A shot in the dark?

At first, for the public at least, it appeared that Nevada State Controller Kathy Augustine had died of a massive heart attack at the age of 50. 

One newspaper article described the stress that politicians must endure. But at services held for Augustine in Las Vegas four days after her death, those appearances began to change.

KRNV-TV reporter Victoria Campbell: I attended the funeral in Las Vegas.  It was heartbreaking. It was tragic. I mean, this was a woman who was struck down really in what many people would say is the prime of her life.

A pall of grief hung over the mourners, but so did a pall of suspicion.  In the large crowd of mourners, someone was missing.

Campbell: Something just wasn’t right.

And there was more. Troubling details were trickling out about Kathy Augustine’s death.  One reason for suspicion: an unsettling discovery during her autopsy—what appeared to be a mark on Kathy Augustine’s left hip. A possible injection mark that had no medical explanation.

Unexplained injection?  Could that be the cause of Kathy Augustine’s mysterious collapse? And if so—who could have done it, and how?

Hoda Kotb, Dateline correspondent: When all these factors were coming out in the media reports and stuff, what did you think?

Greg Augustine: I thought what everybody thought.  You know, it just seems that there was foul play of some sort involved. And we were shocked. ‘Cause this doesn’t happen to people I know, for sure.  Especially family members.

And political friends like Heidi Smith had big questions too.

Kotb: Did you think because she did have her share of enemies? Politically, did it ever cross your mind that maybe—

Heidi Smith, Dateline correspondent: Yeah, I don’t think I can go there.

Kotb: The idea that a political enemy...

Smith: Rampant rumors.

Kotb: Like what?  What were some of the ones kicked around by people?

Smith: That she had stepped on too many toes and had to be eliminated. We had rumors of every kind.

At the Reno police department, detectives were quietly conducting an investigation.  

Lt. Jon Catalano, Reno P.D.: We wanted to know what she did not just 12 hours preceding her death, but the week preceding her death: who she was around, who she talked to, what her happenings were, how she felt.

Kotb: When you talked to her on the phone, did anything—

Smith: Fine.

Kotb: —seem out of the ordinary?

Smith: Absolutely not.

Kotb: She seemed okay?

Smith: She seemed okay.

As for Kathy Augustine’s husband, Chaz Higgs? At the funeral, he was the missing man everyone was talking about. 

Kotb: In that entire sea of people, there was no Chaz Higgs?

Campbell: There was no Chaz Higgs.  He did not attend.

Kotb: And when you didn’t see him, what did you think?

Smith: Well, I asked Phil, her brother, what was going on.

The man who’d spoken out in the hours after Augustine’s collapse was suddenly in no position to talk. He had been sidelined by a health crisis of his own. 

Chaz Higgs had tried to take his own life.

Campbell: Chaz Higgs attempted suicide by slashing his wrists.  Kathy Augustine’s daughter came into the room, called paramedics.  And they were able to get him to the hospital.

Higgs recovered after a few days.  But by then, people were beginning to believe there was more to Chaz’s story about the morning he called 911 than he was letting on...

John Tsitouras, neighbor: Because of all this history that we know about him, nothing seems right about the guy, but all this is all hearsay, and that’s why I have to be circumspect.

And police were becoming more suspicious than sympathetic...

Lt. Jon Catalano: Because of the suspicious circumstances surrounding Miss Augustine’s death, we started taking a look at her husband. Our detectives started building a timeline.

As the police delved deeper into the marriage of one of the state’s top officials—a more complicated portrait of Chaz Higgs began to emerge.

Before his life collided with Kathy Augustine’s political rising star, Chaz Higgs had spent much of his career in the Navy. He trained as a Navy Seal and spent 16 years as a medical corpsman and along the way, there were three previous marriages and divorces, a string of bankruptcies...

When he met Augustine, he was working as a nurse at this hospital.  As for their marriage, over time it seems Kathy’s initial infatuation had given way to something else—frustration with Chaz’s inability to deal with her political life.

Smith: Chaz was becoming difficult. It wasn’t his cup of tea, either politics.

Victoria Campbell: Earlier this year, Kathy Augustine confided to a friend who was recently widowed, “Don’t do what I did. You need to take time to be by yourself and learn to live by yourself.”  And at that point, she confided that her marriage to Chaz Higgs was on the rocks.

Kotb:  What did you think when you heard about that stuff?

Greg Augustine:  I think the entire family, we were all, to use Phil’s words, "cautiously suspicious."

Kotb: Why?

Greg Augustine: (pauses) I don’t know if I should go on anymore.

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