Wife guilty of fatally poisoning Marine husband

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0701310089jan31,1,3035292.story?coll=chi-newsnationworld-hed

SAN DIEGO -- A woman was convicted Tuesday of murdering her Marine husband with arsenic so she could cash in on his $250,000 life insurance policy, some of which she used to have her breasts enlarged.

Prosecutors argued that 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 his military life insurance policy as a way to "set herself free."

Sommer's friends and co-workers testified that in addition to the breast enlargement surgery, she threw wild parties and had sex with multiple partners in the weeks after her husband's death and the payment of the insurance policy.

Enjoy the cell block you pig.

Some say.... :sarcasm:

I only saw the news reports last night about her and the 911 calls. They sounded genuine to me. But not seeing the trial it was hard to put everything in context.

I know of people who have done some really crazy things when a spouse dies, so I did find that particularly odd. Don't think that is what I would be doing.

I've been watching it too, and I don't think the prosecuter made her case.

when a spouse dies under suspicious circumstances they naturally look to at the surviving spouse and in this case i think they pegged her from day one and just stopped looking for any other possible suspects.

I thought the defense witnesses, especially the forensic guys were outstanding.

I'll be curious to see if she gets an appeal. Nancy grace has got her headed to the guillotine already, quell surprise.

was the only one who thought she was guilty. I'm waiting for an appeal also.

If I ever get arrested, (god forbid) I want Udell to defend me~!

i love watching Ashley Banfield and Catherine Crier and the reporters in the field.

because people don't like Nancy Grace, that they will automatically take the other side of the case she argues simply because they don't care for her personality.

Nancy Grace was not the judge or the jury on this case. She wasn't the prosecutor either. All she did was report on it.

They went after her for conduct unbecoming a widow.

The money went into a trust fund, the biggest Forensic expert on toxic poisons in the country disputed the lab results from the Navy, and called the whole thing ridiculous.

This woman and her marine husband had a "normal" kinky sex life, and he had no problems with her getting breast implants. The prosecutor went overboard on this one I think.

Anyway, you really had to see the thing to believe it...not at all what it sounds like.

You would think this would be open and shut. Did he or did he not have arsenic in his system?

See the link below, from the San Diego paper.

I think your retraction is premature.

were so screwed up that the defense put up 4 experts who said that they couldn't trust the validity of the results. One speculated that the results were tainted.

The woman was tried for having a tatoo (which was the birth date and death of her husband, AND Semper Fi) having breast implants, that her husband KNEW she was planning, before he died, having sex 3 months after he died and for insurance money that actually went into a trust for her kids.

It was a total character assasination of this young woman. I don't think she did it, and none of the legal commentators on Court tv did either; except for Nancy, string em up, Grace.

The testimony had her screwing around WEEKS, not months after he died. And per his relatives, she only did any "Trust Funding" (half of the total) after they griped:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,,-6382577,00.html
...In addition to the breast enlargement surgery, Sommer's friends and co-workers testified, she threw wild parties and had casual sex with multiple partners in the weeks after her husband's death and the payment of the insurance policy..... With no direct evidence that Sommer was the source of the arsenic, Deputy District Attorney Laura Gunn relied heavily on circumstantial evidence of Sommer's debts to show that she had a motive to kill her husband.

Gunn asserted that the defendant was the only person with the motive and access to poison the Marine.

The Marine's relatives testified that she objected when they asked her to put her husband's $250,000 death benefit in trust for herself, their baby and her three children from a previous marriage. However, she later put a little more than half of the benefit into a trust.

She is now engaged to a former Marine she met two months after her husband's death. She was extradited to California last March from her new home in West Palm Beach, Fla.

She used the death benefit money to pay for them. Trust fund? A booby trust fund was part of that package, apparently.

First degree murder, special circumstances, murder for financial gain.

Sorry, I go with the jury--she did it, she got bagged for it. Participating in a wet tee shirt contest in Tijuana is not a normal way to grieve for your husband, nor is screwing around with one or several of his shipmates while the ground around his grave hasn't even settled typical in any way, shape or form.

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/metro/20070131-9999-7m31sommer.html

honestly, I don't think she did it.

How she grieved for her husband, does not make her a murderer. I don't think she'd kill her husband for the money to get implants, because that's all she got...the insurance money went into a trust for her kids, she paid her father-in-law for a van he bought for them, and by killing him she lost the low rent housing that they had. Her husband was alive, and went with her to the doctor for an evaluation for the implants.

The women was medicated for severe depression after he died and got zip financially; no reason for her to kill him.

I don't think she did it, but it's only my opinion.

I would urge his parents to sue for every dime of that money, get those trusts revoked, and if any of those kids are his, sue for custody.

Let's assume that the jury was a bunch of inattentive and obtuse idiots who slept through the trial and didn't come to your conclusion because they were out to lunch through the entire proceeding, and that your scenario is correct--who put the arsenic in the guy's kidneys and liver? Did some evil lab person sprinkle it on like powdered sugar? Why weren't there TEN specialists refuting the findings, instead of one PAID testifier?

As for your assertion that "she got nothing" well, that's total bullshit, too. If the defense attorney said it, he lied. She got plenty before she was caught--besides the death benefit money, the funeral payments, the allowances that are provided between the death and the payment of the SGLI, AND the extended billeting in base housing that all surviving spouses get, she got monthly SBP payments that would have gone on FOREVER, until she died (unless she remarried) because the guy died on active duty--and the way that works, it is as though he had done twenty years, and signed up for and paid into the program after retirement. Oh, and she and her kids, if they were listed as his dependents, also would be eligible for three years of free medical and dental care, and later, low cost TRICARE medical coverage. See this guidance: http://cs.itc.dod.mil/files/content/AllPublic/Workspaces/DoDITC-CS-Public/PDF/MHF/Casualty%20Assistance/Survivors%20Guide.pdf

Pay particular attention to Ch. 9.


Sorry, I'm not buying it at all. Poor Marine, kinky or not, stupid or not, no one deserves to be murdered.

(well, you don't know) that you're one of very few posters who I really admire around here, and your opinion is one that I always respect, so I'm going to say that yes, you could very well be right, and she did it. I'm only going to throw out a couple of things that impressed me with the defense.

The forensic expert was not just an ordinary someone, he was a very respected voice in the forensic toxicology community. He was generally brought in for the prosecution, but in this case he testified for the defense because the arsenic values didn't make any sense.

At the levels presented by the Navy lab, Sommer's white count and platelets should have been decimated, and yet they showed no abnormalities. He said that it was such an enormous level of arsenic, that the man couldn't have lived longer than a few hours, and yet Sommer went to work for what, a week I think. He even took the family to a theme park.

I wish that I wrote all this down (it just wasn't that important to me) but the arsenic level in his kidneys and possibly other organs, didn't fit with either a massive dose or a slow poison death. There wasn't any rhyme or reason to the Navy lab's results that was consistent with organ involvement.

Another toxicologist who was a department head in another lab, also testified to pretty much the same thing. They ran the tests twice, to make sure that it wasn't their lab that had made mistakes. It was bewildering. They also testified about the gastrointestinal response to arsenic and how that didn't jibe with the lab results.

A third toxicologist testified concerning the procedures at the Naval lab, and found irregularities in their processing and some mathematical problems.

They concluded that some organs had too high a level of arsenic to be a slow poisoning, and other organs and blood, had too low (even 0) levels of arsenic to be a massive arsenic poisoning and the overall picture made no sense at all.

I could be naive, but they convinced me at least to the point of having a reasonable doubt.

Anyway, peace, like I said, you can absolutely be right.

you can get low doses over time which make it harder to kill someone. It could be she gave him small doses, laid off for awhile and then nailed him with a big dose in his nachos or something.

But I'm no expert on arsenic or any kinds of poisons. I do think, if the defense witness was so compelling, and given that LIFE is the penalty on the line, that the defense might have gotten a few other 'experts' to bolster the case decisively--don't just show the jury the hammer and nail, bang in it for them. Again and again and again.

I think the MOTIVE elements, and defendant behavior, both in her personal conduct and towards the family of the deceased, enabled the jury to get over any doubt with regard to the lab tests.

The defense left too much to chance...and motive was undeniable. Further, the actions of the defendant after the death were WAY too celebratory--arguments about how people mourn differently notwithstanding (mourning by participating in a wet tee shirt contest is unusual, IMO; screwing half her husband's pals is odd, too...and this woman has four kids at home who have just lost "Daddy?" And she's throwing parties and acting wild? I dunno--it just stinks on ice to me).

It's not like the death of this young 23 year old was EXPECTED (by anyone other than the murderer, perhaps)--he wasn't terminally ill--you'd think she'd be SHOCKED, immobile, stunned at such an unexpected and unusual event, not out partying and screwing half the dead kid's unit. Hell, when she was arrested, she was living with the guy she was cavorting with two scant months (at a MINIMUM) after her 'beloved' husband died? Ehhh, I just don't buy it.

I'd love to know about the health of the father/fathers of her three kids who were not by this dead guy, frankly!

I might buy an assertion that the boyfriend/'fiance' she was living with at the time of her arrest and was screwing shortly after the husband was killed, aided and abetted in the murder, but she'd have to turn the guy in to try to reduce her sentence and rat him out--I'm guessing if that is the case, she thought she could get away with it, be acquitted, so she tossed the dice and clammed up....and it will be interesting to see if she changes her story and finks on someone else on appeal. I'm sure they've done a forensic analysis of her debt, and it would be interesting to know who benefitted from the hundred-plus grand that she didn't put, under pressure, in the "kiddie trust."

I just can't nullify the jury here. 12 people sat in the courtroom, watched the accused closely, heard every single iota of testimony, without commercial breaks, without bits cut out, watched the family members, the body language of those testifying, and heard the testimony. And they took a couple of days to make the decision, but it likely wasn't a "12 Angry Men" scenario.

But really, when all is said and done, the truth is known by only one person...the defendant.

Or two, if she had an accomplice!

was well, not something I'd consider normal, but I have to put it in the context that their married life wouldn't have been something that was normal for me either. I had to take 10 giant mental steps back, squint my eyes, and look at it from that perspective.

The thing about the arsenic evidence though, was that the autopsy results of the organs weren't consistent with a massive dose of arsenic even if he had built up a resistance. Like I said, bewildering.

Biggest problem for the defense: what the hell did he die of, if not for arsenic? If arsenic, who the hell had the opportunity or motive to poison him, but her? ....and of course, why was there any abnormal level of arsenic in his system at all?

Biggest problem for the prosecution: no evidence and no direct link of arsenic to her and really no solid proof of a motive except for really questionable behavior, breast implants and the insurance policy. (I thought that most of it went into the trusts, but if it's 100k, it makes more sense)

All I can say is that I hope to God she did it now that she's been sentenced to life in prison.

and have very mixed feelings about her conviction with no physical evidence. Maybe she did it, who knows, but a character assassination case with nothing else to back it up? Just because she took tasteless/promiscuous actions after her husband's death does not mean she is a murderer. Those actions might be indicative of psychological trouble/denial/burying her grief.

edit: wonder if laws there are diff. regarding reasonable doubt? And yeah, she doesn't seem like a great contributing member of society, but I don't know if I would convict on that alone.

:wow:

... not the one she wanted.

She certainly didn't support her troop. Must have been fundy.