An Almost Perfect Murder (16 page)

“That is correct.”

“Same result for the blood testing?”

“The blood was a little bit more surprising,” Anderson responded. “I have since found an article that says after a few minutes you may find it in the urine and not in the blood. But that was a bit more surprising. I thought, if we had any possibility (of finding the drug’s presence), that would be in the plasma. The urine was the most likely. . . .”

“How fast does this drug get out . . . of a live system?”

“Succinylcholine itself has a half-life of less than one minute,” Anderson said.

“So, if you inject me, and half the drug is gone in less than a minute, then I’m down to a quarter in less than two minutes . . . an eighth in less than three minutes. It goes away pretty fast.”

“Succinylcholine does, yes.”

“You said this process the FBI used was a simple extension,” Barb said. “What does that mean?”

“Succinylcholine—the drug—and succinylmonocholine are very similar,” Anderson explained. “They have a chemical called succinic acid. One has got two choline molecules attached to it, and the other has one. Obviously, succinylmonocholine has one. Both are what we would call a quaternary ammonium compound, so they . . . can be extracted by the same procedure. . . .”

“Mr. Houston also spoke to you about the Sybers case. . . . Are you familiar with that case?” Barb asked.

“I’m not intimately familiar with it, but I . . . have some knowledge of it, yes.”

“The difference between that case and this case is that in Sybers the samples had been embalmed for nine years, and then they were tested. Is that your recollection?”

“I don’t remember exactly how long it was, but it was some period of time.”

“Nobody could say what embalming fluid would do to anything in the body as related to succinylmonocholine.”

“Right.”

“And succinylmonocholine was the only evidence found in the Sybers case, is that correct?”

“To my knowledge.”

“In this case, we also have, for lack of a better term, the parent drug, succinylcholine.”

“Yes.”

“Do you have any doubt that this evidence is—I understand the jury gets to decide whether they believe it or don’t—whether this evidence is trustworthy and reliable enough to tell the jury about?”

“I have no problem with this data indicating that succinylmonocholine and succinylcholine were present.”

“Thank you,” Barb said, finishing his redirect of the witness. Judge Kosach, however, interjected a comment.

“And I would add a question,” Kosach said. “To a reasonable degree of medical probability, would your answer be the same?”

“Yes, sir,” Anderson replied.

Dr. Anderson was excused to make room for the defense’s expert witness as the issues surrounding the motion
in limine
continued.

H. Chip Walls, a forensic toxicologist who has been qualified as a toxicology expert in federal, state, county, and city courts, in both criminal and civil cases, took the witness stand on behalf of the defense during the pretrial motions. David Houston began the questioning, taking Walls through the information regarding the data pack from the FBI laboratory, including method validation to substantiate or refute the process as it was used by the FBI lab. He explained that in this case the method was designed to detect succinylmonocholine in biological samples, and in performing method validation, the scientist does things to prove that the test being performed can distinguish a positive from a negative, that there is no residual carryover from one set of tests to another, and that no false positives or false negatives have occurred.

Walls said that he was not aware of any standard operating procedure methodology in the FBI laboratory for the detection of succinylcholine, and he confirmed that the FBI had not sent him a procedure for that—he said that they had basically modified the procedure for the detection of succinylcholine in the samples.

Walls testified that the fact that the source(s) of the negative control samples, as mentioned earlier as having come from volunteers in the lab, were problematic for him in that typically such samples are tested to show that the sample does not contain the analyte or target compound of interest. Most of the time, he said, such samples come from healthy individuals “giving a negative urine sample that proves that type of sample is not going to be positive.” In this case, he would have liked to have seen samples coming from patients in hospitals that may have been given medications, such as the atropine, epinephrine, and heparin that were administered to Kathy in an attempt to save her life, to verify that they did not interfere with the testing process. When asked whether succinylmonocholine was produced as part of the decomposition process, Walls stated, “Not that we know of.”

“What is the definition of ‘false positive’ and ‘false negative’?” Houston asked.

“A false positive is where you find the drug in a sample, whatever target analyte you’re looking at, and it’s really not there,” Walls replied. “Something else has caused an interference that produced a positive result when the drug itself was not there. A false negative is when you have a negative when the drug should be there, but you do not detect it.”

When asked about the importance of keeping the urine frozen for the purpose of the testing, Walls said that succinylmonocholine and succinylcholine can degrade as the samples become warmer—the warmer the sample, the more decomposed the sample might get. It had already been shown in the description of the FBI lab’s chain of custody that the urine had been shipped frozen from Washoe County and had likely still been frozen upon arrival at Quantico, Virginia. However, due to the procedures in place at the FBI lab, it was also shown that the urine had thawed, been refrigerated, and refrozen at various steps along the way of that agency’s bureaucratic staircase. Walls said that the succinylcholine, the parent compound, would decompose very rapidly, but that the succinylmonocholine would degrade at a slower rate and would produce a false negative. In Walls’s opinion, the FBI lab had done a “limited validation study” that he would like to have seen performed differently, particularly with regard to the controls.

Walls indicated that he would have liked to have seen a more complete validation as opposed to the limited validation study that occurred. In fairness to the FBI lab, he said, they had done a positive-negative control, which is typical in a forensic laboratory, to identify a compound and to be able to say that a positive can be identified from a negative sample.

 

 

Upon cross-examination by Tom Barb, Walls went through a lengthy question-and-answer session that basically resulted in him saying that the colder the samples to be tested are during storage, the better the chances are that the integrity of the samples would be preserved for testing purposes. There would be less degradation of both the urine and any drugs that it might contain.

“Urine samples are different than tissue samples, as far as your expectation of finding anything in it, is that correct?” Barb asked.

“Yes,” Walls replied. “Urine is somewhat protected from enzymes that normally break drugs down, so once it’s filtered out of the blood into the urine and is stored in the bladder, it may be detectable for longer periods of time.”

“So just take this as an example,” Barb continued. “A call came in at six forty-five . . . ‘Come help me with my wife.’ Medics arrive, do their treatment and resuscitate her, and get her to the hospital at about seven-o-five, seven-ten. So that’s twenty minutes. First urine sample is taken at seven thirty-five. So we’re forty-five, fifty minutes out. Would you expect the urine sample, given that amount of time—we don’t know the injection time, but given that amount of time, forty-five or fifty minutes, would you expect the urine sample to contain that drug if it had been injected?”

“Yes.”

 

 

At the end of the at-times-complicated process of presenting the scientific information, Judge Kosach stated that the law in Nevada on the admissibility of expert testimony is very clear, and he quoted part of it: “The threshold for admissibility of expert testimony turns on whether the expert’s specialized knowledge will assist the trier of fact in understanding the evidence or an issue in dispute.” He denied the defense’s motion
in limine,
and said that he would allow Montgomery, Anderson, and Walls to testify at trial.

The remaining pretrial motions filed by the defense included whether to allow testimony about statements that Chaz Higgs had made to his coworkers about getting rid of his wife, whether testimony about the e-mails between Chaz Higgs and Linda Ramirez should be allowed, whether probable cause had been adequately shown in the affidavits for search and arrest warrants that were filed by Detective Jenkins, whether Jenkins knowingly and intentionally misrepresented what Kim Ramey had told him regarding the conversation that Chaz Higgs had with her about using succinylcholine to kill someone, a motion to dismiss the charges against the defendant, and so forth. Both sides argued the merits of their respective positions on the issues, but Judge Kosach ultimately sided with the prosecution and denied most of the defense motions.

 

 

Following a lunch break, jury selection began at 2:10
P.M.
in the courtroom next door to Kosach’s. Although there were ninety-nine potential jurors in the jury pool, the selection of twelve jurors and three alternates did not take as long as it could have despite the lengthy questioning. Jury selection was completed by early that evening, and the jurors were sent home for the day so that they could get a good night’s sleep. They were instructed to report to Judge Kosach’s courtroom the following morning, prior to nine o’clock for the beginning of what was expected to be a three-week trial.

 

 

Opening statements began on Tuesday, June 19, 2007, at 9:05
A.M.
After the jury was seated in the jury box and everyone was accounted for, Deputy District Attorney Christopher Hicks greeted the jury and then began.

“Succinylcholine, or succs as it’s commonly called in the medical setting, is a paralytic drug that has devastating effects,” Hicks said. “It’s commonly used in emergency situations when a person needs to be intubated—they need to have a tube run down their throat so that a machine can breathe for them. It is administered both intravenously and intramuscularly. And when it is administered, it renders a patient totally paralyzed. They cannot move, they cannot breathe, they can’t even blink their eyes, and yet they are totally awake. Without the assistance of another person in helping that person to breathe, they will suffocate, their heart will stop, and their brain will likely suffer irreversible damage due to oxygen deprivation.”

Hicks described how Chaz Higgs had spoken about that drug on July 7, 2006, while referring to a high-profile murder case in which a Reno man, Darren Mack, had allegedly stabbed his wife to death.

“Mr. Higgs said, ‘That guy did it all wrong. If you want to get rid of somebody, you just hit them with a little succs.’ The very next morning, his wife, Kathy Augustine, a woman who he admittedly hated, who he commonly referred to in real nasty terms, and who he desperately wanted to leave, was found in their home, with Mr. Higgs, not breathing and without a heartbeat.”

Hicks described how treating physicians at the hospital had found no evidence of a heart attack, no evidence of a pulmonary disorder, and no evidence of a brain dysfunction that would explain Kathy’s condition that morning.

“However, what was found in her system was succinylcholine,” Hicks said.

Hicks explained that Higgs, as a critical care nurse, was commonly around the drug, and the two hospitals where he had worked had very few controls in place that would prevent a person from taking succinylcholine home with them if they so desired. He also described how an autopsy had been performed on Kathy’s body and it had revealed that she had not succumbed to death as a result of natural causes—she had died from succinylcholine poisoning. He pointed out that when Higgs had been arrested in Virginia, he had a piece of paper in his car that explained the appropriate dosage for the administration of succinylcholine.

“Ladies and gentlemen, you’re going to hear from numerous witnesses during this trial,” Hicks said. “I want to go over just a few of them this morning.”

Hicks told the jury that the first witness they would hear from would be Kim Ramey, and explained that she was a nurse who had worked at the Carson-Tahoe Hospital, where she had met Chaz Higgs, a new hire, on July 7, 2006.

“You see,” Hicks said, “he had been hired as a nurse at that location, and as part of his orientation, he was following around Miss Ramey that day.”

Hicks explained that personal conversations had developed between Ramey and Higgs, and Higgs began telling Ramey about the contempt he had for his wife, the fact that he was planning on leaving her, and all the while had referred to her in derogatory terms.

“At one point during that day,” Hicks said, “he made a statement to Miss Ramey that literally made the hairs stand up on her arm. He made the statement that ‘that guy did it all wrong. If you want to kill—if you want to get rid of somebody, you hit them with a little succinylcholine.’”

Two days later, he said, Ramey experienced that same sensation of the hair raising up on her arm when she saw in the media that Higgs’s wife, Kathy Augustine, was in the hospital in a coma. Ramey, he pointed out, had later contacted a detective at the Reno Police Department.

Hicks told the jury that they would hear testimony from the REMSA paramedics who were involved in trying to resuscitate Kathy Augustine at her home early on the morning of July 8, 2006. Benjamin Pratt, he said, would provide details of what had occurred upon his arrival at Kathy’s house.

“[Pratt] will further tell you that when he went into the house, he found Kathy laying in their bed,” Hicks said. “She was not breathing. She had no heartbeat. Mr. Pratt and his fellow paramedics removed Kathy from the bed, placed her on the floor, on a hard, flat surface, and began to administer CPR. Through their efforts, they were able to get her heart beating again. Mr. Pratt will tell you that during that time Mr. Higgs was not even in the room and that it appeared that he could care less as to what was going on with his wife.”

He told the jury that they would also hear from Marlene Swanbeck, who had formerly worked with Higgs, and how she and another nurse withdrew a urine sample from Kathy as they tried to determine what was wrong with Kathy Augustine. Swanbeck, he said, would describe how Higgs had seemed totally disengaged that morning at the hospital, and how, in the past, he had often talked about his intent to leave his wife, how he had referred to Kathy in very derogatory terms, and so forth.

Hicks basically went through the state’s witness list as he told the jury who would be testifying and what they would be testifying about, including physicians who had treated Kathy in one capacity or another.

“First you’ll hear from Dr. Stanley Thompson,” Hicks said. “He’s a cardiologist here in town. He will tell you Kathy did not suffer a heart attack. Her arteries were clean. She had no blockage. He will also tell you that he was amazed at the lack of emotion exhibited by Mr. Higgs when he explained to him the condition of his wife.”

Dr. Steve Mashour, a Reno pulmonary physician, would testify that there was nothing wrong with Kathy’s lungs that would explain her condition the morning she was brought to the hospital. Neurologist Dr. Paul Katz would explain how he had not found any external injuries to Kathy’s head, no bleeding inside her brain, or anything else that would explain her condition; he would also explain how she had suffered brain damage that was consistent with oxygen deprivation.

“All three of those doctors will tell you that their observations during their diagnosis of Kathy is consistent with succinylcholine poisoning,” Hicks said.

And on it went until he had gone through the entire list, providing a glimpse of what jurors should expect from each witness’s testimony: Dr. Ellen Clark, Dr. Jerry L. Jones, Madeline Montgomery, several of Higgs’s former coworkers, Kathryn Almaraz, and Detective David Jenkins, among others.

“In a nutshell, ladies and gentlemen,” Hicks concluded, “that’s the evidence that we will present to you. And that evidence will show that Chaz Higgs is a calculated murderer who used his trade to accomplish his goal—getting rid of his wife.”

 

 

David Houston provided the opening statement for the defense and talked to them about evaluating the evidence in the proper context and to not “snatch bits and pieces, as has been done a moment ago” with the prosecution’s opening statement. He led the jury through Chaz and Kathy’s history together, how he had been happy-go-lucky at first in their relationship, but had changed when he realized that he couldn’t live a political lifestyle. Despite having wanted a divorce, Chaz stood by Kathy during her impeachment proceedings.