SAN DIEGO -- A woman accused of poisoning her 23-year-old Marine husband five years ago didn't act like a grieving widow in the days after his death, several members of the victim's family testified Thursday.

Cynthia Sommer, a 33-year-old mother of four, is charged with murder and special circumstance allegations of murder by poison and murder for financial gain in the Feb. 18, 2002, death of Sgt. Todd Sommer.

Prosecutors theorize that the defendant poisoned her spouse with arsenic at their home at Miramar so she could collect a $250,000 life insurance payout.

Sommer used some of the money to throw wild parties and wrote a $5,400 check for breast augmentation surgery several weeks after her husband died, prosecutors said.

The victim's mother, Yvonne Sommer, said the defendant called her about a week before her husband died, asking what she should do for his vomiting and diarrhea.

The witness testified that she thought the call was odd because her daughter-in-law had dealt with sick children before.

"I just thought it was strange, as did my friends," Yvonne Sommer testified.

After her son died, the woman said she and her husband traveled from their home in Florida to be with the defendant at Miramar.

A couple of nights after her husband's death, the defendant said she wanted to go out with some friends and Yvonne Sommer offered to watch the couple's young son, she testified.

When it got to be after midnight, the mother-in-law said she called the defendant's cell phone. Sommer returned home shortly thereafter and said she was angry that her mother-in-law had called, the witness testified.

"She told me to mind my own business," Yvonne Sommer testified. "She said she would grieve her way, and I could grieve my way."

Mitchell Sommer testified that his daughter-in-law brought a number of her military friends to her husband's burial in Nashville, Tenn., and got a motel room nearby.

When he went to pick her up for an event, her room looked "more like a party thing," with beer and wine glasses everywhere, he said.

"It just seemed more casual than it should have been," the father-in-law testified.

He said he told the defendant that she should put her deceased husband's insurance money in a trust fund for her and her four children -- three of whom were from a previous marriage.

"I was amazed at the amount she was entitled to," Mitchell Sommer testified.

He said he was concerned the insurance money would disappear, based on the defendant's previous spending habits, and proposed putting away $40,000 for each of her children from her previous marriage and for herself and $80,000 for the baby son the couple had together.

"She didn't want that much put away," the witness said.

He said he and his brother, who is an attorney, convinced the defendant to put $25,000 in the trust fund for her children, $40,000 for the couple's son and $25,000 for herself.

Defense attorney Robert Udell has told the jury that his client did not benefit from her husband's death and she had no motive to kill him.

Testimony is to resume Friday.

Sommer faces life in prison without the possibility of parole if convicted.