By TIM JOHNSON And GLENN GARVIN

Gen. Augusto Pinochet, the army commander who ruled Chile for nearly 17 years and left a legacy of striking economic advancement and utter disrespect for human rights, died Sunday from heart complications. He was 91.

Pinochet's three decades on the forefront of history, which began with the bang of a brutal military coup, ended in whimpers of ill health and senility from his attorneys as they tried to keep him from facing charges for the several thousand murders carried out by his security forces.

By the time of his death he had even lost the respect of some of his supporters, following accusations of tax dodging and revelations in 2004 that he had stashed up to $17 million in secret accounts at the Riggs Bank in Washington and other banks in Britain, Switzerland and the Bahamas.

On Sept. 11, 1973, Pinochet helped carry out the coup that toppled the government of President Salvador Allende, the first openly Marxist head of state elected in the Western Hemisphere, and within months the general was the military regime's undisputed leader.

Even as he transformed Chile into a free market haven, Pinochet fashioned a repressive regime that snatched its opponents off the streets and sent hit squads as far as Buenos Aires, Rome and Washington to gun down or blow up its enemies.

Years later, a Chilean truth commission would estimate that 3,197 Chileans were killed by security forces and 250,000 more were imprisoned during Pinochet's rule.

The general showed a slight measure of repentance only a week after his 91st birthday Nov. 25, issuing a statement in which he said: ``Today, near the end of my days, I want to say that I harbor no rancor against anybody, that I love my fatherland above all and that I take political responsibility for everything that was done which had no other goal than making Chile greater and avoiding its disintegration.''

Earlier, he had told one judge during the legal wrangling that dominated the last years of his life that he was ``absolutely innocent of all of all the crimes and all the acts of which I am accused...the victim of a cowardly political-judicial plot.''

His enemies were just as adamant that the general could never be forgiven. ''The things he has done, the people I have seen killed in front of my face, I cannot forget these things,'' said exiled author Ariel Dorfman, who served in the Allende government that Pinochet toppled.

The 1973 coup and its subsequent brutality shocked Chileans and outsiders alike and ruptured the nation's reputation as one of the best-established democracies in Latin America.

In the early years of his rule, Pinochet struck many observers abroad as an archetypal Latin strong man, sporting dark glasses and a stern demeanor. It was a view the general encouraged. ''Not a leaf moves in Chile without my knowing about it,'' he once said.

His shrewd political instincts, however, helped him to steer his country toward modernity while keeping his opponents off balance. For a military strongman, he enjoyed a surprising amount of popular support. Throughout his rule, and after the 1990 transition to democracy, a large sector of Chileans remained grateful that he had put an end to the chaos of the 1970-73 Allende years, in which consumer goods grew scarce and Chile moved slowly toward socialism.

Luck, too, played a role in his ability to survive: He escaped nearly unscathed in September 1986 when Marxist guerrillas attacked his convoy of automobiles with rockets and gunfire on the outskirts of Santiago, an ambush that killed five of his bodyguards.

With no economic training himself, Pinochet and his advisors instituted free-market economic reforms that turned Chile into the model Latin American economy by the 1990s.

To this day, deep divisions cleave Chilean society over Pinochet's legacy.

''There is no half-way with Pinochet. People love him or they hate him,'' said Arturo Longton, a leader of the center-right National Renovation party.

How Chileans felt about Pinochet depended on their opinions of the more than 3,000 deaths blamed on his regime, the suffering they felt under the Allende government, and their view of the economic progress Chile has made in recent years.

''He's the biggest criminal in the history of our country,'' said Sola Sierra, head of the Association of Relatives of the Detained and Disappeared.

Striking an opposite chord, rightist legislator Iván Moreira described Pinochet as ``a liberator ... who brought democracy back to Chile.''

''He saved us from Marxism, from becoming a satellite colony of Soviet-Cuban imperialism,'' Moreira said.

Pinochet was born Nov. 25, 1915, in the bustling port of Valparaíso. He received a Roman Catholic education before entering the Military Academy in 1933.

His army career was superior -- but not noteworthy -- until events in 1973 pushed him into the history books. With the country wracked by strikes, demonstrations and shortages, and discontent in the military growing, Allende turned to Pinochet, whom he trusted, on Aug. 23, 1973, to become commander in chief of the army.

Nearly three weeks later, Pinochet and other military leaders betrayed the president, sending air force planes to bomb La Moneda, the presidential palace. Allende died during the attack, allegedly putting a gun to his own head.

As head of a military junta, Pinochet established a dreaded security force, known as DINA, to round up suspected Marxists, torture them and, often, kill them. States of siege and nightly curfews were frequent throughout his regime.

Condemnation fell on Pinochet, who became an outcast on the world stage. Washington cut off military arms sales to Chile, forcing it to set up its own military arms industry. Years later, in a painful public humiliation, Pinochet was flying to Manila to visit another strongman, Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos, when Marcos suddenly canceled the invitation.

By 1974, Pinochet moved from his post as leader of a military junta to president. Unfazed by criticism of his human rights atrocities, Pinochet became ever more aggressive against his opponents, at home and abroad.

A DINA hit squad bombed the car of outspoken critic Orlando Letelier along Washington's Embassy Row in September 1976, killing him and his American assistant, Ronni Moffitt. Another Pinochet foe, former Gen. Carlos Prats, was blown to bits outside his Buenos Aires garage by a bomb so powerful that pathologists couldn't even identify the body of his wife.

By the late 1970s, Pinochet established a team of economic advisers to redesign Chile's economy. Known popularly as the ''Chicago boys,'' the advisers were disciples of renowned economist Milton Friedman at the University of Chicago. With Pinochet's support, the advisers opened up the economy, ending the huge reliance on copper exports, which in 1973 provided 82 percent of its Chile's export income.

''No one knew what the country would export when it opened its economy, tore down tariffs, freed up prices and interest rates and began to privatize,'' El Mercurio newspaper recalled in 1998. ``With almost no exceptions, business owners screamed bloody murder, predicting the ruination of national industry by foreign competition.''

Not only did Chilean industry compete, it diversified and thrived. Chilean wines, fruit, salmon, wood and paper products now fill foreign shelves.

The reforms worked fitfully at first, and the economy suffered a serious reverse in 1982. Critics said they widened the gap between between Chile's rich and poor. And significant chunks of the economy, including the copper industry, remained in government hands. Nonetheless, the economy began sustained growth in 1984.

The expansion soon had Pinochet sounding like former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, boasting of downsized government and a strong economy. By the time Chileans voted in a ''yes'' or ''no'' plebiscite in October 1988 on whether they wanted Pinochet to remain in the presidency, he bragged of creating a nation of ``property owners, not proletarians.''

Pinochet lost the plebiscite by a 55-43 margin. Patricio Aylwin, a Christian Democrat, was elected president in December 1989 and replaced Pinochet as president in March 1990.

The deck remained stack in Pinochet's favor, though. Under the transition agreement, 10 of the 50 senators in the upper chamber were appointed or took seats without election, guaranteeing Pinochet virtual veto power in Congress on any important issue.

Pinochet did not give up his post as commander of the military until March 10, 1998. Then, abandoning his heavily-decorated gray officer's uniform for a pinstripe suit with a pearl tie clasp, he took a senate seat reserved for him, taking his place in a legislative body he had shut down 25 years earlier, among men he had imprisoned and driven into exile.

He doted on his wife and five children and toned down his strident criticism of the country's politicians. He had a heart pacemaker implanted in 1993, and apparently suffered a series of small strokes.

Try as he could, though, he was unable to shake the violent legacy of his early years in power.

It finally caught up with him in October 1998, when he visited London to undergo an operation for a herniated disc. At the request of a Spanish judge who had charged him with genocide, terrorism and torture, British police arrested Pinochet and began proceedings to extradite him to Madrid.

The arrest stood traditional notions of executive immunity -- not to mention legal jurisdiction -- on their head. Some world leaders were outraged. Margaret Thatcher called the detention ''disgraceful'' and added: ``Gen. Pinochet was a good friend to this country during the Falklands War. By his actions, the war was shortened, and many British lives were saved.''

The arrest in London emboldened others. There were moves immediately in Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay and Indonesia to bring ex-dictators and former security officials to trial on charges of old crimes. The organization Human Rights Watch even published a legal manual titled ''The Pinochet Precedent'' offering detailed advice on how to prosecute former dictators.

After spending 503 days under house arrest in London, Pinochet evaded extradition when British authorities ruled he was too ill to stand trial and sent him home to Chile. But the general's eroded political clout could no longer shield him.

In January of 2001, a Chilean judge placed him under house arrest and ordered him to stand trial for murder. At least three other charges for murder and torture were later fired. And then came the allegations of secret bank accounts abroad and tax dodging, a blow to his image as being a harsh but at least honest ruler.

His youngest son, Marco Antonio, declared that his father was innocent, saying the money had come from 60 years of hard work and political donations from grateful supporters. Few people believed the explanation, especially after reports surfaced of Marco Antonio's earlier claims that his father held no such foreign bank accounts.

The final months of Pinochet's life mocked his former might. His attorneys argued that a series of strokes had left him too feeble to face trial, and even floated a trial balloon about filing an insanity plea. Anti-Pinochet demonstrators who attended his hearings mocked him with chants of tata, grandpa.

In a sign of how far Pinochet had fallen, former DINA chief Gen. Manuel Contreras, turned on him and wrote a report in May 2005 on some of the military regime's human rights violations.

One reason for writing the report, Contreras said, was ``the permanent, ominous silence maintained by my superior -- the President of the Republic and Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces.''

But to the very end Pinochet had his supporters, reflecting the deep divisions that continue to haunt the nation of 14 million.

''History will treat him badly because of his dictatorial actions,'' said Jaime Castillo Velasco, a human rights advocate. ``But he will always have his defenders.''

Miami Herald staff writer Tyler Bridges contributed to this report.