The husband of Nevada's late state controller Kathy Augustine was arrested on Friday and charged with murdering her after an FBI toxicology test found a paralyzing drug in her system.
A warrant charging Chaz Higgs with first-degree murder was issued this week in Reno after a coroner's autopsy and results of toxicology tests found succinylcholine in Augustine's system.
Police described the drug as a powerful paralytic. The warrant and test results had been kept secret until Higgs' arrest.
PHOTO: AP
Higgs, 42, was arrested in Hampton, Virginia, where he had apparently driven to visit his father and stepmother, Reno police said.
Augustine, 50, died in a Reno hospital July 11, three days after Higgs, a critical care nurse at another hospital, said he found her unconscious in her Reno home.
Higgs told reporters his wife died of a massive heart attack. But police said Augustine had no history of heart problems and that the autopsy did not suggest she had heart disease.
Suicide attempt
Three days after her death, Higgs tried to commit suicide. He was released from a hospital later that day, and did not attend his wife's funeral the following day.
Investigators said medical experts told them that the drug found in Augustine's system paralyzes muscles within several minutes, including those used for breathing.
The drug is used in hospital operating rooms, emergency rooms and intensive care units to help put in breathing tubes, they said.
Reno homicide investigators went to the hospital where Augustine was admitted after receiving an anonymous telephone tip that her death might not be accidental.
Higgs has vehemently denied having anything to do with his wife's death. The night before attempting suicide, he told the Las Vegas Review-Journal that he welcomed the police investigation.
"My wife was a healthy 50-year-old woman who dropped dead. I want to find out what happened," he said. "People don't know what went on in our home. She was frazzled and stressed out."
Higgs had been the nurse for Augustine's previous husband, Charles Augustine, who died three years ago in Las Vegas. His death certificate says he died of complications from a stroke.
Three weeks after her husband's death, Kathy Augustine married Higgs in Hawaii.
Greg Augustine, Kathy Augustine's adult stepson, has said he wants his father's remains exhumed and an autopsy conducted if the FBI determines Kathy Augustine did not die of natural causes.
Elected
Augustine was first elected in 1992 as a Republican member of the state assembly. She became Nevada's controller, the state's chief fiscal administrator, in 1999.
She was impeached by the assembly and convicted for using state equipment on her 2002 campaign and was censured but not removed from office. Political leaders including Republican Governor Kenny Guinn called for her to step down, but she refused.
She was running for state treasurer when she died. Elections officials did not have time to remove her name from the primary ballot last month, creating a potentially embarrassing situation for the state.
Malaysia yesterday installed a motorcycle-riding billionaire sultan as its new king in lavish ceremonies for a post seen as a ballast in times of political crises. The coronation ceremony for Malaysia’s King Sultan Ibrahim, 65, at the National Palace in Kuala Lumpur followed his oath-taking in January as the country’s 17th monarch. Malaysia is a constitutional monarchy, with a unique arrangement that sees the throne change hands every five years between the rulers of nine Malaysian states headed by centuries-old Islamic royalty. While chiefly ceremonial, the position of king has in the past few years played an increasingly important role. Royal intervention was
Hong Kong microbiologist Yuen Kwok-yung (袁國勇) has done battle with some of the world’s worst threats, including the SARS virus he helped isolate and identify, and he has a warning. Another pandemic is inevitable and could exact damage far worse than COVID-19 pandemic, said the soft-spoken scientist sometimes thought of as Hong Kong’s answer to former US National Institutes of Health director Anthony Fauci. “Both the public and [world] leaders must admit that another pandemic will come, and probably sooner than you anticipate,” he said at the city’s Queen Mary Hospital, where he works and teaches. “Why I make such a horrifying prediction
A high-ranking North Korean diplomat stationed in Cuba defected to South Korea in November last year — just months before Seoul and Havana established diplomatic ties, the South Korean National Intelligence Service said yesterday. North Korean diplomat Ri Il-kyu had been responsible for political affairs at Pyongyang’s embassy in Cuba since 2019, tasked specifically “with obstructing the establishment of diplomatic relations between South Korea and Cuba,” South Korea’s Chosun Daily reported. Ri defected to South Korea with his wife and children in early November, making him the highest-ranking North Korean diplomat known to have defected since then-North Korean deputy ambassador to the
The Philippine Air Force must ramp up pilot training if it is to buy 20 or more multirole fighter jets as it modernizes and expands joint operations with its navy, a commander said yesterday. A day earlier US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said that the US “will do what is necessary” to see that the Philippines is able to resupply a ship on the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) that Manila uses to reinforce its claims to the atoll. Sullivan said the US would prefer that the Philippines conducts the resupplies of the small crew on the warship Sierra Madre,