WHO IS CHAZ HIGGS?

By Ed Koch, Mary Manning

Sunday, July 30, 2006 | 7:39 a.m.

State Sen. Sandra Tiffany remembers her reaction when State Controller and good friend Kathy Augustine broke the news: While on vacation in Hawaii, Augustine had married a handsome, younger man she barely knew - a critical care nurse at the hospital unit where her previous husband had died just three weeks earlier.

"When I heard that, I said, 'What, are you nuts? Are you crazy?' " Tiffany recalls telling Augustine of the whirlwind marriage to Chaz Higgs.

Tiffany, a Henderson Republican, says that she met Higgs only once, at a political function: "I don't think I heard him say two paragraphs."

And the senator's first impressions? "He was buff. The guy is self-centered and self-absorbed."

Tiffany is not the first person to describe Higgs that way.

One of his three previous wives paints a similar portrait of the man whose attempted suicide after the mysterious death of Augustine earlier this month has thrust Higgs from being a bit player as a political spouse onto center stage.

This week Reno Police expect to receive FBI toxicology reports from Augustine's autopsy. The work is being done at the federal agency's lab in Quantico, Va., where it is believed Higgs once lived.

Police officials are quick to label their case as merely a death investigation, with the cause being "questionable." They say that Higgs is neither a suspect nor a person of interest.

But a representative of the Nevada Department of Investigations has asked at least one of Higgs' ex-wives, who spoke briefly with the Sun, to no longer speak with any media.

Seems lots of people are trying to find out, "Who is Chaz Higgs?"

Extensive research by the Sun - including interviews with two ex-wives and the scouring of scores of public documents - shows a man who:

Little is known of Higgs' boyhood other than he was born a twin on June 2, 1964. His first wife recalls that he said the boys were raised in Virginia and North Carolina by his Marine father.

Higgs enlisted in the Navy on Dec. 21, 1983, at age 19. There he met his first wife, Dawn Renee Brown, while both attended corpsman school at Camp Lejeune, N.C. They married Sept. 15, 1984, in her hometown of Dillon, S.C.

In a telephone interview, Dawn describes the man she knew as Chuck as a golfer, surfer, weightlifter and bodybuilder. "Always athletic," she says, "always into himself."

A few months into their marriage, Dawn says, she caught Higgs in bed with a nursing student in a room behind the garage of his parents' North Carolina home, where the couple were living.

"He was a little womanizer," she says, noting that Higgs was such a charmer she put that incident aside and tried fruitlessly to work things out.

He did have positive traits, too. Higgs didn't smoke, drink or take drugs, Dawn says, and "he was good at patient care."

In 1985 they transferred to a base hospital in Jacksonville, Fla. There, Higgs met his future second wife, Kirstin Dawn Gonzalez. She, too, was a corpsman. She also was married and had an infant son with her then-husband.

"He (Higgs) was seeing her (Kirstin) while he was married to me," Dawn says. "He liked to be with other women - he could not be faithful. I was not going to have anything more to do with that."

The Higgses divorced on Feb. 19, 1988. Dawn went on to a 12-year Navy career, married another sailor and today is a homemaker in New England.

She last heard from her ex-husband in 1993, receiving a letter from Higgs, stationed at the time on a medical ship in Bahrain.

"He wrote that he was young at the time and that he was sorry for what he had done to me," Dawn says. She threw the letter away.

On Aug. 18, 1989, Higgs filed for bankruptcy in Florida. Four months later, Kirstin Gonzalez's divorce was granted, ending her four-year marriage. On New Year's Day 1990, Higgs and Kirstin married.

In all, they probably spent less than six months together, says Kirstin, who left the Navy to care for her baby. According to court documents, Higgs adopted the boy.

In fall 1990 the couple drove across the country. Higgs dropped Kirstin off in Las Vegas, where she became the apartment manager for a complex on Reno Avenue. He went on to San Diego for duty on a medical ship.

The marriage, for all intents and purposes, was seemingly over. In Las Vegas, Kirstin lived the life of a single woman, appearing at one point on "Meet Someone Special," a Las Vegas-based, cable-television dating show.

She caught the eye of a local law enforcement officer who would later attest to her Nevada residency in Kirstin's June 4, 1992, divorce from Higgs. According to the terms of that divorce, Higgs was ordered to pay $400-a-month child support until his adopted son was 18. He also was given liberal visitation rights.

Three months after divorcing Higgs, Kirstin and the officer married.

Higgs paid child support for 6 1/2 years until Kirstin and her husband released him from the responsibility, reasoning that Higgs had not seen the boy since he was a baby.

Kirstin, who still lives in Las Vegas, didn't know that Higgs was living in Nevada until she saw a television news report this month about his suicide attempt. She declined to discuss her marriage to him.

Asked if Higgs had been abusive or unfaithful, she was tearful: "That would be an issue I would rather address to law enforcement."

Days later, according to her husband, Kirstin was advised by the Nevada Department of Investigations not to talk to the news media.

The state agency referred all inquiries to the Reno Police Department - the lead agency investigating Augustine's death. Reno Police Lt. Jon Catalano says that his department didn't ask the state agency, which is assisting Reno Police, to tell anyone not to talk about the case: "They probably did it thinking they were helping us," Catalano said.

From July 1993 to February 1997 Higgs was stationed in Manama, Bahrain, and that part of his life is somewhat sketchy. Sometime during or after that period, however, he apparently married a third woman - Lorelei Sagmit Gueco.

According to public records, the third Mrs. Higgs did not obtain a Social Security number until 1996 or 1997 in North Carolina, when she was 24 or 25. That could indicate she might not have been born in the United States.

The Sun could find neither marriage nor divorce documents for Higgs and Lorelei in public records. Her name first appears as Higgs' wife - and joint debtor - in an Oct. 29, 1998, Chapter 7 bankruptcy proceeding in Alexandria, Va.

Those court records also list Higgs as the stepfather of Lorelei's then-2-year-old daughter. The couple had nearly $30,000 in debt - including $8,600 on one credit card - but only about $15,000 in assets.

Higgs left the Navy on March 1, 1999, according to the Pentagon, which would not give a reason for the discharge. The Navy confirmed that Higgs left at the rank of HM1-E6, a medical corpsman.

In April he and Lorelei moved to Louisville, Tenn . Later that year, they moved to Las Vegas.

When they broke up is not clear.

Lorelei married another man in Las Vegas in 2002 and divorced him the following year. A local attorney who handled the divorce said Lorelei later married another Las Vegas man. The lawyer said he didn't know when or where the marriage took place, and the Sun could not locate marriage records for them.

Attempts to reach Lorelei - including a note left at her home - were unsuccessful, but her current husband said that neither he nor his wife would comment on Higgs or anything related to her marriage to Higgs.

In 2002 Higgs received an associate's degree in nursing from Craven Community College in New Bern, N.C. Higgs also has taken Internet courses from the University of Phoenix, receiving both a bachelor of science and a doctoral degree. A University of Phoenix spokesman declined to identify Higgs' field of study for either degree or when he completed the online classes.

He passed the National Council Licensure Examination test in Nevada in 2002 and received a state nursing license, according to the Nevada State Board of Nursing. The board has no record of complaints or disciplinary actions against Higgs.

In November 2002 public records indicate that Higgs was living in a recreational vehicle park on Boulder Highway.

Kathy Augustine's life at that time was moving along on a much higher plateau.

The former Delta Air Lines flight attendant and her pilot husband, Charles, had moved to Las Vegas in 1988 and purchased a home in the downtown area in 1990, according to Clark County assessor records.

She was elected to the Assembly in 1992, serving from 1993 to 1995 before winning a term in the Nevada Senate. In 1998 she became the first woman elected state controller.

By late 2002, however, their marriage was shaky, friends say, and on the last day of the year, records show she purchased a small home in Reno in her own name.

Tiffany and other friends say that by the time of Charles Augustine's July 2003 stroke, the couple had been separated for some time.

He was taken to the Sunrise Medical Center, where Higgs would be one of his critical care nurses. At the time the stroke was described as mild.

On Aug. 19, however, about six weeks after his stroke, Charles died.

No autopsy was conducted on the 63-year-old man. He left Kathy the Las Vegas home and a $1 million insurance policy, according to published reports.

Tiffany says that Kathy had planned earlier in the year to take a trip to Hawaii. After her husband's death, Augustine invited Higgs to go along. While they were there, Tiffany says, Augustine asked Higgs to marry her.

Of their Sept. 19 wedding in Honolulu, the Sun wrote in its Sept. 26 editions: "Augustine said she met Higgs when he was caring for her second husband, Chuck, before Chuck Augustine's death. The controller intends to keep Augustine as her last name."

It would be a major lifestyle change for Higgs. Augustine's annual salary, according to public records, was $80,000. In the Navy, Higgs' yearly income averaged in the high $20,000s.

Friends of the couple say that Higgs was quiet, distant and appeared seemingly content in Augustine's shadow. But all was not rosy, those same friends say - at least once, she had asked him to leave.

And public records indicate Higgs never had any ownership in Augustine's homes.

In September 2004 Augustine's once-meteoric political career had hit the skids when she admitted violating state ethics laws during her 2002 re-election campaign.

Augustine became the first Nevada state constitutional officer to be impeached by the Assembly in November 2004. Following a weeklong trial in the Nevada Senate, she was found guilty on one count and censured, but allowed to remain in office.

She was fined a record $15,000 by the state Ethics Commission, and made $500-a-month payments on the fine until November 2005, when she paid off the balance five months after refinancing her Las Vegas home.

Higgs' name popped up in media reports in March 2005, when he filed a complaint with the Nevada Ethics Commission against Sen. Steven Horsford, D-North Las Vegas, claiming there were irregularities with some of Horsford's campaign contributions.

Horsford says that the complaint was merely retaliation for his criticisms of Augustine during her impeachment trial, but the senator later filed some amended campaign reports.

Augustine, meanwhile, was retrenching.

Unable to seek a third term as controller because of term limitations, last January she announced her candidacy for state treasurer. She would be running, however, without the support of the Nevada Republican Party, which in May voted to deny help for any impeached or similarly disciplined candidates.

Despite her death, her name will remain on the ballot for the Aug. 15 primary. If she wins, a replacement nominee will be designated - by the same party that disowned her.

On July 8, Chaz Higgs found Kathy Augustine unconscious, without a pulse and not breathing. After he tried to resuscitate her, Higgs told authorities, paramedics were called and took her to Washoe Medical Center. She died three days later.

At a subsequent news conference, Higgs said her cardiac arrest resulted from campaign stress, and that his wife had complained of stomach pain and heartburn in the days prior to her attack.

Preliminary results of an autopsy found there was no evidence that Augustine had long-term heart disease, Reno Police said.

And not everyone subscribes to the death-from-stress theory.

Augustine, 50, thrived on controversy, Tiffany says. "I don't believe that would have caused a heart attack," she says, adding that her friend never took drugs, nor drank alcohol. "Even when she was in the roughest times, the toughest times, she was above it."

Two days after Augustine's death, Higgs told reporters he had nothing to gain financially from his wife's death as her estate was left to her daughter, Dallas Augustine.

The following day, Dallas kicked in a bedroom door and found Higgs with his wrists slit and a suicide note, Metro Police said. Higgs, 42, was treated and released from University Medical Center the same day.

Under Nevada law, those who attempt suicide can be held for observation for up to 72 hours without a court hearing. The attending physician, however, may release the patient at any time if the doctor does not believe the patient is a threat to himself or others.

Higgs did not attend Augustine's funeral, the day after his suicide attempt, and neighbors say he has not been seen recently around the couple's Las Vegas residence - a huge two-story structure with three pillars, located on a cul-de-sac. The long vertical blinds inside the home are drawn shut, and the driveway and separate garage are void of vehicles.

He also did not attend a memorial service for her last week in Carson City.

Since the controller's death, Charles Augustine's relatives have asked authorities to exhume his body for examination if toxicology results from Kathy Augustine's autopsy are suspicious.

Dallas Augustine and Chaz Higgs did not return Sun phone calls seeking comment, nor has anyone responded to a note left at the Las Vegas home. Calls to the Augustine home in Reno, which also is listed in public records as a Higgs residence, have gone unanswered, and the voice mail says the electronic mailbox is full.

Reno Police have not had contact with Higgs for several days, but are not concerned, says Catalano, because there is no evidence of any crime and he is not a suspect.

And if the toxicology tests come back negative?

"The case," Catalano says, "will be closed."