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reporters gather in reno to hear the fate of a high-profile local politician her worried husband tells them she's
00:00:15
gravely ill there was a television report on kathy augustine being in the hospital
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chaz higgs said she'd had a heart attack kathy augustine the state controller the
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woman who manages nevada's money is in a coma something's wrong with my wife
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she's not breathing she's not breathing at all not breathing at all friends find it hard to believe that a
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woman so full of life and vigor could have been struck down so suddenly by illness
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it was jarring to think of her going down like that they couldn't really find any reason why kathy 50
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years old never drank didn't smoke and worked out regularly would have had a heart attack
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as kathy augustine fights for her life medical staff begin to wonder if she's
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been the victim of foul play there was an undercurrent of suspicion surrounding kathy augustine's death
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nothing was found in the sense of a cause of death kathy was married to chas higgs a nurse
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a man who knew how to kill someone and leave little or no trace had state controller kathy augustine
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been killed by her husband [Music] kathy augustine had husband charles to thank for bringing nurse chaz higgs into
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her life chas and kathy's eyes met over charles augustine's death bed charles augustine was kathy's third
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husband they've been married for 17 years but by 2003 the relationship was in serious trouble charles and kathy
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augustine were estranged and heading toward divorce when he fell ill friends suspected that cathy's soaring
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political ambitions had begun to take their toll on the marriage kathy had been drawn to politics since
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she was in her teens long before she met charles augustine chuck augustine's wife kathy was born
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cathy alfano in california when she was growing up her passion had always been politics and she was growing up in the
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60s and 70s at a time when women were leaving the house attaining more they were more involved in politics and they
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were out in the social sphere she was very highly educated she had a bachelor's degree she had a master's
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degree and she had served an internship in washington dc around the time that she was in college
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but before kathy could pursue a career in public service love marriage and children got in the way she got married
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twice divorced twice had a young daughter and went to work for an airline and she
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put her political ambitions aside for about 12 years she began working for an airline
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sometimes as a flight attendant traveling around the world and around the country and then later and in
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scheduling kathy would often tell friends how she never seemed to fall for the right men
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but then she met chuck and her luck seemed to change charles augustine was 15 years her senior he was
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a strong looking man he'd been a football player earlier in life he was also a vietnam vet and a devout catholic
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they fell in love and got married and moved to the las vegas area charles adopted cathy's daughter dallas
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and she in turn hit it off with charles sons larry and greg the family moved into a large luxurious
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home in downtown las vegas but kathy wasn't content to stay at home playing happy families her passion for
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politics rekindled she joined the republican party and launched her first campaign kathy augustine was very well
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known in the state of nevada she was known as a hard charging very strong very dynamic
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state politician she reveled in politics she loved the rough and tumble of politics
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kathy took on the old boy's network of nevada politics with huge success she
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campaigned to become a member of the state assembly she won she served a term then ran for state senate again her
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charisma and her ruthlessness helped her crush the opposition she had run for and
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won election to the office of state controller of nevada she was actually the first female state controller in in
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nevada's history she was the state's bill collector more or less you can't be
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a shrinking violet and have that job and be any good at it and kathy augustine was very good at her job as state
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controller kathy became a champion for republican women she joined all 18 of the state's
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republican women's clubs and would drive miles to attend their functions dressed
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in her trademark bright blazers and polished broaches but kathy's husband chuck resented
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politics and resented his wife's soaring ambition a quiet conservative man he
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wanted to be at home and he wanted his wife at home with him local journalist victoria campbell knew
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kathy as a woman who intended to succeed no matter the cost i interviewed kathy augustine on
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numerous occasions she struck me as tenacious very tough she was a very tough woman
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she just had her eyes on what she wanted she was ambitious the pressure that that put on her relationship was
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starting to show and by 1998 they were separated charles and kathy augustine were estranged and
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heading toward divorce when he fell ill he suffered a minor stroke at their home
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in las vegas was taken to the hospital then suffered a major stroke in the hospital it was 2003 and at the time
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chuck and his wife still jointly owned their vegas home but charles had been living there alone cathy was living over
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400 miles away in reno closer to her work at the state capital she was buying herself a smaller home they planned to
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divorce charles's illness put the plan on hold for the next six weeks kathy traveled
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back and forth to be at her husband's bedside while he was being treated and was
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seriously ill one of his nurses was chas higgs the critical care nurse chas higgs saw
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dollar signs she was an easy route to success she was she was she had glamour she had status
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potentially he he thought that she was an easy route to the fairytale ending that
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he believes uh is his destiny william charles hicks was also someone with a complicated relationship history
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not a lot is known about chaz higgs's early life but between 1984 and 2002 he
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had three failed marriages he changed state and job quite a lot and drifted chas and his twin brother mike were
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raised in north carolina by their father who was in the marines forensic psychologist donna youngs
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my sense is that he came out of quite a hard background a background where he didn't learn uh how to care about other
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people because it was a tough background where other people weren't particularly
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caring about him it fits with the idea of an upbringing led by a military man chaz followed his father into the armed
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forces he joined the navy and spent 16 years as a medical courseman looking after sailors in naval clinics and at
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sea chaz was a wanderer moving from state to state leaving three failed marriages numerous accusations of
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infidelity and a string of bankruptcies in his wake we've got somebody who has an inability
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to self-regulate somebody who's who's always looking for excitement somebody
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who who's who's immature and and somebody who um is very emotionally fluent is very is very warm
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and charming and open put all those things together and you get somebody who is going to move from woman to woman
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very readily and is going to appeal to a lot of women as well so it's easy for
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him to do that but as higgs hit his late 30s he began to show signs of settling down
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by 2002 after the breakdown of his last marriage jazz was living in nevada he had seemed to
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be a bit more stable he took a number of medical qualifications and in 2002 received a
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state nursing license he got a job as a critical care nurse at the sunrise medical center in las vegas
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he was living in a recreational vehicle he was living in an rv but he seemed to be
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moving towards an actual career by now had chas higgs finally found his calling he seemed to thrive in a hospital
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environment but not perhaps because he was a natural-born caregiver he would have been comfortable going into nursing
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of holding other people's lives in his hands because not because he cared so much but
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because actually other people's lives were so unimportant to him certainly much less important than chas higgs's
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life in fact just a few years later his nursing colleagues would discover just how disposable our human life was to
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chas higgs anytime he was busy and they'd one of them would say and all of them
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testified to this and there were several one of them would say there's anything i
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can help you with and he said yeah get rid of my wife [Music] the step change in the relationship
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between critical care nurse chas higgs and state finance controller kathy augustine came when kathy watched her
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husband of 17 years chuck take his last breath after six weeks he unfortunately passed
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away but kathy's relationship to the intensive care team at the hospital didn't end there chas would later say
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that they had chemistry they had instant chemistry and when they met in the hospital it was just
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it was one of those things it seemed that kathy found chaz as captivating as he found her and a few
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days after her husband's death she found the perfect excuse to see his nurse once
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again kathy wrote thank you notes to all of the staff but she forgot to write one
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to chaz in order to make up for that she decided to invite him out for coffee and that
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was when their romance began chas took no time to accept the offer he'd been around this kind of
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relationship roundabout before his romance romances mirror his his whole his whole approach to life it it's
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one passionate encounter followed by another for kathy who was perhaps used to more intellectual reserved men who
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was part of a calculating political world chaz actually would have been a breath
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of fresh air in his warmth his openness pretty soon marriage was suggested i would venture
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to say that kathy augustine probably hoped for what most people hope for a meaningful happy relationship
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and this being her fourth marriage it was not something that she had been able to
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have before she told her family he's an angel to me he swept me off my feet kathy's close friends and family were
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skeptical to them they hardly seemed like a match made in heaven i think there were
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probably some questions and you know people kind of looking askance at that relationship and wondering what she
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saw in him and what he saw in in her they were both very dynamic attractive people but
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whether they belong together i think i think there were a lot of questions asked about that the relationship
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between chaz and kathy was not something that their friends could have predicted
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she was eight years his senior and they didn't really seem to have a ton in common
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he was a nurse she was a politician he hated politics um i think it just shocked people and and
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he clearly had no interest in her career which was very very important to her but kathy seemed happy so her friends
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swallowed their fears and wished the new couple well at the start of their relationship
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things seemed to be going very well kathy gushed her friends that she'd never been happier
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straight out of the gate it appeared that she was happy chas was athletic had always been interested in keeping up his
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appearance and looking good um over the course of their relationship however he got kathy into shape he got her
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interested in working out and they seem to be ticking along fairly well chaz enjoyed something he'd never known
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before a luxurious lifestyle as a nurse he was never going to be rich by marrying kathy his life had become
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comfortable overnight he had always been terrible with money and friends suspected that part of kathy's appeal in
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the first place was that she was fairly wealthy she had received the payout from chuck's
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life insurance which amounted to about a million dollars cathy's status as a formidable
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political figure almost a local celebrity may also have been very attractive to chas
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but the reality of being married to a hard-working highly ambitious woman was perhaps not as glamorous as chas
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expected he was soon out of his depth and growing more resentful by the day he wanted her to quit politics when she
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didn't quit politics it aggravated him in 2004 what some described as cathy's
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ruthless style of politics came home to roost when she was accused of misconduct
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in office in september of that year kathy was impeached for a campaign ethics violation and was forced to pay a fine
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of fifteen thousand dollars that seemed to derail her political career somewhat and she had to work to
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recover her good name kathy became the first nevada state constitutional officer to be impeached
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by the assembly she was found guilty and censored but she kept her job the episode damaged her reputation and her
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wallet it took her 14 months to pay off the record fifteen thousand dollar fine and she was forced to refinance her
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grand las vegas home [Music] the marriage wasn't turning out to be quite the dream that chaz higgs had
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envisaged money was tighter his wife was no longer the respected celebrity that he had wed
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just two years before she was busier than ever rebuilding her damaged career not what chas higgs wanted
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he was frustrated the stress of that situation may have caused more problems in their relationship by
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autumn of 2005 chaz was really bad mouthing kathy quite a lot to colleagues at work he wanted her to
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lose weight he called her a fat [ __ ] and that sort of thing clearly they were not getting along
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they just didn't mesh he didn't like the scene she was in she wanted him to to like it and to go
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with her to these events and things and he just didn't want any part of that
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chas always vain was now obsessive about his appearance kathy's friends had often
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joked about how much chas fussed over his perfect hair now it seemed that looking good was the only thing that
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mattered to him chaz had gotten into bodybuilding and was spending most of his nights at the gym he had also gotten
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into steroids and was stockpiling medicine at home these peter pan figures emotional peter pan figures are also
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incredibly immature and we see evidence of that in the unrealistic approach that
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they take to life they're they're forever getting into problems with their
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money becoming bankrupt they're forever taking on some new project with with a ridiculous intense ardency
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for for for a while by early summer 2006 chas higgs had a new project he had one clear goal
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to get out of his marriage and he made no secret of this to his fellow nurses anytime he was busy and they
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one of them would say and all of them testified to this and there were several one of them would say did anything i can
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help you with and he said yeah get rid of my wife he was saying terrible things about his wife to
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his co-workers if i didn't have a daughter in las vegas i would kill my wife and throw her down
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a mine shaft he started a flirtatious relationship with a colleague called linda ramirez
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their email back and forth for months he suggested she booked a hotel room so they could meet and do dirty things
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[Applause] three years after they got married chas was cautioned by superiors for
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using his email his work email to send flirtatious messages to a colleague he had joined a website called passion.com
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and was sending emails to other women chief deputy district attorney tom bob would later discover how disturbing some
00:17:53
of these emails could be we had witnesses as far as he was flirting with one of the people that worked at the
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hospital he would you know say he sent her an email said i'm gonna make kathy he said that [ __ ]
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kathy's life miserable another message read i hate this woman and i'll make her break
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higgs loved to vent blurting out his darkest thoughts and feelings again and again
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he was soon summoned before his boss to explain why he'd been misusing his hospital email account
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he uh said he was reaching out to these other women because he was sad he was angry he was venting he confided to his
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supervisor tina that things with kathy were problematic he described her as abusive and controlling
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and tina started to get concerned that chaz might be the victim of abuse so she offered him a place to stay if he needed
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it somehow word of this got back to kathy convinced that this other woman was making a move on her husband the
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powerful politician lost her composure kathy somehow found out and began harassing tina at her place of work
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cathy wrote threatening letters to tina and tina eventually took the matter to the hospital board and after that
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kathy's harassment seemed to stop to have friends and family it seemed that kathy's relationship with chaz
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higgs had driven the once dignified intimidating politician to new lows at times she seemed scared of him while
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chaz was making it seem to tina that he was being abused the evidence seems to suggest that maybe something else was
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going on for example kathy called her brother one day from the car crying sobbing and saying he's going to
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kill us both because chaz was driving erratically crazy chas and kathy's marriage was in a mess
00:19:44
chaz could have chosen divorce he could have accepted another failed relationship and returned to square one
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but he had a better plan one he was sure he could get away with higgs is on the telephone 911 my wife
00:20:01
is not breathing something's wrong with my wife she's not breathing she's not
00:20:05
breathing at all not breathing at all you can help at 6 45 a.m on saturday the 8th of july
00:20:25
2006 chas higgs made an emergency call from the house that he and his wife kathy
00:20:30
augustine shared in reno northwest nevada something's wrong with my wife higgs is
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on the telephone 911 my wife is not breathing i need help he told the operator that he had found
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his wife in her bed and she wasn't responding she didn't seem to be breathing the 911 dispatcher would later
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tell a court that he'd never heard a caller so calm in a lengthy conversation chas gave
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detailed directions to the home he was real kind of nonchalant about the whole thing
00:21:07
everybody commented about his his demeanor his tone of voice that sort of thing something is wrong with my wife he said
00:21:15
in a calm monotone she's not moving i'm a critical care nurse i've already
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started cpr on the 911 call he didn't seem to be too affected by the fact that
00:21:26
his wife wasn't breathing or anything like that something's wrong with my wife
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she's not breathing hicks said he didn't think cathy had any medical issues but in that 9-1-1 call
00:21:36
and later when speaking to reporters he was quick to point out how much stress kathy had been under in recent months
00:21:43
it's not trauma or anything said she's been really stressed i don't know over
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the last six months or so hey i'm gonna do some more cpr okay when the ambulance folks arrived
00:21:55
she was still on the bed and i i think they found a faint heartbeat chas told paramedics that he had
00:22:04
attempted resuscitation but when they arrived they found her still in the bed this was suspicious because as a trained
00:22:10
medical professional he should know that in order to resuscitate someone they have to be on a hard surface not a soft
00:22:16
bed to emergency responders the situation seemed odd even a little disturbing but
00:22:22
in that moment their main concern was saving kathy's life they did resuscitate her enough to get a
00:22:28
heartbeat blood pressure that sort of thing going and then they put her in the ambulance and took her to the
00:22:36
renowned mid south in the ambulance chaz sat up front alongside the driver who couldn't help
00:22:43
but notice his cool demeanor even as they sped along sirens blaring on the way to the hospital he was even reading
00:22:50
a newspaper if the emt had suspicions about kathy's condition and higgs behavior nurses at
00:22:56
the local hospital were even more skeptical how had this fit feisty politician ended up so seriously ill
00:23:03
some very alert nurses thought this just didn't look right she's not you know 50 years old no history of
00:23:11
anything doesn't look like heart attack to me or at least the normal heart attack
00:23:17
protocol she was a very vivacious apparently healthy 50 year old woman and that's not
00:23:23
that's not normal for her to just come in in a comatose state for her heart to stop
00:23:30
and she stops breathing and paramedics have to revive her later the same day chaz made another
00:23:37
move that was seen as distinctly odd he stood before assembled reporters to update them about his wife's condition
00:23:44
her family was in grief they lined up behind him during his news conference and they looked grim and they were
00:23:51
wearing sunglasses they were obviously distraught and they were losing someone very special to them chas appeared to be
00:23:58
very cool very calm very collected while he recounted what he had done to save his wife higgs told the press that kathy
00:24:06
had suffered from heartburn and stomach pains in the day before and that he believed that it was a cardiac arrest as
00:24:12
a result of campaign stress he said she'd had a heart attack i don't know where he got that
00:24:17
information or what what made him say that was kathy suffering under extreme stress
00:24:23
she was embroiled in a tough race to become the nevada state treasurer with the primary election in just a month's
00:24:28
time but for kathy's family and friends the stress theory didn't drink true
00:24:37
they knew her as a person who thrived on stress and something like that wasn't
00:24:42
enough to do it you know at first the uh the scuttlebutt was that it may have been a heart problem and of course
00:24:49
that's not always obvious and and people get sick and and die every day from
00:24:54
heart problems kathy's doctors were baffled they could find nothing to explain her condition
00:25:01
doctors meanwhile couldn't find any evidence of heart disease and they couldn't really find any reason why
00:25:06
kathy 50 years old never drank didn't smoke and worked out regularly would have had a heart attack if there
00:25:13
had been a heart attack except for the i guess there there are exceptions to every rule but if there
00:25:20
had been a heart attack there there would have been evidence in the heart muscle
00:25:24
or in the arteries uh around the heart that sort of thing and there was none of that
00:25:32
kathy's extended family flew in to be by her bedside but as her condition deteriorated her estranged husband chas
00:25:39
was taking care of business the news just became progressively worse she was in a coma she was
00:25:49
had irreversible brain damage knowing this chas higgs moved fast to make sure he'd benefit from kathy's
00:25:56
death he had gone on i believe july the 10th to the retirement system office in carson
00:26:04
city to sign up for the for the the retirement that kathy had available to her kathy was in a coma for three
00:26:13
days during that time chaz made sure that her 1 100 a month state pension was signed over to him it would be his 1100
00:26:21
a month for the rest of his life now nobody thought that was extremely large amount of money but i'm thinking i could
00:26:28
live you know pretty pretty well with eleven hundred dollars a month more than i was working for
00:26:36
when higgs's colleagues at the hospital saw him they were struck by his demeanor
00:26:40
he didn't seem like a man whose wife was battling for survival the day after she was admitted he went
00:26:47
to go pick up a paycheck from a colleague and even brought that colleague a box of donuts as a thank you
00:26:53
he was checking on her pension he was bringing donuts to the nurses he was not always as nurses would later
00:27:01
testify behaving as a husband who was deeply concerned about his wife who was lying there in a comatose state
00:27:09
[Music] friends family workmates everyone who came across chas during these difficult
00:27:14
days were confused by his calmness his joviality after three days it became clear she
00:27:21
wasn't going to regain consciousness on july 11 2006 kathy's family made the decision to take
00:27:27
her off of life support and she died when news came that kathy augustine had died in the hospital that life support
00:27:39
had been terminated three days in i think the public felt terrible for her and for her family we
00:27:46
had lost someone who held a very high office in this state who had blazed a trail for female politicians for all
00:27:52
politicians and she was gone [Music] with a star of nevada politics dead at the age of 50 it was time for detectives
00:28:02
to start asking some serious questions to put it all together that was the challenge how do you how do you go from
00:28:09
a healthy 50 year old female to a dead 50 year old female the investigation would begin by
00:28:18
questioning those closest to kathy but as her family prepared to bury her knowing he was a suspect in her death
00:28:24
her husband did something quite shocking on july 14th chaz higgs attempted suicide
00:28:33
he was found by kathy's daughter dallas having slit his wrists and was briefly
00:28:38
hospitalized he missed kathy's funeral he slits the wrists but not very well
00:28:45
and lays down in the bathtub in the house that he and kathy had in las vegas uh wrote a big long note
00:28:54
blaming other people in this world talking to people talking to his daughter talking to
00:29:03
kathy's brother [Music] signs it sincerely chaz higgs it says i'm going to see my wife
00:29:14
did chaz higgs really intend to kill himself and if he did what was he feeling grief remorse or something else
00:29:22
the suicide attempt following the murder is one of the most psychologically revealing of all factors here
00:29:30
it the fact that even this has to become about chaz uh is terribly revealing and i don't think for a minute that he
00:29:42
wasn't suffering the pain but the fact that it was the pain produced by him himself
00:29:50
is again just a classic symptom of the immaturity of the the lack of self-regulation of
00:29:57
self-analysis of self-awareness of of these type of peter pan psychological characters
00:30:05
meanwhile an autopsy on kathy augustine failed to establish a cause of death doctors and police were mystified
00:30:12
nothing was found in the sense of a cause of death found that her heart was in good shape
00:30:20
that her lungs were in good shape there was no evidence of a brain bleed or anything
00:30:27
like that there was something though the postmortem picked up a tiny injury to kathy's body that no one could explain
00:30:34
there was a a puncture wound on her hip uh that had turned it turned black and blue a little bit
00:30:41
uh as if whoever did it was in a rush or didn't know quite you know how to get it done without
00:30:46
hurting somebody neither the hospital nor the paramedics had administered a drug to kathy via an injection in her
00:30:52
hip when the hospital toxicologist examined samples of kathy's tissues and blood
00:30:57
after her death the only traces that were found were of drugs legitimately given to kathy by the doctors nurses and
00:31:04
paramedics who've been caring for her the blood and tissue samples came up with nothing when the autopsy was
00:31:11
finished and there was no apparent cause of death that resulted from that those tests i
00:31:18
think all of us knew something was up so it was just i have no case there's nothing to
00:31:23
prosecute she just died if chance had done something to cause kathy's death it seemed he might get
00:31:31
away with it the wounds on his wrists were healing chas had his job back and kathy's
00:31:41
pension too he was ready to get on with his life i didn't have enough information
00:31:48
to question the death and i didn't have enough information to say oh she just died
00:31:54
charles higgs may have thought he was sitting pretty but unbeknownst to him the local sheriff's department was far
00:32:00
from done with the mysterious death of kathy augustine and neither were his nursing colleagues
00:32:07
these very alert nurses took blood samples and urine samples and put them in a refrigerator
00:32:13
under an assumed name [Music] critical can nurse chas higgs appeared to have got over the death of kathy
00:32:29
augustine he seemed to write it off as an unfortunate tragedy not everybody was quite so willing to
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move on there was an undercurrent of suspicion surrounding kathy augustine's death
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some of the police officers implied that there was an investigation going on behind the scenes that
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really was pointing away from a natural medical problem or cause of death in fact as cathy had lain in a hospital
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bed fighting for survival two very important things happened the first was that deeply suspicious
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nurses trusted their gut instincts when kathy was rushed into hospital they knew
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that something about her condition didn't make sense she she or they the two of them decided to
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take the body fluids from kathy right upon her entry in the into that hospital these very alert nurses took blood
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samples and urine samples and put them in a refrigerator under an assumed name this doesn't look
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right we're taking the fluids thank you the second thing that happened a day or
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two later was that higgs's colleague kim raimi contacted the police she reported
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a troubling conversation that she'd had with higgs on july the 7th the day before his wife was taken ill
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chas confided in a co-worker that he was considering divorce later that same day with the same
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co-worker kim raimi he happened to mention a news story in which a husband had killed his wife chaz higgs said he
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did it all wrong if i'm going to kill someone i'm just going to hit him with a shot of sucks or
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succino choline and he made the injection kind of movement with his hand and she she said that scared her
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a good deal said the hair on her arms stood up he said that it would have been much better if the husband had used
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zucchino choline because that particular drug a paralytic that's very frequently found on crash
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carts in intensive care units and emergency rooms isn't traceable after death
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the drug is quick acting as far as paralyzes quickly it's also quick acting as far as it
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moves out of the system quickly and it was because of kim raymie that you know the case really took off and
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they knew what to test for and they knew what to look for because of a comment that he had made
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if this really was what chaz higgs had used to kill his wife it was a remarkably cruel weapon of choice
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sectional choline is used by anesthesiologists to paralyze the the throat muscles the lungs
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so that they can intubate a person uh without causing too much harm and without much fight back it's a general
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paralytic but when too much is given it can be fatal and even more horrifically the person
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is often aware of what's happening and it takes about six to ten minutes to die
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they can feel it the entire time i think what struck me most about this case was
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how cold and how calculated this death was imagine giving someone a drug that stops them
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from breathing and stops them from crying out or calling for help or moving a drug that's
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going to make someone suffocate to death in front of you for six or eight minutes they know they're going to
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die and there's nothing they can do about it it's an agonizing death it's
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part and parcel of somebody this self-centered that the drug he chose was one that
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caused a lot of suffering to the victim he just wouldn't have thought that through properly
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it now seems certain that chas higgs had chosen to inject caffeine augustine with
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succinylcholine because the drug wouldn't be detected postmortem would the actions of the nurses who had
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taken samples from kathy while she was still alive now help bring chaz higgs to justice
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after kim rainey's phone call to detectives investigators knew what to test for
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those nurses had not gone in and gotten those fluids it would have been a whole lot harder if
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not impossible to make a case against chas higgs we sent the bodies the tissue samples
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and the fluids to the fbi lab in quantico where they began testing and this was in july
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a waiting game began chas higgs had told fellow nurses that he wanted his wife dead he had boasted about knowing the
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best way to kill someone yet if the toxicology report had come back clean you're waiting two months two and a half
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months to get evidence that there even was a crime we didn't know what was happening behind
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the scenes as far as you know body fluids and tissue samples being sent to the fbi
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laboratory in virginia we didn't get the results back till september 26th i think
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finally is the hot nevada summer due to a close a breakthrough the samples sent to the fbi had contained traces of the
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anaesthetic drug suctional colin police put out a warrant for chas's arrest and on september 29 2006 he was
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found and arrested in hampton virginia there was enough to arrest him enough for a warrant to search his belongings
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and it was at this point that detectives were able to seize the evidence that would prove beyond a doubt that chaz
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higgs had poisoned his wife when they combed through his car they couldn't believe their luck
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at the time of his arrest he was carrying a backpack that contained a nursing manual there was a bookmark on
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the page about administering sequin choline there was a packet of three by five cards for lack
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of a better description and the very top one was a card that dealt with sectional choline
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administration use that sort of thing higgs had boasted about committing the perfect murder so how had he come to
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leave such an incriminating trail of evidence people like this do often get caught by the carelessness the uh which
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is typical of such egocentric people um they're so unconcerned with other people
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that the the flip side is that they're very unaware of the clues that they're
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leaving the prosecution's case was all but water tight yet in court higgs insisted he was
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innocent of kathy augustine's murder he just was saying what he needed to say
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and we led him because i wasn't about to stop him from saying anything because i
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wanted to talk to him he said i love my wife i wouldn't do that well what were you doing with ramirez
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telling her you wanted to drive that [ __ ] crazy and it was working and it was your goal
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to be rid of her what i wanted to do or what the purpose of my cross-examination was
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was to point out to everybody within hearing distance that what he said was complete and utter
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junk out on bail during the trial chas higgs ends his first day on the stand heads
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back to where he is staying with former hospital colleagues and repeats a dramatic action
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one that he'd carried out a few months earlier mr higgs is in the hospital because he had done his second suicide
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attempt as successful as the first one where he cuts himself and lays down the bathroom floor
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in a house where he knows people are going to be around and check and they find him and get him to the hospital
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before anything bad happens his second suicide attempt leaves him far from close to death in fact he is
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returned to court the next day we talked to the gun and said well we'll just
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cancel the day and let the jury know we'll call them as soon as he's available to testify
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and oh by the way judge i want you to revoke his bail because we can't have him out on the
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street or he's going to try to kill himself that's just not good we don't
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want him dead we want him on trial of course when i ask that his bill be revoked for that reason his attorney
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said i was a barbarian and or that was barbaric the judge did not feel the request
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barbaric higgs was kept in jail and julie returned to the stand where he faced an old-school attorney move from
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tom barb who was trying to show the jury how little damage higgs had done to himself with his suicide attempt
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when he first took the stand i walk up to him with a blank sheet of paper and a pen
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and tell him to draw me a diagram of your house just you know whatever it is just to
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draw me a diagram of your house and so he starts drawing and the only purpose in that
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was to let everybody know that his wrists weren't immobile or they weren't
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broken or anything like that he could draw and he could write and and he did it chas higgs told lie
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after lie he just wasn't believable in anything he said he was just a liar chaz higgs's
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trial continued through 2007 and on june 29 2007 he was convicted he was sentenced to life in prison and
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he almost immediately went on suicide watch higgs's defense team attempted an appeal
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but in may of 2009 the supreme court of nevada upheld the conviction you got life with the possibility of parole
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after 20 years to donna young's chas higgs personality was fatally flawed and it was his flaws
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and his mistakes that would eventually sign his arrest warrant the absolute self-centeredness which
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which made it possible made it easy for chas to discard of kathy um also in the end uh trips him up uh produces the
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carelessness in his behavior which trips him up chas higgs was found guilty of the murder of kathy augustine he was
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sentenced to life in prison and will not be eligible for parole until the year 2027
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[Music] you