What happened next is something of an enigma. Perhaps traumatized by yet another undoing at the hands of Bond, or the rejection of the lovely Countess Teresa, or maybe just mentally exhausted from transferring between hosts so many times, Ernie seemingly suffered some manner of mental breakdown in 1970. This time he sought out not one, but four new hosts, and then set about subjecting them to a long and complicated regimen of mud baths, plastic surgeries, and vocal modifications to make them all appear identical. What's more, he chose as his template host a rather effete, silver-haired, aristocratic British gentleman, and then, in a clear indication of his growing personal paranoia, even fashioned feline doubles of himself.
SPECTREphiles also look back on this period, often mournfully, as the time when Ernie started wearing opulent diamond necklaces, indulging in a reclusive agoraphobic lifestyle, and surrounding himself with increasingly strange henchmen (including the likes of the flamboyant Mssrs. Kidd and Wint, and the bikini-clad Bambi and Thumper). He moved his operations to Las Vegas, of all places, and sequestered himself in the lavish penthouse apartment of enigmatic industrialist Willard Whyte. Thus, in his most convoluted setup yet, Ernie was now a cat masquerading as four identical men, who were in turn masquerading as an eccentric American billionaire.
Having discarded all thoughts of becoming a recognized aristocrat (or ever receiving any manner of pardon), Ernie let his schemes swing back to the wildly maniacal, and instructed his increasingly confused minions that his new project would require "Diamonds! Thousands of sparkling diamonds! Pretty diamonds up in the sky!"
As usual, though, the tediously predictable Bond was not far behind, and he quickly dispatched two of Ernie's new Blofelds... in hot mud, no less. Before long, Britain's top pain-in-the-ass was dropping in uninvited at Ernie's Vegas penthouse, where he rudely kicked around one of his cat-doubles and then did away with Blofeld #3, which sent Ernie into a fit of rage (which he took out in part on his now-useless personal double).
Ernie's next series of moves represent what those closest to him considered to be his final mental break. First, he remanded Bond into the "care" of two wildly unpredictable and obliquely ineffective assassins (perhaps revealing a hidden desire to keep Bond alive as a now-inextricable component of his own fractured psyche?). And then he commanded his remaining host to take him on a nice stroll through the casinos and streets of Las Vegas... in drag.
At this point, Ernie had become so unhinged that most agree there was no way for his scheme not to go sour. The details of Ernie's final escape from his burning oil rig are unclear, but it is known that it involved an extremely long swim through shark-infested waters, followed by several weeks of aimless wandering in the Baja Peninsula. It is rumored that he seized telepathic control of the alpha-male in a herd of wild javelina and eventually became absolute ruler the Chihuahuan Desert; others claim he resurfaced in California as the real brains behind Hugo Drax's dobermans. |  "A little lower. Lower. Right there. Oh you. You complete me."
 Sadly, what happened in Vegas did not stay in Vegas.
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