An Almost Perfect Murder (27 page)

The next morning, Tuesday, June 26, 2007, when prosecutor Tom Barb was supposed to begin his cross-examination of Chaz Higgs, Judge Steven Kosach suspended the trial for one day after it had been announced that Chaz had made another suicide attempt. According to the information that was being released, Chaz had been found with his wrists slit earlier that morning inside a Reno apartment that he had been sharing with his mother while he was out on bail. Kosach revoked Chaz’s bail and ordered both sides to return to court the next day. Although Kosach had not declared a mistrial, he said that he would not rule out the possibility if it appeared that the defendant’s recovery turned out to be lengthy. Higgs’s attorney David Houston told the court, as well as reporters, that Chaz’s injuries did not appear life-threatening.

According to published reports of the 911 call made by Higgs’s mother, Chaz had used a knife to slash his wrists in the bathroom of the apartment they shared. She had found him on the floor, and the knife was in the sink. He had been taken to the Renown hospital, in Reno.

According to Houston, Chaz’s latest suicide attempt hadn’t been motivated by fear of cross-examination by the prosecution—instead, it had been because it had been difficult for him to relive his wife’s death on the witness stand on Monday.

“His goal was to clear his name and then to join his wife,” Houston said. “He felt he cleared his name yesterday.”

 

 

The trial didn’t resume until Thursday, June 28, 2007, when Chaz returned to the witness stand, wrists bandaged, for his cross-examination from Barb. Barb asked him shortly after beginning if he understood that people might think his recent suicide attempt might have been an effort to gain sympathy. He said that he understood, but that it didn’t matter.

Early in his questioning, Barb pointed out to Chaz that his e-mailing hadn’t been limited to Linda Ramirez and others that had previously been talked about. He showed Chaz, and the jury, a profile of Chaz’s from an Internet Web site called Passion.com, an online chatting and dating service.

“Do you recall what your profile was?” Barb asked.

“I don’t recall off the top of my head,” Chaz responded.

Barb approached the witness, and asked Chaz to read his profile to the jury. He read the following:

“As far as sex is concerned,”
he continued reading,
“I like to please my woman. I like to see her happy. I love giving oral sex. I love to do just about anything you can think of as far as sex. I have tried a lot and will try more. I am open to new ideas and completely adventurous.”

“Now, you didn’t mention in there how much you loved Kathy,” Barb said. “Is there a reason?”

“Sir, at that time, I was in a fog. I was reaching out for somebody.”

“When was this?”

“I don’t remember, sir. It was after her death, sir.”

“How do you know you were in a fog at that time?”

“I can’t say I remember a lot of what was going on at that time.”

“For the whole past year.”

“A lot of the first few months.”

“So you were in a fog, but every time you . . . come out of this fog, you remember you loved Kathy? Is that it?”

Barb was brutal in bringing out certain aspects of Chaz’s character. He mentioned other e-mails that Chaz had sent shortly after Kathy’s death. Some were to female nurses that he had also asked to run away with him. Barb asked him to read a couple of them to the jury. The first one that he had Higgs read was dated September 3, 2006, almost two months after Kathy died:

“Noodle, how are you—where are you?”
Chaz read.
“If you are in Myrtle Beach, I’m only two hours away from you at the present. I am in North Carolina now.

“You didn’t mention . . . that your wife died,” Barb said. “You just said, ‘Oh, by the way, I’m single again.’”

“Yes, sir.”

“Is that your idea of displaying love for Kathy?”

“No, sir.”

The second e-mail that Barb asked Chaz to read was dated August 27, 2006, and it had been sent to a nurse that Chaz said he’d gone to school with:

“Oceanside is cool,”
Chaz read.
“I will only be less than an hour from there.... I love the video. I hope you do not mind me saying that you are hotter than you were before. Send some more. How about with a little less clothing on? You are damn beautiful. I look forward to seeing you. I did not want to leave North Carolina when I did because I wanted to spend more time with you. I was truly sad. You are a fantastic woman. I just think that you are with the wrong man. But we all do that, don’t we? That’s life. But just know that I am here for you.”

“‘But we all do that, don’t we?’” Barb repeated. “Isn’t that your attempt to say, ‘I was with the wrong woman’?”

“No, sir.”

Much of Barb’s cross-examination consisted of rehashing previous testimony of a number of witnesses by putting his own prosecutorial spin on things. Taken out of context or not, it was clear that it was having his desired effect on the jury. At one point, Barb zeroed in on the fact that Chaz had been assigned the duty of being a charge nurse during the course of his employment at South Meadows, and he, likewise, of course, reminded Chaz of testimony in which Marlene Swanbeck had said that the charge nurse could get inside the refrigerator where the drugs were kept on a regular basis and could remove anything in the refrigerator without necessarily creating a record. Barb pointed out that Chaz could have been a charge nurse as many as fifty times or more during his employment, with the insinuation being that he would have had many opportunities to remove whatever drugs he liked from the drug refrigerator.

 

 

After each side had rested its case, closing arguments took up much of the afternoon before the case was handed off to the jury to begin deliberating. The jury worked into the night with their deliberations, but adjourned at about ten o’clock. They resumed their effort the following morning, Friday, June 29, 2007, at nine. Three hours later, the four men and eight women returned and announced that they had reached a verdict: they had found Chaz Higgs guilty of first-degree murder in the death of his wife, Kathy Augustine.

Chaz stood at the defense table as the verdict was read. His hands were clasped in front of him and he stared at the floor. In keeping with his calm demeanor, he had shown no emotion when the judge read the jury’s verdict. Several members of Kathy’s family clapped their hands together once, but otherwise said nothing.

 

 

That afternoon, in what could almost be viewed as a slam-dunk style of adjudication by those who regularly follow murder trials, the penalty hearing began. The jury was told that they could sentence Chaz to life in prison with no possibility of parole, life in prison with the possibility of parole after serving twenty years, or to fifty years in prison with a minimum sentence of twenty years.

Dr. Pamela Russell, an anesthesiologist, was called as the first witness. She explained the characteristics of the drug succinylcholine, as well as its horrible and terrifying effects if given to a person without a mechanism to assist him with his breathing.

The next witness was Dallas Augustine, Kathy’s daughter. Christopher Hicks asked her to explain for the jury the impact that her mother’s death had had on her life.

“First of all, to Chaz,” Dallas said. “I just want to say that I pity you. And after hearing your indifference toward my mother’s suffering, I understand you could never know what it’s like to be a human being.

“My mother was the most influential person in my family,” she continued. “She wasn’t perfect, but she worked very hard to truly make something special of her life. She could be here right now. And you in the span of a morning took away not only her life, but everything I knew as family. She was my only family.

“Now, after a year of hell, I will finally be able to move on with my life. And I hope you will spend the rest of yours in a cell. I miss her every day and will miss her the rest of my life. Nothing will ever take away the pain, but I can find some solace in the fact that you will pay.”

The state’s next witness was Kathy’s brother Phil Alfano. Hicks asked him the same question that he had asked Dallas: “Sir, could you please explain the impact that this death has had on your life, and your family’s life, to the jury?”

“Well, I don’t know where to begin,” Phil Alfano said. “I’ve known two emotions for the past year, anger and sorrow, because of that man sitting right over there, Chaz Higgs.

“When Kathy introduced Chaz to us,” he continued, “she talked about how he had swept her off her feet, how he had been there for her and comforting her when her husband Chuck was dying. She referred to him as her angel. Fact is, he’s an angel of death.

“You heard how Kathy suffered. We’ve lived with that memory every single day for the past year. It will be forever scarring our memories of our sister.

“His bogus suicide attempt robbed us of the opportunity to bury her in a dignified manner. I can think of no other individual more deserving of the maximum penalty in this case than Chaz Higgs. He took away my sister. He robbed my daughters of an aunt that they loved. And worst of all, my parents lost their first child and their only daughter. And I’ve seen this tear them apart for the past year. Words cannot express my feelings.”

The state’s final witness was Kay Alfano, Kathy’s mother.

“Ma’am, what’s your relationship to Kathy Augustine?” Hicks asked.

“Kathy was our firstborn and our daughter,” she replied.

“Could you please explain the impact her death has had on you, and your family, to the jury?”

“It has been devastating,” she said. “Chaz, you don’t know, to take the life of another human being is just unheard of. But the way it has affected the whole family, friends, relatives, schoolmates that she went to elementary school with, high school, college, when she went after her master’s, professors, her airline people that were her bosses—they called, they sent cards. They’re all devastated.

“All you’ve heard from the defense over there is—‘Oh, she was political and she was a terrible wife, and she was this and she was that.’

“She raised money for I don’t know how many organizations. She—yes, she was political, but she was a wonderful human being.... She was very caring. She cared about everybody. She was always there to help. She never forgot anybody’s birthday. If somebody needed something, she was there . . . for them. She’d drop everything.

“And I just also want to say I feel sorry for Chaz’s mother and father and stepparents because what he has done to them is devastating, too.

“I—I hope he spends the rest of his natural life in prison. That’s actually too good for him. He took our daughter. And to do that to another human being . . . If you had walked into the hospital room and saw her when we did—if you’ve got any compassion at all, you—you can’t do that to a human being. She was just completely paralyzed. Her eyes wide open. Couldn’t move, but she could hear. And as I said, life in prison is too good for him.”

 

 

Tina Carbone testified for the defense during the penalty hearing and told the jury that Chaz Higgs was a good nurse, that patients liked him, and that he possessed a strong knowledge base of what was needed for emergency room patients. He had not had any human resources issues regarding his nursing abilities, and that during the course of his employment, he had saved lives.

The defense team also called Chaz’s mother, Shirley Higgs, to testify during the penalty hearing. She described Chaz as having been a good kid who was very close to his brother. Neither of them ever got into any trouble. Chaz had been involved in sports, and had participated in the Cub Scouts and Little League baseball. Overall, she said, Chaz, as well as his brother, were just good kids who were well disciplined. She appealed to the jury to sentence Chaz to life in prison with the possibility of parole.

“Every person is entitled to hope,” she said. “And I would like my son to have that hope while he’s in prison.”

Chaz’s father, William “Bill” Higgs, in similar fashion, said that Chaz had been a good kid with no prior criminal record. Like Chaz’s mother, he pleaded for the jury to sentence Chaz to prison with the possibility of parole. He also apologized to Kathy Augustine’s family for what had happened, and said that he would say a rosary for her next time he went to mass.

 

 

Final arguments of the penalty phase were heard next, with coprosecutor Christopher Hicks summing up first.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” Hicks said, “as I am sure you’re feeling right now, this is an incredibly difficult phase of the proceeding. We have to hear the terrible things . . . how this has affected the Augustine and Alfano family, and also Mr. Higgs’s family. And, sincerely, the state feels for both of them. It’s a horrible situation. But we’re all here, they’re all here. Everybody who is suffering in this room is suffering because of this man, what he did.