00:00A young Marine drops dead, and his widow spends the insurance money on wild parties and plastic
00:05surgery. The state called it a cold-blooded arsenic poisoning. But the shocking truth behind
00:11the lab results changed everything. On February 18, 2002, 23-year-old U.S. Marine Sergeant Todd
00:19Sommer collapsed unexpectedly on his bedroom floor at the Miramar Marine Corps Air Station in San
00:24Diego. His 28-year-old wife, Cynthia, frantically called 911, reporting that Todd was turning blue.
00:32Paramedics managed to revive him, but it was too late. He died at a nearby hospital later that day.
00:39The armed forces medical examiner initially ruled the death a tragedy of natural causes,
00:44attributing it to a sudden heart attack brought on by cardiac arrhythmia. But almost immediately,
00:50Cynthia's behavior raised serious red flags. Instead of grieving, the mother of four began
00:56throwing wild parties at their home. She cashed in Todd's $250,000 life insurance policy and
01:03immediately used it to pay for a breast augmentation. According to authorities, she eagerly showed off
01:09her new body to other military wives, entered a wet t-shirt contest at a local bar, and started
01:14dating another Marine just two months after Todd's death. To everyone watching, she looked like a
01:20guilty woman cashing in. Then, over a year later, the case took a toxic turn. In May 2003,
01:27laboratory testing on Todd's preserved tissue samples revealed something terrifying—his body
01:32contained levels of arsenic that were 1,020 times higher than normal. The death was immediately
01:38reclassified as a homicide due to acute arsenic poisoning. By November 2005, Cynthia Sommer was
01:46arrested and charged with first-degree murder for financial gain. In January 2007, a jury convicted
01:53Cynthia, leaving her facing life in prison without parole. The prosecutor admitted there was no smoking
01:59gun direct evidence showing Cynthia buying poison, but she argued the financial motive and Cynthia's wild
02:05lifestyle spoke for themselves. But from her prison cell, Cynthia maintained her innocence and hired a new
02:11attorney. They started digging into the science, and what they uncovered exposed a catastrophic failure in
02:17the government's case. It turned out that before the trial even started, NCIS investigators had consulted
02:24with Alphonse Pokles, a world-renowned forensic toxicologist and arsenic expert. Pokles had looked at the initial
02:31lab results and told investigators they were completely false. Out of six tissue samples tested, only two showed high
02:38arsenic levels. The other four samples, along with Todd's blood and urine, were entirely negative.
02:45Pokles explained that if Todd had actually been poisoned, the arsenic would be everywhere. The only
02:50logical explanation was lab contamination. Even Todd's medical timeline proved it. A week before his death,
02:58he had been treated for a stomach bug, but he recovered, went back to work, and was even healthy enough
03:03to
03:04ride a massive roller coaster at Knott's Berry Farm with his family just two days before he died.
03:09In November 2007, a judge officially vacated Cynthia's conviction, ruling that her original lawyer had
03:16failed her by letting the jury get blinded by her partying behavior. A brand new round of testing was
03:21ordered on Todd's remaining tissues. By March 2008, the results came back clean, there was absolutely no
03:29evidence of arsenic. The charges were dismissed, and after more than two years behind bars for a
03:34murder that never happened, Cynthia walked out of jail a free woman. But she wasn't done fighting.
03:40In September 2009, Cynthia filed a massive $20 million lawsuit against the federal government,
03:47NCIS agents, and the district attorney, claiming they fabricated evidence and ignored the experts just
03:53to lock her up. The legal battle dragged on for four years, but ultimately, a federal judge
03:59dismissed the lawsuit, ruling that while a massive scientific error had occurred, there was no
04:03proof that NCIS agents acted with malicious intent. Cynthia Sommer got her freedom back, but she never
04:10saw a dime of that $20 million. In the end, Todd's death was tragic, but the rush to judge his
04:16eccentric
04:17widow nearly destroyed another innocent life.
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