An Almost Perfect Murder (9 page)

Although everyone connected to the case was growing more impatient by the day to learn the outcome of the tests on Kathy Augustine’s blood and urine, they also understood the process that the specimens had to go through for any conclusion to be reached. To compound the tedium at work here, they also realized that the process was a bureaucratic one. First of all, supervisory personnel at the FBI’s crime laboratory in Quantico, Virginia, were contacted by authorities in Reno to determine if the FBI’s lab could perform testing that could not be accomplished in Reno. When it was agreed that the FBI lab would perform the requested testing, Kathy’s blood and urine specimens were sent to the FBI lab via overnight express. When the package containing the specimens arrived, it was received by the evidence control center, where the package was opened. After the contents had been identified and logged in, it was then passed along to the scientist who would perform the work—in this case, Madeline Montgomery, a forensic examiner in the area of chemistry and toxicology. Montgomery held a B.S. degree in chemistry from George Washington University, in Washington, D.C., and had been employed by the FBI lab for eleven years. She had also completed graduate courses from the same university in chemistry, toxicology, and forensic chemistry, in addition to the regularly occurring training provided by the FBI—in-house training that the government believes helps its employees perform their jobs more effectively and efficiently. Also a member of the Society of Forensic Toxicologists and the International Association of Forensic Toxicologists, Montgomery seemed more than adequately qualified to perform the job that she had been asked to do.

When Montgomery received the specimens, one of the first things she did was to make certain that the containers’ seals were still intact. Satisfied that they were, she inventoried the contents which would enable her to determine which tests, and how many, she would be able to perform with the amount of specimen she had on hand. In this particular case, she had, of course, been specifically asked to look for one drug, succinylcholine or its breakdown or metabolite product, succinylmonocholine. The drug, she knew, was a paralytic, a form of curare.

According to Montgomery, succinylcholine, being a unique drug, is not routinely tested in every forensic laboratory in the country, which is why it is sometimes sent to the FBI lab. Even at the FBI lab, tests searching for the presence of succinylcholine are not done every day of the week. As such, it required Montgomery to make new reagents and prepare the equipment, to get it ready to go specifically for the succinylcholine testing.

Because the FBI lab has looked for succinylcholine and its breakdown product in the specimens it examines for a number of years, they had placed a procedure online specifically for the breakdown product, succinylmonocholine, as a chemical marker or indicator of the drug’s presence in the specimens being examined, before doing anything else. Not being a very stable chemical, whether it’s in a human body or in a test tube in a lab, succinylcholine breaks down fairly quickly through the process of hydrolysis and its reaction to water and enzymes. Enzymes in the human body help break down drugs and other toxins into less toxic materials so that the body can quickly process and expel the material, whatever it is. These same enzymes act on succinylcholine to produce succinylmonocholine in the body. If the breakdown product isn’t present, there is no need to go any further with the testing because the succinylcholine wouldn’t be there, either.

The test that is used to look for succinylcholine and its breakdown product is called liquid chromatography mass spectrometry.

“It’s actually two techniques in one,” Montgomery said.

The liquid chromatography (LC) part helps the scientist separate chemicals, such as separating the succinylcholine and its metabolite from other chemicals present in the body.

“It’s a separation technique so that we can clean it up or clean up our sample and look at the drug and metabolite away from the other things that may be present,” Montgomery said.

The second part of the test is called mass spectrometry (MS), which the FBI likes to call a chemical fingerprinting technique that allows the scientist to look at the chemical and identify its very unique signature pattern so that it can be differentiated or excluded from all other chemicals. The FBI runs the liquid chromatography and mass spectrometry tests twice. The first is called the screening technique, and the second is called the confirmation technique.

Because the LC-MS piece of equipment is utilized on a daily basis to test for a wide range of chemicals that are sent to the lab, including illicit drugs, such as cocaine and heroin, among many others, and prescription medications, it is necessary to ensure that the equipment is always up and running and ready to go for the task at hand. As a result, each day the machine is turned on and a mix of five different chemicals that is known to the scientist is run through it to ensure that it is working properly. The procedure actually tests the range of the machine, and the five chemicals are often referred to as a “known mix.” Whenever it came time to look for a particular chemical, such as succinylcholine, the lab technician would run a standard of the chemical through the machine to make sure that it was working properly for the drugs or metabolites that were being looked for on any given day.

There are actually two types of data that are produced by the equipment. Much of the data looks like a graph and has peaks and valleys. The data from the LC separates components based on their size and their chemical nature in time, while data from the MS produces numbers that represent different masses across a mass range and looks like a stick figure graph. Therefore, simplistically put, the LC separates components and the MS provides a chemical fingerprint, thus granting the laboratory investigator the ability to identify the chemical(s) present in any given sample, which is being examined.

To prove that succinylcholine or its metabolite does not naturally occur in a live human being, Montgomery took fifteen different urine samples from volunteers in the FBI’s lab and ran them through the processes described to look for the presence of succinylcholine. Finding none in any of the urine samples, she was satisfied that succinylcholine does not show up naturally in the urine of a living human being. To determine what succinylcholine would look like when detected in a urine sample, Montgomery took a sample of her own urine and several samples of the volunteers’ urine and added succinylcholine to each. She then ran them through the lab equipment and obtained the “chemical fingerprint.” After placing a concentrated sample of Kathy Augustine’s urine into the equipment, she placed a “blank,” or a negative urine sample, right before or in front of Kathy’s sample to verify that there was no contamination throughout the process. It all sounded like overkill to the layman, but it was part of the tedious process of lab work to ensure accurate results.

To Kathy Augustine’s family and the Reno Police Department, Wednesday, September 27, 2006, turned out to be the day they had all been waiting for, a day that had seemed like it would never come. But the day had arrived, and that afternoon brought the nervously awaited toxicology report on Kathy’s blood and urine. Madeline Montgomery had found traces of succinylcholine in the samples of Kathy Augustine’s urine, which had been sent to the FBI for analysis more than two months earlier. She ran the samples of Kathy’s urine three times, and each time succinylcholine, as well as its metabolite, was present.

However, Montgomery failed to detect the presence of succinylcholine or its breakdown product in the tissue samples taken from Kathy Augustine’s body. Because succinylcholine is such an unstable chemical, as explained earlier, Montgomery really hadn’t expected to find the drug’s presence in the tissue samples. Because of the body’s ability to break down toxins in order to get rid of them, it would have been very unusual to find succinylcholine in the tissue samples, according to Montgomery. Typically, such a drug would be excreted by the body in just a matter of hours. In Kathy’s case, she survived—although in a coma—for a few days, until her family decided to have her removed from life support. According to the scientific literature and the findings of the FBI lab, the time period would have been sufficient for the drug to have disappeared from the tissues of Kathy’s body.

Similarly, Montgomery had not found succinylcholine or its breakdown product present in Kathy’s blood, due to the fact that enzymes in the blood had broken each down further into other chemicals that most people have present in their blood.

After carefully reviewing the report, Detective David Jenkins presented the findings to his supervisor. Afterward, Jenkins spent much of that evening and part of the next day putting together an affidavit for a first-degree murder warrant and presented it to a Washoe County judge. The warrant was quickly approved as a sealed warrant, and Jenkins and his colleagues, knowing that Higgs had been staying with a relative in the Hampton, Virginia, area, notified their counterparts in that jurisdiction and supplied them with a copy of the warrant. Jenkins had asked that the arrest warrant be sealed because Higgs was considered both a flight risk and a suicide risk.

“We believed that Chaz was a flight risk,” said Lieutenant Jon Catalano. “Based on what happened in Las Vegas, also a suicide risk.”

After completing all of the necessary steps, the Reno detective requested that Hampton police arrest Higgs at their earliest opportunity.

Hampton police quickly organized a plan of action, and began watching the house where Higgs had been staying with a relative. Even though it had taken a little more than a day and a half from the time Reno police received the toxicology report to set up the arrest stakeout on the other side of the nation, the operation went off without a hitch. At a few minutes before 6:00
P.M.
, on Friday, September 29, 2006, Chaz Higgs, driving the BMW that had been left to him through Kathy’s will, pulled into the driveway of the relative’s house. Hampton police, in unmarked vehicles and regular police cruisers, converged on the house and surrounded Higgs before he could even step out of the BMW. After explaining to him that he was being arrested on charges that he had murdered his wife, he was handcuffed, placed inside one of the waiting cruisers, and taken to the local jail facility, where he was booked and jailed.

An extradition hearing was scheduled for the following Monday, a necessary legal step before he could be transported back to northern Nevada to stand trial.

 

 

Although Kathy’s family members had been notified of the information contained in the toxicology report shortly after it had been received, everything had been kept under wraps from the media to ensure a smooth arrest. However, after news of the arrest had been made public, the family began expressing their thoughts and feelings to a variety of media sources, particularly the
Las Vegas Sun
and the
Las Vegas Review-Journal.

Dallas Augustine told reporters that she’d had no reason to suspect that Higgs had killed her mother until the results of the toxicology tests had come back positive.

“Two months ago, I was faced with my mom’s death, and that was completely devastating,” Dallas said. “Now I have to deal with the fact that my stepfather is being charged with her murder.”

She said that Higgs’s arrest had caused the grieving process to begin “all over again.”

“I was firm with my believing that everyone is innocent until proven guilty,” she added, “and now we have the evidence to go on.... Now he can rot.”

Following Higgs’s arrest, the troubling subject of a possible motive for him to have killed his wife came up again among family members.

“It is a question that we all are asking,” Phil Alfano said. “We can’t get inside his head. I am confident it all will come out.... You know how it is with a relative. You don’t want to say things. But things with him bothered me. . . . Their relationship seemed strange to us from the very beginning. My hope is he does the right thing and owns up to his crime. I hope he spares my family additional grief.”

Phil, who was the executor of his sister’s estate, reiterated his thoughts about the will, and said that Higgs had only received the couple’s vehicles, some sports equipment, and little else. It was hardly enough to kill someone over—if he had known that the bulk of the estate was going to Kathy’s daughter.

Kathy’s family apparently wasn’t alone in thinking that the relationship between Kathy and Higgs had been unusual. An elderly neighbor couple, John and Dotty Tsi-touras, who had been longtime friends of Kathy and Charles Augustine, had been suspicious of Higgs long before Kathy had died.

“Everyone who knew Kathy over the years had something negative to say about him,” Dotty said.

Approximately a year before Kathy’s death, Dotty said, Kathy had confided to her that she had been planning to divorce Higgs because he had spent all of the money in one of Kathy’s bank accounts.

Dotty’s husband, John, however, was considerably more to the point in his opinion about Chaz Higgs, and said that he had pointed the finger at him as being responsible for Kathy’s death shortly after she had died. He said that he had made it a point to stay in touch with Kathy’s family following the tragedy.

“I always thought he was a phony,” John said to a reporter for the
Sun.
“I think Chaz was a complete con artist, and I think that is going to show up in his dealings with previous ladies.... It certainly puzzles us to this day that Kathy was taken in by Chaz. He always seemed to strut and pose. He seemed pretty apolitical. He was a bodybuilder. He had diamonds in both ears.... I couldn’t figure out what Kathy could have possibly had to do with him. I suppose none of us are quite what we seem, on the surface.”

Meanwhile, Greg Augustine made good on an earlier promise that he had made about having his father’s body exhumed if the toxicology tests came back and showed that his stepmother had not died from natural causes. He promptly hired Las Vegas attorney Dominic Gentile, who had represented Kathy during her impeachment proceedings, on behalf of the family to ask Las Vegas authorities to investigate his father’s death for evidence of foul play. Specifically, he wanted tissue samples from his father’s body examined for traces of succinylcholine.