Arsenic and breast augmentation

From the Palm Beach Post-

A jury in San Diego on Tuesday convicted a former Wellington woman of poisoning her 23-year-old Marine husband with arsenic so that she could collect on his life insurance policy.

Cynthia Sommer used the $250,000 to finance a more luxurious lifestyle than her husband, Sgt. Todd Sommer, could afford on his $1,700 monthly salary, prosecutors argued.

The mother of four viewed the military life insurance policy - of which she was the sole beneficiary - as a way to "set herself free," prosecutors said.

She faces an automatic life sentence.

Sommer, who worked at a Subway, had been in debt when her husband died in San Diego on Feb. 18, 2002, at the couple's home on the Marine Corps' Miramar base in San Diego, after a bout of nausea and vomiting.

A coroner originally ruled it was a natural death, caused by heart problems. But follow-up tests showed an arsenic level 1,020 times above normal.

Sommer denied killing him.

But investigators depicted her as a disgruntled mom who poisoned her husband to escape his strict lifestyle.

Among the circumstantial evidence was the fact that she got breast implants - something he didn't want her to do - and showed them off shortly after his death.

Ten days before her husband's death, Sommer visited a medical center and had pre-surgery photos taken for the $5,400 augmentation procedure. At that time, investigators said, she had $127 in her bank account.

Sommer's friends and co-workers testified that, in addition to getting her breasts enlarged, she threw wild parties and had sex with multiple partners after her husband's collapse.

I wasn't present at trial, but I'm going to make some comments about people's behavior.

From my days on the Melanoma list, I've known many men and women who lost a spouse to that terrible disease. The grief they suffer afterwards is overwhelming particularly in the beginning. Eventually they do get their lives together. Some remarry a year later, some years later, some never. It is all up to the individual.

Grief is a personal experience. It takes how ever long an individual needs it to take. Days, months, years. I've always been bothered by people who tell you to 'get over it' or 'move on'. It is none of their business. Who are they to judge how I grieve my son Daniel or my friends who lost a husband or wife?

That makes this story above interesting to me. By all accounts the evidence was totally circumstantial. Did a jury sentence a woman to jail just because they didn't like the way she grieved? For an innocent woman could be jailed for life just because some people think they know how others should behave.

The biggest boobs in this story may not be the obvious one.

Linked to- Stuck on Stupid, Right Truth, Blue Star, Right Wing Nation,