The Missouri fire captain whose doctor fiancée was found dead in his house gave ‘contradictory’ and ‘demonstrably untrue’ statements regarding the circumstances of his first fiancée’s 2020 death, DailyMail.com can reveal.
This is just one in a string of allegations made against Robert Daus, 50, by Grace Holland’s family who are demanding the ‘justice’ of which they feel she was deprived when her death was ruled a suicide.
This week, the family’s fight was pushed back into the headlines as it was revealed that while Holland was the first woman to meet an untimely end during her engagement to Daus, tragically she was not the last.
On Saturday Daus’s current fiancée, Missouri doctor Sarah Sweeney, 39 was found dead in his home in suburban St. Louis.
Police in Frontenac, 15 minutes west of downtown St. Louis, found no signs of a struggle and have classified Sweeney’s death as ‘sudden’ pending a finding by the medical examiner.
Now, a wrongful death suit filed by Holland’s family and reviewed by DailyMail.com, has laid bare a litany of psychological and physical ‘abuse’ they claim his first fiancée endured during a ‘highly volatile’ relationship with the business owner and fire chief that lasted four years and ended with her death from a single gun-shot wound to the head.
In 2020, 35-year-old Grace Holland died from a single gunshot wound to the head in her then-fiancé Robert Daus’s home
They claim that Daus changed his story regarding the circumstances of her death, from the version he told officers responding to the scene to the account he gave later that same day when accompanied to the station by his lawyer.
They allege that Holland’s engagement ring – visible in crime scene photographs – disappeared along with other expensive jewelry in the wake of her death.
And they present evidence that, they claim, when ‘taken together’, leads to the ‘reasonable inference that Daus shot Grace.’
Holland’s family filed a wrongful death suit against Daus which claims he abused Holland and gave contradictory evidence to police
Holland was right-handed, a woman trained in firearms who only ever wielded her weapon using her dominant hand, yet she was shot in her left temple.
That, according to her parents’ lawyers, ‘is inconsistent with being right-handed [and] consistent with someone standing opposite her shooting with his right hand.’
According to the suit, Holland’s mother, Patricia, begged her daughter to leave the relationship allegedly characterized by vicious verbal and physical assaults.
In one instance, in June 2020, Holland reported that Daus, ‘pushed, shoved and dragged her down the hall, pulling her clothes off.’ After this incident her mother ‘saw bruises on her arms, thighs and spine.’
Later that same month Holland called her mother during an episode during which Daus ‘was yelling at her and throwing her things in the yard’.
As her mother urged her to call the police, the older woman heard Daus utter the chilling threat, ‘My brothers in blue are not going to do anything to me. I’ve already taken care of that.
‘You’re the crazy girlfriend, remember.’
Throughout the relationship Daus allegedly put pressure on Holland to leave her job and work for a company that he owned.
Instead of paying Holland directly, the company paid Daus who, the suit states, ‘controlled all the money.’
‘By controlling the money,’ it says, ‘Daus controlled Grace.’
Despite living and picking out a house together, Holland’s name was not on the deed, meaning she would have nothing were she to walk away.
Holland’s four daughters from a previous relationship were reportedly afraid of Daus and witnessed numerous violent scenes between him and their mother.
According to the suit they told their maternal grandmother that Daus, now captain at Maryland Heights Fire District, was ‘shoving and always yelling’ at their mother and that he scared them by ‘throwing the phone across the dinner table while they sat there.’
At times, they said, he lost his temper over minor issues such as the couch touching the curtain in the living room or silverware being out of place.
In one conversation captured on video Daus ranted at Holland that he was in a ‘forced f***ing marriage’ and discussed how he would do anything to ‘spend as little time with [her] as possible.’
Heartbreakingly Holland responded by telling Daus that she loved him. He told her, ‘F*** yourself. F*** you. F*** your c*** mother. Get the f*** out of my house.’
Holland’s four daughters from a previous relationship were reportedly afraid of Daus and witnessed numerous violent scenes between him and their mother. Holland is pictured with her daughter Emma
Holland’s daughter Emma took to Facebook to demand justice for her mother’s death
Daus is a captain at Maryland Heights Fire District and Vice President of his family owned business Liberty Art Works
In text messages Daus repeatedly offered Holland $600 to abort their baby that she was carrying at the time. She later miscarried.
In the days leading up to her death on July 22, 2020 texts between the two swing wildly between the abusive and the mundane.
On July 17, 2020, a benign conversation about home furnishings and carpentry ended with Daus saying, ‘I absolutely cannot b w you…I’m not marrying you…You and your f***ing kids. F*** [y]ou.’
Two days later he texted her, ‘I’ve asked you to leave. Several times. I don’t want you there. I don’t want you or your kids. I want away. I’ve asked you to leave. Take your Jeep, your things, leave. I’m done.’
Yet later they had a conversation about faucets to buy for the new house.
On July 20, 2020, Daus yet again turned, stating, ‘I want you out of [my] life. You did nothing but ruin my first night staying at [the new house]. The thought of you sleeping in that house makes me want to vomit. That’s how much I hate you.’
Two days later Holland was dead.
According to the suit, ‘The only living person who knows exactly what happened… is…Robert Daus Jr.’
But on the morning of her death in Daus’s home in Creve Coeur, Missouri, he gave two very different accounts.
According to the medical examiner, at 7.25am on July 22, 2020, a detective contacted their office and reported the facts as follows: ‘Holland came to the living room to give Robert a hug and she went back into the bedroom without speaking with him.
‘Shortly after, Robert heard a single gunshot wound and located Holland in the bedroom with a gun and apparently blood beneath her head.’
The lawsuit notes that the only possible source of this information was Daus.
But, later, Daus went into Creve Coeur Police Department accompanied by a lawyer and gave a statement to police ‘that included an entirely different narrative.’
Then, he stated that he got up for work and was standing at his closet stacking clothing. He claimed that Holland left the bedroom, returned and hugged him.
He stated that he attempted to hug her back, but his arms were full so she ‘moved to his right side and hugged him by pulling his face towards her.’
He claimed that she said, ‘Goodbye’ at which time he heard a gunshot and witnessed her fall to the ground.
The following year Daus was interviewed by police about Holland’s missing $20,000 engagement ring and other expensive jewelry that had disappeared after her death.
At first Daus claimed that Holland had given the ring back to him but text messages showed that he subsequently returned it to her.
Dr. Sarah Sweeney, 39, was found dead in the home of her fiancé, local fire captain Robert Daus, in suburban St. Louis on Saturday
According to the wrongful death suit, In one text message, Daus told his fiancée Holland that she should kill herself
Daus then claimed the ring was lost and that he had filed an insurance claim. When asked why it appeared in crime scene photographs, he told cops that the ring pictured was a fake one made for traveling but failed to provide any documentation to prove that they ever had a fake ring manufactured or produce insurance claim information, despite repeated request from Creve Coeur Police Department.
According to Holland’s family all of this, taken together, along with ‘smiling selfies taken by Holland the night before her death…the numerous times that Daus demanded she leave the house… the omissions, contradictions and downright fabrications in Daus’s narrative of her death, lead to the reasonable inference that Daus shot Grace.’
And if he did not pull the trigger himself, they state, he ‘had the intent to aid or encourage Grace to commit self-harm,’ through his ‘cruelty, including psychological and physical abuse.’
Shockingly, in one text message, Daus even told his fiancée that she should kill herself.
Either way, Holland’s grieving family firmly believe, ‘Robert Daus Jr. is liable for the wrongful death of Grace Holland.’
Whether there will be any further investigation into the death of Dr. Sarah Sweeney depends on the medical examiner’s finding.
But speaking earlier this week her mother, Teresa Sweeney Light, surely echoed the hopes and feelings of the Holland family who grieved before them when she said, ‘We just wish we could have her back. We just want closure. We want it to be truthful and fair.’