Marine murdered for insurance?

Cynthia Sommer is on trial for
arsenic murder of Todd Sommer.


Did hubby pay with life for her boobs?

BY MICHELLE CARUSO
DAILY NEWS WEST COAST BUREAU CHIEF

SAN DIEGO, Calif. - Cynthia Sommer got a pricey boob job to die for - and, according to prosecutors, her Marine husband did just that.

The 33-year-old widow is charged with poisoning Sgt. Todd Sommer, 23, with arsenic in 2002 so she could snare his $250,000 life insurance payout to finance the implants, shopping sprees and hard-partying lifestyle she craved.

Two months after her husband died, Sommer went under the knife, and she showed off her new bod to friends at the Marine Corps Air Station at Miramar, witnesses say.

And instead of somberly mourning, she threw loud parties that brought military cops to her door and quickly began romancing another Marine, who is now her fiancé, witnesses say.

But as the twice-married mother of four stands trial in San Diego Superior Court this month, she's shielding her surgically enhanced chest from the jury with loose shirts and boxy suit jackets that make her look more like a bank clerk than a Black Widow.

Gone, too, is the bleached-blond hair she had in her 2005 mug shot. Her locks are back to natural brown and tied in a schoolgirlish pony tail.

But no matter how prim she appears, Deputy District Attorney Laura Gunn alleges Sommer is a devious killer who slipped her husband a fatal dose of poison - possibly just hours after she consulted a plastic surgeon about getting her $5,400 boob job.

The broke Marine wife had just $280 in the bank and a $7-an-hour job at a Subway sandwich shop on Feb. 8, 2002, when she visited the plastic surgeon, Gunn told the jury in her opening statement.