Trace of Suspicion - Ep. 3: Suspicious Minds

I had a garage fridge, we had a pool, my parents vacationed with their friends and sailboats in the Caribbean.

“It was a comfortable life to be sure, one that might have put Cindy on the well-tron path to upper middle-class affluence.”

It was when Cindy was nine, that her life changed. A lot of us encounter the cut of brutal disruption she went through, sometimes it's a heart attack, a bankruptcy, a broken heart, the thing you look back off, the thing that changed your life's trajectory. For Cindy, it might have come when her parents perhaps distracted by their divorce, lost control of their daughter. I just, I rebelled. By the time Cindy was 13, she was in rehab.

What happened was my girlfriend and I, we ended up taking acid, and long story short, I went to rehab and Kormon made her a spaghetti dinner. She's a doctor today and I am not. So my mom just should have made me a spaghetti dinner.

Rehab was the second earthquake in her life, but not the last. In Cindy's life, they kept coming, kept getting bigger.

Cregnancy, marriage, divorce, remarriage, her husband's sudden death, and then becoming a murder suspect. It's an irresistible narrative. Absolutely.

“Right, healthy 23-year-old marine suddenly drops dead.”

His wife takes the insurance money. Get some plants, sleep to the sky. Sleep to the bunch of other guys, go to Mexico, and then there's a wet t-shirt contest. Right. And she's spending the money as fast as it comes in.

Right. So, let's charge her with murder. It would be a great date line show. It's a great story. If it happened tomorrow, we'd be all over it.

But if it happened tomorrow, I don't think that you could put by story on lifetime TV and have it be believable.

“I think there's too many things that just when you put them all together and you go, "That's just that, right?"”

That doesn't make sense. In this episode, you'll hear how investigators in Florida found new circumstances to deliver us. That made Cindy seem even more guilty. Until we went to Florida, we had no clue that there was even a trust fund in the picture. You'll hear what happened when investigators confronted Cindy face to face.

And told her they had some new information concerning her husband's death. I talked to them thinking, "Oh, maybe they've got something, maybe they've found something out." And you'll hear how Cindy received compassion and some valuable advice from an unlikely place, while she was behind bars. She just said, "Sir, we've got to get it together. We've got to suck it in, stuck it up, put it in, just a straight face."

I'm Josh Makewitz, and this is "Trace of Suspicion," a podcast from day by. Episode 3, Suspicion's Minds. Now, when you go to church, make sure you sleep till sunset, try to get over it. Sandy Ego to South Florida is a long cross country flight. For the investigators on Cindy's summer's trail, the time passed quickly.

Somewhere over that vast expanse of snow-capped mountains and quilted planes that day in November 2005, the conversation between the NCIS Special Agent and the investigator from the San Diego DA's office would have naturally touched on the purpose of their flight. Their investigation into the untimely death of Marine Sergeant Todd Summer, nearly four years earlier.

Family members described him as always being an athlete, playing basketball and baseball.

NCIS Special Agent Rob Terwiliger. He typified a standard Marine who is maintaining his physical fitness regimen. Yes, Todd Summer had been a healthy guy, handsome too. That's probably what attracted Cindy to him in the first place. That and maybe the fact that as Cindy told friends, Todd came from money. According to witness statements, one of the first things she talked about was how well off this particular Marine was.

At a very nice vehicle, very nice car. Again, had parents who were in her mind. Very well off because of the business they owned. What did he see in her?

You ever talked to anybody who talked about how he felt about her or based on a witness statement.

“And interviews that we did with his family, they indicated that he loved her.”

And wanted to marry her. And there were members of his family who tried to talk him out of it. Did he know what he was getting into? I couldn't tell you that. Again, based on what family members were saying, he seemed that the main focus was that he loved her.

He enjoyed her, having her kids. He liked having the children. And that was seemed to be the motivation for what he was doing. More than two years had passed since stratospheric levels of arsenic had been discovered in tissues taken from Todd's summer's body. That was when a routine death inquiry had become a homicide investigation.

Ever since, the investigators had done a dicey dance with their sole suspect. Todd's wife Cindy Summer. It was a dance in which only those who could hear the music knew the steps. And Cindy, she heard only crickets.

“She still had no idea her late husband's death had been ruled a homicide.”

And that she was the only suspect. Someone intentionally administered this poison and killed it. Well, who would benefit from that? There was only one name that kept coming up. And so, with the kind of delicate deliberation one might expect of an explosive

expert disarming a bomb. They interviewed people who knew Cindy well.

People who had never been interviewed before.

We didn't know how close-knit those family and friends were with Cindy at the time. So the minute you talk to one of them, you run the risk that they're going to call her and say, "Exactly." And CIS was here and they were asking a lot of very serious questions. And that's exactly it.

Though the investigators still had more interviews to do, they intended to arrest Cindy's summer on this trip and bring her back to San Diego to stay in trial for the murder of her husband. We presented the facts to the district attorney's office. They found that there is significant evidence enough to move forward.

Significant evidence? Well, they had a theory. And a pile of circumstantial evidence to support that theory.

“What they did not have, at least not yet, was any proof Cindy's summer actually poisoned her husband?”

Where'd she buy the arsenic? We don't know. How much does she use? Again, we don't know. Diligence, they say, is the mother of good luck.

And luck was what investigators now needed the most. Perhaps by confronting Cindy cold, they hoped she might say something incriminating. Maybe even confessed. Like six o'clock now arriving at gate 20 to be.

First though, investigators needed to talk with Todd Summers family.

The Summers, like Cindy, had no idea that Todd's death had become a homicide investigation. They needed to be notified before anything was reported in the media. So the investigators ease their rental car onto Route A1A and headed south toward Kilargo. The place where Todd Summer grew up and where his family still lived. It is easy to imagine the older woman breezing through her floor at a home.

Leveling the blinds, straightening the throw pillows. Iván or Ivani, as she was known to friends, would likely have been in motion all that after new. Making her home ready for the investigators who were coming in from San Diego. The man who had phoned earlier had said he wanted to talk with the family. About Todd.

Todd, they're youngest. Todd who had died too young. Hard attack they said. Strange. Todd had been on Ivani's mind.

She could still picture him walking and laughing in these very rooms. Todd was an active child. He worked in our church with the four and five roles. That's the voice of Ivani Summer. He was loyal to his friends.

He had many friends. And he cared about them. And he was a good son. Vomits train of thought may have been broken when she heard a car pull-up. The visitors from San Diego were at her door.

She invited the man and waited to hear what the two men had to say. We had the difficult task of advising Todd's parents.

Letting them know that of the forensic findings

“and that the San Diego County Medical Examiner reclassified their son's death as a homicide.”

Once again, that's NCIS Special Agent Robter Willicker. And so we had to do those interviews. Sort of cold in the sense of we didn't want to predispose anyone with an opinion of well. This person did it, this person did it. We wanted straight information without them being tainted by any outside information.

It was slow going. A step-by-step process. The investigators covered all the bases.

From the first time a summer's met Cindy.

They spoke about their initial reservations about the match. Todd was so young and Cindy. Three children already. However, they said that was what Todd wanted. He could be stubborn like that.

And well, they could see he genuinely loved Cindy and her children. As we've progressed to the interviews,

“they recognize that Cindy's name kept coming up over and over again.”

So once the investigators finished with their questions, it was the summer family who had a few questions for them. I believe it was Todd's mom who said, Well, Cindy's name has come up a lot in our conversation.

And do you think she had anything to do with this?

And that's when we told them that she was going to be arrested the following day. If you can, imagine that moment. Almost four years after the death of your only son, you've just learned that his death was a homicide. Not only that, but your former daughter-in-law,

the mother of your grandson, is about to be arrested and charged with his murder. The summers weren't the only ones to be stunned during that encounter. Investigators were also surprised to learn from Todd's family that he'd had a trust fund.

It had been worth about $30,000 on the day he married Cindy. Until we went to Florida,

we had no clue that there was even a trust fund in the picture.

And once that came to light, we started looking at who was the beneficiary of that trust fund. Because again, we were talking about motive. You could speculate that as the spouse, you believe that just like all those other benefits,

that she was going to be the beneficiary of that trust fund. Turns out that was a moot point. Investigators soon learned that by the time Todd's summer died, that trust fund had been drained. Well, we know from our investigative findings that the trust fund

had been exhausted on January 31 of 2002, roughly two and a half weeks before he died. Where had all that money gone? The investigators thought they knew it had gone to cover the gap between what Todd made and what Cindy spent.

The investigators wondered if Cindy knew the trust fund had gone bossed. They wondered if she'd been counting on that trust fund money to pay for her breast augmentation. If so, she would have needed a new plan. Special agent to her williger wondered if maybe that new plan involved

using Todd's life insurance policy.

“You think that was part of the motive of the trust fund ran out?”

I think that it could have been, again, it could go two ways. She found out the trust fund was exhausted, and so they were in real financial straits, or she had no clue that that trust fund had been depleted. And she believed that as the spouse,

she was going to be the beneficiary that trust fund. So, it could go both ways. The day after investigators met with Todd's family in Alamurata, they drove north toward West Palm Beach, and the strip mall call center were Cindy summer-worked.

Cindy had no idea what was headed her way. Ed said in place, she watched a screen in a cubicle, waiting for pickups. It was late morning, almost time for her lunch break,

when the call center's manager came to her cubicle, and asked Cindy to come to his office. Cindy took off her headset, and walked to the manager's office, where two men stood waiting. They looked like cops, dress shirts, and pants, no ties.

They said, we have some new information about Todd's death,

Nothing about that felt adversarial.

No.

“When the investigators suggested they continue their conversation”

down at the Palm Beach County Sheriff's office, Cindy says she was happy to go. She followed them in her own car, thinking all the way about Todd, and wondering what kind of new information

these guys from California might have. After Todd died, I mean, I had many conversations with military people that we all thought it was strange that he had a heart attack, that he was sick beforehand,

that he had gotten food poisoning. Maybe he saw something. Maybe he had seen classified information. You're starting to think of conspiracy theories here. Right.

Right. So when they came to talk to me three years later, I talked to them thinking, oh, well, maybe they've got something. Maybe he was murdered by somebody.

Maybe who knows?

Her first clue that there might be more to this

than just an informational chat came when she arrived at the Sheriff's office. They took me to violent crimes unit. I mean, I just went in a door, and that's what it was labeled.

“Was it a conference room or an actual little interrogation room?”

There was an interrogation room. But I, you know, my thinking was really, okay, you know, they're from out of town, and this is the room that they got. You know, it's.

I'm not being interrogated. I'm not being interrogated. She was wrong about that. The investigators wanted to talk about her marriage about the family finances,

and about her physique. We started to question her about the breast augmentation procedure. That's NCIS special agent, Ter Williger again. She had mentioned that this was something that he wanted to do and he had went whether to the consultation.

And we asked, was he happy about, I mean, he's a sergeant in the Recall, was he happy about the cost? And she said, "No, he wasn't happy about the cost, but he had a trust fund that would help pay for it.

He could get money from his parents." From the nature of their questions, Cindy knew the two men were implying something. She wasn't quite sure exactly what? What was the new information?

They said they had. Well, the investigators would only say that a foreign substance had been found in Todd's body. What kind of substance? They said, "We can't discuss any of that."

Or that's classified, or whatever. And I mean, to me, I'm like, "Well, anything that I can give you any information, I can help any minor detail that I can think of, I'm going to tell you."

That's what I did. I would expect having covered a billion criminal investigations, most of which dealt with murder, that they would say to you in that interview.

We think he was murdered. And we know what it was. We know it was arsenic. Right. How did he get arsenic in him, Cindy?

Right. That never happened. Right.

They never said the word arsenic to you.

They didn't. Whatever it was, investigators were hoping to get on tape from Cindy in that interview. They did not get. There's no audio recording,

and there's no video recording. They said it was corrupted or somewhat, however, how convenient. Turns out that was a bigger deal than you might think, because later, without any recording of that interview,

it would be only the investigators' word against Cindy's, about what she did or did not say. That the end you got in your car alone. The end I got up and we walked out, shook hands.

I told them, you know, there was a strip club that had great straight stakes, and they should go there and eat. And I left and went home. That night, Cindy thought long and hard

about what she had been asked by the investigators. From the tone and content of the questions, she could tell somebody had spent a lot of time rummaging around in her past. She wondered who they had been talking to,

or who had been talking to them. Cindy said she'd called her former mother-in-law, Bonnie Summer. I did talk to her and told her that they had just come to talk to me, and she said she didn't know anything about it.

Was it true? No, she did. Bonnie, she worked at a Christian school. She was very proper. I would say.

And maybe didn't approve of your behavior. Right. Yeah.

“So I think that she fed them a lot of east to their bread.”

Right.

of what those investigators had heard about her. Embarrassing things, silacious things. Things she now regretted. She was right about that.

“Still, even as her head hit the pillow that night,”

she says she did not think the investigators actually believed she was somehow responsible for Todd's death. She would walk about that. The morning after her meeting with the investigators from San Diego, Cindy Summer got up, got dressed, and went to work

as she always did. Then around 10 in the morning, five or six patrol cars from the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office descended on the call center. As if they had cornered a dangerous desparada.

Cindy was cuffed and escorted out in front of coworkers. They put me in handcuffs. And I was just like, I'm like, I dumbfounded. We'll explain everything when we get to the station. Bobo, Bobo, Bobo, you're under the arrest for murdering Todd Summer.

Yada, yada, yada. Wait one second. They said you're under arrest for murdering. And you think-- Out of the blue.

I mean, I had--

“I mean, even though they talked to me the day before,”

I did never think that I was being--

I was under any suspicion at all. So I was floored. You seem to be here for the second time in 24 hours. Cindy was ushered into an interrogation room at the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office.

In the development, you will appreciate this time the recording equipment worked as advertised. Dan Schmidt, the investigator from the San Diego DA's Office, let off. I just want to let you know if this interview is being recorded.

We're going to do another interview with you. And they tried to talk to me again. And I said, nope. I need a lawyer. I have a friend that's called it's an attorney.

He said, I have a friend that's called it's an attorney. He said, I have a friend that's called it's an attorney. He said, I have a friend that's called it's an attorney. He said, I have a friend that's called it's an attorney. He said, I have a friend that's called it's an attorney.

He said, I have a friend that's called it's an attorney. He said, I have a friend that's called it's an attorney. He said, I have a friend that's called it's an attorney. He said, I have a friend that's called it's an attorney. Once again, the DA's investigator told Cindy some new information regarding Todd's death

had come to light. What information? He didn't say.

There was a particular piece of business he needed to take care of first.

I'm going to read you writes. Okay. What am I being arrested for? Okay. And that's what I'm going to tell you.

Like I told you yesterday, there was a phone substance that was found in his body. Okay. But before we go in further, yeah, and then start. So you try to get me from the murder? Yeah.

Oh my gosh, are you serious? Yes. What's what's what's what's substance? Okay. Before we start talking about it, though, I want to read you writes first.

Okay. I just don't say anything and talk to an attorney. Okay. And that is completely up to you. At this point, the investigator reminded Cindy that she had voluntarily.

And he voluntarily spoken with him the day before. And he vaguely referred to things she had said that he considered incriminating. Like when she told him Todd had accompanied her to the breast implant consultation in Lohoya. You did talk to us yesterday. We found a lot of inconsistencies with what she told us yesterday compared to what she told us two years.

It's four years ago. I don't really, I honestly mean as far as dates and if he was sick and he got better, we went on vacation. He came back, he said you had a heart flutter. And that's, I mean, that's all. I really remember, you know, it's been four years and it's something that I put in the back of my head.

“Because it's something that I don't want to remember that happened because it was very traumatic.”

And it was traumatic that way for me, but it was traumatic for my kids.

Four minutes into that second interview.

Investigators Schmidt finally got Cindy to stop talking long enough for him to merriindizer. Having a minute understanding each of these rights that I've read to you, are you willing to talk to me? I really wait for an interview. I spoke to one earlier. I'm going to wait because I really, this is, I'm just blind sighted and I don't understand what's going on. Cindy was taken from the interrogation room to a holy cell in the Palm Beach County jail.

Her mind was a jumbled mess, so many questions. Who take care of the kids? Where's my lawyer?

I knew I was being arrested for murdering Todd. I didn't know what I had supposedly done.

“And I've only found out from the news what I had done.”

From the news report Cindy watched on the TV in the lock-ups common room. She learned she was accused of using arsenic to poison her husband. She was stunned. I had asked my mother what arsenic was. While I was in jail because I didn't even know what arsenic was.

Knowing Cindy would have to return to San Diego for trial. Her mother found a lawyer to fight extradition. Cynthia summer appeared in Palm Beach County court to fight extradition to California where the mother of four is accused of murdering her husband. I fought extradition because I had the kids and so we had to figure out custody and where they were going and what was going to happen with them. In the end, the children were scattered among relatives.

Todd's son, the youngest, went to live with Todd's mother Bonnie. Cindy's brother took the other two boys and sent these mother to her daughter. With that settled, Cindy turned her attention to the case against her.

“I didn't know why I was arrested and what the accusations were and what evidence they had.”

As far as Cindy's attorney could tell, there wasn't any evidence. The lawyer even thought the San Diego DA might be persuaded to drop the charges against Cindy. No such luck. I lost extradition. I knew I was going to lose extradition.

But like I said, we wanted to get more evidence and find out what was going on. What the case against you was against me was and kind of get a head start on that. Yes, but Cindy says the hundred day long extradition fight bought her valuable time. Time to steal herself for the ordeal she was about to face on the other side of the country. I really am thankful that I did that because I was a basket case in in Florida.

Like I couldn't eat, I couldn't sleep, I couldn't I couldn't do anything. I just cried the whole time. Cindy says it was in the depths of that darkness that she connected with a compassionate soul. Someone who offered her some valuable advice. I had a deputy.

I don't remember what her name was, but she was amazing.

She pulled me aside and everybody called me summer. She just said summer. You've got to get it together. You've got to suck it up. They're going to eat.

You will live in here. You cannot cry all the time. Put out just a straight face and stop blabbering. Stop crying just and I did. And that was very good advice.

“I think she also went to my house and got my teddy bear and sent it to my house.”

And sent it to my mom. That's so random. In March 2006, a little more than four years after her husband's death, Cindy Summer was flown back to California to stand trial for his murder. Next time, everybody knew who I was. I was very high profile.

Even like the homeless girls that came in from the street knew who I was. All the deputies knew who I was. When Cindy grew up, her golden life was to be the wife of a marine. That's what Cindy wanted to do in life. And she married a marine.

She didn't know of a sudden decide to kill that marine. She arrives there and there is no ambulance. There is no fire trucks. I suggest a view that Cindy called Susan to watch her kids before she called by one of them. I think that's a safe assumption.

One has to question why somebody would be on an adult single's dating website if one was in the happy marriage that was portrayed by the defense in this case. This podcast is a production of date line and NBC news. Tim Beachow is the producer. Marshall Housefell, Brian Drew, and Meredith Cramer are audio editors.

Molly Dorosa is associate producer. Rachel Young is field producer. Adam Gorphane is co-executive producer. Paul Ryan is executive producer. And Liz Cole is senior executive producer.

From NBC News Audio, sound mixing by Rich Cutler. She is an executive producer. I'm Craig Melford. Cheers.

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