Death on the high seas NATALIE’S CASE REOPENED
VETERAN ACTOR ROBERT IS CONSIDERED ‘A PERSON OF INTEREST’
It’s a mystery reminiscent of the most gripping of Hollywood’s thrillers. But the tragic death of actress Natalie Wood has had no nice, neat movie ending.
Her husband, TV star Robert Wagner, has always insisted that he believes she drowned by accident after slipping, hitting her head and falling off their yacht Splendour.
Other people, however, believe there was something more sinister at play on the night of November 29, 1981.
And now, more than 36 years later, Robert has been named as a “person of interest” and the death has been re-classified as suspicious by law enforcement as they continue their investigations into exactly what happened on board Splendour, which had dropped anchor near Catalina Island, off the coast of Los Angeles.
Lt John Corina of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department says some of the details Hart to Hart star Robert (88) has given don’t tally with accounts from other witnesses. “I think he has constantly changed his story a little bit. His version of events doesn’t add up.”
He adds, “She got into the water somehow and
I don’t think she got in the water by herself.”
Two new witnesses claim they heard shouting and crashing sounds from the couple’s stateroom before Natalie (43) went missing. Another witness later heard a man and woman arguing on the back of the boat, and believed the voices belonged to Natalie and Robert. John says the witnesses were very credible with “no reason to lie”.
The boat’s captain, Dennis Davern, has previously told media that the sailing trip was a “tension-filled weekend” fuelled by alcohol and, allegedly, Robert’s jealousy of Christopher Walken, who was co-starring with Natalie in the movie Brainstorm.
The Oscar winner joined the couple on board the yacht for the weekend and Dennis says, on the evening she died, Natalie had a loud fight with Robert.
“I was concerned that something really bad was going down because the arguing was so intense.”
According to the autopsy, Natalie had bruising on her body, along with a high level of alcohol in her blood, and witnesses who saw the actress on Catalina Island earlier in the day say she seemed inebriated. The yacht’s dinghy was found near her body, which was clad in a nightgown and jacket, and it has been theorised that she Natalie was 18 when she met Robert in 1956, a year later t he couple were married. may have been trying to get into the dinghy to leave the yacht when she fell into the sea.
Despite repeated requests, Robert has not spoken to police since the case was re-opened in 2011. That’s when the cause of her death was changed on her certificate from “accidental drowning” to “drowning and other undetermined factors”.
But Natalie’s sister Lana Wood is demanding Robert answer more questions about what really happened. “I’m hopeful that this will help the truth come out and she can finally rest in peace, and her family can try to heal.”
Lana (71), an actress and casting agent, says she is sceptical of Robert’s account, and doubts that Natalie, who was afraid of deep, dark water, was trying to get in the dinghy to leave the yacht.
“She would never, never in a million years have left the boat undressed,” says Lana. “She was in a nightgown!”
Christopher (74) has rarely spoken about what happened, but in a 1997 interview, he provided another scenario for why Natalie went up on deck that night. “What happened that night only she knows because she was alone. She had gone to bed before us and her room was at the back. A dinghy was bouncing against the side of the boat and I think she went out to move it.
“There was a ski ramp that was partially in the water. It was slippery – I had walked on it myself. She had told me she couldn’t swim – in fact, they had to cut a swimming scene from Brainstorm. She was probably half asleep.”
Christopher is understood to have recently talked to investigators re-examining her death, and John would now like Robert to break his silence and talk to investigators.
In his 2008 memoir, Pieces of My Heart, Robert says while he believes his wife slipped and fell, he doesn’t know the exact details.
“I wasn’t there, I didn’t see her... I thought she was below decks. I didn’t hear anything. But ultimately, a man is responsible for his loved one and she was my loved one.”