An Almost Perfect Murder (11 page)

As the investigation into Kathy Augustine’s death continued, Detective Jenkins spoke to Michelle Ene, Kathy Augustine’s executive assistant. Michelle explained that she began working for Kathy as a state employee in June 2003. Her duties in that capacity consisted of the coordination of Kathy’s events, booking and confirming travel, travel expense reimbursement, and so forth. She did just about anything that Kathy asked her to do in the course of her day-to-day job. As an executive assistant, one tends to become close to the boss, in part because so much time is spent with each other. It’s just the nature of the beast. In Kathy and Michelle’s situation, the two spoke to each other nearly every day, even when Kathy was out of town or away on business, and the two women eventually became friends. Michelle was working for Kathy when Kathy had married Chaz Higgs, and, as friends, the two women naturally talked to each other about their love interests.

According to Michelle, it seemed clear that Kathy had wanted to be with Higgs, at least at first. They scheduled trips with each other, had gone on cruises together, and Kathy would often take him on her political trips and events because she wanted to spend as much time with him as possible. Despite problems that had arisen barely ten weeks into their marriage, Kathy had wanted her matrimonial union with Higgs to work. Kathy had really loved Higgs, Michelle said, and had tried to make him happy. For example, she had bought Higgs a Volkswagen Beetle, or Bug, to restore because she had known that he had wanted one. If he wanted something, she would either give him the money to buy it or she would purchase it for him, as long as it was something that she could afford.

Michelle explained that she had been working for Kathy in 2004 when the impeachment investigation and subsequent trial proceedings had occurred. It had been a tough year for Kathy and for everyone concerned, particularly those who had been working on her behalf. But they had all managed to struggle through it, and when it was all over, much of the turmoil, at least as far as Kathy’s political career was concerned, seemed to just go away.

During the three years that Michelle had worked for Kathy, she seemed to thrive on the stress and excitement of being in the political limelight, particularly after the impeachment proceedings ended and she was allowed to finish out her term in office as state controller. Kathy was rarely sick, and Michelle could only recall five or six times that Kathy had been ill during the three years that she had worked for her. She had never complained to Michelle about any health issues.

Kathy had seemed particularly happy in May 2006, which was when she had filed as a candidate for the state treasurer race. Michelle had been with her in the office when she brought out the check for the filing fee. After the filing had been completed, Kathy took Michelle, Acting Chief Deputy Controller Bill Rhinehart, Assistant Controller Mark Taylor, and Chaz Higgs to Adele’s Restaurant, in Carson City, for lunch to celebrate her new candidacy for political office.

During their lunch, Michelle had formed the distinct impression that Higgs was being supportive of her new candidacy. Besides talking about his own new position at Carson-Tahoe Medical Center, Higgs had actually seemed happy regarding Kathy’s new venture and not upset over it, like others had characterized him. And in Michelle’s opinion, Kathy was not stressed-out about the impending campaign. Because politics was her life and her passion, Kathy thrived on all the running around, coordinating events, and attending political meetings and fundraising. According to Michelle, Kathy was looking forward to showing the people of Nevada, after the impeachment, just what she was made of.

At one point, Michelle’s details turned to her boss’s last few days alive, specifically to Friday, July 7, 2006. They had both been working that day, and Kathy had left the office sometime between 4:00 and 4:30
P.M.
, about two minutes before Michelle. Michelle hadn’t gone home immediately that day after work and, in fact, didn’t get home until 10:10
P.M.
As soon as she walked in the door, a family member told her that Kathy had been trying to reach her by telephone that evening and had called for her three or four times. Michelle called her back immediately, within two minutes or so of arriving at home.

Kathy was awake and answered the phone. She was very upset with Chaz after she had discovered that he had opened a separate bank account. She was also upset with him because, she had told Michelle, he had told Kathy that he was going to leave her. Michelle said that Higgs was there with Kathy while she and Kathy were speaking on the phone, and Kathy had asked Chaz if he wanted to speak to Michelle’s husband about some car jacks that Chaz had wanted to borrow. Chaz, however, declined. After saying good night to Kathy that evening, the two never spoke to each other again.

Michelle told Jenkins the next time she heard anything about Kathy Augustine had been on Sunday, July 9, 2006, when Chaz Higgs had called Michelle’s home to speak with her. She wasn’t home at the time, but Michelle’s husband called her and told her that she needed to call Chaz right away, which she did.

Chaz, she said, told her that Kathy was in the hospital, and that she’d had a heart attack.

“Is she okay? What’s going on?” Michelle said she had asked Chaz.

Chaz calmly explained to her that he didn’t really know what was wrong with Kathy, but said that she was in bad shape.

Later that day, at about 8:00
P.M.
, Michelle, along with her husband and daughter, drove to the hospital to visit Kathy. It was difficult for her to see Kathy laid out in a bed in the hospital’s intensive care unit, and it wasn’t long before she began crying and the crying turned to near-hysteria. Chaz Higgs was in the room, and he sat down with Michelle and began a conversation with her while Michelle’s husband and daughter stood off to the side. As Michelle held Kathy’s hand and cried, Chaz began telling her what had happened early on Saturday morning.

Chaz purportedly told Michelle that he had arisen early on Saturday, July 8, and had gone outside to “tinker” on his Volkswagen Bug. That had been at approximately 5:30
A.M.
He went back inside the house about half an hour later and had “crawled” back in bed next to Kathy. It was when he tried to snuggle with her that he realized that she was not breathing and began performing CPR while calling 911.

Michelle said that she asked Chaz how much time had passed with Kathy not breathing, and he had purportedly told her “about an hour.” She said that they then talked about the effect that not breathing has on the brain, and how, Michelle explained, Chaz had gotten somewhat technical in explaining how, after six minutes or so, the lack of oxygen adversely affects brain activity.

Their hospital room discussion eventually turned to the subject of the argument between Kathy and Chaz, two nights earlier, over Chaz opening a separate bank account and wanting to leave Kathy. According to Michelle’s account of the conversation, Chaz had said that he and Kathy had worked things out and had made an agreement with each other. He also allegedly said that it was too bad “that this had happened,” a reference to Kathy and what had happened to her.

Michelle, however, said that she hadn’t believed “for one minute” that they had worked things out. She said that she knew Kathy too well, that what had happened on Friday evening had been a big deal in Kathy’s eyes and she would never have just let it go. Michelle said that she had become suspicious of Chaz, and began to think that he may have had something to do with what had happened to Kathy. After all, she said, they had been arguing on Friday night, and the next morning she was rushed to the hospital, not breathing—at least not on her own. She said she knew that Kathy and Chaz had “an explosive relationship,” and she believed that Chaz might have decided after the argument to take matters into his own hands. She was nearly sure of it after the four of them left the ICU room and walked down the hospital hallway together, when Chaz stopped and made a comment to Michelle’s husband.

“You know, I’ll have to get those car jacks another day,” Michelle said, quoting Chaz.

Michelle said that she thought Chaz’s comment about the car jacks was bizarre, and wondered how he could even be the least bit concerned about car jacks at a time when his wife was on life support and no one knew whether she would survive her horrible ordeal or not. Michelle said that her husband and daughter shared her feelings about the comment.

In the three years that Michelle had worked for Kathy Augustine, she had gotten to know her boss well enough that she could tell what kind of frame of mind Kathy was in the moment she walked through the door each morning.

“I knew Kathy . . . ,” Michelle said. “I knew if something was wrong. I knew what she wanted before she asked me to do it.”

Michelle said that Chaz had once told her that Kathy had on one occasion said to him: “I wish you knew what I wanted and were more like Michelle.”

When the subject of Kathy’s general personality characteristics came up again, Michelle said she knew that Kathy could be confrontational. There were times when Kathy had supposedly had confrontations with nurses at the hospitals where Chaz worked, and there had been talk of people either getting fired or being threatened that they would be fired, but Michelle had not witnessed this. And Kathy, she said, had never talked to her about such things. The only confrontational situation that Kathy had ever talked about with Michelle had been over one or more e-mails between Chaz and another hospital employee. Kathy hadn’t gone into specifics of the situation beyond saying that the female employee had been fired from Washoe Medical Center and Chaz had been reprimanded because of the e-mails.

In his diligence of leaving no stone unturned in uncovering the facts of the case, Detective Jenkins soon learned the identity of the female employee who had been fired from her job at Washoe Medical Center at South Meadows over an exchange of e-mails between herself and Chaz Higgs. The woman’s name was Linda Ramirez, and she had been employed at the South Meadows campus as an admissions clerk since February 2004. Her duties had her routinely checking in patients, ordering lab work and X-rays, some telephone work, and various other administrative responsibilities. She had been working there a little more than four months when she first met Chaz Higgs in July 2004.

Ramirez had, of course, seen Chaz at various times around the hospital, but they hadn’t actually met in a formal sense. The circumstances of their first meeting, she said, when they exchanged introductions, had centered on her birthday when Chaz showed up at her workstation and gave her a rose. The rose had been accompanied by a simple note that read:
Linda, happy birthday.
At the time, Linda had thought that it was a “sweet” gesture on Chaz’s part, but it soon seemed like each of them wanted to get to know each other better. As time went on, they developed a more personal relationship at work, and it eventually became nothing more than a “flirtatious relationship,” as Linda described it.

As time allowed, she said, the two of them would spend time talking together at work, often at Linda’s desk. Linda explained, in response to questions, that Chaz would sometimes talk about his wife. He complained that Kathy was controlling and manipulating, and referred to her as a “bitch.” He never spoke about Kathy, she said, in a loving fashion.

“I hate my wife,” Linda quoted Chaz as having said. “She’s a controlling, manipulative bitch. Vindictive.”

Linda explained that she began writing e-mails that were deemed personal and flirtatious to Chaz on January 14, 2005, and ended on January 23, 2005. She wrote them while at work, using the hospital’s computer and e-mail system, and sent them to Chaz at his work e-mail account, as well as his personal e-mail account. She also confirmed that she had e-mailed Chaz from her personal e-mail account. Linda said she believed that Kathy had found out about the e-mails, which had ultimately resulted in Linda being fired from her job in February 2005.

Linda said that she’d had no contact with Chaz Higgs after being terminated from Washoe Medical Center at South Meadows until November 2005, when the two began exchanging e-mails again, and continued until August 28, 2006. The circumstances that led up to the new round of e-mail exchanges came about when a coworker had mentioned to Linda that Chaz had been talking about her. As a result, Linda said, she contacted him at his personal account and he had responded. For reasons that weren’t entirely clear, Linda had printed out the e-mails and had filed the hard copies away, a practice that she said she commonly followed. Fortunately, she had found the hard copies that she had kept and turned them over to the state, which Jenkins and others, including the district attorney’s office, found to be very interesting.

Chaz asked her to e-mail him at his “secret” address.
“Kumustakana,”
Linda explained, means “how are you?” in Tagalog, the primary language that is spoken in the Philippines. She said that she and Chaz would occasionally speak to each other in Tagalog, because they knew the language “a little bit.” He used that Tagalog greeting in his private e-mail address.

In his first e-mail of their cyberspace reunion, dated November 4, 2005, Chaz Higgs wrote to Linda:
Thank you for writing. I have to tell you that I have missed you every day since I last saw you.

Chaz explained to her that he wanted her to understand that what he was dealing with in his personal life was a nightmare. He said that each day he planned on leaving Kathy, and that he was seeking out a place in which to live:
I did what I did with us to protect you from her. I did not want to. I had to.... Miss you.

Much of that e-mail, Linda believed, had been in reference to Kathy, and the part about him doing what he did “to protect you from her” had been, at least in Linda’s mind, a reference to the situation that had ended with Linda’s termination.

In another e-mail, dated December 8, 2005, Chaz wrote to Linda that
there are prying eyes here as always, so I will write more soon.
He ended it with,
“Miss na miss kita,”
Tagalog for “I miss you a lot.” A few hours later, Chaz followed up the December 8 e-mail with another, which, in part, thanked her for writing back to him. He also told Linda how much he missed her and that he had missed her and thought of her every day. He told her that he wanted to be with her. He explained that he had not given up hope that he could be with her again, and apologized for what had happened regarding Linda being fired. He told Linda that he truly cared for her.

The e-mail continued with Higgs telling Linda that he knew that he was giving her so much information because he had it bottled up inside for nearly a year. He explained that he had made a pact with himself that he would tell her just how he felt about her, that she had caused him to feel things that he had not felt before, and that such true feelings normally only occur once in one’s lifetime. He said that he wanted to give her the world.

Chaz also wrote that
the other party in this is very vindictive and has a lot of power,
an obvious reference to Kathy. He went on to write that Kathy wanted to control everything in her life, but that she had lost control of him when Linda appeared in his life. Higgs characterized Kathy as “crazy,” and had made his life a “living hell” through threats and manipulation. He said that he had seen such things depicted in the movies, but had never expected that he would be experiencing it in his own life. He explained that in Kathy’s position, she held the power to make a person’s life hell if she so desired.

A portion of the e-mail, as with some of the others, was reflective of Linda’s termination at Washoe Medical Center at South Meadows, and Higgs claimed that he only wanted to protect her from Kathy. He wrote that he was willing to sacrifice himself so that Kathy would not be able to hurt Linda anymore.

Chaz also said in the e-mail that he had made a pact with himself to spend each day with Kathy making her life hell, to pay her back for causing him to lose Linda. He indicated that he lived to manipulate Kathy and to cause her frustration:
I hate this woman, and I will make her break.
He wrote that he got to that point in his emotions after losing Linda. He wrote that it was his
quest in life to drive this bitch crazy. And it is working. She is losing her mind.

He wrote that he no longer cared what Kathy might do to him, stating that he was no longer scared of his wife. Previously, he said, she had manipulated him, as well as his friends and employers, but that he could now leave her. He indicated that he had set into motion a plan to leave Kathy, and that he now had a place to go.
I will be free, and I will be with you. That is what I want. You have my heart.
He signed off with
Chaz.

Chaz’s characterization of his wife in the e-mails, Jenkins reflected, seven months before her death, was markedly different from the manner in which he had characterized her immediately after she had died. And so were the emotions that he had expressed. After her death, he had exhibited emotions of the grieving husband, and had told the press and just about anyone else who would listen how much he loved her. But in the e-mail, written a little more than half a year before her demise, Chaz Higgs had clearly indicated that there was no love left in their marriage.

Another e-mail in Linda’s packet, this one dated February 15, 2006, read:
Just wanted to say
mahal na mahal kita, which means, “I love you very much.”

Linda responded three days later with:
How was your Valentine’s Day?
Kalbigan ko kinakanto ko, which is translated as, “I am your friend, and I want to sleep with you.” She also asked him how things were going with Kathy.

Chaz didn’t respond to Linda until March 10, 2006, when he wrote:
The wife is the wife, but not my life.
He said that his Valentine’s Day had not been pleasant, but added that he had gone to Mexico during the first week of March and had thought of Linda the entire time. He signed off by telling her that he missed her and to write to him soon.

Although the occasional e-mail exchanges between Linda and Chaz continued in May and June 2006, they had appeared infrequently, according to the hard copies that Linda had produced, and with which she had come forward. One e-mail from Chaz to Linda, dated May 26, 2006, said that he was working on getting out of his “present situation,” and that he had an apartment lined up:
In June it is going to happen. Cannot wait. I miss you.

It wasn’t until July 30, three weeks after Kathy’s death, that Linda wrote to Chaz and explained that she had broken up with her boyfriend. Chaz responded that he was single as well, and had moved out of Nevada
due to recent events. My wife had a sudden heart attack and passed away.
He explained that he was working as a traveling nurse, but had plans to eventually relocate to San Diego. He asked Linda if she wanted to go with him, and told her that he had never forgotten about her. That e-mail had been written on August 3, 2006.

In the meantime, Linda explained, she had begun reading news reports, mostly on the Internet, about how Kathy had died, how Chaz was being looked at as a suspect, and how he had made a suicide attempt. She asked him, in a follow-up e-mail, if it was true that he had tried to kill himself.

Chaz wrote Linda that it was
great to hear from you,
and he told her that he missed her and assured her that he was not getting into any relationship unless it was with her. He reminded her how he had expressed his love for her previously:
It does not go away. You only have one true love in your life, and you are it. So whatever it takes, that is what I will do.

Chaz also explained that he wanted to talk to her about what had happened, but he didn’t want to make any statements about the case in an e-mail, and because his lawyer did not want him speaking to anyone about the case just yet. He said that he had been contacted by several media sources, including
People
magazine, Fox News,
48 Hours, Geraldo,
and the
New York Times.
He promised Linda that he would see her again sometime.

Chaz wrote that he missed Linda, and truly loved her. He explained how he could no longer hold back the feelings that were in his heart for her:
I would give you the world if you let me because that is what is in my heart for you, the world.

He said that he might return to Nevada, and agreed with Linda in her opinion that the state
is a little slow, a little redneck.
He asked Linda to go to Mexico with him, and in the next sentence asked her to go to San Diego with him, instead, so that they could
run to Mexico all the time.
He also suggested Sedona and Santa Fe.

You tell me,
he wrote.
I’ll take you anywhere. I can make you the happiest woman on this earth.

He reiterated that he wasn’t trying to “freak” her out with the things that he was saying in the e-mail, and expressed the emotions that he claimed he felt for Linda.

I just love you . . . ,
he wrote.
You are all I’ve wanted since I first saw you.
He recalled the rose that he had given Linda for her birthday, and said that he had felt like giving her a million roses. He said that he had wanted to run away with her:
I do not want anything else in my life, and it has been this way for two years. I want you with all my heart.

Knowing Chaz had four marriages, and only God knows how many relationships, Jenkins and everyone else associated with the case could only wonder just how sincere this guy was capable of being.