Sure, the dog ate your homework, that’s a perfectly legit excuse, but did he strangle your wife to death with a scarf? Probably not.
TO THE DOGS
In my true crime ramblings, I recently came across the story of the esteemed California infertility doctor, Scott Sills, who just last year was finally sentenced to the (second degree) murder of his wife in 2016. She was found at the bottom of the main entrance staircase of their home after the kids heard the couple arguing in the night. She was young and fit enough to not likely suffer a ton of injuries falling down stairs, but there she was, without a bump heard in the night, in a dead broken heap with all kinds of ailments, including strangulation wounds around her neck. Nonetheless, somehow—even after the balding husband is soon seen online sharing selfies with a new head of hair and cool shades, and quickly dating—the family dog gets thrown in as a possible culprit. Or maybe even both dogs! Susann was found with a silk scarf around her neck. Perhaps one or two dogs, as they was known to enjoy a good tug-of-war, yanked it tighter around her post-fall until she croaked. So not pushing her but rendering the final blow. Even the daughter suggested this was possible, as the kids have stood their by father.
From CBS news, a snippet from court:
The prosecution’s case relied heavily on Susann Sills’ autopsy. But Scott Sills’ defense attorney, Jack Earley, came to court armed with a unique theory. He suggested that Susann fell—either going up or down—the stairs and that one or both of the family dogs then tugged on the scarf that was wrapped around her neck.
Tracy Smith: Do you honestly think that the dogs pulled hard enough to strangle her to death?
Jack Earley: No, no—I didn’t. That was not the main theory that the dogs actually strangled her to death.
Instead, Earley focused on another injury identified in Susann Sills’ autopsy: that fractured C3 vertebra. He says that injury is consistent with a fall, and that it would have left Susann incapacitated.
Jack Earley: Let’s assume that someone trips and falls and fractures their C3… their breathing is compromised. If they’re then choked, it doesn’t take much to kill ’em.
The defense had the scarf tested for dog DNA and it came back positive. And there was testimony that the dogs were known to play tug-of-war. And when Susann and Scott Sills’ now-19-year-old daughter Mary-Katherine took the stand for the prosecution, her testimony supported the defense’s theory. Investigator Dave Holloway was at the trial.
Det. Dave Holloway: Mary-Katherine testified that she…saw the dogs pulling at the scarf around her neck. And none of that came up during—the—the day we interviewed her the first time.
Tracy Smith: How did that strike you?
Det Dave Holloway: Well, (sighs), um, I know that she was still close with her father…
Tracy Smith: Do you think she’s trying to protect her dad?
Later Prosecution Jennifer Walker: Strangulation is a silent killer. You know what’s not a silent killer? Falling down multiple stairs… You have to believe she bounced her head, neck, back, shoulders, inside of her arms, legs and feet, multiple ways against approximately six stairs. Like being in a soundproof pinball machine… Then was strangled by her dogs. Not reasonable.
THE OWL THEORY
All of this—the stairs, the poor accused animal(s), the kids caught in the crosshairs of defending—reminded me of the infamous staircase of author Michael Peterson fame. In December 2001, the author’s story is that he came into his North Carolina house after lingering poolside much later into the night than his wife Kathleen with wine and cigarettes, only to then discover her in a bloody mess at the bottom of their stairs. This case was the focus of an 18-part riveting documentary on Netflix notably sympathetic to Michael as he prepares for trial (the film editor was having a romantic relationship with him, it turns out), and, again, somehow in the mix comes a creature with no say in the matter. In this case: an owl.
Among the many theories diffusing attention from the obvious (he did it), there was the obtuse idea floated, at first by a neighbor, that perhaps her head contusions were the result of a barred owl attack as she returned from the pool deck ahead of her husband. Supposedly there was a feather, or microfeathers, found on her body. Of course the internet won’t quit and many an Owl Theory post are out there, including by Peterson’s own lawyer, David Rudolf on his website:
Here is the circumstantial evidence that supports the theory that Kathleen went out to the front yard, perhaps to place the small reindeers seen in the photos of the scene taken by the police, and that a barred owl inflicted those injuries:
Barred owls were living in the woods by the Peterson house
Barred owls are aggressive and can be dangerous, as explained here
Barred owls have attacked people on numerous occasions
There were drops of blood on the outside walkway leading to the front door of the house, as shown in police photos
There was a large smear of blood on the outside of the front door frame as shown in police photos
At least two of the wounds on Kathleen Peterson’s scalp are in the shape of the talons of a barred owl, as shown on autopsy photos
The tiny wounds on Kathleen’s face are consistent with the tip of an owl’s beak
A feather was found on Kathleen Peterson’s body
A twig was found in dried blood on Kathleen Peterson’s body
There were numerous strands of Kathleen Peterson’s head hair, which the roots indicated had been pulled out (not cut), found in dried blood on her hands
Kathleen’s head injuries are not consistent with her having been beaten by a blunt object or on a stair, as she had no brain injury or swelling, no subdural hematoma, and no skull fracture.
Of course, none of this absolutely *proves* it was a barred owl that inflicted the initial wounds on Kathleen Peterson. But as circumstantial evidence goes, it seems pretty persuasive and credible.
Michael served time, but only for manslaughter and then was set free by the end of the docuseries. Both husbands here—Peterson and Sills—still attest to their innocence and their kids still believe them. Despite the fact that in Michael’s case, he once was the last person to see this other woman before she too fell to her death down her staircase in Germany. Must have been that traveling owl!
ALLIGATOR ALIBI
Now, if you were going to blame a murder (or its cleanup) on an alligator and you happened to live in Florida, you might have an argument with more teeth. Mike Williams supposedly went duck fishing in a boat one morning in the year 2000, never to return. Investigators, only locating an empty boat in Lake Seminole, initially believed he must have bumped up against the tree stumps at the bottom of the shallow area, fallen in, drowned, and been snatched by the under-creatures of the large reservoir, as you do.
From Wikipedia:
If Williams had drowned after accidentally falling out of his boat, his body would be the only one of 80 known deaths in the lake never to have been found. The head of a private search firm that supplemented official efforts near the end of the search offered a possible explanation. “With the wildlife around, I would guess that the alligators have dismembered and have stored the remains in a location that we would not be able to find,” he wrote in a report. Early searchers had reported seeing many of them, and some of the officials were willing to accept the possibility. “Everyone knows the lake is full of alligators,” said the FFWCC’s David Arnette. “You look for other answers: ‘Why hasn't the body appeared?’”
It was suggested that perhaps Williams’s body had become entangled in the beds of dense hydrilla beneath the lake surface, and then found by the alligators later, with turtles and catfish finishing what they had left behind. Denise Williams, who had avoided media attention during the search for her husband, accepted that her husband had died. She arranged for a memorial service for Mike to be held the day after the search ended.
But it’s a worse betrayal than that of the swamp creatures. It was Mike’s own best friend, who had been having an affair with the wife Denise, and by their own hatched plan, took his buddy out for an early morning hunt, shot him instead of ducks, and buried the body five miles away. Mike’s mom never bought this “alligator alibi” and friend Brian Winchester confessed in 2017, getting immunity for his story. Even in Florida, alligators don’t eat in the winter months, and the crime occurred in December. Don’t people know by now that murder for the sake of being with your lover rarely results with anyone ending up with said lover? Brian is serving time, but actually for the kidnapping of Denise in 2016, who was now divorcing him. Denise is serving 30 years for murder conspiracy.
85 CHIPMUNKS
Finally, in the way of animal scapegoats, there’s the Morphew case of 2020 in Colorado and seemingly every animal in the kingdom. Busybody Barry blames a mountain lion attack when his wife Suzanne goes missing—along with a whole menagerie. Bull elk, horned deer, runaway turkey and no less than eighty-five chipmunks come into this tall tale worthy of a Disney animation gone wrong. From HuffPost:
Just after 7:30 p.m., investigators found Suzanne’s undamaged bike in a nearby ravine, where a police officer’s bodycam recorded Barry arriving in his truck at around 8:45 p.m. The second question he asked police was whether she’d been attacked by a mountain lion, which he said he’d been tracking in the area, the probable cause affidavit said. Suzanne’s teal helmet was found three days later, about 1.5 miles from the Morphew’s house. Her cellphone has never been found.
But mountain lion soon morphs into all kinds of creatures in Morphew’s very animated world,
like Turkeys:
Although he’d initially said he’d driven home to have lunch and go hiking with his wife, location data seemingly showed him approaching the house on foot. (Oliver later told investigators that Barry had stalked her and Suzanne on at least two occasions, sneaking up to their houses because he believed Suzanne was having an affair.) Barry accounted for his movements, authorities said, by saying he was watching turkeys. Later he said he was specifically searching for a turkey that his daughter had shot with a bow but they hadn’t found.
85 Chipmunks:
An FBI agent testified at the preliminary hearing that cellphone data indicated when Barry came home at around 2:44 p.m. Saturday he began “moving in a pattern around the outside of the house.” When asked whether he was looking for Suzanne, Barry told the agent, “I shoot chipmunks.” When the agent said it looked like he was chasing one, Barry allegedly said, “Yeah, I was. I’ve shot 85 chipmunks because they got into my furnace and cost me a bunch of money.”
Bull elk:
The locations where Suzanne’s bike and helmet were found were in the opposite direction of the route Barry took to his job site, but his cellphone and GPS activity showed that he had driven by both spots that Sunday morning, authorities said. According to the police affidavit, he didn’t volunteer that information, but when investigators confronted him with it, he said he had spotted a bull elk and followed it down the road. He turned around after about 5 miles, police said he told them, and continued to his job site.
And then when they found animal tranquilizer dart caps in the home, it’s for Deer bucks not the wife who was found full of animal tranquilizers:
“They’re in the yard,” investigators said they told him in a recorded interview. “I shoot ’em, they go to sleep. I cut their horns off, and I wake ’em up, and they go off with no horns on their head.” In another interview, investigators said he told them that he only used the darts to tranquilize bucks in a hunting business back in Indiana.
This dizzying parade was an amusing distraction at best (is there anything he won’t hunt?), but Barry’s first-degree murder charges were later dismissed (due to discovery violations) so he’s not been convicted, and of course his loyal daughters defend dear Dad.
THE DINGO DID IT
Animals play convenient roles in these narratives when they can’t be subpoenaed to make any statements in their defense. The one animal that comes to mind that probably did do it was that creature we all came to know from the “dingo ate my baby” line, which for many introduced us in the 1980s to the concept that dingoes exist in the first place.
The phrase “A dingo ate my baby” is forever tied with the case of Azaria Chamberlain, the nine-week-old infant who was snatched from her parent’s tent in northern Australia in 1980. While the distraught mom’s wail was mocked culturally with a line that became a punchline and synonymous with far-fetched claims around the world, ultimately evidence supported the claim that a dingo, known to be a threat to small children in those parts, had indeed taken that small baby.
The scapegoat here was poor Lindy, wrongly convicted of murder with her husband as accessory, until the charges were overturned in 1988 when the baby’s jacket was found near a dingo lair. It took thirty-two years after the death for the dingo version to be finally officially supported by a coroner.
All of these scapegoats, only one of them actually guilty, leave me with the final question of what’s up with that goat.
ESCAPEGOAT
From the Sydney Jewish Museum, the etymology of “scapegoat” stems from Jewish mythology and its translation in the 1500s:
The word was coined by a Protestant scholar, William Tyndale, in 1530, when he undertook the task of the first translation of the entire Hebrew Bible into English. He found he needed to introduce some new words into the English language in order to make sense of the Hebrew, as he understood it. And where the Torah describes Yom Kippur, he met with a problem.
A key part of Yom Kippur, as described in the Torah, is the ritual slaughter of two goats; one for the Lord, and the other is designated “for Azazel.” Jewish tradition takes “Azazel” as the name of a rocky headland off which one goat, having the sins of the community symbolically placed upon it, would be thrown. The other goat, the one for the Lord, would be slaughtered as part of the general Yom Kippur rituals. This slaughter would bring atonement to the community.
Tyndale however, who practiced Christianity, translated “Azazel” differently. Christian tradition similarly acknowledged that one goat was to be slaughtered for atonement of the community. But the second goat, bearing the community’s sins, was understood to have simply gone free—to have escaped. Tyndale named this goat the “escapegoat,” which evolved later to be used as ‘scapegoat.’
Interesting here that the scapegoat is the escapegoat who gets to go free, yet still carries this human-imposed burden of shame.
The word as we know it is recorded in 1824, says Etymonline, as “one who is blamed or punished for the mistakes or sins of others” with its accompanying verb by 1884. Similar are scapegrace, perhaps modeled from the goat version, and, more dramatically scape-gallows, “one who deserves hanging.”
Do you have a wild whodunit tale where the animal is accused? What’s your verdict?
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Hearing about a crumpled body lying at the bottom of the stairs brought me to Yellowjackets season 3. We're on episode 7 now, I think! You in?
-scapegoatfury
Well, my dog peed on my homework one time so I couldn't bring it to teacher. Otherwise, the idea of 84 shot chipmunks makes me sad. Big takeaway though for that one feller with all the tales - don't you know that when you're committing a major crime to leave your phone at home?