How an Okatie marriage became a fatal attraction

It is hard to imagine two people who had less in common than Catherine "Cathy" Kaminsky Aust and Jose Herrera.

A native of East Orange, N.J., Aust worked as counselor for troubled children at Okatie Elementary School, was a mother of two and a grandmother. A meticulous organizer and planner, she had a soft spot for damaged people and animals, family and friends said.

Herrera, a Los Angeles native with a long criminal record, was hiding out in Hardeeville from parole violation charges that stemmed from a 2005 drug possession conviction. His arms were covered with gang-style tattoos.

A large one on his neck read "INGLEWOOD," the section of L.A. he grew up in. The one on his scalp had a darker message: "Breaking Bitches."

He didn't mind a messy home and sometimes let Corona beer bottles fall where they may if he'd had a few after coming home from his landscaping job.

She was 42.

He was 25.

Despite those differences, the two, at least initially, seemed happy.

After being set up by a mutual friend in 2006, they were inseparable -- to the dismay of her family and friends.

Their love seemed indifferent to dissent.

"She used to say, 'He's my soul mate,' " said Cindy Duggan, a longtime friend of Aust's. "I never saw it, and I know no one else noticed what she saw in him, but she was crazy about him."

The couple eloped six months after they met and were married in the Jasper County Courthouse.

They moved into Aust's mobile home in Okatie.

Her friends and neighbors said any honeymoon period the couple had was short-lived.

There were hours-long arguments as the differences between them began to wear on the relationship.

The last fight they had, about Herrera's family, ended around 10 p.m. Sept. 16, 2007, when Herrera fired a single .22 caliber bullet into the back of Aust's head in the bathroom of their home at 150 Cherry Point Road.

On Wednesday, an eight-man, four-woman jury convicted Herrera of murder.

He was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

While Aust's friends and family found some comfort in that verdict, it won't bring back what they want most.

"A mother should never have to bury a child," Aust's mother, Betty Everhart, said. "... I've lost my daughter, and another mother has lost her son, but I think she lost him a long time ago."

'BECAUSE I LOVE HIM ...'

The Kaminsky family was shocked by Aust's choice of a boyfriend when she introduced Herrera shortly after the two began dating.

The age difference, Herrera's tattoos and his criminal past made them nervous, family members said.

But Aust was convincing and assured her family she knew what she was doing.

Herrera promised them he was working to turn his life around.

He moved from Los Angeles to Hardeeville to escape his troubles, his attorney said during the trial. He took a job at a landscaping company and settled down with Aust.

Reluctantly, her family decided to give him a chance.

"I don't care about your tattoos, your race, where you come from or your past. If my aunt said you were an OK person, you were OK to me," Chris Kaminsky, Aust's nephew, said last week.

It was the sort of close-knit response someone from a loving family would make.

Aust came from a large Polish family and was the sixth of eight children.

She grew up in a suburb of Newark, where as a child she longed for a climate warm enough where she could play outside. She held the memories of family vacations to the Florida Keys close, letting them warm her through the cold, East Coast winters.

"Her face would just light up when she was around the water," her mother Betty said. "She took to it like a fish."

Aust learned early on that her charm and humor, coupled with the sheer force of her will, was the best way to get noticed, her family said.

That dominating confidence and her booming, Jersey-accent made her unforgettable, they said.

As a consequence, there was no real way to fight her decision when Aust introduced Herrera to her family.

She was, she said, in love. And that was that.

But while her family opened its arms to Herrera, her friends and coworkers didn't.

Aust began to change, they said, and, as far as they were concerned, Herrera was to blame.

Her lavish Halloween parties and the frequent get-togethers stopped.

She quit going out for a Michelob Ultra at Sunset Pizza after work with friends.

She retreated into her new life with Herrera, friends said.

"I didn't know why she was with him, and I asked her about it one day because we were worried for her," Okatie Elementary principal Jamie Pinckney said. "She said 'Because I love him, and I can make a difference in him.' "

That was Aust's approach to life in a microcosm, those who knew her said.

She spent much of her life trying to make a difference, friends said. She counseled troubled kids at the school, and the students loved and respected her.

Teachers joked that no matter how badly a kid misbehaved, a quick glance from Ms. Aust would set them straight.

Teachers called it "the look."

In the weeks before her death, a group of Okatie Elementary teachers planned to confront her about Herrera and tell her it wasn't too late to leave him.

She was murdered before that discussion could happen.

THE 'TOUGH GUY'

Aust bought the tan mobile home where she would die from a friend.

It was near the end of a dead-end, dirt road close to Okatie Elementary School. One drives to it by bearing right at a fork in the road and continuing beneath a tunnel of overhanging pine and oak trees. The mobile home sat on a 100-foot-by-100-foot plot that she and Herrera rented for $300 a month.

Aust bought the mobile home shortly after she broke off her on-again, off-again relationship with her ex-husband, John Aust, in the spring of 2006.

Herrera moved in a few months later.

The neighborhood is dotted by small homes. Those who live there like the way the sun slants through the tree canopy. They like the country feel of the place and the peacefulness of the nearby marsh. Most of all, they like the quiet that comes with living in a rural area.

All of that was interrupted by the blaring music and the loud arguments coming from inside the Herrera home, neighbors said.

The only thing louder than the Tejano rap music blasting from Herrera's stereo was the fighting between the couple, they said.

Neighbors say the couple's days often were punctuated by shouting matches, slamming doors and the sound of Herrera's Escort roaring up the dirt road and away from the house.

Aust tried to keep up appearances for friends. But most of them realized the relationship was in trouble.

"We all talked," Duggan said of the neighbors. "And she would make it all sound like it was all roses, but everyone could hear the fighting. Everyone knew things weren't going well."

Aust's then 11-year-old daughter from her previous marriage lived with the couple. The girl stayed with her dad on the weekends.

The fights always were worse on the weekends.

When the child was there, Aust did all she could to keep her from hearing the arguments, those who knew her said. She drove the girl to a friend's home or had a neighbor baby-sit, friends said.

But there were other dangers as well.

Herrera liked weapons, Solicitor Duffie Stone said.

It was another difference between the two.

Herrera collected weapons.

Aust collected animals. She had birds, rabbits, turtles, cats and other pets she had cared for.

Herrera owned a set of brass knuckles with a built-in, spring-loaded blade, an assortment of knives, a shotgun and the small, black .22-caliber revolver he would use to kill Aust, Stone said.

The couple had found the battered gun near a creek while taking a walk together, Herrera would tell investigators after his arrest.

The revolver, an investigator testified, had a rusted chamber and was held together by a screw beneath the barrel.

Herrera told investigators he kept it for Aust's protection. It stayed on her night table, and the hammer always was cocked, he told police.

Lauren Carroway, Herrera's public defender, told the jury during his murder trial he never meant to hurt Aust. He picked up the gun simply to make the fighting stop, she said.

On the day of her death, the two were arguing about why Herrera's uncle in Savannah never came to visit, he told investigators.

Two hours after the fight started, Herrera shot his wife in the back of the head as she most likely reached for toilet paper.

"He thinks he's a tough guy," Stone said after the trial. "Now, he'll spend the rest of his life living around even tougher guys."

'OUR CATHY'

Teachers and administrators at Okatie Elementary chartered a bus to Beaufort for Aust's funeral.

They sang songs and played the guitar and told their favorite Cathy joke or story.

The somber ceremony, filled with weeping and psalms, wasn't Aust's style.

She had flair and an attitude that demanded celebration, friends and family said.

Knowing that, teachers met after the 2007-08 school year to have a send off Aust would have approved of. They had a few beers, shared some stories and kept it light-hearted. They remembered her at her best, as the caring friend she was.

While the three-day trial provided some closure for the family, it stirred many unresolved feelings for teachers and students at Okatie Elementary.

Aust made the daily intercom announcements about bus arrivals. For months after her death, faculty still expected to hear her loud, Jersey voice over the speakers, Hunt said.

Her death left a void within the administration that has been hard to fill, they said.

School staff planted a weeping willow tree in her honor on school grounds and placed a bench beneath it.

Aust was cremated. Her family set her ashes free on a sandbar in Port Royal Sound. They knew she'd want to be near the water.

It was the same sandbar where she and her daughter used to hunt for shark's teeth at low tide.

"That was always my favorite thing to do with my mom," Madison Aust, now 13, said. "We loved to go out there and dig around. She was so happy doing that."

Madison moved back with her father to Hardeeville and has begun caring for nearly all the animals her mother adopted. Madison wants to be a veterinarian when she grows up.

Herrera will be moved to Lieber Correctional Institute in Ridgeville later this week for processing, officials said.

His name is not on the memorial plaque family members bought for Aust.

"To us, the time she was with Jose never happened," nephew Chris said.

"She isn't a Herrera ... She's our Cathy."