An Almost Perfect Murder (12 page)

In the meantime, as Detective Jenkins continued his investigation into Kathy’s suspicious death, Kathy’s stepson, Greg Augustine, along with assistance from attorney Dominic Gentile, began pushing for the exhumation of his father’s body after considering the circumstances of Kathy’s untimely death and the fact that Chaz Higgs had served as his father’s critical care nurse at Sunrise Hospital and Medical Center. Greg had previously said that he would ask that his father’s body be exhumed if it turned out that his stepmother’s body contained traces of succinylcholine. Since that fact had indeed been determined, and in part because of Dr. Cyril Wecht’s statement that he would want the exhumation under those circumstances if he were a family member, Greg began consulting with authorities in Las Vegas, including Clark County district attorney (DA) David Roger and Las Vegas police lieutenant Lew Roberts. Before long, the general consensus among all of those involved was that it was something that needed to be done.

David Roger may have been moved so swiftly to action with the exhumation, at least in part, because he recalled that he had seen Chaz Higgs before. It had been in the fall of 2002 when Roger happened to attend the same Republican campaign event as Chaz Higgs and Kathy Augustine. In recounting the event to a
Las Vegas Sun
reporter that he didn’t remember the specifics of the gathering, but he absolutely recalled seeing Higgs and Augustine there—several months before either of them had claimed they met.

“It’s a blur, the whole campaign was a blur,” Roger said. “But I remember his face, and I immediately remembered him when I saw him on the news, and we’ll find other people who remember.... He wasn’t very talkative.”

Roger said that Higgs had been sitting by himself and had a scowl on his face much of the evening.

“He seemed somewhat standoff ish, and it appeared that he didn’t want to be at the function,” Roger said.

Although it now seemed that Chaz and Kathy appeared to have known each other in 2002, several months before they claimed to have met, this incident hadn’t meant anything to the district attorney at that time. Now, however, it somehow seemed significant. Thinking like a district attorney would, Roger determined that such an inconsistency about when they met could cause suspicion of criminal goings-on. Roger stopped short of being more specific, but it seemed clear what he intended to convey.

According to the
Sun,
Kathy Augustine had told a reporter for that newspaper in September 2003 that she and Chaz Higgs had met in July 2003 at Sunrise Hospital and Medical Center where her then-husband, Charles, had been hospitalized and was recovering from a stroke. Six weeks after they claimed they had met, Charles died—presumably of complications from the stroke—and three weeks later, Kathy and Chaz were married in Hawaii. When all of the circumstances were put together in the same pot, it was enough to make any reasonable person suspicious, even more so when the discrepancy pointed out by Roger was factored in.

“We have a reason to open an investigation and exhume a body,” Roger said.

In early October 2006, both Lieutenant Roberts and DA Roger confirmed that plans were under way to exhume Charles Augustine’s body from his grave site at Paradise Memorial Gardens, in east Las Vegas. They also confirmed that toxicology tests on tissue samples were planned to determine whether he had died from an act of foul play instead of a stroke, as originally believed. Specifically, they were going to look for the presence of succinylcholine.

On Monday, October 2, 2006, the same day that Chaz Higgs appeared in a Hampton, Virginia, courtroom just prior to his return to Nevada with Detective Jenkins, David Roger consulted with renowned medical examiner Dr. Michael Baden regarding whether toxicology tests on tissue samples from Charles Augustine’s body could determine whether succinylcholine traces might still be present, even though three years had elapsed since his death.

“I was told that if the decedent was injected intravenously with the drug, it would be unlikely you would find any remnants of the drug,” Roger told reporters for the
Las Vegas Review-Journal
. “However, if the decedent was injected in muscle tissue, there would be a decent chance of finding it.”

Dr. Brian Andresen, the scientist who developed the process of detecting succinylcholine in the body, said that succinylcholine might very well be the most difficult drug to detect in a corpse, according to the
Review-Journal.
Andresen was responsible for the creation of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s Forensic Science Center.

“On an exhumation, I would say it is going to be very difficult,” Andresen said. “If you run the right controls and run the standards, if you do things in a very controlled, systematic, scientific manner, then you possibly can get a positive result, but it’s still very difficult.... It is one of the worst drugs to analyze confidently. You have to be so careful, and the testing has to be done at the toxicology labs with the most scientifically advanced equipment.”

If a body has been embalmed, as Charles Augustine’s was, it becomes an even bigger problem. Embalming, according to experts on exhumations, is a detriment in performing toxicology analysis because embalming fluid can interact with the poisons being looked for and sometimes changes the chemical structure of the toxic substances. Nonetheless, despite the difficulties that lay ahead, everyone concerned knew that the only way to find out was to perform the exhumation and the toxicology tests.

According to Andresen, it would be necessary for the Las Vegas authorities and scientists to collect soil samples from the grave site to be used for controls, and the type of embalming fluid would also need to be determined. He said that it would also be necessary to analyze the materials from which the coffin was constructed.

Neither a search warrant nor a court order is required to exhume a body in Clark County, Nevada. The county coroner’s office can make such a decision independently without regard to law enforcement’s input or desire to either get involved or not get involved, as the case may be. It just so happened that in the case of the Charles Augustine exhumation, the coroner’s office, headed by Michael Murphy, law enforcement, and the district attorney’s office were all in agreement that this was something that needed to be done.

A week later, on Tuesday, October 10, 2006, two men wearing black suits and smoking cigarettes supervised the television crews and other media types when they began arriving at Paradise Memorial Gardens, also known as Davis Funeral Home and Memorial Parks, before five o’clock for the morning broadcasts. The exhumation was planned for 7:00
A.M.
, and only news media personnel with valid credentials would be allowed to observe the process from an area specifically set up for the media so that others using the cemetery would not be disturbed or have to worry about being photographed or videotaped while they paid respects to their deceased loved ones. One of the black-suited mortuary workers drove a golf cart to the main entrance, where he used it to help block access to curious onlookers who happened along and wanted to know what the predawn fuss in the cemetery was all about. According to Coroner Michael Murphy, every effort to show respect to others and to maintain the dignity of the dead was being made by his office and everyone else involved.

“We don’t take this lightly, and I mean that with as much sincerity as I can possibly convey,” Murphy said. “We are in a unique situation. The family wants answers, the media wants to cover it, but there are other people who have loved ones in that cemetery, and they may be there, grieving.... This is probably one of the biggest things that’s going on in the state of Nevada right now. And everybody wants to know.”

Murphy told the reporters that were present that morning that his office hoped to answer the questions that centered on the cause of Charles Augustine’s death. Up until the decision was made to do the exhumation and the toxicology testing, particularly since an autopsy hadn’t been performed on his body, everyone—including Charles Augustine’s doctors—had believed that his demise was due to complications of the stroke that he had suffered.

Dr. Robert Middleberg, the director of NMS Labs, in Pennsylvania, agreed with experts that had been interviewed by local media that the only way to definitively show that succinylcholine is present in a body exhumed from a cemetery is to exhume several other bodies from the surrounding area that had been interred at about the same time so that levels could be compared from all of the bodies, since succinylmonocholine tends to appear naturally in dead bodies. Middleberg was quick to point out that sufficient data to show what a normal level might be does not exist, and stated that succinylcholine poisoning is a very bad way for a person to die.

“It’s really a very insidious poison,” Middleberg said. “If you do manage to give it to somebody, that person knows they are becoming paralyzed, and they can’t do anything about it. It’s a terrible poison to have administered to you. Is it an insidious murder weapon? You better believe it.”

Middleberg said that investigators normally wouldn’t expect to find succinylcholine in an exhumed body. However, he added, if it was injected into tissue and an injection site was found, some of the drug would remain in that area.

Although Middleberg had suggested that a number of bodies needed to be dug up for purposes of comparing the levels of succinylcholine to rule out that which might have occurred naturally in the form of succinylmonocholine and to show a higher presence of that which might have been deliberately given to a victim as succinylcholine, Murphy indicated that his office didn’t have the wherewithal of going that route. Instead, he said, his office would be concerned with the overall picture and would not only look for the presence of succinylcholine, but he would attempt to determine any other manner of death that might have caused Charles Augustine’s demise.

Middleberg also pointed out that if traces of a drug, even succinylcholine, were found in the tissues of the exhumed body, it didn’t automatically make the probe a homicide case.

“If they find it in a needle site,” Middleberg said, “it’s a good inference. Keep in mind, though, toxicology is only a piece of information. There has to be more to a case than toxicology.”

Later at the Clark County Coroner’s Office, Murphy was pleased at the overall condition that Charles Augustine’s body was in, considering that it had been in the ground for more than three years. If succinylcholine had been injected into tissue, which was basically their only hope for detecting the drug’s presence, they had good samples from which to work. If it had been administered intravenously, there would be virtually no chance that it could now be detected. It was also possible that they wouldn’t find any at all because it hadn’t been administered by anyone during Augustine’s hospital stay.

“Our initial examination has indicated the body is in remarkable condition,” Murphy told reporters. “The casket was contained in a concrete vault to seal it off from the elements.... It obviously did its job.”

In the meantime, Lieutenant Roberts said that homicide detectives had begun their own inquiry into Charles Augustine’s death while working with the coroner’s office.

“The whole case obviously hinges on the toxicology from the exhumation,” Roberts said, obviously in disparity with Dr. Middleberg’s opinion that toxicology doesn’t make the case. “In addition, we are gathering up some background facts, some medical information. We’ll go from there, after we see what [the coroner’s office] comes up with.”

Following a daylong autopsy, Murphy said it could be months before anyone obtained the results of the toxicology tests.

Upon his return to Nevada, Chaz Higgs retained California criminal lawyer Alan Baum, with offices in Woodland Hills, on Ventura Boulevard, along with Reno attorney David Houston, to defend him. Both attorneys believed in their client’s innocence, and said so publicly.

“He’s a caregiver, not a life taker,” Baum said.

Baum told reporters that Chaz had kept the Reno Police Department informed as to his whereabouts since the investigation began, and that his client did not stand to gain anything from his wife’s death.

“It’s as big a mystery to him as it is everyone else,” Baum told reporters. “He was quite surprised when Kathy suffered her heart attack and subsequently died. Although he has medical training, he has no better explanation for her demise than anyone else.”

Baum said that his client also denied having anything to do with Charles Augustine’s death and had no issue with the exhumation. Baum said that he and Chaz believed that the exhumation and toxicology tests would show that Chaz had nothing to do with Charles Augustine’s death. He said that Chaz hadn’t killed his wife, either.

“Exhumation is unusual,” Baum said. “But if it will help in the pursuit for the truth, we’ve got no problem with that. Chaz is not responsible in any way for Charles Augustine’s death, and we are not afraid of the results. It’s morbid, but let’s clear the air.”