The body of Charles Augustine will be exhumed from Paradise Memorial Gardens in Las Vegas. Photo by Ralph Fountain. Chaz Higgs Critical-care nurse is innocent in the death of his wife, defense attorney says

As Chaz Higgs appeared in a Virginia court Monday for the first time on a charge of fatally poisoning his wife, Nevada Controller Kathy Augustine, Las Vegas authorities were preparing to dig up the body of Augustine's previous husband to try to determine whether he had been slain in a similar way.

Las Vegas police Lt. Lew Roberts confirmed officials with the Clark County coroner's office plan to exhume Charles Augustine's body from an east Las Vegas grave in the coming days.

Once the body is exhumed, District Attorney David Roger said, authorities plan to conduct toxicology tests for the presence of succinylcholine, the same drug that authorities allege Higgs used to poison Kathy Augustine in July.

Roger said he consulted famed medical examiner Dr. Michael Baden on Monday to determine whether toxicology tests on Charles Augustine's body could identify the presence of succinylcholine, considering that Charles Augustine was buried nearly three years ago.

"I was told (by Baden) that if the decedent was injected intravenously with the drug, it would be unlikely you would find any remnants of the drug," Roger said. "However, if the decedent was injected in muscle tissue, there would be a decent chance of finding it."

The plan to exhume the body of Charles Augustine stems from allegations that Higgs killed his 50-year-old wife by injecting her with the paralyzing drug at the couple's Northern Nevada home on July 8. She died in a Reno hospital on July 11.

Higgs' defense attorney, Alan Baum, said Monday Higgs is innocent.

"He's a caregiver, not a life taker," Baum said.

Authorities said toxicology tests confirmed the presence of succinylcholine in Kathy Augustine's urine, prompting Reno detectives to arrest Higgs in Virginia on a murder charge Friday. Higgs was visiting relatives at the time.

Higgs had been Charles Augustine's nurse at Sunrise Hospital and Medical Center when Charles Augustine died in 2003 at the age of 63. His official cause of death was listed as complications from a stroke. He had been hospitalized after suffering a stroke but appeared to be recovering when he suddenly died.

No autopsy was performed on Charles Augustine, and three weeks after his death, Higgs and Kathy Augustine married in Hawaii.

Charles Augustine's relatives have told authorities they would approve of an exhumation so that the exact cause of his death can be fully investigated.

"I am very happy with the way all the officers are working," Charles Augustine's son, Greg Augustine, said Monday. "They have been so professional in the way they are handling the case."

He declined further comment.

A spokeswoman for the Clark County Coroner's Office also declined comment on the plan to exhume Charles Augustine's body.

Glenda McCartney, director of marketing at Sunrise, said she could not discuss Higgs' prior employment there or any patient records at the hospital because of federal privacy law. As far as she knew, the hospital had not been contacted by authorities yet, she said, but the hospital would cooperate fully with any request for information from police.

Higgs, meanwhile, appeared in court Monday for the first time the criminal division of the General District Court of Hampton, Va., and waived his right to fight extradition to Nevada.

Washoe County District Attorney Richard Gammick expects Higgs could be back in Nevada in about a week.

Baum said Higgs had kept Reno detectives abreast of his whereabouts since the start of the investigation into Kathy Augustine's death. Baum also said Higgs stood to gain nothing financially from his wife's death.

"It's as big a mystery to him as it is (to) everyone else," Baum said. "He was quite surprised when Kathy suffered her heart attack and subsequently died. Although he has medical training, he has no better explanation for her demise than anyone else."

"He has denied having anything to do with the death of Charles Augustine," Baum said.

Succinylcholine is a powerful muscle relaxant often used in emergency rooms to help doctors insert breathing tubes into patients. It can be lethal if a patient's respiration is not ensured by medical professionals.

Higgs told police and the media that he found his wife unconscious, and he figured she suffered a heart attack brought on by stress, though she was in good health. Augustine was campaigning for state treasurer at the time of her death.

Authorities, however, were suspicious.

In a news conference in Reno on Monday, Reno police Deputy Chief Michael Poehlman said police in Hampton found literature about succinylcholine in Higgs' car when they arrested him about 5:40 p.m. Friday in front of his brother's house.

The blue BMW he was driving had Nevada plates and was registered in the names of Higgs and Kathy Augustine.

Poehlman said Reno police had secured a search warrant following Augustine's death and searched the couple's Reno home.

They found drugs typically used in hospitals, but not succinylcholine.

Higgs was arrested on a warrant from the Reno police. His nursing license also was suspended by the Nevada Board of Nursing, and full disciplinary proceedings are scheduled to be considered in another hearing in November.

Reno police on Monday credited suspicious Washoe Medical Center doctors with securing the evidence they needed to charge Higgs. Poehlman said doctors at the center, now called Renown Regional Medical Center, were concerned from the beginning that Augustine was not ill from natural causes when the comatose state controller was admitted to the hospital on July 8.

Soon after she was brought to the hospital, doctors took both blood and urine samples, freezing them in case they would needed for testing later, he said.

"That was good work by folks in the hospital, by the treating physicians," Poehlman said. "They felt something was suspicious about the circumstances. They requested the samples be held."

Two days later Reno police were contacted by a nurse at Carson-Tahoe Hospital who told them that Higgs, a critical care nurse at her hospital, had boasted to her on July 7 that if you wanted to kill your spouse, an injection of succinylcholine was the way to go because it was undetectable.

After receiving that tip, Poehlman said detectives spoke with doctors at Washoe Medical Center who took more samples and detected a needle puncture wound on Augustine's buttock.

Augustine never regained consciousness before she died on July 11.

Poehlman said during a news conference that he does not know what motive Higgs had to kill his wife.

Augustine family members said last week that the controller left Higgs only the couple's vehicles and some personal items in her will. She left the bulk of her estate, including two homes and a $500,000 annuity, to her 27-year-old daughter, Dallas Augustine.

But Augustine's brother, Phil Alfano, said Higgs may not have known he would receive little in the event his wife died.

Poehlman said the technology to detect succinylcholine has been developed only in the last five years.

Only a couple of laboratories in the United States, including the FBI National Crime Laboratory in Quantico, Va., are able to detect its presence in blood or urine samples, he said.

"It deteriorates rapidly in the body," Poehlman said. "If it is not detected fairly quickly, it would be undetectable."

He also said that people injected with succinylcholine are paralyzed almost immediately unless they are given counteracting drugs.

Cheri Glockner, a spokeswoman for Carson-Tahoe Regional Medical Center, said Higgs had been at the hospital for three weeks prior to Kathy Augustine's death.

When asked if all of the hospital's succinylcholine was accounted for, Glockner said: "We are confident that all of the correct procedures were followed as far as proper maintenance of controlled substances."

Higgs obtained an associate's degree in nursing from Craven Community College in Newbern, N.C., in 2002. He was licensed by the state of Nevada that same year, and he has worked at least three hospitals in the state. He had worked at Renown, in addition to his stints at Sunrise and Carson-Tahoe Regional Medical Center.

A federal bankruptcy filing shows that while in the Navy in Virginia, he also worked at a medical clinic for at least 16 months.