Category: Poisoning

Last week’s blog post presented the case of Barbara “Bloody Babs” Graham. California executed Graham and two men for murdering an elderly widow in 1953. This week, we look at Chaz Higgs and the murder of his wife, Nevada politician Kathy Augustine.

Kathy Augustine

Kathy Augustine was born into an Italian-American family in Los Angeles. After college, she worked as a flight scheduler for Delta Airlines and, briefly after 1988, as a flight attendant. She had two short marriages, both ending in divorce, before she married Delta Airlines pilot Charles Augustine in 1986.

Kathy Augustine in Politics

In 1992, Kathy entered politics (she had a master’s degree in public administration), running for the Nevada Assembly. She won despite criticism that some of her campaign literature had a racial slant (her opponent was African American). After completing one term in the Assembly, Kathy defeated incumbent Lori Lipman Brown for a seat in the Nevada Senate. This campaign also drew criticism for inaccurate claims made about Brown’s positions on issues.

In 1998, Kathy won election as Nevada’s first female state controller.

Kathy’s career suffered a setback when, in September 2004, she faced charges that she violated state ethics laws. The state Ethics Commission fined her $15,000 for using state personnel and equipment for her personal reelection campaign. The Nevada Assembly impeached her, ultimately convicting her on one charge but acquitting her on three others. The Assembly censured her, but she was allowed to stay in office.

Kathy Augustine and Chaz Higgs

In August 2003, Charles Augustine suffered a stroke and died on August 19. Charles “Chaz” Higgs was one of the critical care nurses caring for him in the hospital.

Three weeks after Charles’s death, Kathy Augustine and Chaz Higgs married.

The Murder of Kathy Augustine

On July 8, 2006, Kathy was found unconscious in her Reno home. She died three days later, on July 11, without regaining consciousness.

Early reports stated that Kathy’s cause of death was a heart attack. Police soon suspected foul play, however. For one thing, Chaz Higgs allegedly made suspicious remarks to a co-worker about how to kill someone undetectably. FBI forensic tests later found trace amounts of the paralyzing drug succinylcholine in Kathy’s system. Succinylcholine leaves the body very quickly and is often difficult to detect.

On July 14, Higgs attempted suicide by cutting his wrists in the couple’s Las Vegas home. He survived and remained free for two months until police arrested him in Hampton, Virginia, on September 29, 2006. He was extradited back to Nevada to stand trial for murder.

Epilogue

On June 29, 2007, a Reno jury convicted Chaz Higgs of murder. He was sentenced to life in prison with a chance for parole after twenty years. In May 2009, the Nevada Supreme Court upheld his conviction. Today (summer 2023), Chaz resides at the Northern Nevada Correctional Center in Carson City, Nevada.

You can read more about the Kathy Augustine murder in Gary C. King’s An Almost Perfect Murder.

The true crime television series Forensic Files featured the Augustine case in a 2008 episode titled Political Thriller.

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Last week, I presented the sad case of Tera Smith. Tera was only sixteen when she vanished from Redlands, California. More than twenty years later, her disappearance remains unsolved. This week’s case is that of the many-married Shirley Allen. In 1982, Shirley poisoned her sixth husband with ethylene glycol. She probably poisoned at least two of her previous husbands as well, one fatally.

Shirley Allen

Shirley Allen entered the world as Shirley Elizabeth Goude in 1941 in St. Louis, Missouri. Little information exists about her early life, but she was obviously unlucky in love. She married a total of six times to five different men. Several of her husbands developed health problems shortly after the wedding.

In October 1968, Shirley married her first husband, Joe Sinclair. Eight months later, Shirley tried to get rid of him with rat poison. Sinclair informed authorities, but they did not file any charges. Instead, Sinclair wisely divorced Shirley and got away from her.

Shirley married for the fifth time in 1977, when she wed John Gregg. The following year, after being married to Shirley for less than twelve months, Gregg collapsed and died. Initially, authorities ruled it a natural death. Shirley had hoped to collect on Gregg’s life insurance. She was furious when she learned he’d recently changed the beneficiary of the policy, leaving her nothing.

Shirley Allen Poisons Husband Number Six

Lloyd Allen married Shirley in 1981, her final spin of the matrimonial wheel. Lloyd’s health soon began a precipitous decline. When he complained that his drinks tasted “off,” Shirley explained she’d added iron supplements “for his health.” Unfortunately for him, he took her at her word. Lloyd Allen died on November 1, 1982, leaving behind a $25,000 life insurance policy.

Whispers about the unnatural nature of Lloyd’s death began to circulate. An autopsy determined Lloyd’s body contained a lethal amount of ethylene glycol. Ethylene glycol is a sweet-tasting, odorless substance. It is the main ingredient in automotive antifreeze and is a deadly poison if ingested. With an autopsy confirming foul play, police arrested Shirly on November 6.

Shirley Allen went on trial two years later in Rolla, Missouri. Her two daughters from a previous marriage, Norma Hawkins, 18, and Paula Hawkins, 17, agreed to testify for the prosecution if they didn’t seek the death penalty. On the stand, the girls testified they’d seen Shirley put antifreeze in Lloyd’s drinks. They also said Shirley sent them to buy antifreeze so she could “finish him [Lloyd] off.” And they further testified that their mother sent them to look for tainted Tylenol capsules in the wake of the infamous Chicago Tylenol poisonings.

Epilogue

It took the jury less than three hours and only three votes to convict Shirley Allen of first-degree murder. With the death penalty off the table, the judge sentenced her to life in prison without the possibility of parole for at least 50 years. Shirly died in prison on April 2, 1998. She was 56 or 57 years old (her exact birthdate is uncertain).

Some sources report that another husband, Daniel Null, died mysteriously. Authorities exhumed the body, but an autopsy failed to reveal proof of ethylene glycol poisoning.

The Discovery Channel series Evil Lives Here featured the Shirley Allen case in Episode 11 of Season 5, Poisoned by Love.

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Like last week’s case, this week deals with murder by poison. But this time, it happened on the West Coast of the United States in a suburb of Seattle, Washington. There Stella Nickell poisoned two people trying to get her husband’s life insurance money.

Bruce and Stella Nickell

Stella Maudine Stephenson was a native of Colton, Oregon. By age 16 she was pregnant with her first daughter, Cindy Hamilton. She later moved to Southern California where she married and had another daughter. Stella also had more than her share of legal troubles. These included convictions for fraud and forgery and a charge of beating Cindy with a curtain rod.

Stella met Bruce Nickell in 1974. Bruce worked as a heavy equipment operator and had a fondness for alcohol. Bruce’s heavy drinking suited Stella just fine. Later, however, he entered rehab and gave up the bottle. Stella resented Bruce’s newfound sobriety because it deprived her of their visits to bars. Her bar-hopping drastically reduced, Stella began to request more night shifts at her baggage-screener job at SEA-TAC airport. To fill the now empty hours at home, she began keeping a home aquarium.

In 1986, the Nickells lived in Auburn, Washington, a suburb south of Seattle not far from SEA-TAC airport. On June 5, Bruce came home from work with a headache. As Stella told it, he took four extra-strength Excedrin capsules before collapsing minutes later. Rushed to Harborview Medical Center, Bruce did not respond to doctors’ efforts to revive him. He died shortly after arriving. Authorities ruled his death to be from natural causes—emphysema, the attending physicians said.

Another Death in Auburn

Less than a week later, Sue Snow, a 40-year-old bank manager took two extra-strength Excedrin capsules for an early-morning headache. Sue’s husband also took two capsules from the bottle for his arthritis before leaving for work. At 6:30 a.m., Snow’s 15-year-old daughter, Hayley, found her lying on the bathroom floor, unresponsive and with only a faint pulse. Paramedics rushed her to Harborview, but she died without regaining consciousness.

Snow’s suspicious death triggered an autopsy. During the autopsy, an assistant medical examiner noticed the odor of bitter almonds, a tell-tale indicator of cyanide. Tests confirmed that Snow had died from acute cyanide poisoning.

Investigation

Death by cyanide poisoning was big news in Washington. After all, it had been less than four years since the unsolved Tylenol poisonings in the Chicago area. When another bottle of contaminated Excedrin turned up at a grocery store in Kent, the manufacturer, Bristol-Myers launched an immediate recall of all Excedrin in the Seattle area. The company followed this on June 20 with a recall of all their non-prescription capsule products.

In the face of the publicity blitz, Stella Nickell came forward on June 19. She told authorities that her husband had died suddenly after taking Excedrin. The bottle had the same lot number as the bottle in Sue Snow’s home. Investigators exhumed Bruce Nickell’s body and found evidence of cyanide. They also found cyanide in two bottles of Excedrin capsules Stella turned over to the police.

The FDA quickly ruled out Bristol-Myers, as the source of the cyanide. Investigators concluded they were dealing with product tampering. This, in turn, brought in the FBI. Sue Snow’s husband, Paul Webking, agreed to undergo a polygraph examination and passed. Stella refused, her lawyer saying she was too shaken up. (Note: Polygraph tests are not evidence and failing or refusing to take one is not evidence of guilt).

Stella Nickell Under Suspicion

Gradually suspicion hardened on Stella Nickell. For one thing, authorities found only five contaminated bottles of painkillers in all of King County. Stella had two of them. She claimed to have bought the two bottles at different times in different stores. The odds of her selecting two contaminated bottles by random chance were astronomical.

Other evidence pointed to Stella. The FBI laboratory determined that the contaminated capsules contained small particles of an algicide called Algae Destroyer. Investigators verified that Stella had bought Algae Destroyer from a local aquarium supply store. They speculated she used the same container to crush both the Algae Destroyer and the cyanide without washing it.

Then there was the insurance. Stella had taken out $76,000 of life insurance on Bruce. But the policy would pay an additional $100,000 if he died from accidental causes. Like cyanide poisoning. Examination showed that Bruce’s signatures on at least two of the policies in his name were forgeries.

Enter Cindy Hamilton

Despite a strong circumstantial case, there was no direct proof that Stella Nickell had bought or used cyanide. The clincher came when Stella’s oldest daughter, Cindy Hamilton, contacted police. She told them her mother had often spoken of wanting Bruce dead. She claimed Stella admitted to researching poisons and told her of an unsuccessful attempt to poison Bruce with foxglove.

Records from the Auburn Public Library showed Stella had checked out numerous books on poisoning. The records tended to confirm at least that part of Hamilton’s story.

On December 9, 1987, a federal grand jury indicted Stella Nickell on five counts of product tampering. Police arrested her the same day, and she went on trial in April 1988.

Stella Nickell Convicted

The jury convicted Stella on all counts on May 9, after five days of deliberation. The judge sentenced her to two 90-year terms for tampering with the bottles that caused the deaths of Bruce and Sue Snow. The other three charges each drew a 10-year term. win all terms to run concurrently.

Epilogue

Stella appealed her conviction but none of her appeals succeeded. Her lawyers have also petitioned, unsuccessfully, for a new trial. She continues to maintain her innocence, saying that Cindy lied to get the $300,000 reward money (she received $250,000). She became eligible for parole in 2018 but remains in prison. Her release date is set for July 10, 2040, when she will be almost 97 years old.

The Seattle cyanide poisonings are the subject of several true-crime television episodes and at least one book Gregg Olsen’s Bitter Almonds, published in 2013.

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