Daughter’s bid to dispel ‘preposterous’ claim Robert Wagner killed her mum Natalie Wood

THE DROWNING of actress Natalie Wood off the coast of California in November 1981 remains a mystery that has only escalated over the decades. And after years of silence, Wood’s husband, Hart To Hart star Robert Wagner, 90, has come forward to talk about the fateful night in a bombshell new interview.

Opening up to his stepdaughter Natasha in a documentary she’s made about her mother, Wagner chokes with emotion as he recounts how Natalie’s final evening descended into a drunken, ugly argument with actor Christopher Walken, her then co-star and a guest on the couple’s yacht for the weekend with Wood and the captain, Dennis Davern.

While Wagner’s account of events doesn’t change, he paints a visceral picture of the evening in question.

After a boozy dinner on Catalina Island, he says, the party returned to the boat for more drinks before Natalie went to bed.

At that point, recalls Wagner, he and Walken quarrelled about Natalie’s work-life balance when Wagner smashed a wine bottle in anger. “And I sat there with Chris and said, ‘Just don’t tell her what to do and stay out of our lives’,” recalls Wagner in the interview.

“And I picked up the bottle and smashed it on the table. I was really angry about it. But as I look back at it, unjustifiably so.” Wagner says that on going to bed soon after, he realised Natalie was missing and raised the alarm. She had disappeared with no explanation and the next morning her body was discovered floating off Catalina.

Although Natalie’s death was quickly ruled accidental, since then Davern and Wood’s sister, Lana, have made accusations against Wagner. In 2011 the LA County Coroner’s office reopened the investigation, naming Wagner a “person of interest”, changing the cause of death from accidental drowning to drowning and other undetermined factors.the case remains open.

Yet Wagner has never faced charges and Natasha, for one, is fed up with the suspicion hanging over him.

Her reason in making Nataliewood:what Remains Behind, is two fold: to vindicate her stepfather and rewrite her mother’s legacy. “They have been extremely hurtful, the accusations, and are just so preposterous,” says Natasha. “For me it’s so clear, the people who are behind them and what they want.” Natasha doesn’t name her aunt Lana and Davern, but it’s evident that she is referring to them.

“I do hope this documentary clarifies the night that she died and vindicates my dad, of course, because I don’t want him to carry that around and I don’t want that to be a part of his legacy.”

Natasha knew she couldn’t make the film with director

Laurent Bouzereau without Wagner’s contribution.

“Laurent and I felt that that interview was the crux of the film and that if it didn’t go well, that perhaps we wouldn’t make the documentary,” she says.

“I am very protective of him and I adore him and cherish him, but... I was also asking him to step outside his comfort