Where funerals tend to be mournful occasions, exhumations (this one, anyway) can be humdrum. None of Augustine’s family members attended and any pretense of solemnity was erased by the buzz of 7 a.m. rush-hour traffic and the overhead roar of planes—life continuing amid death. Massed 20 yards away and waiting paparazzi-like behind police caution tape, a small army of media eagle-eyed the two dozen people (including county coroner Michael Murphy) on hand milling about the gravesite.
All told, less than an hour passed from when the backhoe pierced the earth to when six men in suits loaded the turquoise casket into the back of a white van for a trip to the coroner’s office for an autopsy that aims to confirm whether the 63-year-old Augustine indeed died of that stroke (as listed on his death certificate) or, as some suspect, of something more nefarious.
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The day after Augustine’s exhumation, I visit Murphy. He looks much the same as he did when he took the job three years ago: like a shorter, slightly more compact version of Telly Savalas. A few days after starting with the office, he worked his first exhumation. It was a case from 1980. A teenage girl had been stabbed, beaten and found near what it is now the intersection of Interstate 215 and Arroyo Grande.
"We did the exhumation on May 29, 2003," says Murphy, noting the deceased, nicknamed Jane "Arroyo Grande" Doe, inspired the coroner’s Cold Case Unit and its website featuring unidentified bodies. "There was speculation that someone had discovered a parental match in California. We needed DNA and dental records. We got the information we needed and re-interred the body. But there wasn’t a match."
The next exhumation he ordered came the next year, on August 24. It was a case of a tragic mix-up. John and Victoria Stevens moved here from California for health reasons, Murphy says. When John died, Victoria had him cremated and his remains shipped back to Bishop, California. Or so she thought. Her husband’s body had been accidentally switched with that of Steve Erwin. Both men were war veterans, says Murphy, which might have played a role in the mix-up. An exhumation confirmed that the body buried in the Boulder City Cemetery was that of John Stevens; Erwin’s remains were in California. Then came the tough part for Murphy: driving to Bishop and breaking the news to Victoria Stevens.
"I had a responsibility to make the trip," he says. "I first called her to say that we had some news regarding her husband. Then me and my assistant coroner drove to Bishop. On the seven-hour drive up there, I fretted over what I was going to say. I told the coroner there what I was doing and the office was supportive. I had a cop come so she would know we were legitimate. [When I got there] I asked if she scattered the cremains. I asked her to explain her dealings with the mortuary. Then I broke the news. She was visibly upset, but very understanding. She was surprised I made the trip. I asked her what she wanted—she wanted to get her husband’s remains—and I promised to do that."
Thirty days later, Victoria Stevens was reunited with her husband’s remains.
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With nearly 13,000 deaths each of the past few years—including more than 100 murders—and more than two dozen unsolved cases, you might think that exhumations were a frequent occurrence. Not so. Murphy’s seen four in three years. His predecessor, Ron Flud, the county’s first paid coroner, ordered six in his 19 years leading the office. And he’s certain there were few during the tenure of his former boss, Dr. Otto Ravenholt, who as chief health officer for the county, handled exhumations.
"There just haven’t been many over the years," says Flud, who retired in 2002 and now lives in Cedar City, Utah. "There’s no real record of exhumations, nothing that we’ve kept, anyway."
Back in the ’60s, Flud says, justices of the peace handled the procedure. Then Ravenholt took over. After apprenticing under him, Flud became coroner in January 1991. Of the half-dozen exhumations he ordered, he vividly remembers the homicides, the John or Jane Does dug up because new information surfaced that could possibly lead to solving the crime. One such exhumation involved a little girl, Michelle King, who was exhumed twice.
"There was an allegation that her mother and her friend were responsible for her death," Flud says. "The DA [District Attorney] bowed out because of a conflict of interest; he knew the victim’s mother. The state took over the investigation and found that when the child had gone to the hospital and died, the hospital did an in-house autopsy, which was inappropriate. The hospital also didn’t notify the coroner until the autopsy was complete. The girl was released to the funeral home and buried. When I came aboard, there was new evidence in the case. A California pathologist looked at the case and asked to exhume her. A year later, the state came back and wanted the body exhumed a second time, which was highly unusual."
Flud says the murder charge ended up getting overturned.
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On September 29, Chaz Higgs, 42, Kathy Augustine’s third husband, was arrested and charged with murder. Higgs, a critical care nurse by trade, is accused of poisoning his wife with a potent muscle relaxant. Higgs told authorities his wife died of a heart attack brought on by a stressful campaign for state treasurer; as controller, she was impeached in 2004 for campaign ethics violations.
Her death triggered interest in Charles Augustine’s demise. Higgs was the nurse who treated him in Sunrise Hospital and Medical Center after a stroke. Higgs and Kathy Augustine married three weeks after Charles’ death.
Back at the cemetery, all was silent but for chirping birds and the low hum of a John Deere-type lawnmower clipping grass on a plot 30 yards away.
After the backhoe did its thing, a group of men shoveled dirt, then dug with their hands, securing a strap around the casket. Once the coffin was lifted from the ground, it was placed on a gurney and photographed from every angle. Murphy told the media that it could take three to four months to get toxicology results.
In his office the day after, he stressed the seriousness and solemnity of the occasion: "We do so few of these that we don’t take them lightly."