36 years after Natalie Wood ‘fell off his yacht’, police say Robert Wagner’s story doesn’t add up
‘To get away from the argument’
ROBERT Wagner has been named as a ‘person of interest’ in the death of Natalie Wood 36 years after she drowned mysteriously.
The bombshell revelation that police are unimpressed by the veteran movie star’s account of the tragedy means they may no longer accept the coroner’s verdict that his late wife’s death was accidental.
The allegation surrounding the Hollywood couple is made in a forthcoming CBS documentary.
Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department Lieutenant John Corina, who leads the investigation, tells the programme 48 Hours: ‘ As we’ve investigated the case over the last six years, I think he’s more of a person of interest now. I haven’t seen him tell the details that match all the other witnesses in this case.
‘I think he’s constantly changed his story a little bit. And his version of events just don’t add up.’
Detectives investigating her November 1981 death after the case was reopened in 2011 told CBS that there were numerous bruises on her arms and body that were mentioned in the autopsy report.
‘She looked like the victim of an assault,’ said Detective Ralph Hernandez. ‘ We have not been able to prove this was a homicide. And we haven’t been able to prove that this was an accident, either.’
When asked if Miss Wood’s death could have been murder, Lieutenant Corina said: ‘I think it’s suspicious enough to make us think that something happened.’
Wagner, who is now 87 and married to the former Bond Girl Jill St. John, did not immediately comment yesterday. He has always denied any involvement in Miss Wood’s death and says it ‘shattered’ him. Police have previously insisted he wasn’t a suspect.
Miss Wood’s death remains one of Hollywood’s great unresolved mysteries. She drowned while sailing on their yacht Splendour with her husband and their friend, actor Christopher Walken, off the island of Catalina in Southern California.
Her daughter Natasha remembers begging Wood not go on the trip and told People magazine in 2016 she had a ‘funny feeling’ about the weekend away.
On the night before Wood’s death, the three Hollywood actors enjoyed a boozy dinner at a smart restaurant on the island and were seen going back to the boat at around 10pm.
Wood, the 43-year- old star of West Side Story and Rebel Without A Cause, was found floating in a cove at 8am the following morning about a mile from the yacht with its dingy beached nearby. She was wearing a long nightgown, socks and jacket.
A post mortem examination revealed not only the bruises, but an abrasion on her left cheek.
A coroner ruled in 1981 she had died accidentally from drowning and hypothermia. He said her bruises were consistent with drowning and said she might have drunkenly slipped and hit her head while trying to board the dinghy.
In Wagner’s 2008 memoir, Pieces of My Heart, he said that after a night of drinking, he and Walken had got into a heated argument back on the boat about Wood’s career. ‘I picked up a wine bottle, slammed it on the table and broke it into pieces,’ he recalled.
Nobody knew why she fell off the boat, he said.
‘There are only two possibilities: either she was trying to get away from the argument, or she was trying to tie the dinghy,’ he wrote.
However, the case was reopened in 2011 following appeals from Wood’s sister, Lana, and from Mr Davern.
He claimed Wood and Wagner – a former Hollywood leading man who by the 1980s was starring in TV series such as Hart To Hart – had got into another argument after Walken went to bed. This ‘terrible argument’ was never mentioned to investigators, said Mr Davern who insisted Wagner was responsible for Wood’s death.
‘We didn’t take any steps to see if we could locate her,’ Mr Davern said. ‘I think it was a matter of, “We’re not going to look too hard, we’re not going to turn on the searchlight, we’re not going to notify anybody right now”.’
Lana Wood has long claimed her ex-brother-in-law hadn’t been honest with police.
In 2013, she claimed Mr Davern had once confided that Wagner had pushed Wood overboard and refused to help her once she was in the water. ‘ Leave her there. Teach her a lesson,’ Wagner allegedly told his skipper.
Wood, who had received three Oscar nominations before her 25th birthday, had first married the dashing Wagner in 1957, when she was 19. They divorced in 1962, but re-married a decade later.
Frank Sinatra, Gregory Peck and Fred Astaire were among the Hollywood elite who attended her funeral, where her coffin was covered in a thousand gardenias.