An Invisible Enemy

It was in February 2002 when Cynthia Sommer and her husband Todd, a Marine, were coming home from a family weekend at an amusement park. With their four children, Cynthia and Todd were the very picture of happiness.

But as Bill Lagattuta reports, no one could have predicted the rollercoaster ride was just beginning.

Hours later, she made a panicked 911 call, when Todd collapsed in the middle of the night in their home. When Todd was pronounced dead a couple of hours later at the hospital, it seemed his heart had just given out.

"They explained it the same as - hear of kids playing baseball and just falling over, that there's no symptoms, there's no warning sign, there's nothing,'" Cynthia remembers.

But there was something: Todd had started feeling sick ten days before he died. His symptoms had started on Friday, Feb. 8.

Cynthia says the next day, Saturday, her husband exhibited signs of food poisoning. She says Todd had told her he had eaten egg rolls.

On Sunday, Todd went to the base clinic, where a doctor thought it might be food poisoning and told him to wait it out. But when his symptoms got worse, Cynthia appeared frustrated.

"The conversation would be, 'Mom, Todd's fever is up to 102. What should I do?' And, 'I just can't stop him from throwing up,' and, 'What else can I give him?'" Cynthia's mother Jan Lippert remembers. "I'd tell her the usual mother's remedies."

Desperate for an answer to what was wrong, Todd went back to the doctor two days later. Cynthia says they gave Todd IV fluids and prescription medications.

And by that Saturday, Feb. 16, he seemed to make a miraculous recovery, well enough for that family outing to the amusement park.

But 48 hours later he would be dead.

Cynthia's mother rushed to be by her daughter's side. "It was a scene that I will never in my entire life forget. She was upstairs in their bed and she had one of Todd's shirts," Jan recalls. "She was just clinging onto his shirt, and saying how it smelled like Todd and this is all she had left of him, that he was gone."

The couple had met three years earlier when Todd was just 19, and Cynthia was a 25-year-old divorced mother of three.

Within six months, Todd and Cynthia were married in the Florida Keys, where Todd grew up. They set out for the West Coast, where Todd was assigned to the Marine Corps Air Station Miramar in San Diego. The newlyweds soon added another member to their family.

After Todd's death, Cynthia's life would never be the same. The Naval Criminal Investigative Service opened an investigation into the death, something they do whenever someone in the military dies. As the investigation began, NCIS agents found nothing unusual. The official cause of death was cardiac arrhythmia -- Todd's heart had simply stopped beating.

A year later, as the shock of Todd's death wore off, Cynthia had moved on. She and the children had begun a new life in Florida with a new boyfriend. Almost everyone had accepted the explanation that a healthy young Marine had suddenly collapsed and died at the age of 23.

Almost everyone accepted it, but not NCIS special agent Mark Ridley. "There were some odd things goin' on with the investigation that I thought needed additional work," he says.

Ridley was the man in charge of Todd's death review panel, an NCIS process of making sure all leads are pursued in military deaths, especially when someone so young dies unexpectedly. "They were lookin' at the case as being a natural death from the beginning," Ridley says.

Ridley felt the autopsy had overlooked important clues -- those symptoms Todd was suffering in the days before he died. "When you look through the medical record it showed that he had vomited several times, maybe 12 to 15 times in the space of a short period of time," he says.

Ridley suspected that Todd's symptoms and sudden death were related. It reminded him of a 1986 poisoning case in North Carolina that he learned about during his training days. "It just so happens that Todd Sommer was exhibiting some of the same things that were found in the victims associated with the Blanche Taylor Moore case," Ridley explains. "It resonated with me and when I read that case file it just made me a little bit uncomfortable."

Rather than close the investigation, Ridley ordered a rare heavy metals test on Todd's tissue samples, which had been removed during the autopsy. If Todd had been poisoned, NCIS investigators had a lot of questions.

NCIS Special Agent Rob Terwilliger was put in charge of the new investigation, and began to look at Todd's personal life.

The agent put a microscope to the young Marine sergeant's relationship with his friends, his family, and his grieving widow. "More and more information came out indicating that - his relationship with his wife was not what it seemed," Terwilliger says.

"He was pretty set in being a United States Marine, in being a stay at home dad when he could because he spent a lot of time away," Terwilliger says. "Cindy at the time, she was more of a party girl, was having financial difficulties when Todd was away on deployment."

Terwilliger says Cynthia was spending more money than the family had.

As Terwilliger looked more closely at the Sommer family finances, he came across an expense that seemed particularly odd: a receipt for a breast implant consultation the same day Todd got sick.

Terwilliger says such an elective surgery costs about $5,400 to $6,000, but that the couple only had about $250 in their bank account.

Todd supported his wife Cynthia's desire for breast implants in a Valentine's Day card he sent to her just days before he died. And in fact, she went ahead with the surgery two months after Todd's death.

"After he died, I wanted to escape everything," Cynthia explains.

"You know that people say that that looks suspicious, it looks bad," Lagattuta points out.

"I know if he were alive and he had that much money, he would have wanted me to do it," Cynthia says.

Nearly two and half years after Todd's death, the results of that heavy metal test were back. They showed the young Marine was poisoned with a lethal dose of arsenic. But was it murder?

Cynthia says she had nothing to do with the death of her husband.

Special agent Ridley's hunch had paid off with those startling results from the lab test he ordered, showing very high levels of arsenic in Todd's liver and kidneys.

The NCIS became convinced that homicide was the only real possibility. In November 2005, Cynthia was arrested and charged with first-degree murder.

But proving Cynthia murdered her husband with arsenic would be difficult. It's a poison that has been known to man for centuries, an element that comes from the earth.

Dr. Lee Cantrell, a toxicologist who runs a poison information hotline in San Diego, has spent a lot of time studying the use of arsenic as a murder weapon.

Dr. Cantrell says if someone put arsenic in a target's food or drink, they wouldn't know it at the time. He says a tiny amount, 100 to 200 milligrams of the poison, is enough to kill a human.

And it's not all that easy to detect, which is why, authorities say, Todd's autopsy totally missed it.

Cantrell says a death by arsenic poisoning is painful. "Arsenic impairs the body's ability to produce energy; you can ultimately develop seizures, loss of consciousness and death," he explains.

Cantrell says the symptoms of an acute poisoning show up very quickly, within an hour or less, mimicking the very severe stomach problems Todd experienced.

And judging by when Todd's symptoms first began to appear -- very late at night -- the prosecutor concludes the only person who could have poisoned him was his wife.

"Based on the information you had at that point, you reasoned he had been poisoned that night?" Lagattuta asks Terwilliger.

"Yes, that's correct," Terwilliger says.

Asked if she was the only one that could've done it, Terwilliger says, "Based on her own statements, she was the only one who was there other than the children."

But why would Cynthia kill the man she says is the love of her life?

"We have witness statements now that indicate that all was not well in the marriage," Terwilliger says. "He may have been her knight in shining armor, but she wasn't apparently enjoying the lifestyle that being married to a sergeant in the Marine Corp provided."

Investigators say it was the lure of Todd's military life insurance policy -- worth a quarter of a million dollars -- that gave Cynthia the motive for murder.

Cynthia's mother calls the prosecutor's theory ludicrous. "She doesn't even know what arsenic is. When this happened, she said, 'What does it even look like?' I said, 'I wouldn't have any idea. I don't even know where you get it.' She said, 'I don't know where you get it from either,'" Jan recalls.

Terwilliger was wondering himself where Cynthia could have gotten it. But he says it didn't take him long to discover that arsenic, unfortunately, is easy to purchase on the Internet and in supply stores.

Terwilliger says he did not have to prove that he was a doctor or scientist with a legitimate use for arsenic, and says he was able to purchase the poison without leaving a financial trace.

"I loved him. I didn't want him gone. I didn't want him out of my life," Cynthia says. "There is no link between me and arsenic. And they can look for the rest of my life and they won't find one."

Terwilliger acknowledges that no concrete link has been established between Cynthia and the purchase or research of arsenic, and that there is no direct physical evidence that she had poisoned her husband with the substance.

Despite this lack of a direct physical connection, prosecutor Laura Gunn is going forward with the trial.

NCIS investigators had been hoping to find an arsenic connection on the Sommer's home computer, which could be seen in evidence photos taken of their bedroom the day after Todd died.

"The question was posed, you know, 'How long have you had your computer,' that type of thing. And she had indicated that it's been the same computer that she had in San Diego," Terwilliger says.

"And you asked her if that was the same computer she had at the time that Todd died?" Lagattuta asks.

"And she indicated yes, that it was the same computer," he replies.

Asked if it was the same computer, Terwilliger says, "It didn't appear to be the computer."

Cynthia says the computer somehow disappeared. She says she had moved five times since the death and that it may have gotten lost in the process.

But it's more than just a missing computer and lack of evidence that's hampering prosecutors: Cynthia and her attorney are getting help with her defense from a well-credentialed arsenic expert, Dr. Al Poklis, who had actually been approached first by the investigators in this case.

On the very day Todd first began showing signs of what investigators now call an acute arsenic poisoning, he had visited a nearby naval air facility in El Centro, Calif.

Cynthia thinks there may be a connection. "I have no idea why they didn't look into the fact that he was in El Centro the day that they claimed he got poisoned, and El Centro has these toxic landfills that have arsenic in 'em. I don't know how NCIS can overlook something like that," she says.

Actually, NCIS investigators didn't overlook it. Special agent Rick Rendon says he retraced Todd's movements that day. Rendon says he also interviewed the other Marines who were with Todd that day, and that none of them got sick.

Still, the NCIS agents tested the soil and water in the area where the Marines had been. They found normal levels of arsenic in the ground. In fact, small amounts of arsenic are most everywhere in our environment.

Rendon says it's impossible Todd could have become poisoned just by being on that ground, pointing out, "Then I would be contaminated myself cause I spent more time than he did there."

NCIS investigators are convinced that any attempts to link Todd's trip that day with the arsenic found in his body are groundless. Rendon says the only way arsenic could have entered Todd's system is if he had eaten the dirt - a lot of dirt. He estimates Todd would have had to eat 200 to 400 pounds of dirt.

On Jan. 4, 2007, nearly five years after her husband's death, Cynthia's murder trial finally got under way.

"The murder weapon was poison," prosecutor Laura Gunn tells the jury. "Todd's liver turned out to have over one thousand times the acceptable level of arsenic in it."

Bob Udell is Cynthia's defense attorney. "The evidence will prove to you that Cindy did not have a motive to kill Todd or have any desire to kill Todd," he says.

Dr. Poklis, an arsenic expert and key defense witness, strongly challenges the only real physical evidence in the case: the lab results that found lethal levels of arsenic only in Todd's liver and kidneys, but nowhere else in his body.

"Arsenic poisons everything," Dr. Poklis says. "There's no death where you only see elevated concentrations of arsenic in the liver and kidney, and not in the muscle or brain or blood or any other organ in the body that you test."

Poklis and other defense witnesses criticized the lab's testing methods. "They can't tell you exactly where the specimens were and how they were prepared. There's so many inconsistencies in that data," he says.

Poklis also questioned Todd's ability to go back to work, as he did -- and even to an amusement park -- days after allegedly being poisoned. "I mean, this is a lethal dose. He should be dying," he testifies.

But the medical examiner, Dr. Glenn Wagner, disagrees. He says it is possible for a person to walk around for several days with those high levels of arsenic in their system. "It depends on the body's ability to metabolize that poison."

"In other words, he died because his heart gave out, but the reason his heart gave out was because there was so much arsenic in his body?" Lagattuta asks.

"That's correct," Wagner says. The medical examiner says, in his opinion, Todd was murdered by poison.

"In your opinion, was this a well thought out crime or was it something that was just, I don't know, done on the spur of the moment?" Lagattuta asks Terwilliger.

"I believe it was a well thought out crime," the agent replies.

"In your opinion, did she cover her tracks pretty well?" Lagattuta asks.

"Yes," Terwilliger says. "She appeared to be the doting wife, she made well-placed phone calls."

Defense attorney Bob Udell believes that Todd died of natural causes and there was no murder. The Marine widow herself becomes the defense star witness.

For the first time, the jury will hear Cynthia's story about the last night of her husband Todd's life. "He looked at me and he said, 'I'm okay, I'm alright,' and he fell down," she testified.

The frantic 911 call Cynthia made that night, the defense claims, is proof she was trying to save her dying husband's life.

But prosecutor Gunn questioned Cynthia's story. She was especially curious about that 911 call, which Cynthia said was made on a cordless phone. On the 911 tapes, Cynthia indicated she was doing CPR on Todd while she was on the phone.

"There are people who listen to that 911 phone call and say, 'It doesn't make sense. How in the word could she be giving him CPR and talking on the phone at the same time?'" Lagattuta tells Cynthia.

"I don't remember. I was in shock. I mean I know I had speaker phone on my phone. I don't know if that's what I did. I don't know if I just had it on my shoulder," Cynthia says.

When the paramedics arrived, they say Cynthia wasn't doing CPR, but that she was standing over Todd's body. And they testified he was cool to the touch. So what really happened that night? When did Todd die?

"It's quite likely that Todd Sommer was in fact dead for sometime before the 911 was called , maybe as much as an hour to two hours," the medical examiner, Dr. Wagner, says.

And NCIS investigators uncovered more troubling clues about the night Todd collapsed and died.

"After I had picked her up from her home, and was transporting her to the hospital, she wanted to stop at the store to pick up cigarettes," says Eva Stoner, the young military police officer who drove Cynthia to the hospital that night.

Stoner thought it was odd that Cynthia didn't seem to be in a rush to get to the hospital, but even more puzzling, she says, was the Marine widow's behavior when they arrived at emergency room. "She wasn't crying in the vehicle, she wasn't crying at the hospital and even when the staff came in and told her that, 'We're sorry your husband has passed away,' I don't remember her actually showing tears. I remember her crying, but it's more like the act of crying."

Todd's mother, Yvonne Sommer, who had never spoken publicly about their son's death recounted the moment Cynthia told her that her only son had died. "The final call would have been that they couldn't bring Todd back, that he was dead," she testified.

And what troubled Todd's mother was a confrontation she had with her daughter-in-law about hanging out late with friends the night of Todd's memorial service. "I was concerned that she had not returned, because I didn't think she would gone," Yvonne testified. "She told me to mind my own business, that she would grieve her way, and I could grieve my way."

The way Cynthia grieved and her behavior the night her husband died convinced investigators she had a motive for murder. "Todd had been deceased not more than three hours and she was calling the family accountant and asking about taxes and how she should file and how they were gonna get their refund-things of that nature, so money seemed to be the driving force here," Terwilliger says.

"I wasn't asking about money. My husband had just died. And I knew that being a military wife, I lost everything," Cynthia says. "I have four children and I just felt like my life had … everything that I had known at that time was gone."

When Cynthia got that hefty lump sum of $250,000 from Todd's life insurance, investigators say, Todd's family convinced her to put approximately half the money in a trust fund for the children. With the remaining cash, Cynthia paid off some debts and bought clothes and jewelry. But one particular purchase would raise eyebrows: the breast implants.

"Is this something that had just come or had you and Todd been discussing this issue?" Udell asked Cynthia on the stand.

"Discussing it for a while," she replied.

"What's the bottom line here, in your opinion as an investigator. At the time she was considering having those breast implants, did they have the money to pay for that operation?" Lagattuta asks Terwilliger.

"No they did not," the special agent replies.

"We were definitely saving for it, we definitely had plans for it and after he died, I really wanted to make myself feel better. And I thought that was one of ways I could do that," Cynthia says.

With no proof that Cynthia murdered her husband Todd, what do prosecutors really have?

Defense attorney Bob Udell works around the clock with his investigator to build a case to free Cynthia.

But prosecutor Gunn suspects Cynthia was clever enough to plan a murder without leaving any direct evidence of her using arsenic to kill her husband.

If her love for money seemed suspicious, Cynthia's behavior after her husband Todd's death would give prosecutors even more ammunition for their case. A string of friends were forced to testify about the marine widow's wild side.

Friends testified that Cynthia participated in a wet T-shirt contest, as well as a thong contest, in Tijuana, Mexico.

"Do you think the prosecution is attempting to put you on trial for your behavior, what they are attempting to paint as immoral behavior?" Lagattuta asks. "After your husband's death?"

"Absolutely," Cynthia says. "I understand I did the thong contest and people do it in Spring break all the time. I don't see them standing trial for things that they didn't do. I don't think the actions that I did justified bringing me to trial."

Former Marine Christopher Reed spoke at Todd's memorial service and testified in court that Cynthia suggested a threesome with him and his wife shortly after Todd died. He testified that they had sex; several other former Marines also testified about their sexual encounters with Cynthia in the weeks after Todd's death.

"It's not just a one sided thing. I didn't go to the bar and pick up all these, you know, random guys, These were people I knew," Cynthia says. "I missed my husband and I wanted companionship and that's how I got it."

Asked how she thinks the jury is going to evaluate her behavior, Cynthia says, "I'm hoping that they don't look at it as a moral issue. Those are things I did to get through it. I've been through a lot in my life."

The jury has a lot to consider. "Four inquires about money in the first five hours that her love of her life, her knight in shining armor was dead," Gunn tells jury.

After three days of deliberations, the jury reaches a verdict: guilty.

It's a bittersweet victory for Gunn. "It's been so much harder on Todd's family than anybody else…for all of us this has been a criminal case. It's just been tremendously emotional for all of them," she tells reporters at a press conference.

The verdict was a devastating blow to Udell, who thinks the jurors got it all wrong. Her case has now become his obsession. "I don't know how I'm gonna go on. I haven't slept one night … I don't know what to do, I'm part of Cindy's nightmare."

With a guilty verdict - with any verdict - most cases are over. This one wasn't. In fact, it was about to begin a new. Ten months would pass before Cynthia's sentencing hearing. She has a new attorney Allen Bloom, making a bold move by asking the judge not to sentence her, but to grant her a new trial.

"The evidence is incredibly underwhelming in terms of proving Cindy Sommer's killed Todd Sommer," Bloom explains.

Bloom says there was a mountain of errors committed by her attorney, Bob Udell. "The errors that occurred in this case were not harmless," Bloom says.

But prosecutor Gunn says "not so fast." "It is common and understandable to want to have a do-over with a better attorney," she says.

Now Udell is on the hot seat. Bloom says the most damaging mistake was eliciting that testimony from Todd's mother, who talked about Cynthia's behavior. That's what opened the door and allowed the jury to hear about Cynthia's scandalous actions after Todd died.

"Do you think that the benefit of the sympathy or compelling nature of the testimony would have been worth it had you know that you were going to open the door to all that sexual evidence?" Bloom asked Udell.

"No," Udell replied.

"And would you have done it, if you had known it was opening the door?" Bloom asked.

"No," Udell said,

Prosecutor Gunn makes a final plea to the judge to let the verdict of murder stand. "Miss Sommer I think did not get the result that she wanted, she did not get the result that she expected, but your Honor, she should not get a new trial based on what you've heard here today," she says.

Judge Peter Deddeh takes Udell to task. "He missed many areas that would have been fruitful for his defense and in missing those areas, I believe that he has been ineffective," he says.

The decision: "I'm going to order that Ms. Sommer be allowed to have a new trial," Deddeh ruled. "I'm going to grant a new trial motion."

Cynthia is shocked. It was a million to one shot, but the judge throws out the murder conviction saying Cynthia's lawyer failed his client.

There were no words to describe prosecutor Gunn's disappointment, but Cynthia's family was overjoyed.

"This puts us back at square one, where Cindy really has a right to show her innocence in a full and complete way," Bloom told reporters at a press conference. "I remain just as fervently, that I believe in Cindy's innocence as Bob Udell does and I think we're going to be able to show that when we get to our next trial."

Udell is relieved that Cynthia will get a new chance at freedom, even though his reputation is now tarnished. "If it cost me, it cost me. I can sleep now," he says.

Cynthia says her faith is strong and she prays everyday for Laura Gunn, who is convinced she's a killer. "I pray that she understands and sees the truth in this case," Cynthia told reporters.

And Cynthia is confident a new trial will prove she did not kill her husband Todd. "I feel like I'm in a movie, like any day I'm going to wake up and it's just been a nightmare. I didn't give him arsenic. I didn't poison him," she says.
Produced By Marcie Spencer, Ira Sutow and Gayane Keshishyan