A shot in the dark

There are mountains and valleys, deep lakes and high desert.

There are the darkest of nights and the brightest of lights.

One the fastest growing areas of the country, the Reno-Lake Tahoe-Carson City area of Nevada is full of contrasts.

It is beautiful and brash, in-your-face, on the move, looking ahead and self-confident.

And a woman who wielded power at the highest levels of government personified the place.

She made her mark here and attracted attention right until the end.

Reno likes to call itself "the biggest little city in the world." This used to be the spot where Hollywood celebrities would come for a quickie divorce. Now it is the setting for a bizarre saga that could have been pulled from a Hollywood screenplay.

It's a story of power, ambition and enemies. Investigators say it's also a story of murder, what they believe could have been the perfect crime -- if not for one slip of the tongue.

The photos say it all. She was a prominent politician poised for an even brighter future. She posed with President Bush, with the First Lady, with the president's father, and Vice President Cheney.

Nevada state controller Kathy Augustine put herself front and center almost any chance she could get.

KRNV-TV reporter Victoria Campbell covered Kathy Augustine's career for years.

But when it came to her personal life, Kathy wasn't nearly as much in control, and the sorrow sometimes showed.

She started life as a California girl. Born Kathy Alfano in the Los Angeles area, she grew up in the '60s and '70s. Phil Alfano admired his big sister.

That taste of student government soon developed into a passion for politics. In college, she majored in political science and won a coveted internship on Capitol Hill.

But after graduation, she took a more traditional route for a time. She went to work for an airline in crew scheduling and briefly as a flight attendant.

She traveled across the country, but the high flying may have come with a price.

One marriage failed and then another. Her brother says Kathy was always a bit naive when it came to relationships.

And as she approached her thirtieth birthday, she was a single mother raising a daughter on her own.

Then, in 1988, a new man entered her life. He was a Delta Airlines pilot named Charles Augustine -- 15 years her senior.

When Kathy and Charles said "I do" it was his second marriage and her third. They lived in the Las Vegas area. And for a time, this marriage seemed built to last.

By the late '80s, though, her enthusiasm for politics came to the forefront once again.

Before long, Kathy Augustine was consumed by a newfound passion for the Republican party. Heidi Smith was Kathy's friend for two decades:

In 1992 she was elected to her first public office, the Nevada assembly. The state senate followed. Then, in 1998, she got her most powerful job yet: Nevada state controller.

While some state workers say you could hear the sound of her laughter booming through the hallways...

There was turmoil away from the capital, too. Charles Augustine hardly relished the role of political spouse. Over time, the marriage faltered.

Kathy and Charles Augustine eventually decided on a divorce, but he was certainly not pushing for it, and neither was Kathy's family.

And then, later in 2003, fate intervened. Charles Augustine suffered a stroke. Kathy spent long hours by his bedside. For a time he seemed to improve.

But after weeks in the hospital, Charles Augustine took a sudden turn for the worse. He suffered massive organ failure and died.

It turns out that Charles Augustine would not rest in peace. For Kathy Augustine, Charles' death would be just the beginning of a bizarre chain of events.

She would marry again, but when settling into her new life storm clouds would gather. Enemies -- and a murder investigation -- loomed on the horizon.

As Nevada's casinos were doing record business in late 2003, State Controller Kathy Augustine was bouncing back from the death of her third husband, Charles, and taking a gamble on a new man named Chaz Higgs.

The way they met was anything but ordinary. It was here at a Las Vegas hospital where Chaz, a registered nurse eight years Kathy's junior, was helping to care for her husband Charles. Like Kathy, he'd been married before, and had one daughter.

To many people, the pairing seemed a bit odd.

Especially when Chaz and Kathy said "I do" in a Hawaiian ceremony. The date? Just three weeks after Charles died.

But as 2004 rolled around, whispers about Kathy Augustine's private life were drowned out by the roar of a public scandal.

Kathy Augustine's hard-charging style had transformed some state employees into bitter enemies. That spring they lashed out at their boss, accusing Augustine of forcing them to work on her 2002 campaign on state time -- a violation of the state's ethics rules. She denied the allegations.

Kathy Augustine became the first official in Nevada history to be impeached.

She was convicted on one charge, but acquitted of two others. She paid a $15,000 fine. The governor asked her to resign from office, but she refused and even insisted she would have no trouble working again with the very employees who wanted to bring her down.

And enemies or not, in 2006, Kathy Augustine felt confident enough to run for still another important statewide office: Nevada treasurer.

But all of her hard-charging ambition was about to be stopped in its tracks.

On Saturday, July 8, Kathy was scheduled to attend a fundraiser, but she never showed up.

She wasn't home because in the early morning hours, Kathy had stopped breathing. Her husband Chaz Higgs says he found her on the bed and called 911.

Higgs said he thought she may have had a heart attack and that he administered CPR but the efforts may have come too late. Later, he spoke to reporters.

By the time the ambulance arrived at the hospital, Kathy Augustine was in a deep coma. Chaz called Kathy's mother in California.

Chaz told reporters he thought his wife Kathy may have fallen victim to the stress of hard work and long days.

Could it have been stress? Doctors didn't know for sure, but Kathy's brother found that theory hard to believe.

When it became clear that Kathy would not recover, her family made the decision to terminate life support. Three days after that 911 call, Kathy Augustine, the tough, determined public servant, lost the fight of her life. She died without ever regaining consciousness.

Speculation was rampant even before Kathy Augustine was buried. When her autopsy was complete, the results raised as many questions as they answered.

If a heart attack didn't kill Kathy Augustine -- then what did?

There was even more troubling information from the autopsy. Evidence, perhaps, that when it came to Augustine's death there was nothing natural about it at all.

On July 15, 2006, Nevada State Controller Kathy Augustine was laid to rest. A pall of grief hung over the mourners, but so did a pall of suspicion.

Questions were swirling across the state. Had a heart attack killed her? Or was it something more sinister?

Word had spread about an unsettling discovery during her autopsy -- a mysterious mark on Kathy's left hip. It was a possible injection site that had no medical explanation. Could that be the cause of Kathy's mysterious collapse? And if so, who could have done it? And how?

Certainly, Kathy had made her share of political enemies. Her friend Heidi Smith says the rumors were rampant.

And some rumors hit much closer to home. At those funeral services, someone was noticeably absent: Kathy's husband Chaz. He had slit his wrists the day before the funeral.

Was this the action of a distraught, grieving husband, or could it have been a sign of something more?

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

Police were becoming more suspicious than sympathetic.

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 15 years as a medical corpsman. Along the way, there were three previous marriages and divorces and a string of bankruptcies.

Kathy's brother says he knew there were problems in the marriage.

And there was another incident Phil now says he wished he'd paid more attention to. Just months before Kathy died, Kathy called her brother sobbing while on a drive with Chaz.

Suspicion hung in the air. Turns out the very day Kathy Augustine died, police here in Reno received an intriguing phone call. It would change everything.

That nurse met Chaz Higgs for the first time at this hospital the day before Kathy Augustine was stricken. The nurse said Chaz made an off-hand comment about a murder case in the news involving a husband accused of stabbing his estranged wife.

The tipster, nurse Kim Ramey, told police Higgs said there was a much better way to commit murder.

Det. David Jenkins: And then made specific reference to succinylcholine as a drug that would have been much wiser to have used because it was virtually undetectable.

Succinylcholine. If used correctly, it paralyzes respiratory muscles to allow the insertion of breathing tubes. But it is a powerful drug that if mis-used can cause organ failure and even death. It quickly dissipates from the bloodstream and leaves few traces.

Police launched a full-blown investigation. They quietly requested an arrest warrant and sent Augustine's blood and urine samples to the FBI crime lab in Virginia.

Two months later, the FBI lab confirmed that Kathy Augustine had succinylcholine in her urine. In September 2006 Chaz Higgs was arrested and charged with first-degree murder.

Higgs pleaded not guilty.

But if Kathy Augustine did die by an injection of succinylcholine, it's even more disturbing to everyone who knew her because the effects on the victim are so terrifying.

But Kathy's suspicious death got Greg Augustine thinking about another sudden death -- that of his own father, Kathy's third husband Charles. When Charles died from complications of a stroke in 2003, Greg assumed his father had simply taken a turn for the worse.

But now he wondered: Was there a chance his father's death was not due to natural causes?

In light of Kathy Augustine's death and the murder charges against Chaz Higgs, Greg Augustine set out demanding answers to his father's death. What really happened to his dad Charles? Could he have been killed the same way Kathy Augustine allegedly was?

Three months after Kathy died, Greg had his request honored. Police in Las Vegas exhumed Charles Augustine's body to see if he also had succinylcholine in his system. Greg and the police waited for answers as Chaz Higgs prepared to stand trial for his wife's murder.

Chaz Higgs' trial began in June in this Reno courtroom. It would be the very first murder case for prosecutor Christopher Hicks, who along with veteran district attorney Tom Barb hoped to convince the jury that Chaz Higgs had deliberately killed his wife, Nevada state controller Kathy Augustine, by injecting her with a lethal drug.

To prove their case, prosecutors first had to show that succinylcholine killed Kathy Augustine.

The FBI toxicologist who tested Kathy's urine said she had no doubt that succinylcholine was in her system at the time of her death.

Based on the FBI's findings, a pathologist determined the cause of death.

But if the drug was in her body, how -- and when -- did it get there? The pathologist pointed to a mark on Kathy's left hip as a possible injection site and said there was no evidence that it had occurred in the course of Kathy's hospital treatment.

Therefore, the prosecutors argued, the mark must have happened before Kathy went to the hospital.

As for the early theory that Kathy had suffered a heart attack, the prosecutors attempted to knock that down by putting a cardiologist on the stand.

The prosecutors may have established succinylcholine as the cause of death, but they still needed to connect Chaz Higgs to the murder weapon. The big hurdle? There was no "smoking gun" -- no hard evidence linking Higgs to the drug.

What prosecutors did have, they argued, was proof that Chaz knew what succinylcholine was and how to use it.

Detective David Jenkins told the jury about a startling discovery: a stack of index cards and on top were some instructions for using succinylcholine.

And several nurses testified that Chaz Higgs had ample access to succinylcholine as a critical care nurse.

Chaz may have had access to the drug, but why would he want to kill his wife?

Friends always thought the two were kind of an odd couple, but prosecutors were about to show that cracks in the marriage ran far deeper than they imagined -- and that Chaz Higgs was a long way from a loving husband.

A series of Chaz's co-workers took the stand. They all had the same story: Chaz could not stop talking about how much he hated his wife.

And prosecutors said that Chaz demonstrated that same contempt for Kathy on the morning of her collapse.

Prosecutors argued he was too calm.

They said his actions in the ambulance were a far cry from the way a truly concerned husband would react.

And if he truly cared for, and wanted to help his wife, prosecutors argued, he would have acted differently when he found Kathy that morning.

When emergency responders arrived at the scene, they were surprised to find Chaz standing on the sidewalk, not frantically administering CPR. Even more alarming, Kathy was still on the bed. That was strange, said prosecutors, because standard procedure says you always put a victim on a hard surface to perform CPR -- something a registered nurse like Chaz Higgs should have known.

But some of the most dramatic testimony was yet to come. As prosecutors neared the end of their case, some startling new evidence came to light: e-mails from a woman named Linda Ramirez.

Ramirez used to work with Chaz, and it turns out while Chaz and Kathy were still married he began a flirtatious relationship with Ramirez.

Prosecutor Christopher Hicks read some of those emails to the court...

And in those emails, there were some disturbing comments about Kathy.

In the end, prosecutors say he acted on that hate. As proof they offered up the conversation he had with Kim Ramey, the nurse who worked with Chaz the day before Kathy went into the hospital.

Ramey said she and Chaz were discussing that case in the news in which a husband had stabbed his wife to death. Ramey said Chaz told her the guy did it all wrong:

The prosecutors felt confident about their case, but now it was the defense's turn. Chaz Higgs would have the chance to tell the jury his side of the story.

In late June a devastating wildfire raged through south Lake Tahoe, while just 60 miles away in Reno, Chaz Higgs' defense team was preparing to put out another fire.

Prosecutors had already presented their case against Higgs, saying he had deliberately killed his wife by injecting her with a drug called succinylcholine.

Now it was the defense's turn. They would argue Chaz Higgs had no reason to kill his wife and that the prosecution hadn't presented any credible evidence that proved otherwise.

The defense began by picking apart the prosecution's scientific testimony, beginning with that mark on Kathy's left hip.

They called their own pathologist to the stand who said the wound looked too fresh to have happened before Kathy was rushed to the hospital.

Kathy was in the hospital for nearly four days... So if the mark was only 48 hours old, the defense argued, it could not be the cause of Kathy Augustine's mysterious collapse.

The defense also poked holes in the FBI's urine tests, portraying them as too sloppy to truly indicate whether succinylcholine was in Kathy's system when she died.

But the most persuasive bit of testimony may have come when, cross-examining the prosecution's anesthesiologist, defense attorney Houston demonstrated how long it would take to inject a syringe filled with succinylcholine into the body of an unwilling victim.

So then what did kill Kathy Augustine?

The defense revealed that Kathy suffered from a condition called "mitral valve prolapse," or a leaky heart valve. Though the prosecution had argued the condition could not lead to heart attack, on cross-examination the prosecution's cardiologist could not say it was impossible.

Now that the defense had taken on the science of the case, it was time to take a crack at those allegations that Chaz Higgs was little more than a scheming playboy and a man who hated his wife so much that he planned and carried out her murder. It was time for Chaz Higgs to tell his side of the story.

All eyes were on him as he took the stand.

Chaz began by telling the court about the early, happy days of his relationship with Kathy.

But, he said that over time, the stress of political life -- and especially that impeachment scandal -- took a toll on the marriage.

He said he tried to leave Kathy several times, but that over and over she begged him to stay.

And when it came to those flirtatious and occasionally angry emails Chaz wrote to a co-worker before Kathy died? He said they show not malice but sadness about the breakdown of his marriage.

Chaz said he encouraged Kathy to get out of politics and that he was convinced it was the only way their marriage could be saved.

But when she threw her hat into the ring for the state treasurer's race, he'd had enough.

He said he broke the news to her on the evening of July 7 and that hours later he found her alone in her room and not breathing.

He said he did all he could to save her, and that contrary to what the prosecution alleged, there was nothing suspicious about his failure to place her on the floor before performing CPR.

Chaz attributed the calm demeanor that the prosecution found so suspicious to his years of military and medical training.

Chaz said that if he bore any responsibility for his wife's death it was because his request for divorce was simply too much for the already stressed-out politician to take.

As for the prosecution's star witness -- the nurse who said that Chaz told her succinylcholine was the perfect way to commit murder…

The fifth day of trial came to a close. Prosecutors Tom Barb and Christopher Hicks prepared to cross-examine the defendant the following morning.

But in the middle of the night there was an unexpected emergency.

Chaz Higgs had slit his wrists.

Why try and kill himself? His attorney says the reason was simple.

The prosecutor, however, had a different theory.

Two days later, Chaz was back in court. His wrist bandages were on display and the prosecutor didn't waste any time trying to depict those very injuries as further evidence of Chaz's guilt.

The prosecutor also attacked Chaz's claim that he didn't remember talking to nurse Kim Ramey about succinylcholine.

The prosecutor also picked apart Chaz's so-called love for his wife.

Now, as the trial came to an end, Chaz's attorney made one final attempt to knock down the prosecution's case. He insisted his client was no murderer and that he could not be convicted based upon merely circumstantial evidence.

As Chaz prepared for the case to go to the jury, he could be confident about one thing: the tests performed on Kathy's deceased husband Charles Augustine had already come in. There was no succinylcholine in his system. Chaz Higgs would not be charged in that death.

But now, Chaz's future rested in the hands of 12 jurors. When it came to the death of Kathy Augustine, would they find him guilty of murder?

After two weeks of testimony, Chaz Higgs' future was now in the hands of 12 jurors. It was up to them to decide whether or not Chaz had murdered his wife, Nevada State Controller Kathy Augustine, with an injection of a paralytic drug called succinylcholine.

We met with eight jurors. They all found the trial difficult to sit through.

From the very first vote, it was clear that reaching a verdict would not be easy.

All of the jurors said they discounted the defense's arguments that stress from her political life led to her death.

They also didn't believe a minor heart condition was to blame.

But they still struggled to find the answer to the question: What killed Kathy Augustine?

If it was succinylcholine, how did it get into her body?

At least one juror was influenced by the defense's demonstration with the syringe.

Others called the defense's demonstration merely courtroom theatrics.

Chaz's off-hand remark to nurse Kim Ramey played big for the jury.

And all of the jurors were disturbed by Chaz's indifference toward his wife.

He didn't make much of an impression on the stand, either.

But the defense scored points by arguing Chaz had no motive to kill Kathy.

After eight hours of connecting those dots, the jurors announced that they had reached a verdict. Chaz Higgs was about to learn his fate.

Chaz will now spend his life in prison with the possibility of parole in 20 years.

It's a lifetime to think about the life he was convicted of taking away, Kathy Augustine, the resilient, confident, driven leader.

And when all was said and done, for Kathy's family, after a year of anguish, there is some degree of peace.

Lawyers for Chaz Higgs have filed an appeal in the case.