Team Infidel
Forum Spin Doctor
By ALLISON HOFFMAN
Associated Press Writer
SAN DIEGO (AP) -- A woman accused of poisoning her Marine husband with arsenic to cash in on his $250,000 life insurance policy was convicted of murder on Tuesday.
Prosecutors argued Cynthia Sommer, 33, wanted a more luxurious lifestyle than she could afford on her 23-year-old husband's $1,700 monthly salary and saw the military life insurance policy as a way to "set herself free."
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.
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.
His death was initially ruled a heart attack. Tests of his liver later found levels of arsenic 1,020 times above normal.
With no direct evidence that Sommer was the source of the arsenic detected in her husband's liver, Deputy District Attorney Laura Gunn relied heavily on circumstantial evidence of Sommer's financial debt to show that she had a motive to kill Sgt. Todd Sommer.
Gunn asserted that the defendant was the only person with the motive and access to poison the Marine.
Cynthia Sommer faces life in prison. Her attorney, Robert Udell, told jurors that his client had lost her "knight in shining armor." She is now engaged to a former Marine she met two months after her husband's death. She was extradited last March to California from her current home in West Palm Beach, Fla.
Associated Press Writer
SAN DIEGO (AP) -- A woman accused of poisoning her Marine husband with arsenic to cash in on his $250,000 life insurance policy was convicted of murder on Tuesday.
Prosecutors argued Cynthia Sommer, 33, wanted a more luxurious lifestyle than she could afford on her 23-year-old husband's $1,700 monthly salary and saw the military life insurance policy as a way to "set herself free."
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.
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.
His death was initially ruled a heart attack. Tests of his liver later found levels of arsenic 1,020 times above normal.
With no direct evidence that Sommer was the source of the arsenic detected in her husband's liver, Deputy District Attorney Laura Gunn relied heavily on circumstantial evidence of Sommer's financial debt to show that she had a motive to kill Sgt. Todd Sommer.
Gunn asserted that the defendant was the only person with the motive and access to poison the Marine.
Cynthia Sommer faces life in prison. Her attorney, Robert Udell, told jurors that his client had lost her "knight in shining armor." She is now engaged to a former Marine she met two months after her husband's death. She was extradited last March to California from her current home in West Palm Beach, Fla.
