GOP Family Values: Husband of NV Candidate who Died Attempts Suicide

[BurtWorm]

They were married three weeks after her former husband died unexpectedly as a patient under his care.



http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/27/AR2006072701525.html?nav=rss_politics

Candidate's Death Piques Interest Across Nevada
Reno Police Await Autopsy Results on State Controller

By Sonya Geis
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, July 28, 2006; Page A03

LAS VEGAS, July 27 -- A healthy Nevada politician suddenly dies. Two days later, her husband attempts suicide. Her husband, it emerges, was strangely close to the death of the politician's previous husband.

The death of state controller Kathy Augustine, a 50-year-old Republican candidate for state treasurer who was the only Nevada state elected official ever to be impeached and convicted, is the talk of Nevada. Reno police, and a lot of curious bystanders, are waiting for autopsy results to see whether this turns into a full-blown murder mystery.


"It raises all of our eyebrows," Reno police Lt. Jon Catalano said of the circumstances surrounding Augustine's death. Reno police opened an investigation and brought in extra help from the state Investigation Division.

Augustine was campaigning hard for an Aug. 15 election when, her husband, Chaz Higgs, said, he found her on the floor of their Reno home on July 8. Having apparently suffered a heart attack, Augustine died in a hospital three days later.

Because she had seemed healthy, Catalano said, police searched the home and ordered an autopsy. "If, during the medical examination, they would have seen a completely occluded coronary artery, that would have been the end of it," he said. Instead, the autopsy results were inconclusive. Toxicology results from an FBI lab in Virginia are expected as early as Friday.

Three days after Augustine's death, Higgs, 42, was found at home with his wrists slashed and a suicide note nearby. He was treated and released from a hospital. He did not attend his wife's funeral the next day.

[BurtWorm]

1. kick

[tanyev]

2. Well, well, well.

I'm so glad he did not successfully commit suicide. That would be too easy.