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Wife Found Guilty of Murdering Marine
Cynthia Sommer was convicted of murdering her Marine husband with arsenic so she could cash in on his $250,000 life insurance policy.
In the weeks after Marine Sgt. Todd Sommer collapsed in his bedroom and died, his widow lived like a woman set free, hosting loud parties at their home and using his $250,000 death benefit to finance breast implants and shopping sprees.
That was enough to arouse the suspicion of military investigators who refused to accept that the 23-year-old died of natural causes - and enough for a jury to convict Cynthia Sommer on Tuesday of murdering her husband with arsenic to get the cash.
The jury also found Sommer, 33, guilty of special circumstances counts of poisoning and murder for financial gain, meaning she will be automatically sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Sommer may appeal the verdict after her March 23 sentencing.
Prosecutors argued that Sommer wanted a more luxurious lifestyle than she could afford on her husband's $1,700 monthly salary and saw the life insurance money as a way to "set herself free."
Sgt. Todd Sommer was in top condition when he collapsed and died at the couple's home on the Marine Corps' Miramar base in San Diego.
"We have somebody in the end who was not acting aggrieved at the death of her husband," said Deputy District Attorney Laura Gunn told reporters after the verdict.
Sommer stared silently ahead as the verdict was read but wept briefly into her hands after the jury filed out.
In the court's spectator area, her mother burst into tears at the verdict and sobbed. Family members left the courtroom without speaking to reporters.
Sommer swallowed and stared as the verdict was read, while her mother burst into tears. Sommer faces life in prison.
The seven women and five women of the jury also did not to talk to reporters.
"I'm deeply disappointed," defense attorney Robert Udell said after the verdict. "I don't believe Cindy killed Todd."
Of his client, he said, "She's quite stunned."
During the trial, Udell told the jury repeatedly returned to the absence of any paper trail linking Sommer to the arsenic.
With no proof that Sommer was the source of the arsenic detected in her husband's liver, Gunn relied heavily on circumstantial evidence of Sommer's financial debt and later spending sprees to show that she had a motive to kill her 23-year-old husband.
Todd Sommer was in top condition when he collapsed and died at the couple's home at Marine Corps Air Station Miramar in San Diego on Feb. 18, 2002.
His death was initially ruled a heart attack.
Cynthia Sommer's friends and co-workers testified during the trial that she threw wild parties, got her breasts enlarged and had casual sex with multiple partners in the weeks after her husband's collapse.
Her in-laws testified that she initially objected when they asked her to put the bulk of the $250,000 death benefit in trust for herself, their baby and her three children from a previous marriage.
Gunn asserted that the defendant was the only person with the motive and access to poison the Marine.
"It's not a case where there was a one big smoking gun," Gunn said after the verdict.
The Marine's relatives said Sommer refused to put her husband's death benefit in trust for herself, their baby and her children from a previous marriage.
Gunn said she had few qualms about prosecuting the case after heavy-metals testing by military labs more than a year after the Marine's death found levels of arsenic 1,020 times above normal.
"From the outset, the fact is that everybody thought it was a natural death," she said. "For so many years, the defendant really did in many respects get away with it."
Todd Sommer spiked a 103-degree fever and visited an urgent care clinic on base complaining of gastrointestinal pain a week before his death.
Cynthia Sommer was extradited last March to California from her current home in West Palm Beach, Fla.
Source: AP
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