COLUMBUS, OHIO ? Rose Mary Woods, the devoted secretary to President Nixon who said she inadvertently erased part of a crucial Watergate tape that had an 18 1/2-minute gap, died Saturday. She was 87.

Woods died at a nursing home in Alliance, about 60 miles south of Cleveland, funeral home owner Roger Ruzek said Sunday. He did not know the cause of death.

The gap in the tape of a June 20, 1972, conversation between Richard Nixon and chief of staff H.R. Haldeman was critical to the question of what Nixon knew about the break-in at Democratic headquarters in the Watergate complex three days earlier.

Woods moved to northeastern Ohio after leaving the disgraced president’s staff in 1976.