In a cocoon of their making

On the evening of July 10, rising art star Jeremy Blake returned to his New York apartment, a converted rectory at St. Mark's Church in-the-Bowery that he shared with his girlfriend, Theresa Duncan. The couple, extremely devoted and still very much in love after 12 years, had eaten a late lunch together, and Blake invited the church's assistant pastor over for a drink.

According to Father Frank Morales, Blake was the first to discover Duncan -- a blogger, screenwriter and video-game designer -- lying prone in the bedroom. "He was crying, visibly shattered," said Morales, who entered the apartment five minutes behind Blake. "He was sobbing, kicking the walls, putting his head in his hands. But that night he got a grip fairly quickly." A suicide note, a bottle of pills and alcohol were found near the body, police said.

Friends rushed to Blake's side, including some from Los Angeles, where the couple had lived for several years, and the Washington area, where Blake was raised. "It was on the table: This guy's an extreme suicide risk," Morales said. "Six to 10 people took it in shifts looking after him. We had him blanketed."

But after a week of supervision, Blake was "pulling at the leash," Morales said, and returned to his day job as a graphic designer at the video game manufacturer Rockstar Games.

On July 17, a day before Duncan's funeral outside Detroit, Blake took the subway heading for Brooklyn, where he was meeting a friend. A short while later, a woman phoned police when she observed the 6-foot-2 artist wander into the surf off New York's Rockaway Beach, leaving behind his clothing, wallet and a short, hand-written suicide note. A fisherman discovered Blake's body off the coast of New Jersey five days later.

The double suicide of this glamorous, well-connected and attractive couple has baffled and fixated branches of the Hollywood film community, the art world and the blogosphere. In the days since their deaths, a clearer picture has emerged of a couple bound very tightly but suspicious of outsiders and increasingly losing touch with reality. Though he was selling work at top art galleries, she had suffered a big disappointment when Paramount put a screenplay of hers into turnaround. And Blake and Duncan were sure people were conspiring against them -- in particular, the Church of Scientology.