SAN DIEGO — In the minutes after 23-year-old Marine Sgt. Todd Sommer took his last breath and collapsed, his wife, Cynthia Sommer, acted "unusual" and seemed overly concerned about money, according to witnesses who testified Monday in Sommer's murder trial.

While she was clearly upset, according to one witness, Cynthia Sommer also made a comment about her husband's Servicemembers' Group Life Insurance, or SGLI, policy as he lay blue and unresponsive on the floor at the foot of their bed.

"She said that they joked about it a lot, but she never thought she'd ever see it," testified former U.S. Marine Corps Military Police officer Thomas Streckfuss, the first responder at the scene.

"'It' being the SGLI money?" Deputy District Attorney Laura Gunn asked.

"Yes," Streckfuss replied. "The money."

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Sommer, a 33-year-old mother of four, was the one who called 911 at about 1:34 a.m. on Feb. 18, 2002, begging paramedics to hurry to the couple's home at the Miramar Station. 

By all accounts, Todd Sommer appeared dead by the time military emergency medical technicians arrived. His skin was cyanotic and mottled, cooling to the touch, and he had urinated on himself.

His death was initially ruled as heart failure, but forensic tests conducted a year later found elevated levels of arsenic in Todd Sommer's tissues, and a homicide investigation ensued.

Cynthia Sommer has pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder and the special circumstances of murder by poison and murder for financial gain. She faces life in prison without parole if convicted.

As a landing support specialist, Todd Sommer's job duties were primarily administrative; his desk job didn't expose him to hazardous materials, according to a station supervisor who testified Monday.

Several witnesses painted a conflicting portrait of his pretty, older wife, the mother of their infant son, who also had three young children from a previous marriage.

A military police officer who drove Cynthia Sommer to the hospital where her husband had just been taken testified that the defendant asked her to stop at the base "shoppette" on the way so that she could pick up a pack of Newport cigarettes.

"Was there any sense of urgency to get to the hospital as soon as possible?" Gunn asked former MP Eva Stoner.

"Not from Miss Sommer," Stoner replied.

But Stoner also testified that Sommer seemed anxious, saying that her husband was a good man, and she was sure he would be OK. When a hospital official informed them that Todd was dead, Sommer cried and asked Stoner to accompany her to view his body.

The Miramar Station supervisor approached Sommer at the hospital, asking if she needed anything. He testified that he received an unusual question from the defendant.

"[She] asked if she would have to repay his enlistment bonus ... that's not the response I would expect from someone who just lost her husband," testified former Marine Sgt. Major Stewart Payne. (VIDEO)

Sommer's reenlistment bonus of $15,000 was being paid to him in annual installments, according to Payne.

Prosecutors say they can't link her to the arsenic found in her husband's tissue samples, but they have compelling circumstantial evidence that Cynthia Sommer killed her husband for his money.