Deadly Mirage - Dateline Presents: Trace of Suspicion

Episode Date: March 10, 2026

Hey Dateline fans! As a bonus, we’re giving you a special preview clip of our new podcast series, Trace of Suspicion. After seemingly healthy 23-year-old Marine Todd Sommer dies unexpectedly, his widow Cindy’s lavish spending, cosmetic surgery, and wild partying raise investigators’ suspicions. They accuse her of poisoning him with arsenic for his life insurance, setting off a criminal case that takes a stunning turn... Josh Mankiewicz sits down with the woman at the center of it all in Dateline’s newest podcast.  If you like what you hear, just search Trace of Suspicion to listen to the first two episodes now, completely free. Or subscribe to Dateline Premium on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or DatelinePremium.com. Subscribers get early access to new episodes and can listen to all Dateline podcasts ad-free. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hey, it's Josh Mankowitz from Dateline with a special preview of my new podcast called Trace of Suspicion. Death comes for us all eventually. We can never know exactly when, where, or how. What is known is that the Grim Reaper is always out there, waiting, checking our names against a list, like some bill collector on commission. United States Marine Sergeant Todd Summer had every reason to think his appointment with death was still decades away. After all, he was only 23. Except sometimes the years don't matter. As he got ready for bed that night in February 2002, the Reaper was watching. Todd had been battling some kind of bug for more than a week. Nausea, diarrhea,

stomach pains, chills, fever, the full menu of misery. The doctors at the Miramar Marine Base in San Diego thought this might be food poisoning. Maybe that gas station egg roll he had eaten. We do not know how much sleep Todd Summer actually got that night. We do know that at about 1.30 in the morning, his wife Cindy was awakened by the sound of her husband gasping for breath. He got up and he walked towards the bathroom and turned around and just looked at me and, like, just couldn't catch his breath. Years later, the memory of that night is still fresh for Cindy.

I went over to him. I'm like, what's the matter? He just looked at me and he said, I'm all right, I'm okay. I'm fine. And then you just fell down and I just kind of freaked out. Come on. That is Cindy back in 2002. on the phone to 911. 9-1-1-1. What happened to class? What happened?

You could class. He walked out and couldn't bring in class. Okay. The parent-maker on the waist in you. Good morning. Summer. Go on the way right now. Cindy remembered the basics of CPR from her days as a swimmer in middle school

and says she did what she could. I'd never done it before other than on a dummy, so I really wasn't sure the exact sequence of how things should go. A platoon of paramedics, EMTs, and cops were only minutes away. But by then it seemed, the Grim Reaper had her husband in a death embrace. Then police and fire got there, and it was just they had taken me out of the room, and it was just all a blur from there. This story is about the why and the how of Todd Summers' death that night.

Come on, I don't like you. It is about the wife he left behind and the questions that have persisted for more than 20 years. Well, we learned that they had some money issues. It is a story about private behavior and public shame. She started having a lot of people over and a lot of parties shortly after his funeral. I understand everybody says it's the sex. We understood how it doesn't look good. The experts say that people do some pretty strange things in their grieving.

And it is the story about investigators who found reasons to believe Todd Summer's sudden death was really a cold and calculated case of murder. This was really strange for a 23-year-old seemingly healthy Marine to die, so why don't we run one more test? Because poison could have been an option here. I'm Josh Mankiewicz. Thanks for listening. Search for trace of suspicion to hear the full episode now.