An Almost Perfect Murder (13 page)

On Friday, October 13, 2006, Chaz Higgs, along with his attorneys, appeared before Reno Justice Court judge Jenny Hubach via a video link from the Washoe County Jail in his first court hearing upon his return to Nevada. Shackled and dressed in an orange jumpsuit issued by the jail, Higgs responded to the judge in the affirmative that he understood that he was being charged with murder. He also agreed to waive the requirement that a preliminary hearing be held within fifteen days, and attorney David Houston entered a not guilty plea for his client. Judge Hubach set Thursday, December 7, 2006, for a preliminary hearing.

“I have not seen anything to tell me that [Kathy Augustine] was murdered,” Houston said to reporters after the five-minute hearing. “If anyone murdered her, it certainly wasn’t Chaz Higgs.”

Houston alleged that the police did not investigate other possible causes of Kathy’s death after landing on the possibility that she might have been poisoned. He said that the police found in Higgs “a subject and then designed evidence to fit their conclusion.” Houston said that the defense team would hire their own experts and would challenge the state’s toxicological tests. Houston reiterated that his client had no criminal record and had cooperated completely with the police prior to his arrest. Houston said that he would seek bail for Higgs, who, he insisted, had demonstrated that he was not a flight risk through his cooperation with the police, who, he said, always knew where they could find him at any given time after his departure from Nevada.

“There is no motive in this case,” Houston said. “He stood to get nothing. He had no hope of getting anything.... Did they really find it (succinylcholine) in her system? I don’t know. But I do know if you are looking for something, you can find a derivative of it in the body.”

In October 2006, one of Chaz Higgs’s ex-wives, who resides in Las Vegas, talked to reporters for the
Las Vegas Review-Journal
and provided additional background and insight into her ex-husband’s life, as well as fodder for local and national news media of all types. The ex-wife, who was married to Chaz only briefly, told of how Chaz used to give her vitamin B injections on a near-weekly basis to boost her energy. The injection site, she said, was always in the buttocks.

In the autumn of 1990, Chaz came home and told his wife that he had been accepted for training as a Navy SEAL. It required a move to the West Coast, and she moved with him. Chaz, his wife, and a female friend of his wife’s began their journey westward in a rented recreational vehicle (RV). His ex-wife told a reporter that she suspected him of having an affair with her friend, and he had denied the accusations.

During the trip, they began having problems with the RV’s sewage system. It finally failed, and all three of them fell ill. By the time they hit Las Vegas, Chaz became concerned that his wife might be getting dehydrated and was adamant that she needed an IV.

“Instead of taking me to the (military) base, he decided to plug me up with an IV in the living room,” she said. “That was not the first time he had stuck a needle in my arm.”

She claimed that Chaz brought home medicine that he obtained through his job.

“I can tell you in my house,” she said, “I had a pharmacy. And it wasn’t stuff prescribed to him.”

During her marriage to Higgs, she said, she knew him as “Chuck,” not Chaz. She characterized him as being manipulative and obsessed over his appearance, and he had used steroids—presumably as part of his bodybuilding regimen. He had admitted it to her, she said, and it had seemed like he hadn’t cared whether she knew or not. Chaz also liked to make promises, she said, in which he vowed to take care of her at a time when she was going through a divorce and needed the emotional support.

“‘You can have me,’” she quoted Chaz as saying. “‘I’m going to be there for you. I’m going to make things okay....’ He knew exactly what to tell me, exactly what to say. He was out there to basically take me away from everything happening in my life. Why did I have to put up with that (from the husband she was divorcing)? Why did I have to stand for those things that my ex-husband was doing to me? Chuck was better than that. He could help me better myself.”

She said that he had done a good job of sweeping her off her feet, as well as brainwashing her. She didn’t believe that he was faithful to her, however—in part because she had found a letter from a woman among his personal things.

She said that Chaz had spent of lot of time bodybuilding. He also liked to maintain a dark tan, and shaved the hair from his body regularly. He was always concerned over his hair, she said, and wasn’t satisfied unless his appearance, to him, was flawless.

“It took him longer to get ready than it did me,” said the ex-wife. “Every curl in his hair had to be perfect. His clothing had to be perfect. It was very strange. He was metrosexual before ‘metrosexual’ was a term.”

The ex-wife claimed that she regretted her marriage to Chaz right away, and only a few months into the marriage, she kicked him out of their apartment. She always took him back, though, hoping that he would change and repair their broken relationship. But he never wanted to change, and he was often out all night after saying that he was going to work out at the gym.

“He was at the gym all night,” his ex-wife said. “Sometimes he wouldn’t even come home. I didn’t think you could work out all night long.”

She said that her parents hadn’t liked Chaz. They had warned her that the relationship was moving too quickly, and her father’s opinion of him was that he was “slick.” Nonetheless, she said, she ignored everyone’s warnings and decided to marry Chaz anyway. The day of the wedding, she said, he had gotten so drunk that someone had to revive him so that he could get married.

“They basically had to wake him up,” she said, “to get married. It was rainy outside, and he’d even been outside in the rain, lying down in the rain because he had passed out.”

In addition to regretting her marriage to Chaz Higgs, the ex-wife said that she also regretted allowing him to legally adopt her child from her prior marriage. But, she said, he had a way of manipulating people into getting what he wanted. He had brainwashed her to the point that her taste in music, clothing, and the decoration of her apartment changed to suit his wishes, and had convinced her to allow him to legally adopt her child.

“Brainwashing,” she said. “If I had to put my finger on one thing, I would say brainwashing. This person knows how to get into someone’s head, rearrange the thought processes, and get you to think exactly what he wants you to think.”

Looking back, she said, she could not figure out why Chaz Higgs had wanted to establish a relationship with a woman with a child who was in the middle of a divorce.

“The only answer I could come up with,” she said, “was that I had property, I had items in my house, I had stability, and those were things that he craved. He had no personal property, he had no real estate, and he had absolutely no stability whatsoever.”

Remarried and with a new life, the ex-wife said that she rarely thought about Higgs after getting past the divorce until seeing him on the news one night as a suspect in Kathy Augustine’s death. She said that she nearly fell out of her chair when she realized that she was looking at her ex-husband, and the thought of him previously administering injections to her made chills run up and down her spine. She said that she had never suspected that he had tried to poison
her
at any time, but the allegations he was facing with regard to Kathy Augustine had given her pause to wonder.

“I would have never thought about that at all until this came up with Kathy,” she told the reporter. “But now that Kathy’s dead, I’ve got to tell you, you start thinking about stuff like that.”

When news of Higgs’s ex-wife’s characterization of Chaz reached Higgs’s lawyer Alan Baum, the portrayal was quickly disputed.

“There are some people who are so angry and vindictive that they will take the opportunity to kick someone when they are down,” Baum declared. “There was never any indication of any of this sort of thing until Chaz is in the newspaper, and now she is looking for her fifteen minutes of fame.”

 

 

Meanwhile, amid the flurry of speculation surrounding Chaz Higgs’s character due to his ex-wife talking to a reporter for the
Review-Journal,
the subject of why there would be an unopened bottle of etomidate inside the house that Chaz had occupied with Kathy surged to the forefront of “breaking news.” Although the subject of the etomidate had arisen before, it now seemed more newsworthy after the ex-wife’s comments and the fact that court records had been released that showed the items found during the police search of Kathy’s house. The bottle of etomidate seemed significant in this case because of its relationship to succinylcholine. Etomidate is a hypnotic drug that is used to put patients to sleep and, according to Dr. Cyril Wecht, is rarely found outside of a hospital or pharmacy setting. When used in conjunction with succinylcholine, etomidate would be administered first to render the patient unconscious.

“What is it doing there (inside the house)?” Wecht asked when approached by reporters. “It’s not something you use to keep away insects or polish your nails. It has a very, very specific purpose, so what the hell is it doing there?”

Wecht indicated that a killer bent on using succinylcholine to murder someone could fully incapacitate the intended victim by first putting them to sleep with the etomidate.

“They are not conscious,” Wecht said. “There is no awareness of the adverse effects of the succinylcholine, so there would then be no likelihood of them calling attention to themselves by movement or verbalizing.”

Lieutenant Jon Catalano was quick to point out that etomidate was not found in Kathy’s body, and the bottle of the drug found inside Chaz and Kathy’s home hadn’t been opened. Catalano said that investigators were attempting to “determine what the parameters are on this substance and . . . what it does.”

Two anesthesiologists, Dr. Anthony Frasca and Dr. Edson Parker, agreed that finding etomidate inside a nurse’s residence was “strange.” They commented that if someone had been injected with etomidate first, they would be rendered unconscious and would theoretically suffer less when the succinylcholine was administered.

“To kill someone with succinylcholine . . . is particularly cruel,” Frasca said. “It could be someone was intending to use etomidate to lower the cruelty factor or to supplement the succinylcholine.”

“At face value,” Lieutenant Catalano said, “the fact that he did have it shows he was taking what we believe to be controlled substances home from the hospitals (where he worked).”

 

 

When the Clark County Coroner’s Office had finished with its examination and selective tissue removal from Charles Augustine’s body for a variety of toxicological tests, it was taken back to Paradise Memorial Gardens on Saturday, October 21, 2006, and reinterred in the original grave site in a straightforward process, without any type of ceremony being performed, according to Coroner Murphy.

“We are taking a very broad approach to this exam,” Murphy said. “The goal of the Clark County Coroner’s Office and the reason for the exhumation is to determine, if possible, whether or not the original cause and manner of death was appropriate and factual.”

Murphy said that the process of the exhumation and reburial had gone off as planned.

As preparations for Chaz Higgs’s trial moved into November 2006, his attorney David Houston began questioning whether authorities properly carried out the forensic testing on which they had based much of their case against Higgs. Houston complained that he did not know whether tissue samples had been taken from the suspected injection site on Kathy’s body, which would have been the proper procedure to follow. All of the information that he had so far received had not shown that proper procedure had been followed, and he was suspicious that the police and the district attorney’s office had built their case based primarily on the statements that nurse Kim Ramey had made to police.

“We have not been provided the detailed toxicology or a detailed autopsy report,” Houston said. “They said they’ve given us everything.... The case seems to have been built based on a witness statement from a single person as opposed to building the case on science.”

“We have an excellent workup on the toxicology,” Washoe County assistant district attorney (ADA) John Helzer said in countering Houston’s remarks. “We weren’t in a hurry, we took our time, and we filed these charges because we believe they are supported by the evidence.”

Helzer said that the evidence clearly pointed to Higgs as the person responsible for Kathy’s death, and charged that Houston “loves to try his case in the press. That’s what he loves to do.”

As the investigation into Kathy’s death continued with Chaz Higgs being looked at as the only suspect in the case, Detective David Jenkins and the Washoe County District Attorney’s Office considered it of paramount importance that everyone concerned with the prosecution be as well versed as possible on the subject of succinylcholine. In order to make headway in that regard, it was decided that they would have to bring in their own group of experts. One of the experts they talked to was Dr. Pamela K. Russell, a board-certified anesthesiologist from Reno. Russell had been an anesthesiologist for seventeen years, and proved to be quite knowledgeable about the characteristics of succinylcholine. She said that the drug showed up on the board examinations for anesthesiologists because of its complex nature and the complications that can arise from its use. She described it as the “purview of anesthesia and critical care medicine,” and indicated that its characteristics are unique.

Russell described succinylcholine as a depolarizing muscle relaxant that was developed from the “(curare) poison of arrow darts of South American Indians.” When introduced into the bloodstream of an animal or a human, either through muscle tissue or intravenously, the drug “causes the neurotransmitter at the receptor to release.

“And what happens then,” Russell continued, “is that all this neurotransmitter goes to every single muscle, and those muscles go into massive taut spasm. We have no other drug in our armamentarium that does that.”

It should be noted that neurotransmitters are defined as chemicals that are used to “communicate, intensify, and modulate signals between neurons and other cells.” In other words, neurotransmitters communicate information between the body’s neurons by causing the information to pass across the synapses from one nerve to the next. Succinylcholine, therefore, causes the subject to which it was administered to go into “big spasms that look like probably the worst seizure that you would ever see,” Russell said.

“And it lasts approximately thirty to sixty seconds,” she continued, “at which time, all those receptors then have been loaded, and then the muscles are paralyzed.... That’s the main characteristic of how that drug works. It tends to be very quick as far as onset. And of most of our paralytic drugs, it tends to wear off about fifteen to seventeen minutes after given.”

When asked how long after succinylcholine is administered to a person that the taut spasms begin, Russell said that several seconds are needed “for those receptors to start releasing the neurotransmitter” that causes the spasm to occur. She said that what occurs when the drug is put into the body goes beyond the rigid spasm and includes shaking as a result of muscle vesiculation. In order to avoid the vesiculation and shaking when, for example, a person goes to the hospital for elective surgery but requires a breathing tube, most often the patient is first sedated, then given a different type of muscle relaxer, and then the succinylcholine. In that manner of using the drug, the patient often doesn’t remember the experience. What makes the experience so painful are the severe muscle contractions.

“So if succinylcholine is just given alone,” Russell continued, “you will sit and be suffocating, unable to move, knowing what’s going on around you, your surroundings, and you will continue to feel that until your brain starts to die at six to ten minutes. Then when the brain cells start to die, you’ll probably go comatose. Could resuscitate you at the end of that time and probably get [the person] breathing, although by that time enough brain cells would have died that the brain will swell up, and your chances for recovering and being a normal human being are very, very limited.... The patients who have told me about that say it’s pure terror, worse than any Stephen King novel you could imagine.”

 

 

As the case moved forward into December 2006 and the preliminary hearing to determine whether Chaz Higgs would be bound over for trial for the murder of his wife approached, attorney David Houston argued that there was no evidence of murder and contended that the FBI crime laboratory had not found succinylcholine in Kathy Augustine’s urine and body tissues. He claimed that the FBI lab only found succinylmonocholine, which, he argued, can occur naturally. He presented his arguments before Reno Justice Court judge Barbara Finley in an attempt to seek a delay for his client’s preliminary hearing, by then only two days away.

“I’m not sure this is a homicide,” Houston said. “I don’t know if we are dealing with a crime at all.”

Washoe County chief deputy district attorney Thomas “Tom” Barb, however, argued that the preliminary hearing should be held as planned.

“He can claim whatever he likes,” Barb said, referring to Houston’s contentions. “I am going forward based on the toxicology report that says there was succinylcholine and succinylmonocholine in her urine.”

Barb asserted that toxicology testing to determine the presence of succinylcholine in urine and body tissues had improved considerably over the past few years, and that his office felt comfortable basing their case, at least in part, on the toxicology tests performed by the FBI crime laboratory. Although there have been a number of murder cases in which succinylcholine had been used to kill the intended victim, the case that involved Chaz Higgs and Kathy Augustine appeared to be the first of its type in Nevada.

“I don’t see an inconvenience by a continuance of thirty days,” Houston argued, claiming that he needed the additional time so that a scientist he had hired would be able to examine the evidence against Higgs. “It is not such an ominous burden for the state that it overrides the interests of justice.”

Houston also planned to question the validity of the various findings that Kathy had not died as a result of a heart attack.

“A lot of people die of heart attacks who have no signs of having heart disease,” Houston said.

Houston also indicated that he needed more time to obtain the notes written by Dr. Madeline Montgomery, the chemist at the FBI crime laboratory who said that she had determined the presence of succinylcholine in Kathy’s urine.

Barb argued that a delay would not help the defense team accomplish anything. The justice court system, where Higgs’s case currently was, could not force the FBI to turn over its records as they pertained to Kathy Augustine because the federal government does not have to comply with such lower-court requests. Instead, he said, a district court judge, after Higgs had been bound over for trial and was officially in the district court system, could request such records from the federal government, which could in all likelihood be compelled to comply with such a request.

“He’s in the wrong court,” Barb said.

Judge Finley apparently agreed and said that the defense team had already had five weeks to get ready for the preliminary hearing. She denied Houston’s request for a continuance, leaving intact the date of Thursday, December 7, 2006, for the murder suspect’s preliminary hearing.

The preliminary hearing took five hours, spread across two days, and was held before Judge Finley. The judge heard testimony from nurse Kim Ramey, who recounted what she told police about Higgs stating to her, “If you want to get rid of someone, hit them with a little succs.” Ramey had also said that Higgs had told her that he was planning to divorce Kathy, but that it would be a “short divorce.”

Houston discounted Ramey’s statements by saying that it was absurd to believe that anyone would tell someone whom they barely knew that succinylcholine was the perfect means to murder a wife or husband. He also said that after Ramey had spoken to the police, the investigators took the position that Chaz had killed Kathy and failed, along with the FBI crime lab, to search for other feasible reasons for Kathy’s demise.

“The science to support this to some is bad science,” Houston argued. “It is seeking the results based on the conclusion you have reached. When you approach it, seeking those results, that is the results you get.”

The judge also heard testimony from nurse Marlene Swanbeck, who described Higgs’s indifference at the emergency room the morning Kathy had been rushed in by paramedics; Dr. Ellen Clark, who had performed the autopsy on Kathy’s body and had found two small puncture marks in the upper portion of Kathy’s left buttock that she believed had been the result of an injection that had appeared to be recent; and Madeline Montgomery testified briefly regarding the results of the toxicology tests she had conducted. The judge ordered Montgomery to provide copies of her notes to the defense team.

At the end of the hearing, Judge Finley found that there was probable cause to bind Higgs over for trial on the murder charges in district court.

“The evidence is sufficient to bind him over for trial,” Finley said. “It is not a determination of his innocence or guilt. A crime was committed, and the defendant was implicated.”

Chaz Higgs was present at the hearing; he sat emotionless as the judge rendered her decision. Kathy Augustine’s mother, brother, and daughter were present as well, as were several family friends. Kathy’s daughter, Dallas, expressed relief over the judge’s decision, as did Kathy’s mother. Her brother, however, was a bit more vocal.

“We are convinced Chaz Higgs murdered our sister and our parents’ daughter,” Phil Alfano said. “I am sure a jury will come to the same conclusion. The past five months have been sad. This is another sad day, but we at least are on the path to getting justice for Kathy.”

Two weeks later on Friday, December 22, 2006, Chaz Higgs and his defense team appeared before Washoe County District Court judge Steven Kosach, who had caught the assignment to hear the case, where Higgs pleaded not guilty to the charges against him. Kosach set a tentative trial date of July 16, 2007, and noted that everyone would have to remain flexible with regard to the trial date so that they could work around the schedules of the expert witnesses that would be called.

Following the brief arraignment, Houston indicated that he would challenge the determination of the justice court that the state had shown sufficient evidence for Higgs to be tried for murder.

“Neither money nor property was at issue,” Houston said. “That, to me, is not a recipe for murder.... Chaz Higgs loved his wife.”

Houston also indicated that he would challenge the conclusions of Dr. Ellen Clark, which, he contended, were based on the FBI laboratory analysis that he termed “suspect.”

The defense counsel said, “With all due respect to the FBI lab, I think we can all agree they’ve had their diff icul-ties in the past.”