do not fathom how that happens, but it does happen clearly all the time. My impression was the guy must have snapped that he didn't often snap that he rarely snapped. But when he did, it was a big storm. It suggests that sort of the jury got it right. That's that this was second-degree murder. This was not something he planned out in advance. This just happened in the moment

because he was unable to control whatever temper was sort of lying beneath the surface there. This was a very thoughtful jury. I thought it was a very good jury. I've talked to a lot of juries in the past, and sometimes you walk out and shake your head, but this one was a good jury. I remember talked to a lot of juries in the past, and sometimes you walk out and shake your head, but this one was a good jury. I remember when we first started covering crime, we used to make a big effort to get the jury. And we would try to get as many of them as we could,

and then we'd line them up. Sometimes we had everybody. We had all 12 people. The chairs ranked in rows. Yeah, like a little risers i remember that yeah and that that was usually a big part of the of the storytelling and over time i guess in part because sometimes people don't want to talk um uh we stopped doing that as much so the jury does not turn up in every dateline hour or two hour but uh sometimes when they do as in this case they they tell a really interesting part of the story so when you were when you were shooting in san clonin when you were out on the street with the uh with the detectives um yeah i i i heard that you uh you attracted a crowd which does not surprise me everybody wants to know this weird strange gentleman mankiewicz that i work with

and how to get in touch with him. I don't think that's what they wanted to know. So how many people came out and said, oh my gosh, it's Keith Morrison. What are you doing here? Nobody. Nobody, Josh. That's not what I heard.

So now I'm going to tell a story. Oh, gosh. Every now and then, dear viewers, I'm in Keith's presence in public. I don't say that very often because usually we're covering separate stories, separate parts of the country. But sometimes we're in the same place. And then people come up to Keith, to you, and they say, oh, my gosh, I love you. You're so great. I love watching you.

And Keith has this expression, kind of like this one that he's got right now where he's like who who is it you've mistaken me for and i'm like no it's you they know who you are no no they it's they've figured it out they know exactly who you are and they love you no no no this is an old and wrinkled guy who's done you know be a threatening one. No, no, no. I didn't realize this until after I saw the episode. But many years ago, also in San Clemente, same place that this story happened, I covered a story about a former Jeopardy champion, a guy named Paul Curry, who was accused and then later convicted of killing his wife, Linda, by overdosing her with nicotine. I remember that story. The coverage of that story went on forever, didn't it?

That was only a couple of miles away. That was only a few miles away from where this happened. Well, I recall two things about that story. One, I think I probably was annoyed with you for poaching on my territory. You absolutely were annoyed with me. You absolutely were annoyed with me. I remember that. And the payback was it took you a long time to do that story.

It did take me a long time to do that story. Yes. Okay. Now, after the break, the producer of this broadcast, Michelle Madigan, is going to be here to help us answer some of your questions from social media. Okay, so now we're going to take some of your questions from social media. And here to answer some of those questions is the woman who produced this episode and many other Dateline episodes, Michelle Madigan. Hi, Michelle.

Hi, Josh. Great to see you. So our first question is from somebody named Lester. He writes in to say, Josh, please tell Keith to stop sending me tuna casserole recipes. They're all, you know what? That's a text. That is not a, that's not viewer mail. Sorry. Nevermind. Sorry. I got that wrong. Let's go

to viewer mail. Mike 1990 says, I love the jury's thoughts on the process of getting to their decision. Great insight. How hard is it to book jurors, Michelle? It can be super easy or it can be really difficult. When we sit through jury selection, we know very little about these jurors. The way the jury service works, it's anonymous. We don't know their names. And so it's really up to them to contact us after they're done being jurors. And you hope that they call you. And sometimes they do and sometimes they don't. But we find that a lot of them find the experience of talking about it really interesting.

So when I saw this comment come in on Friday, I was very grateful because that was an element that I wanted to have in the story. And I thought it would be interesting to hear what they had to say. And I'm glad that Mike agreed. So here's the same comment from three viewers, which something Keith and I talked about a little bit from Susan Whitehill, Katie Augenbaugh,

and Sylvia NYC, who's a longtime friend of ours on social. They all want to know the same thing. How would a doctor not know CPR? You know, wouldn't a doctor not need to be told how to do that? You know, if I were a doctor, I think I probably would know CPR. If I were a doctor who had just killed my wife and was trying to cover it up, I think that's

particularly when I'd at least be practicing my CPR, why he wouldn't be going through the motions better than he did, I don't quite get. This was always what I was listening to every time I heard that 911 call, because he starts the call saying, I've got a patient who's fallen off stairs, but he never actually says to the dispatcher, I'm a doctor, I know how to do cpr and that i think was a problem for him when it came to the jury jorge jr my love wrote in to say children always suffer the most in the long run it's got to be brutally difficult outside of the evidence i mean that's a feeling that you're you know i mean who wants to lose both their parents because of the same thing that you don't really understand and you weren't a part of? We reached out to those kids.

I know we would have in the normal course of business. You get anywhere with them? Yes. I mean, I actually did speak with Eric following the verdict. And it was a really hard conversation, and I think he appreciated my empathy in wanting to hear from him and in understanding that it would be a difficult conversation to have. I'm a mother of two, and this is always the hardest part for me is when I'm meeting the kids and speaking with them and trying to understand how hard it would be to be in their shoes. Also, you know, somebody in Eric's position is caught between two competing interests. One is his desire to see his father acquitted. And the second is to tell his story completely.

And one may not help the other. So a couple other things. Keith and I talked about this earlier, but I want to get your take on it too. Lily Bondy, who's an old friend of ours here on social, says, so weird to go with your husband to a fertility doctor and then leave your husband for the fertility doctor. How does that even happen? And that would be my question. How does that even happen? I spoke with her husband that she was married to at the time. He was very nice. He was very careful not to get into too much detail about that part of their story. He said, you know, there's some filings from the divorce that you're welcome to get. And so I got his divorce filings and I got Dr. Sills' divorce filings. And I tried to figure this out,

the timing of it. Dr. Sills ex-wife accused him of infidelity. And I just, like I put it together that that would have been Suzanne and there had to have been an overlap. I just don't know how that relationship developed. And so I wasn't able to really add that to our reporting. That was good. Thank you. Let's go to something else. A bunch of people wrote in to talk about similarities between this case and the Michael Peterson case, in which an owl played a, perhaps a fateful part. Lauren Ingram said, oh my God, the owl, I mean dog, did do it. The dog and his thirst for pig ears made him obviously filled with murderous rage at likely the woman who feeds him. Yeah. No one bought the dog defense, did they? Yeah, I don't think anybody

bought it, but it was certainly an interesting approach. And Jack Early is one of my favorite defense attorneys that I've had the opportunity. This was my second case that I've covered that he's been involved with. And I respect him as an attorney. And when he felt so strongly about this theory that he wanted to take it to a jury, I thought, okay, I'm going to see where this goes. I mean, even if you believe that the dog grabs the scarf when it's around her neck like you've got to compress someone's neck for a very long time to kill them that's not gonna happen in two seconds during the course of the trial we got a puppy and so it was really interesting to sort of see like just how ferocious she could

pull on something. And so I would come home and be like, can you pull on something like for an extended amount of time? And the answer is no, like they don't have that attention span. It's a shorter attention span to be pulling on a scarf. I don't know why I brought my puppy who's like lovely and sleeping right next to me. She's, she's actually doing a good job. It's interesting how this like, are you like this with every story? Like you're, you're testing out the theory with your dog and you know, you got kids, you're thinking about that yourself. I mean, you definitely feel everything about these stories, which I think is actually probably a pretty good thing. I do. I get, I get, I get a little invested in my stories because I want to know and I like to sort of understand it, you know, on both sides.

All right. Michelle Madigan, you have just talked yourself into future appearances on Talking Dateline. You were very good at this. Thank you. So that's Talking Dateline for this week. Thank you, Keith, for joining us. Thank you, Michelle Madigan, for coming in to answer social questions. It was great to be here. If any of you have any questions about this broadcast or any other, you can get to us on social at Dateline NBC. As always, thanks for listening. See you Fridays on Dateline on NBC. Thank you.