Poor lady. She took good care of Gene until she couldn’t.
She did indeed. The whole episode presented itself as a major medical mystery - both she and Gene (and the dog) were dead, described as partially mummified, and investigators first had to eliminate foul play and then carbon monoxide poisoning. Major TV networks set up cameras at the entrance to their gated subdivision - a well known movie star was dead and so was his wife, what happened??
Then it became known that he died five to six days after his wife, how could that be?? In the end, he died of heart disease complicated by severe Alzheimer's disease. He hadn't eaten in several days but had hydrated by drinking water. He may not have known that his wife had died, maybe he just wondered, at semi-coherent times, where she was?
She was found in her bathroom dead on the floor. There was an open bottle of Tylenol with scattered pills. A possible overdose but with what?? No opioids or other narcotic drugs were found. What happened?? She had come down with the flu and had gone to the CVS to pick up some medicine. The morning of her death she called her private physician and made an appointment for that afternoon. She never kept it.
So it was a medical mystery - she was healthy and active, no sign of foul play or drugs .... It took forensic testing to come up with the answer - hantavirus, specifically the Sin Nombre variant comment to the US southwest. And the dog?? It had just come back from the vet and was in a doggie crate. It died of starvation and dehydration.
A story so strange and unusual that it engaged the imagination of the public, a famous movie star and his wife both dead, why? How? To the credit of the NM Health Department, they have dealt with these type of deaths in the past 30 years. Another one is death by the plague. Both are caused by rodents, the latter those with fleas carrying plague bacteria. Both are dangerous but the plague, with antibiotics usually can be controlled in a patient. The hantavirus is much harder to treat and more likely to result in a fatality.