In Her Prime

On July 8, 2006, Reno critical nurse Chaz Higgs called 911 to report that his wife wasn’t breathing. His wife, Nevada state controller Kathy Augustine, was one of Nevada’s best-known—and most notorious—politicians. Impeached in 2004 for campaign ethics violations, she’d been allowed to serve out her term, but made plenty of enemies along the way.
 
Chaz was Kathy’s fourth husband. Her third husband had died, leaving Kathy their Las Vegas home and a $1 million insurance policy. Weeks later, she’d married Chaz, a younger man who’d been her husband’s nurse.
 
Investigators wanted to know why a healthy, vibrant fifty-year-old woman with no history of heart trouble suddenly stopped breathing. One nurse had a theory—and it involved her colleague, Chaz Higgs.