00:00:04
[suspenseful music] A husband calls a
press conference in Reno to tell the world that his
wife, a big shot politician,
00:00:18
is seriously ill. There was a television
report on Kathy Augustine being in the hospital.
00:00:26
Chaz Higgs said she'd
had a heart attack. MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG: Kathy
Augustine is in a coma.
00:00:31
She's Nevada State
Controller, the woman who holds the purse strings. CHAZ HIGGS: Something's
wrong with my wife.
00:00:37
She's not breathing. 911 OPERATOR: She's
not breathing at all? CHAZ HIGGS: Not
breathing at all.
00:00:40
I need some help. They couldn't really find any
reason why Kathy, 50 years old, never drank, didn't smoke,
and worked out regularly,
00:00:50
would have had a heart attack. Medics fighting to
save Kathy Augustine's life start thinking something
about her sudden illness
00:00:58
is wrong. Kathy's husband is
nurse Chaz Higgs. Has he killed his wife? There was an undercurrent
of suspicion surrounding
00:01:10
Kathy Augustine's death. Nothing was found in the
sense of a cause of death. Half of the women killed are
murdered by their partners.
00:01:19
I'm Michelle Trachtenberg and
this is Meet Marry Murder. [suspenseful music] The way, Kathy and
Chaz get together
00:01:40
is kind of unusual,
well, very unusual. Their eyes meet over her
husband's death deathbed.
00:01:49
It's 2003. Kathy has been married
to Charles Augustine, her third husband for 17 years.
00:01:56
But things have been rocky
between them for a while. Charles and Kathy
Augustine were
00:02:01
estranged and heading toward
divorce, when he fell ill. MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG
: Kathy's friends
00:02:08
are not surprised to hear
her marriage is struggling. Politics comes first for her.
00:02:15
It's something she's been
into since her teens, years before she met
Charles Augustine.
00:02:20
Chuck Augustine's
wife Kathy was born Kathy Alfano in California. When she was growing
up, her passion
00:02:26
had always been politics. And she was growing up in
the '60s and '70s at a time when women were leaving
the house, attaining more,
00:02:33
they're more
involved in politics. And they were out in
the social sphere. Charles Augustine was
15 years her senior.
00:02:39
He was a strong looking man. He'd been a football
player earlier in life. He was also a Vietnam vet
and a devout Catholic.
00:02:48
They fell in love and
got married and moved to the Las Vegas area. At first, it's all sunshine
and roses, happy combined
00:03:00
family. They buy a big luxury home
in Downtown Las Vegas. Charles adopts Kathy's
daughter Dallas,
00:03:07
who gets on great with
Charles' sons Larry and Greg. Politics is calling. So she joins the
Republican Party
00:03:16
and launches her first campaign. Kathy Augustine was very well
known in the state of Nevada.
00:03:21
And she was known as a
hard charging, very strong, very dynamic state politician.
00:03:28
She reveled in politics. She loved the rough
and tumble of politics. MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG : Back
then Nevada politics was a bit
00:03:37
of a good old boys
network, but Kathy takes it on and she comes out on top. First she wins a place
in the state assembly,
00:03:46
next campaign the state Senate. She's charismatic. She's ruthless. And she crushes the
opposition every time.
00:03:56
She has run for and won
election to the Office of State Controller of Nevada. She was actually the
first female state
00:04:03
controller in Nevada's history. She was the state's bill
collector, more or less.
00:04:09
MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG: Kathy
is a hero to Republican women. She joins all 18 of the state's
Republican women's clubs
00:04:16
and drives miles to
go to their functions. Her outfits are like her armor,
always the same bright blazers
00:04:24
and polished brooches. Kathy's husband Chuck
isn't such a fan. He's not into politics.
00:04:31
And he doesn't get
why his wife wants to be out on the
campaign trail when she should be home with him.
00:04:37
Victoria Campbell is a
local reporter who watched Kathy take no prisoners. I interviewed Kathy Augustine
on numerous occasions.
00:04:46
She struck me as tenacious. Very tough. She was a very tough woman. She just had her eyes
on what she wanted.
00:04:55
She was ambitious. Charles and Kathy
Augustine were estranged and heading toward
divorce when he fell ill.
00:05:03
He suffered a minor stroke
at their home in Las Vegas, was taken to the
hospital, then suffered
00:05:08
a major stroke in the hospital. MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG
: So this is 2003. Chuck and Kathy are
getting a divorce.
00:05:16
But when he suddenly gets
sick, that is put on hold. For six weeks, she travels back
and forth to be at his bedside.
00:05:24
While he was being treated
and was seriously ill, one of his nurses
was Chaz Higgs.
00:05:31
MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG : So is
the critical care nurse, Chaz Higgs, seeing dollar signs?
00:05:36
She was an easy
route to success. She was- she was--
she had glamour. She had status potentially.
00:05:41
He thought that she
was an easy route to the fairytale ending that
he believes it is his destiny.
00:05:49
[sinister music] MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG : Now if
I met William Charles Higgs, I'd be a little worried
about his emotional baggage.
00:05:59
Not a lot is known about
Charles Higgs' early life. But between 1994 and 2002, he
had three failed marriages.
00:06:07
He changed state and job
quite a lot, and drifted. MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG : Chaz
and his twin brother Mike were
00:06:14
raised in North Carolina
by their father, who is in the Marines. This is forensic
psychologist Donna Youngs,
00:06:21
a Brit who studied bad guys. My sense is that he came
out quite a hard background,
00:06:29
a background where
he didn't learn how to care about other
people because it was
00:06:35
a tough background where
other people weren't particularly caring about him. It fits with the
idea of an upbringing
00:06:41
led by a military man. MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG
: Just like dad, Chaz also joins the military.
00:06:49
He goes into the Navy, spending
16 years in the Medical Corps, looking after sailors' health.
00:06:56
He's rather unreliable though. He moves from state to state,
has three failed marriages,
00:07:02
files for bankruptcy many times,
and finds women irresistible. He is a player. We've got somebody who has
an inability to self-regulate,
00:07:14
somebody who's-- who's always
looking for excitement, somebody who's
immature, and somebody
00:07:21
who is very emotionally
fluent, is very warm and charming and open. Put all those things
together and you get somebody
00:07:31
who is going to move from
woman to woman very readily, and is going to appeal to
a lot of women as well.
00:07:38
So it's easy for him to do that. MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG
: But everyone has to settle down sometime right?
00:07:45
By this time, Higgs
is in his late 30s. By 2002 after the breakdown
of his last marriage,
00:07:53
Chaz was living in Nevada. He had seemed to be
a bit more stable. MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG
: He goes to college,
00:08:01
gets his qualifications. And in 2002, he gets a
job as a critical care nurse at the Sunrise
Medical Center in Las Vegas.
00:08:11
He would have been comfortable
going into nursing, of holding other people's
lives in his hands,
00:08:17
because, not because
he cared so much. But because actually,
other people's lives
00:08:21
were so unimportant to him,
certainly much less important than Chaz Higgs' life.
00:08:31
Just a few years later,
Chaz Higgs' co-workers will find out just how little
human life means to him.
00:08:40
Any time he was
busy and they'd-- one of them would say-- And all of them testify to this.
00:08:45
And there were several. --one of them
would say, is there anything I could help you with?
00:08:49
And he'd say, yeah,
get rid of my wife. [music playing] It sounds rather shocking,
but the door to romance
00:09:13
opens for Chaz Higgs
and Kathy Augustine as she watches Chuck,
her husband of 17 years,
00:09:21
take his last breath. After six weeks, he
unfortunately passed away. But Kathy's relationship
to the intensive care
00:09:29
team at the hospital
didn't end there. Chaz would later say
that they had chemistry.
00:09:35
They had instant chemistry. And when they met in the
hospital, it was just-- it was one of those things.
00:09:42
MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG :
After Chuck dies, Kathy can't get Chaz out of her head. She just needs to find an
excuse to see him again.
00:09:50
And what she comes
up with is perfect. Kathy wrote thank you
notes to all of the staff.
00:09:56
But she forgot to
write one to Chaz. In order to make up
for that, she decided to invite him out for coffee.
00:10:01
And that was when
their romance began MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG : Well
Chaz isn't going to turn
00:10:06
down an offer like that. A hot frantic affair
is right up his alley. His romances mirror his whole-
his whole approach to life.
00:10:16
It's one passionate encounter
followed by another. For Kathy, who was perhaps
used to more intellectual,
00:10:25
reserved men who was part of
a calculating political world, Chaz actually would have
been a breath of fresh air
00:10:33
in his warmth, his openness. Three weeks later, a wedding. Hmm. Why not? I would venture to say
that Kathy Augustine probably
00:10:42
hoped for what most
people hope for, a meaningful happy relationship. And this being her
fourth marriage,
00:10:50
it was not something that she
had been able to have before. She told her family,
he's an angel to me,
00:10:59
he swept me off my feet. MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG :
Kathy's friends and family are harder to convince.
00:11:05
This doesn't exactly look like
a match made in Heaven does it? The relationship
between Chaz and Kathy
00:11:11
was not something that their
friends could have predicted. She was eight years his senior.
00:11:15
And they didn't really seem
to have a ton in common. He was a nurse. She was a politician.
00:11:21
He hated politics. I think it's just
shocked people. And he clearly had no interest
in her career, which was
00:11:29
very, very important to her. MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG : But what
else can Kathy's friends do?
00:11:35
They bite their tongues and
wish the new couple well. Straight out of the gate, it
appeared that she was happy.
00:11:41
Chaz was athletic,
had always been interested in keeping up his
appearance, in looking good.
00:11:47
Over the course of
their relationship however, he got
Kathy into shape. He got her interested
in working out.
00:11:53
And they seemed to be
taking along fairly well. MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG
: Now it's fair
00:11:58
to say Chaz has gotten lucky. As a nurse, he'll
never be a big earner. But as Kathy's husband, he
finds himself living it up.
00:12:07
He'd always been
terrible with money. And friends suspected
that part of Kathy's
00:12:11
appeal in the first place was
that she was fairly wealthy. She had received the
payout from Chuck's life
00:12:17
insurance, which amounted
to about a million dollars. MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG
: Chaz is attracted
00:12:23
to the fact that Kathy
is a powerful woman, a local celebrity almost. But he finds himself
out of his depth.
00:12:31
Within months, Chaz starts to
resent her high powered career. He wanted her
to quit politics.
00:12:38
When she didn't quit
politics, it aggravated him. MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG : Kathy
doesn't take any prisoners.
00:12:44
And in 2004, that tough
management style of hers backfires. She gets accused of
misconduct in the office.
00:12:52
In September of
that year, Kathy was impeached for a
campaign ethics violation and was forced to pay
a fine of $15,000.
00:13:01
That seemed to derail her
political career somewhat. And she had to work to
recover her good name.
00:13:09
MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG :
Kathy becomes the first Nevada State constitutional
officer to be
00:13:13
impeached by the assembly. What's worse, she's found
guilty and reprimanded. But she manages to keep her job.
00:13:22
The episode hits her reputation
and her wallet, hard. She has to refinance
her fancy Las Vegas home
00:13:31
to pay the $15,000 fine. [intelligible arguing] What about Chaz Higgs? Well, his dream life
is looking shaky.
00:13:40
Money is tighter. His wife is no longer the
respected local celeb. And she's busier than
ever, because she's had
00:13:49
to rebuild her ruined career. Chaz starts getting
a little mad. The stress of that
situation may have caused more
00:13:58
problems in their relationship. By autumn of 2005, Chaz was
really bad mouthing Kathy quite
00:14:04
a lot to colleagues at work. He wanted her to lose weight. He called her a fat bitch
and that sort of thing.
00:14:12
I'm getting the impression
Chaz is quite vain. Kathy's friends like
to poke fun at how
00:14:18
much he fusses over his hair. But now he's obsessed
with looking hot. It seems to be the only
thing that matters to him.
00:14:26
Chaz had gotten
into bodybuilding and was spending most of
his nights at the gym.
00:14:30
He'd also gotten into
steroids and were stockpiling medicine at home. MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG :
By early summer of 2006,
00:14:38
Chaz Higgs has a new project,
getting out of his marriage. He's pretty open about this
in front of his coworkers.
00:14:46
You tell me, is he
stupid or just brazen? Any time he was
busy and they'd-- one of them would say--
00:14:54
And all of them testify to this. And there were several. One of them would say, is there
anything I could help you with?
00:14:59
And he'd say, yeah
get rid of my wife. He was saying terrible
things about his wife
00:15:03
to his coworkers. If I didn't have a daughter in
Las Vegas, I would kill my wife
00:15:09
and throw her down a mine shaft. MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG
: Around this time, Chaz the player is
flirting with a colleague
00:15:16
called Linda Ramirez. They're emailing back
and forth, with Chaz suggesting she book
a hotel room so they
00:15:23
can meet and do dirty things. Three years after
they got married, Chaz was cautioned
by his superiors
00:15:32
for using his email,
his work email, to send flirtatious
messages to a colleague.
00:15:38
He had joined a website
called Passion.com and was sending emails to other women.
00:15:44
MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG : Chief
Deputy District Attorney Tom Barb is on the case. He finds out that some of these
emails are rather disturbing.
00:15:52
We had witnesses
as far as he was flirting with one of the people
that worked at the hospital.
00:15:59
You know, saying he
sent her an email and said I'm going
to make Kathy-- He'd say that bitch.
00:16:06
--Kathy's life miserable. This is another message. "I hate this woman. And I will make
her break" Higgs is
00:16:16
always blurting out his
darkest thoughts and feelings. He really loves
to vent, this guy.
00:16:22
His boss reprimands him for
misusing his hospital email. He confided to his supervisor,
Tina, that things with Kathy
00:16:31
were problematic. He described her as
abusive and controlling. And Tina started to
get concerned that Chaz
00:16:38
might be the victim of abuse. So she offered him a place
to stay if he needed it.
00:16:42
MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG : Somehow
this gets back to Kathy. Convinced that Tina's
making a move on her man,
00:16:48
Kathy loses her cool. Kathy somehow found
out and began harassing Tina at her place of work.
00:16:55
Kathy wrote threatening
letters to Tina. And Tina eventually took the
matter to the hospital board.
00:17:01
And after that, Kathy's
harassment seemed to stop. MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG : Kathy's
friends and family are worried.
00:17:07
They notice that she's
lost her sparkle. She's acting way
out of character. Sometimes she even seems
scared of Chaz Higgs.
00:17:17
While Chaz was making it
seem to Tina that he was being abused, the evidence seems
to suggest that maybe
00:17:23
something else was going on. For example, Kathy called her
brother one day from the car,
00:17:27
crying, sobbing, and saying
he's going to kill us both because Chaz was
driving erratically, crazy.
00:17:35
Chaz and Kathy's
marriage is a mess. So why doesn't Chaz
just get a divorce? Yes, it's another
failed marriage for him.
00:17:44
But you accept it, and
then you move on, right? But Chaz has another plan. And he's sure he can
get away with it.
00:17:54
Higgs is on the telephone,
911 my wife is not breathing. CHAZ HIGGS: Something's
wrong with my wife
00:18:01
she's not breathing. 911 OPERATOR: She's
not breathing at all? CHAZ HIGGS: Not
breathing at all.
00:18:05
I need some help. [music playing] 911 OPERATOR: 911,
what's your emergency? 6:45 on Saturday
morning, July 8, 2006,
00:18:33
Chaz Higgs makes a 911
call from the house he and Kathy Augustine
share in Reno.
00:18:39
CHAZ HIGGS: Something's
wrong with my wife. Higgs is on the telephone,
911 my wife is not breathing,
00:18:48
I need help. MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG :
He tells the dispatcher he's found his wife in her bed.
00:18:53
She's unresponsive,
maybe not even breathing. To the operator,
something seems off.
00:19:01
Chaz is the calmest
caller he can ever recall. His voice hardly falters as
he gives detailed directions
00:19:09
to get to his home. [sirens blaring] He was real kind of nonchalant
about the whole thing.
00:19:17
Everybody commented about his-- his demeanor, his tone of
voice, that sort of thing.
00:19:23
MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG
: Is this guy a great actor or a really awful one? Almost in a monotone
he says, "Something's
00:19:30
wrong with my wife. She's not moving. I'm a critical care nurse. I've started CPR."
00:19:36
On the 911 call,
he didn't seem to be too affected by the fact
that his wife wasn't breathing
00:19:42
or anything like that. CHAZ HIGGS: Something's
wrong with my wife. She's not breathing.
00:19:46
MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG
: Higgs tells the 911 dispatcher
he doesn't think Kathy has any medical issues.
00:19:52
But in the same call, and
with reporters later on, he makes a point of
saying how much stress
00:19:58
she's been under recently. CHAZ HIGGS: It's not
trauma or anything. Said she'd been really stressed.
00:20:04
Over the last six month or so. Hey, I'm going to do
some more CPR, OK? 911 OPERATOR: Yeah go ahead.
00:20:09
Chaz told paramedics that he
had attempted resuscitation. But when they arrived, they
found her still on the bed.
00:20:15
This was suspicious because as
a trained medical professional he should know that in
order to resuscitate someone
00:20:20
they have to be on a hard
surface, not a soft bed. MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG :
A couple of things bother
00:20:26
the emergency responders. The scene just doesn't seem
right, but in that moment,
00:20:31
their main concern is
saving Kathy's life. They did resuscitate her
enough to get a heartbeat,
00:20:38
blood pressure, that
sort of thing going. And then they put
her in the ambulance
00:20:42
and took her to the
Renown Midsouth. MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG : Imagine
you're in the ambulance.
00:20:50
Sirens are blaring. Your wife is on a gurney. She's really sick. You would be frantic, right?
00:20:57
Not Chaz Higgs. On the way to the hospital,
he was even reading a newspaper. MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG :
And at the local hospital,
00:21:04
the nurses take one look at
Kathy's condition and start wondering how has this
fit feisty politician
00:21:11
ended up so seriously ill. Some very alert nurses thought
this just didn't look right.
00:21:18
She's not, you
know, 50 years old. No history of anything. Doesn't look like
heart attack to me
00:21:26
or at least the normal
heart attack protocol. MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG
: Chaz is keen
00:21:32
to take control of the story,
maybe a little too keen. Later the same day,
he updates reporters
00:21:39
about Kathy's condition. Her family was in grief. They lined up behind him
during his news conference.
00:21:46
And they looked grim. And they were
wearing sunglasses. They were obviously distraught.
00:21:51
And they were losing someone
very special to them. Chaz appeared to be very cool,
very calm, very collected
00:21:57
while he recounted what he
had done to save his wife. MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG : Does
the stress theory ring true?
00:22:04
OK. Yes, she's in the
middle of a tough race to become a Nevada
State Treasurer.
00:22:11
And the primary is
just a month away. But still, Kathy's friends
and family aren't buying it.
00:22:21
They knew her as a person
who thrived on stress. And something like that
wasn't enough to do it.
00:22:28
If there had been a
heart attack, except for-- I guess there are
exceptions to every rule.
00:22:34
But if there had
been a heart attack, there would have been
evidence in the heart muscle
00:22:38
or in the arteries around the
heart, that sort of thing. And there was none of that.
00:22:45
The news just became
progressively worse. She was in a coma. She was at irreversible
brain damage.
00:22:54
MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG : Chaz
knows there isn't much time. He wants to make sure he can
cash in on Kathy's death.
00:23:00
Kathy was in a
coma for three days. And during that
time, Chaz made sure that her $1,100 a month state
pension was signed over to him.
00:23:09
It would be his $1,100 a
month for the rest of his life. Now nobody thought
that was extremely
00:23:14
large amount of money. But I'm thinking I
could live, you know, pretty- pretty well
with $1,100 a month more
00:23:23
than I was working for. MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG
: Once again, Higgs is not acting
like a man his
00:23:29
wife's life is in the balance. And his weird behavior
doesn't escape his co-workers
00:23:34
at the hospital either. He was checking on her pension. He was bringing
donuts to the nurses.
00:23:40
He was not always, as nurses
would later testify, behaving as a husband who was deeply
concerned about his wife who
00:23:50
was lying there in
a comatose state. [heart monitor beeping] On July 11, 2006,
Kathy's family
00:23:56
made the decision to take
her off of life support and she died. [flatline beep] I think the
public felt terrible
00:24:06
for her and for her family. We had lost someone who held a
very high office in this state,
00:24:11
who had blazed a trail
for female politicians, for all politicians. And she was gone.
00:24:19
MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG : With
the star of Nevada politics dead at the age of 50, it's time
for detectives to start
00:24:26
asking some serious questions. Put it all together,
that was the challenge. How do you go from a
healthy 50-year-old female
00:24:38
to a dead 50-year-old female? MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG : Knowing
he is likely to be a suspect,
00:24:43
Chaz does something that
shocks the grieving family. He slits the wrists, but
not very well and lays down
00:24:53
in the bathtub in the house that
he and Kathy had in Las Vegas, wrote a big long note, blaming
other people in this world,
00:25:06
talking to people,
talking to his daughter, talking to Kathy's brother,
signs it Sincerely, Chaz Higgs.
00:25:17
It says, "I'm going
to see my wife." MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG : How
seriously would you take
00:25:24
Chaz Higgs' suicide attempt? And what's he trying to
escape, grief, remorse? What's going on in his head?
00:25:32
The suicide attempt
following the murder is one of the most
psychologically revealing
00:25:38
of all factors here. It-- the fact that even this
has to become about Chaz is terribly revealing, is
again just a classic symptom
00:25:52
of the immaturity, of the
lack of self-regulation, of self-analysis,
of self-awareness,
00:26:00
of these type of Peter Pan
psychological characters. MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG :
Kathy's autopsy draws a blank.
00:26:07
Doctors and cops still
don't know how Kathy died. Nothing was found in the
sense of a cause of death.
00:26:18
Found that her heart
was in good shape, that her lungs
were in good shape. There was no evidence of a brain
bleed or anything like that.
00:26:29
MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG : But they
do find something intriguing, a tiny injury to Kathy's
body that no one can explain.
00:26:35
It was a puncture wound
on her hip that had turned-- it had turned black and blue
a little bit, as if whoever
00:26:44
did it was in a rush or didn't
know quite how to get it done without hurting somebody.
00:26:50
Neither the hospital
nor the paramedics had administered a drug to Kathy
via an injection in her hip.
00:26:56
MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG :
Something's not right here. When the hospital toxicologist
examines Kathy's tissue
00:27:01
and blood samples, the
only drug traces they find are the ones the medics
had administered to her.
00:27:08
When the autopsy was finished
and there was no apparent cause of death that resulted
from that, those tests,
00:27:16
I think all of us
knew something was up. So it was just,
I have no case. There's nothing to prosecute.
00:27:24
She just died. I didn't have enough information
to question the death. And I didn't have enough
information to say, oh
00:27:33
she just died. Chaz might think
he's sitting pretty, but he has no idea that
the local Sheriff's
00:27:39
department can be tenacious when
it comes to solving a homicide. Law enforcement are not done
with Kathy Augustine's death
00:27:48
and neither are the
nurses who cared for her. These very alert nurses took
blood samples and urine samples
00:27:56
and put them in a refrigerator
under an assumed name. [music playing] Chaz Higgs is hardly beating
the cops doors down for answers
00:28:25
about his wife's death. In fact, he seems to be
pretty happy to write it off as a random tragedy.
00:28:32
Unlucky for him, not
everyone is ready to move on. There was an undercurrent
of suspicion surrounding
00:28:41
Kathy Augustine's death. Some of the police
officers implied that there was an investigation
going on behind the scenes that
00:28:51
really was pointing away from
a natural medical problem or cause of death. MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG
: Now here's the twist
00:29:01
which investigators uncover. While Kathy is
lying in a hospital bed fighting for her life, two
very important things happen.
00:29:10
First two nurses get suspicious
about Kathy's condition when she's admitted to the
hospital and they take action.
00:29:18
She, or they, the
two of them decided to take the body fluids from
Kathy right upon her entry
00:29:26
into that hospital. These very alert nurses took
blood samples and urine samples
00:29:32
and put them in a refrigerator
under an assumed name. This doesn't look right. We're taking the fluids.
00:29:38
Thank you. MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG : The
second thing that happened, a couple of days later, she
tells them about a weird
00:29:46
conversation she's had
with Higgs on July 7, the day before Kathy fell sick. Chaz confided in
a co-worker that
00:29:54
he was considering divorce. Later that same day with the
same co-worker, Kim Ramey,
00:30:00
he happened to mention
a news story in which a husband had killed his wife. Chaz Higgs said,
he did it all wrong.
00:30:07
If I'm going to
kill someone, I'm just going to hit him with a
shot of sux or succinylcholine.
00:30:12
And he made the injection
kind of movement with his hand. And she said that
scared her a good deal,
00:30:23
said the hair on
her arms stood up. He said that it would have
been much better if the husband
00:30:29
had used succinylcholine,
because that particular drug, a paralytic that's very
frequently found on crash
00:30:36
carts in intensive care
units and emergency rooms, isn't traceable after death. The drug is quick acting
as far as paralyzes quickly.
00:30:46
It's also quick acting as far
as it moves out of the system quickly. And it was because of
Kim Ramey that, you know,
00:30:54
the case really took off and
they knew what to test for, and they knew what to look
for, because of a comment
00:31:00
that he had made. MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG :
Seriously, why would you choose this way to kill your wife?
00:31:07
Kathy didn't have a
quick or painless death. Succinylcholine is
used by anesthesiologists
00:31:13
to paralyze the throat
muscles, the lungs, so that they can end
intubate a person
00:31:24
without causing too much harm
and without much fight back. I think what struck me most
about this case was how cold
00:31:30
and how calculated
this death was. Imagine giving someone a drug
that stops them from breathing,
00:31:39
and stops them from crying out,
or calling for help, or moving, a drug that's going
to make someone
00:31:46
suffocate to death in front of
you for six or eight minutes. They know they're going
to die and there's
00:31:52
nothing they can do about it. It's an agonizing death. MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG :
You got to hand it to him.
00:31:58
It's not a bad plan. It looks like Chaz Higgs
decided to inject Kathy with succinylcholine, because
it wouldn't be detected
00:32:06
in her blood after she died. Those nurses who secretly took
samples while Kathy was alive
00:32:12
are fantastic. But is it going to
bring Higgs down? Tipped off in that
call from Kim,
00:32:20
detectives know
what to test for. Those nurses had not gone
in and gotten those fluids,
00:32:26
it would have been a whole
lot harder, if not impossible, to make a case
against Chaz Higgs.
00:32:33
We sent the body, tissue
samples, and the fluids to the FBI lab in Quantico
where they began testing.
00:32:42
And this was in July. MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG :
Now for the waiting game. The cops have got
their theories.
00:32:50
They've got a bit of
circumstantial evidence with Chaz badmouthing
his wife at work
00:32:55
and boasting about knowing
how to kill someone. All they need now is good
solid forensic proof.
00:33:01
You're waiting two
months, 2 and 1/2 months, to get evidence that
there even was a crime.
00:33:08
We didn't know what was
happening behind the scenes as far as you know
body fluids and tissue
00:33:14
samples being sent to the
FBI laboratory in Virginia. We didn't get the results
back 'til September 26th.
00:33:21
I think. MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG :
At last the detectives get a break through. The samples they sent
to the FBI showed
00:33:30
traces of the anesthetic
drug succinylcholine. Police put out a
warrant for Chaz's arrest.
00:33:36
And on September 29th, 2006
he was found and arrested in Hampton, Virginia. MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG
: Cops have a warrant
00:33:43
to search his belongings. And when they do, they
can't believe what they see. Right there in his car,
all of the evidence the
00:33:54
need to prove beyond a doubt
that Higgs has killed his wife. It's like they hit
the evidence jackpot.
00:34:00
There was a packet
of 3 by 5 cards, for lack of a
better description. And the very top
one was a card that
00:34:12
dealt with succinylcholine
administration, use, that sort of thing. MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG
: Can you believe
00:34:19
this is the guy
who bragged about committing the perfect murder? People like this
do often get caught
00:34:27
by the carelessness
which is typical of such egocentric people. They're so unconcerned
with other people
00:34:37
that the flip side
is that they're very unaware of the clues
that they're leaving.
00:34:44
MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG : The
prosecution has a solid case. There's nowhere
for Higgs to hide.
00:34:49
But in court, he's still
insisting he's innocent. TOM BARB: He just was saying
what he needed to say.
00:34:56
And we let him, because
I wasn't about to stop him from saying anything. Because I want to talk to him.
00:35:02
He said, "I love my wife. I wouldn't do that." Well, what are you doing
with Ramirez telling her
00:35:09
you wanted to drive
that bitch crazy? And it was working. And it was your goal
to be rid of her.
00:35:16
What I wanted to do with the
purpose of my cross-examination was- was to point
out to everybody
00:35:24
within hearing distance,
that what he said was complete and utter junk. MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG
: Higgs will
00:35:32
do anything to
avoid another ordeal like on the witness stand. After his first
day of testimony,
00:35:40
he heads back to where
he's staying with friends and cuts his wrists
for a second time.
00:35:46
It's a dramatic play. Mr. Higgs is in the
hospital, because he had done his second suicide attempt, as
successful as the first one,
00:36:01
where he cuts himself
and lays on the bathroom floor in a house where
he knows people are going
00:36:06
to be around check and they find
him and get him to the hospital before anything bad happens.
00:36:13
MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG
: Chaz has struck out. Far from nearly dying,
he finds himself back
00:36:17
in court the very next day. We talked to the
judge and said, well, we'll just
cancel the day and let
00:36:23
the jury know we'll
call him as soon as he's available to testify. And oh, by the way, judge
I want to revoke his bail,
00:36:32
because we can't have
him out on the street if he's going to
try to kill himself.
00:36:36
That's just not good. We don't want him dead. We want him on trial. Of course, when I ask that
his bail will be revoked
00:36:43
for that reason, his attorney
said I was a barbarian and that was barbaric. MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG :
The judge does not agree.
00:36:52
Chaz is locked up for his
own safety, then brought back to the stand where
he's blindsided
00:36:58
by an old school lawyer trick. Prosecutor Tom Barb
wants to show the jury how little harm Higgs
has done to himself
00:37:07
with his suicide attempt. When he first took the
stand, I walk up to him with a blank sheet
of paper and a pen,
00:37:14
and tell him to draw me
a diagram of your house, just you know whatever it is. Just draw me a
diagram of your house.
00:37:23
And so he starts drawing. And the only purpose in
that is to let everybody know that his wrists
weren't immobile
00:37:31
or they weren't broken
or anything like that. He could draw. And he could write.
00:37:35
And he did it. MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG
: The attorney's game plan is to use Higgs himself
to expose his character.
00:37:42
[gavel strikes] He just wasn't believable
in anything he said. He was just a liar.
00:37:48
Chaz Higgs' trial
continued through 2007. And on June 29, 2007,
he was convicted.
00:37:57
He was sentenced
to life in prison. And he almost immediately
went on suicide watch.
00:38:01
Higgs' defense team
attempted an appeal. But in May of 2009, the
Supreme Court of Nevada
00:38:08
upheld the conviction. Got life with the possibility
of parole after 20 years. Chaz Higgs was
found guilty of murder
00:38:17
and received a life
sentence, making Kathy Augustine yet another
woman murdered by her husband.
00:38:24
The absolute self-centeredness
which made it possible, made it easy, for Chaz
to discard of Kathy also
00:38:32
in the end trips
him up, produces the carelessness in his
behavior, which trips him up.
00:38:38
I'm Michelle Trachtenberg
and I'll see you next time on Meet Marry Murder. [music playing]