Crime, Conspiracy, Cults and Murder - Ep. 111 | The Life & Mysterious Death of Natalie Wood

Episode Date: May 20, 2026

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She was four years old the first time she appeared on a movie screen. And by eight, she starred in a Christmas classic. Three Oscar nominations before she turned 26. America watched Natalie Wood grow up. But on November 29, 1981, she would be found dead in the Pacific Ocean. And she would be 43 years old. And the coroner would rule it an accident, but not everyone believed that. And more than four decades later, not everyone believes it still.

This is Natalie Wood's story. Crime, conspiracy, cults, serial killers, and murder. All things that I love to consume, and I know you do too, you sick, twisted, beautiful, intellectually-minded freak. Today, we are talking about an extremely infamous case. I feel like lesser known than, say, Marilyn Monroe or Princess Diana, and that is the case of Natalie Wood. So without further ado, let's unbuckle our seatbelts, go Mach 5 down the highway,

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world would come to know as Natalie Wood was born Natalia Nikolievna Zacharenko on July 20th, 1938 in San Francisco. And her parents were Russian immigrants. Both had fled a country torn apart by revolution, carrying with them the scars of leaving what they knew and the stubborn hope that America might give them something better. And her mother, Maria, would come from Barnell, a city in southwestern Siberia. The family had money once. Maria's father ran soap and candle factories and kept an estate on the outskirts of Barnall, but the Russian Civil War wiped out everything they had. So the family got out of the country and ended up in Harbin, China, living as refugees. And it was in Harbin that something strange allegedly happened.

Maria and her sisters visited a gypsy fortune teller that made two predictions about Maria's future. The first was her second child would be a great beauty known throughout the world, And the second was quote unquote, beware of dark water. And Maria never let go of either prophecy. But she would eventually leave China and marry an American mechanic named Alexander Tutloff in 1925. And Olga, Natalie's older half-sister, was born in 1988. And two years later, the family sailed to America. And the marriage ended six years later.

And Natalie's father, Nicholas Zacharenko, came from Eusurisk. in Russia's far east. And Nicholas's father had been employed at the Primorsky Condor chocolate factory. But when the civil war broke out, he took up with the anti-Bulshevik civilian forces and he would be killed in a street fight between Red Army and White Russian soldiers in Vladas Vistock.

That after his death, the family then fled to Shanghai, then to Vancouver, and eventually settled in the United States by 1933, just like Nicholas's future wife. And Nicholas found work as a carpenter, and a day laborer in San Francisco. But he was also an alcoholic. Now, Maria was still Tatulov's wife when she and Nicholas began seeing each other.

You know? But their eventual wedding took place in February 1938, and Natalie arrived months later. And Nicholas would rename the family Gerdin when Natalie was about a year old. And the name Wood would come a bit later when studio executives picked it for her at the age of six. and they named her that as a nod to director Sam Wood and to swap out the family name for something American audiences could pronounce.

So when they obtained U.S. citizenship, Maria finally settled on one first name after cycling through several, including Mary, Marie, and Musia. And then a second daughter from this relationship, the third overall, third daughter overall, keep up, came along in 1946. And they named her Svetlana and she was born in Santa Monica. and she'd later become known as the actress Lana Wood. But it was the second child, the one the gypsy had supposedly prophesized, who consumed Maria's attention entirely.

Because Maria used to lean close and whisper to Natalie. One ear got the fairy tale, fame, beauty, the whole world watching, and the other ear got the warning, stay away from dark water. The prophecy left Natalie shaken from a very young age, and she carried it with her for the rest of her life, never once even learning to swim. Every ambition Maria had never been able to fulfill herself, she just poured into Natalie specifically,

and she would stop at nothing to make those dreams real. So while the family lived in Santa Rosa, a production company happened to be filming at the area, where someone on the crew noticed the four-year-old Natalie. And her first movie was then, The Moon is Dawn, a John Steinbeck adaptation that hit theaters in spring of of 1943, and she popped up again that same year in Happy Land, receiving 15 seconds of screen time.

And both were directed by Irving Pichelle, and he took a liking to the girl immediately. And for the next two years, Fishell kept up a relationship with the Gerdens, Natalie's family. And eventually, a part opened up, and Pichel reached out, and he wanted Natalie in Los Angeles to test for it. Maria didn't just bring Natalie. Maria uprooted their entire role. family. The whole family moved to Los Angeles for good. And Nicholas didn't really want to go, and he made that pretty clear, but Maria didn't care. Her mind was made up, and nothing he said was going to change it. So biographer Suzanne Finstead wrote that Maria had been desperately

pushing her daughter into the business from the very start. Classic show mom, living vicariously through her daughter, even if it means putting her into situations, she shouldn't be in, you know? But a In 1946, Pichelle got her in the door for Tomorrow is Forever, a romance film. And she tested for the part of a European war orphan opposite Orson Wells and won it. And allegedly on set, she couldn't cry on cue. So Maria grabbed a live butterfly and ripped its wings off right in front of her, and the tears came instantly. It worked.

Obviously, you know, if she has a shred of empathy in her, my God, can you imagine just your mom mutilating a beautiful butterfly in front of you to make you cry. That's going to do something to you. That's something you're going to talk about therapy later in life. I'll tell you what. Wells himself was stunned by the child's ability. And he later said she was so good, she was terrifying. In that, quote,

Natalie doesn't act from the script. She acts from the heart, unquote. Maria rehearsed her over and over until Natalie barely ever needed a second take, and which earned her the nickname, quote, unquote, one take Natalie. And the following year brought Miracle on 34th Street. And Natalie was eight years old at this point. But the role was perfect for her.

A skeptical kid convinced there's no such thing as Santa who slowly realizes the man working in the department store might be the real deal. And the film starred Maureen O'Hara and John Payne. But it was Natalie who audiences remembered. And it's been a holiday staple ever since. And after it came out, Natalie was suddenly one of the biggest child actors in Hollywood. And Macy's even invited her to appear in the Thanksgiving

Day Parade. And Parents Magazine gave her a title before she turned 10, quote unquote, most exciting juvenile motion picture star of the year. Behind the spotlight, there was no real childhood to speak of, which we hear so much with child actors. I feel so bad for them. It's just not right. Like I know there has to be child actors, but it just seems like it never goes right, unfortunately, especially in those days where stuff just wasn't monitored or cared about at all. And the work that followed her big hit was mostly lightweight stuff, family-friendly comedies that nobody really remembers today. And they didn't win awards, but they earned steady money. And Maria made sure every dollar went through her hands. And Natalie was tutored on set instead of going to

school, Maria made sure to keep her daughter away from kids her own age and away from anything that didn't serve the career. And on top of all of that, just not having any sort of childhood, you know, any sort of social life and having a mom that mutilates bugs in front of you to make you cry on cue, her father's heart was also starting to fail. And Natalie was still very young. And after that, Natalie was the family's only real source of income. So just put the pressure of that on this eight-year-old girl. My God. So Maria doubled down on the pressure. Work more, audition better, be perfect. You can't be anything less than perfect. And she racked up more than 20 film credits before she turned 16, and one of them nearly killed her. During the production of The Green

Promise in 1949, there was a stunt involving a bridge collapse during a storm, and the scene called for a 10-year-old girl to sprint across the bridge that would fall apart the second she made it to safety. But the timing failed and gave way too early, and she was only half. halfway across, and the fall snapped her left wrist, and she went straight into the water. And Maria buried the whole thing. And the wrist was never taken care of, and Lana described, quote,

Mom didn't trust doctors or hospitals, so Natalie's broken wrist was never treated or set, unquote. And because of this intentional avoidance, the bone healed wrong, showing the deformity if you looked closely. And Natalie covered it with bracelets for the rest of her life. It's so heartbreaking.

Mom not even taking her to the hospital to get her fixed. Like, I can't even imagine the pain she still felt and everything. Ugh, it just breaks my heart. And the injury should have been the breaking point. But instead, it became a template for them. Just hide it, protect the career, and just say nothing. That was the rule Maria lived by. And it extended far beyond broken bones.

And Lana told Closer Weekly, quote, My mother was very caught up in the business with Natalie. even when she turned 18, my mom was still running the show, unquote. And Finstead described the dynamic, bluntly, saying, quote, she was groomed by her mom to succeed at all costs, to be a pleaser, to do whatever directors and producers, even co-stars, wanted her to do, unquote. And at one point, Maria went even further.

Quote, her mother brought her over to Frank Sinatra's house, basically bartering Natalie's virginity to try to help her career. unquote. This woman belongs in the deepest hole there is. Are you kidding me? Pimping out your child to a disgusting old man. Like, I, yeah, yeah, I don't know. Like, Hollywood's already so corrupt. And back then, like I said, like the amount of stuff that was probably hidden that we have no idea about is just so, so upsetting. And you never want to think a mother can do that to their child. But the world is extremely evil. And some people, do anything for fame, even if it means giving up their child's innocence. It's disgusting.

But the relationship that developed between Natalie and Sinatra became something else entirely over time and somewhat paternal in nature. And Finstad explained, quote, Natalie's own father had a drinking problem and was very emasculated by her mother. And Frank became very protective of Natalie, unquote. And like you can, you can talk about him being a, like, Sonatra being a father figure or whatever, but her, but her mom was pimping her out. When she was 15 years old, Sinatra was 38. He was almost 40 years old. Okay. So I don't know. It smells really bad. I don't like it. Um, and it, it just makes my heart very sad for Natalie. But Natalie, who earned millions for her family before she was old enough to drive, sadly never had the chance to even be a child.

And she got a career instead and a mother who would trade anything to keep it going. So the hardest thing a child star can do is grow up on screen and survive it. And most don't, honestly. And the audience that adored them at eight years old doesn't quite know what to do with them at 16. And Natalie signed a contract with Warner Brothers hoping for serious work. Instead, the studio kept handing her the same kind of part, the pretty girl standing next to the lead, nothing with any real substance.

And Warner Brothers tried matching her on screen with Tab Hunter, the biggest teen heartthrob, around. And the idea was that putting the two of them together would pack theaters. But it didn't. And one exception to the supporting pretty girl typecast was Marjorie Morningstar in 1958. And she played a Jewish girl trying to carve out a life on her own terms while her family pushes towards something more conventional. And critics responded well, and the movie landed at exactly the movie. the right moment. And as the 1950s were full of films about young people pushing back against the world they'd inherited. But the role that actually changed everything for her came three years before

in 1955, when director, Nicholas Ray was casting Rebel Without a Cause, and the part of Judy was exactly what Natalie needed, a chance to prove she could do more than just be a pretty face on screen. And she was 16 at the time, and Ray was 43. Oh my God. The competition, for the role was enormous. Names like Debbie Reynolds and Jane Mansfield were in the mix, and multiple sources say the same thing. Somewhere between her initial meeting with Ray and the screen tests that followed,

a sexual relationship would begin. And they met at a bungalow in the Chateau-Mormont, and Finstead describes, quote, when she was 16, the director of Rebel Without a Cause manipulated her into having sex with him by saying he wasn't convinced that she would realistically play a bad girl." Lord knows that Maria encouraged her to do the unthinkable, to lose her innocence to a disgusting

pervert, but she would get the part. Dennis Hopper was also seeing Natalie during production, and he and Ray clashed because of it, and it just poisoned the atmosphere on set. But still, Maria was in the loop on all of it. She knew everything. She knew her daughter was being taken advantage of just to get a role. But she only complained about Hopper. The director, after all, controlled the movie. And Natalie earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress with Rebel Without

a Cause, a career defining performance, born from exploitation that no one around her had the courage or decency to stop. And that same year, something far worse allegedly happened. And in the summer of 1955, while The Searchers was in production, Maria arranged a meeting between Natalie and one of the most powerful actors in Hollywood. And Maria was convinced that one word of approval from a star at his level would change everything for Natalie. And Lana Wood was nine years old at this time. And in her 2021 memoir, Little Sister, she identified the man as Kirk Douglas. And Natalie was still a teenager at this point.

16, maybe 17, the ages aren't fully known, but a teenager nonetheless, and Douglas was nearly 40. And in July 2018, Lana went into detail on a podcast about her sister's life. And she said the assault took place at the Chateau-Mormant behind closed doors under the pretense of an audition. And she said it went on for hours. And Lana remembered when Natalie eventually told her about that night saying, quote, It was like an out-of-body experience. I was terrified. I was confused. And Finstad's 2001 biography had described the assault years earlier without naming the attacker. But over the years, Natalie told a handful of people she trusted what had happened to her,

with Dennis Hopper being one of them. And she described the man as a former screen idol. And Douglas wasn't named publicly until Lana's memoir, published in 2021, nearly two years after he died at the age of 103, the bastard had the audacity to live past 100. God, I hope he was suffering in the end, truly. I know that's... You know what, fucking now, I hope he was suffering. And his son, Michael Douglas,

responded through a publicist saying, quote-unquote, may they both rest in peace. And the silence that followed, the assault was immediate and absolute. And Natalie told her mother, all that happened. And Maria's advice, according to Lana was cold and calloused, saying quote unquote, suck it up. I can't stand these mothers. I mean, this is like next level horrendous.

But, you know, every time I see a child on screen in general, especially in content creation because there are zero rules essentially for them, I just think you're a disgusting human being that's taken advantage of your child and exploiting them. And this is just, this just triggers me in a way I cannot even explain. It makes me so upset. Poor, poor Natalie, my God. But for as long as she lived, Natalie never said a word about it in the public. And I feel like that is just by every fault of her mother because she just instilled in her

that she can't say anything and that her fame is the most important thing. And if she can't act, that her family will be in destitute. Like it's just so much manipulation and toxic stuff going on. It's disgusting. But when she and Douglas ended up in the same room, she acted as though nothing had ever happened between them, because her mother had taught her too well how Hollywood worked. You didn't go after someone with that kind of power. And years later, actor Scott Marlowe helped Natalie begin to see her mother's manipulation for what it really was. The damage, though, had already rooted itself.

Natalie allegedly saw her therapist every single day. In the 1967 production of Body and Clyde wanted her, for the lead now. And she said no, as the film required weeks away from Los Angeles, and Natalie wouldn't go that long without seeing her therapist. How much does that say? Like, even just a couple weeks? And she's like, no, I need to speak to my therapist. Like, I, the trauma that that involves, I can't even imagine. Yet, through all of it, she did keep working. And after Rebel Without a Cause, John Ford's The Searchers, came out in 1956. Then West Side Story, and Splendor in the Grass, both in 1961. And then Gypsy in 1962 and The Love with the Proper Stranger

in 1963. And Splendor in the Grass earned her a nomination for Best Actress. And Love with the Proper Stranger earned her another. So she had three Oscar nominations before turning 26, one of the youngest people in Hollywood history to reach that number. So three nominations earned while carrying a weight

that would have broken most people twice her age. So Natalie was 10 years old the first time she saw Robert Wagner, and he was 18 years old walking down a corridor at 20th century Fox. And she told People Magazine in 1976, quote, I turned to my mother and said, I'm going to marry him, unquote. And eight years later, the studio system made that meeting happen on purpose. And their first date was arranged as a publicity stunt, designed to get both their names in papers. And it fell on July 20th, 1956, Natalie's 18th birthday. And whatever the studio's intentions were, the connection, at least, was actually real. And on December 28, 1957, they married in Scottsdale, Arizona, where Wagner's parents lived.

And she was 19 at the time, and he was 27. I mean, I have nothing to say. Like, for the time, it doesn't seem that bad, I guess, but given the history that her mom put her through, she probably only saw significantly older people as an option to marry. You know, I don't know. There's, again, so much psychological trauma that happened to her. But word would get out as to where they were getting married, and several hundred people showed up outside the Scottsdale Methodist Church.

So the staff taped butcher paper across every window to block the view. And the press called it the glittering union of the 20th century. Because two of the most beautiful faces in Hollywood riding a corvette across America together while radio stations tracked their progress. And Wood recalled it years later saying, quote, radio stations would announce we had just passed through and people would wait for us in every little town, unquote. And for their honeymoon, the two of them took a yacht out into the Florida Keys,

because both of them loved the ocean, and it was one of the things that drew them together. Though, even then, Natalie mentioned her fear of the water. And for a while, it looked like a love story the public could believe in. Unfortunately, it wasn't. And the couple announced their separation on June 20th, 1961, only a few years later, and the divorce was finalized on April 27, 1962. And the official story was pretty vague.

And the gossip columns filled in their own versions, of course, and rumors spread that Natalie had started an affair with Warren Beattie, her co-star in Splendor in the Grass. And over the years, the press stopped treating it as gossip and just started printing it as though it were true. but that wasn't what happened. And the truth of what ended the marriage didn't come out for years. And multiple sources have since confirmed the same story.

Because sometime in early 1961, Natalie discovered Wagner in a sexual relationship with a man. Chris Cross, what kind of plot to us is this? And Finstead heard the account from five separate people. And three were close friends of Natalie's, and one was Maria's best friend, and the fifth was Lana. And she walked into their Beverly Hills house and found him with another man. And Lana described what she saw that night saying, quote, I had never seen her that bad.

I was asked to leave the room and that something bad had happened and that Natalie was leaving RJ. It wasn't until later that she said she caught him with someone, and that someone was another man. Oh my God, unquote. She showed up at her parents' door that night, barely holding it together. And once inside, she shut herself in the bedroom she'd grown up in, and would not come out. And the next thing she knew, she was in a hospital bed

because she had overdosed on sleeping pills. But to protect Wagner's public image, Natalie said nothing again, because her mom trained her, never say anything that might make you look bad or anybody else in power, make them look bad. Terrible. She absorbed the blame for the divorce in silence

and let the Beattie rumors stand unchallenged, following the pattern she'd been taught since childhood. Protect the person with more power. Swallow the truth. And in pages from what's been described as her unpublished memoir, she wrote about the end of the marriage saying, quote, so shattering it destroyed the relationship. It was more than a final straw.

It was a reality crushing the fragile web of romantic fantasies with sledgehammer force, unquote. And she later told people, quote, we knew each other better than we knew ourselves. I always knew he was okay. It was myself I didn't know about, unquote. So after the divorce, Natalie was 24 and one of the highest paid actresses in Hollywood. She certainly didn't lack company. And Warren Beattie, Michael Kane, David Niven Jr., Frank Sinatra, who'd she'd known since she was 15?

Ye. And in 1965, she was briefly engaged to a Venezuelan shoe manufacturer named Ladislav Butnik, but none of it lasted. And the relationship with Beattie was the most volatile. quote, our affair was a collision from start to finish. While Robert Wagner never did express hostility, Warren couldn't stop and I contributed my share of fireworks too. In fact, we were both so confused that we thought fighting and hostility meant real emotional honesty, unquote, and she threw herself into psychoanalysis after the divorce and sessions nearly every day for years. She once joked that her therapy bills were, quote unquote, at least the equal of the

annual defense budget of most Central American nations. I don't blame her as if it's every day. Oh my God. But again, who can blame her? My, like everything she's been through. It's horrible. But the therapy couldn't outpace what was happening underneath. And Finstead traced the habit back to age 15. And the barbiturate secondal became the constant she reached for at bedtime. And as late as 1978, she admitted in an interview with Ladies' Home Journal that Secondal was still part of her nightly routine. And three times between 1961 and 1966, the pills nearly killed her. The first was the overdose that landed her in the hospital the night she discovered Wagner's affair, and the second came in November of 1964, and her stomach was pumped at a Hollywood hospital.

Nobody outside her inner circle ever knew. And the third, in January of 1966, was different because there are two versions of what triggered it specifically. And Warren G. Harris's biography tells it this way, which as Beatty showed up unannounced trying to persuade her to star in Bonnie and Clyde, and instead she swallowed a fistful of barbiturates. In either way, doctors saved her life at a Hollywood hospital, and afterwards she told Lana the truth that she hadn't been trying to survive. And Lana's memoir tells a different story about the trigger,

And she wrote that during the production of this property is condemned in 1965, Natalie had a passionate affair with the film's director, Sidney Pollock, and Pollock broke it off and Natalie fell apart. And according to Lana, it was Pollock's rejection, not Beattie or Wagner, that pushed her sister to that point. So three overdoses in five years. And after the third time, she would stop working, because she had been in front of the camera since she was four years old,

and she had never stopped before. But this time, survival came first and everything else could wait. And in 1966, she paid Warner Brothers $175,000 to buy her out of her contract. Then she cleaned house, cutting every agent, every manager, the publicist, the accountant, and the lawyers loose. And that same year, the Harvard Lampoon handed her an award for worst actress of last year, this year, and next, unquote, What the actual hell is that? What? Why does that even exist? But nobody had ever actually shown up to collect it before,

but Natalie did. And the Harvard Crimson noted she was, quote unquote, quite a good sport. And Penelope landed with a thud in 1966. And with that poor reception, Natalie walked away from Hollywood and didn't come back for three years. And when she did come back, it was with a new film and a new relationship.

And the introduction came through Robert Redford, who knew them both. And Richard Gregson was a British producer who also happened to be Redford's agent. And the courtship lasted close to three years, and they married on May 30th, 1969, and Redford served as the best man. And her comeback vehicle was Bob and Carol and Ted

and Alice in 1969, a sharp comedy that took aim at the era's obsession with free love. And it was a hit by all accounts. and it showed audiences something that the industry had doubted. And the child star from the studio era could hold her own in a landscape that had completely changed. And on September 29th, 1970, she and Gregson welcomed a daughter, Natasha. And motherhood would change Natalie profoundly. And she poured everything she had into being a mother.

Unlike her own mother, she actually was a good mother. And she made a home that actually felt real, the family that wasn't built around a case. camera. But then the familiar pattern surfaced again, and Gregson had an affair with Natalie's secretary. God, fucking, this is just fucking predictable as hell. And she filed for divorce on August 4th, 1971. And it was finalized on April 12, 1972. And after a brief relationship with future California governor, Jerry Brown, Natalie picked up the phone and she called someone she already knew better than anyone. And by the end of January 1972, she and Robert West, she and Robert Wagner, we're back in each other's lives.

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That's 60% off your first order, plus free shipping and free treats for life when you head to smalls.com slash CCCM. Thank you so much to Smalls. for sponsoring the video and supporting the channel, and let's get back to it. Now, while Natalie had been rebuilding her life through the 1960s, Wagner had been doing the same. And after their divorce, he'd moved to Rome, where he reconnected with actress Marion Marshall, an old friend.

And they married on July 21, 1963, at the Bronx courthouse, and their daughter, Katie, was born on May 11, 1964. And the marriage lasted seven years before they separated in June of 1970, and their divorce was finalized on October 14, 1971. So by the time Natalie reached out, they were both freshly single, both carrying the wreckage of second marriages, and both older than they'd been the first time around.

And they just started with phone calls. And by January of 1972, the phone calls had turned into something more. And Wagner had asked her to come see him at his Palm Desert home. And Natalie later told people, quote, friends told me to put on the breaks. We were both in show. We talked about what had happened to our marriage. He had become a man instead of a boy, unquote.

And looking back, she felt she needed every single one of those years away from each other to get it right, and that they couldn't have found their way back without first losing each other. So in April, they made it public in the most Hollywood way possible. And their first public appearance as a couple came at the 1972 Oscars. And from there, it was a flight to New York. And next was a transatlantic crossing on the Queen Elizabeth II. And on July 16th, 1972, they married for the second time. And they said their vows on the deck of the 55-foot yacht, the ramblin rose,

floating just off Paradise Cove in Malibu. And the guest list was pretty tiny. Close friends, family, and both of their daughters from previous marriages. And that was it. It was nothing like the first wedding. This time, it was just quiet and intimate. And in People's 1976 profile, the magazine described the reunion as, quote, the triumph of hope over dismal experience, unquote.

The balance of power had shifted since the first marriage. The first time around, it was Wagner, who was on the rise, though not in movies, on TV. And his role in ABC's It Takes a Thief, which premiered in 1968, had made him a household name on the small screen. And that show opened the door to heart to heart. And it premiered in 1979, ran five seasons. and turned out to be the defining role of his career. Behind the scenes, though, the couple had quietly built something more lucrative than any single role.

And their compensation for the affair, a TV movie they appeared in together in 1973, included something unusual. Producers Aaron Spelling and Leonard Goldberg gave them a 50% ownership stake in three TV series the pair were developing for ABC. And only one made it to air, and it was called, Charlie's Angels. And Natalie, meanwhile, had settled into something she'd never really experienced before, a family. And on March 9, 1974, Natalie and Wagner welcomed their daughter, Courtney. And Gregson returned to England after the split. And with her biological father across an ocean, Natasha grew up with Wagner as the only dad she really knew, but there was never a formal adoption. But Natasha

would take Wagner's name and has always called him father. And Natalie told Bygner, Biography.com, quote, work doesn't play the same role in my life it used to, unquote. And she meant it. From that point on, she pulled back from the industry almost entirely, and only a few projects made it to screen before the end. In three years after the affair, she and Wagner joined Lawrence Oliver for a television production of Cat on a Hot Tin roof, and she popped on to a Wagner's TV series as well. And in 1979, she won a Golden Globe for the miniseries from here to eternity. And from the outside, it looked like Natalie Wood had finally gotten everything she wanted,

a stable marriage, children, financial security, and a career on her own terms. But Wagner had been carrying something he didn't talk about. And in his 2008 memoir, Pieces of My Heart, Wagner wrote about a darkness that had lived inside him for years. And he admitted to being consumed by jealousy over Natalie's earlier relationship with Warren Beattie. And he described waiting outside Beatty's home with a gun, seriously contemplating murder. Quote, I was pretty young and I don't think I could have ever gone through with that act, but I was pretty frustrated and upset, unquote.

But that possessiveness didn't fade with time, but for most of the second marriage, it didn't have a target, because Natalie was home with her daughters, and her career was small and selective, and there was nothing to really set it off. And then, in 1981, Natalie took on her first major film role in years and brainstorm a science fiction, film directed by Douglas Trumbull was supposed to be her comeback, and her co-star was Christopher

Wacken, who'd won an Academy Award for The Deer Hunter. A production moved to North Carolina that's September, and the shoot was scheduled for six weeks on location, and Wagner visited the set during a break from heart to heart, and he didn't like what he found. And in his memoir, he wrote, quote, The Bell wasn't exactly clanging, but I was aware that I didn't have her full attention. She was more involved with the movie than she was with her family, and the thought occurred to me that Natalie was being emotionally unfaithful, unquote. And her medicine cabinet at the time told its own story, because she was on at least eight different prescriptions. One of them was the painkiller, Darwin. And she had plans that stretched well beyond brainstorm. And she agreed to appear on anesthesia at the Amison Theater, set to open February 12, 1982, with Wendy Hiller as her co-star. and it would have been her first time on a live stage. And on top of that, she'd bought the rights to Barbara Wurzbaugh's Country of the Heart and was developing it as a film.

And Timothy Hutton was lined up as her co-star. But sadly, none of it would ever happen. So the brainstorm cast had been shooting on location in North Carolina since September. And by late October of 1981, they were back in Los Angeles to finish what was left of the film. And the couple threw a Thanksgiving dinner at the show. their house. And the plan for after Thanksgiving was simple. They'd take the Splendor, the boat they named after the 1961 film that earned Natalie her second Oscar nomination, Splendor in the Grass, out to Catalina Island and spend just a few days on the water. Friday, November 27th through

Sunday to November 29th. And nothing was out of the ordinary. But people close to Wagner later told investigators that two to four other guests had been invited along for the weekend. But none of them could make it. So when the splendor headed out of the marina del Rey that Friday afternoon, there were only four people on board. Natalie, Wagner, and Wachin, and the boat's skipper, Dennis Davern. And the weather was just absolutely miserable, just cold and raining, and nobody has ever said publicly why Wauken's wife, Georgianne, stayed behind. But from the moment Wauken stepped aboard, the atmosphere was wrong. And allegedly, Walkin came aboard wearing a peacoat with the collar flipped up and Wagner disliked him on site.

And people were already whispering that the two of them were more than co-stars. And Davern saw it from the first hour. Saying, quote, you could see a little bit of jealousy from Robert Wagner. It just kept getting more tense every minute of the day, unquote. Now, Lieutenant John Carina of the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department later described that Wagner felt that Natalie was paying far more attention to Wachan than she was to him. And the whole trip was just tense. And according to Davern, Wood and Wagner thought constantly, and the root of it was always the same. Natalie and Wachan were drawn to each other, and everyone could see it. So Saturday night, November 28th, the weather

was no better than it had been all weekend. Rain was off and on, temperatures were dropping, and when they weren't together, they were treated to separate quarters on the boat. And what we know for certain about that evening is limited. All four of them were together on the splendor, and by eight o'clock the next morning, Natalie would be dead. But here is what we do know. So Saturday afternoon, Wacken and Natalie left the yacht and headed to a place called Doug's Harbor Reef, a waterfront restaurant run by the local harbor manager Doug Bombard. And they started drinking, and Wagner and Davern joined them later. And once dinner rolled around, all four of them sat down together. And the tab was pretty heavy. Champagne, two bottles of wine, cocktails on top of that,

and at some point during dinner, a glass shattered against the wall. And staff couldn't agree on who threw it. But it was either Wagner or Waukin. And the server working their table, Christina Quinn, noticed that Natalie barely touched her food, and she described Wood as restless and unsettled. Quote, did not eat much of her dinner and was doing a lot of complaining about small things such as there was too much light on the table, the table was too big, the fish was not fresh, unquote. And Quinn added that Natalie, quote, appeared to be in changing moods, sometimes laughing, and sometimes solemn, unquote. And Ted Bauer, the bartender that night, backed up what everyone else was noticing, saying, quote unquote, Natalie was pretty shaky. And Don Whiting, who managed the restaurant,

got worried enough to pull the harbor master aside, and he told him to watch the group and and make sure they actually got back to the Splendor safely. Inwiting statements to investigators painted a pretty clear picture. And he said it looked to him like there was trouble between Wagner and his wife. And Wagner seemed annoyed with Natalie, and the whole party had been drinking really hard, and he wanted the harbor master to know. So around 10 p.m., the four of them left the restaurant and headed for the pier,

where the small boat was tied up to take them back to the splendor. And it was called the Prince Valiant. And William Peterson, who operated the shore boat, was watching them leave. And he saw Natalie lose her footing on the pier and let out what he described as a, quote, little yell as if she had slipped, unquote. And she got into the boat after that, and they made it back to the yacht. And what happens next depends on who you believe. Now, Davern's most revealing account came in a Vanity Fairpiece published in March of 2000.

And he described a weekend where the attraction between Natalie and Walken was impossible. possible to miss. And by the time they got back to the splendor after dinner, Wagner had reached his limit. And he picked up a wine bottle and slammed it down hard enough to break it. And then he looked at Wacken and shouted, quote unquote, what are you trying to do? Fuck my wife? unquote. And Natalie walked out. And the door to her room slammed shut behind her. And Wagner went after her. And minutes later, the sound of them fighting carried through the walls and Daverd cranked his stereo ladder so he wouldn't have to listen. And at one point, Davern peered outside and caught both of them standing at the back of the yacht, and the fight had moved to the open air. And their body language

made it obvious it hadn't cooled down at all, and then everything went quiet. In Wagner's book, Pieces of My Heart confirmed there had been a fight between him and Natalie before she went missing, but his version of what happened looked nothing like Daverns. And on other boats nearby, people were listening. Because people who anchored in the same cove heard this too. Sound carries on water really far and really well. And multiple witnesses on neighboring boats told investigators about loud fighting that carried across the water from the splendor that night. And one recalled yelling in the sound of things crashing inside what seemed to be the state room. And others picked up a man's voice and a woman's voice going at each other on the yacht's rear deck.

And they were sure it was Wood and Wagner. And then, came the cries. In about 40 yards from the splendor, a woman named Marilyn Wayne was asleep on a sailboat called the Capricorn, and Wayne was a commodities broker from Los Angeles, and her cabin window had been left open. And in a sworn statement to investigators, Wayne said a woman's voice woke her boyfriend first and then woke her. Quote, help me, someone please help me, I'm drowning, unquote. And the words came again and again. And Wayne's son, was on the Capricorn as well, and he heard the same thing.

And he looked down at the digital watch he'd just gotten, and the time was a few minutes past 11 o'clock. Mixed in with the woman screams, Wayne and the others heard a man responding, and his voice was thick with alcohol, saying, quote unquote, okay honey, we'll get you. Then repeated multiple times, quote unquote,

were coming to get you. So Wayne stayed where she was. And at the time, she just figured it was some kind of rowdy party, and sounded like the people, people out there already knew the woman was in trouble. And the cries went on for what Wayne estimated was 15 minutes or more. 15 minutes.

Someone's screaming for help. And you don't go, look, it's, that's something. I don't know about that, but okay. And they stopped around 12.10 a.m. An official records state that Natalie Wood went missing from the splendor at approximately 11.05 p.m. And according to Wagner, by the time he turned in for the night, Natalie was gone. One fact was never in dispute.

Wagner was the last person seen with her before she vanished. And forensic analysis placed the time of death somewhere between midnight and one in the morning. And the contents of her stomach backed that up, and there were still about 500 cc's of food that hadn't fully digested, consistent with a meal eaten three to four hours earlier, which lined up with an 8 to 9 p.m. dinner. And what followed was a slow, staggered response that would, become one of the central mysteries of the case. And it wasn't until roughly 1.30 in the morning that Wagner got on the radio. And he reached out to Doug's Harbor Reef and wanted to know if Natalie had shown up there. And he had people checking for her on land and on shore, but not in the ocean. And at

around 2.30 a.m., the restaurant manager alerted the harbor master, and the Coast Guard didn't get a call about Natalie until 3.20 a.m. And Roger Smith, the lifeguard on duty, didn't find out until after 5 a.m. that morning. And by then, Natalie had been in the water for roughly six hours. And the whole time, a lifeguard boat had been sitting about 100 feet from the splendor. And by 5.30 a.m., the small boat had been found beached on shore. And Doug Bombard ran the harbor at Isma's Cove and had lived on Catalina for years. And searchers woke him about 30 minutes before sunrise. And they told him they thought Natalie had slipped and gone into the water sometime around three in the morning. And by the time Babbard was up and moving, the small boat had already been pulled in. And he went out onto the water

toward Blue Cavern Point. And a hundred yards out, something red caught his eye on the water, a small shape, like a bubble sitting on the surface. And it was Natalie. An air had gotten trapped inside her red down jacket, keeping that one patch of fabric visible above the water line. And Bombard radioed for a second vessel to assist, and her down jacket had taken on so much seawater that it added roughly 40 pounds to her weight. And he couldn't pull her out alone. And when they turned her over, she was dressed in a flannel nightgown, a down jacket, and a pair of wool socks, and nothing else. So the next day on November 30th, Chief Medical Examiner Thomas Noguchi, released his findings, and he called it accidental drowning, complicated by hypothermia.

And the bruises covering Natalie's body, Noguchi said, were quote-unquote superficial, and he believed they came from her struggle in the water. And scratches found out of a small boat, in his view, showed she tried to haul herself aboard, but lost the fight against exhaustion and cold. And the autopsy told a fuller story, because her blood tested at 0.14% alcohol, and on top of that, toxicology picked up both a motion sickness medication and a painkiller. And either one would have made the alcohol hit a lot harder. And together, that combination was very dangerous. And Noguchi documented, quote, superficial skin bruises on the extremities and abrasions on the left side of the face, unquote. And he noted there was, quote unquote, no evidence of

strangulation. And ocean temperatures that night hovered around 57 degrees. and according to forensic analysis, she didn't survive long once she was in. And then there was the small boat. And it told its own story, because the key sat in the ignition, switched off. The gear was in neutral, and the oars hadn't been untied.

And the report noted that it looked, quote unquote, as if the boat had not even been used. No one collected nail clippings from Natalie's fingers, so there was never any way to confirm whether the scratches on the boat came from her. And when detectives finally went looking for the boat decades later, it had vanished. And lifeguard Roger Smith, who'd been called six hours after Natalie went into the water, had his own assessment.

And he told the LA Times, quote, she probably cried for help for hours, unquote. And he said he always believed she could have been saved, saying, quote, her fingers were still pliable when she was pulled from the water, suggesting she had not been dead for hours, unquote. And Smith got a look at the boat. before it was lost, and inside the seats had been knocked out of place. And along with the walls of the raft, he saw what looked like marks left by fingernails, scratched in by someone fighting to drag themselves over the edge. And his conclusion was blunt, saying, quote,

I think she was at least alive for three of the hours hanging on that skiff, unquote. And then there was the question no one could answer. What was Natalie Wood doing near that boat in the first place? And by every account, she had never once taken the boat out by herself, and her terror of dark water had been part of her identity for as long as anyone knew her. And Lieutenant John Carina asked directly, quote, why would Natalie Wood, this big movie star, try to go out on a dingy in the middle of the night in her socks and her pajamas at midnight in rough seas? unquote. And this was a woman who refused to set foot in a swimming pool in her own backyard. And with Lana Wood, was asked whether there was any chance her sister would have gotten into the boat and left the yacht on her own, she didn't hesitate saying, quote, unquote, no, no, not with a gun to her head.

Lana also spoke about what it felt like to imagine her sister's final hours, saying, quote, when I think of her in the water, in the dark, in the cold, and the one thing that she feared was water, and that's where she finishes her life, unquote. Lieutenant Carina added further, quote, she got in the water somehow, and I don't think she got in the water by herself, unquote. So Detective Dwayne Rasher, working out of the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Homicide Bureau, caught the case, and he spoke to all three men who'd been aboard the splendor that night. Wagner, Wauken, and Davern, each told him the same thing. They believed Natalie had climbed into the boat and motored ashore on her own.

And Rassure told 48 hours in 2011, quote, I didn't doubt anything Robert Wagner told me. Christopher Walken, he basically told me the same story. It was pretty well confirmed. They assumed that she got in that zodiac and went to shore, unquote. Not one of them said a word about any fighting that night, which is interesting, given that there was a massive blowout fight. And according to Wagner, the two of them had spent the evening together on the yacht,

and he figured she'd turned in for the night. and he eventually went looking for her and found the master bedroom empty. And Davern, meanwhile, realized the zodiac was missing, and they figured she had taken it and left. And Rasher also asked about something he'd observed on the yacht. Broken glass scattered across the salon. And Wagner blamed it on the ocean, choppy conditions during the crossing, he said, and Rasher accepted the explanation without pressing any further. And years later, in pieces of my heart, Wagner told a very different story about the glass.

In the book, he admitted to grabbing a wine bottle, like we said before, in the middle of the confrontation with Wauken and slamming it hard enough to shower it. And back in 1981, every man on the boat had pointed to rough seas as the explanation for the glass. And Wagner's own book contradicted them. And the retired detective sergeant said he, quote, never really got suspicious of a murder. I think he told me the truth, unquote. And after the initial conversation, Rushier sat down with Wagner just once more. And that second interview took place the day after the funeral. And Wagner was in bed, and his lawyer was sitting right there with him.

And Natalie was buried on December 2nd. Within days of the burial, a spokesman for the coroner's office announced that the case was closed. And when asked how long the whole thing took, for sure, put the total at around five weeks. That's it. Five weeks. But not everyone involved was as satisfied with the outcome. And Mukuchi, who'd ruled the death in accidental draft. later wrote about the morning after Natalie's body was recovered, saying, quote,

the whispers were of murder and I could not deny them. Unquote. Natalie was 43 years old when she died. She left behind two daughters, a sister, and a career that spanned nearly four decades. And the case that was supposed to explain what happened to her lasted only five weeks. So now the case may have been closed, but the physical state of the boat raised its own set of questions. Its condition told the same story it had told from the beginning. Nothing about it suggested anyone had used it that night.

And Noguchi cataloged three pieces of physical evidence that told a consistent story. Scratches from fingernails on the boat's exterior, an abrasion across Natalie's own cheek, an algae on the yacht's swim step that hadn't been disturbed. That's very important. In all of it, suggested she'd been in the water clawing at the boat, not standing on the boat adjusting a rope. And Davern called Wagner's version of the boat story, a lie, saying, quote, that story is 100% false. The dinghy really wasn't banging because it was tied off with two lines securely to the boat, unquote. And then there was the delay that no one on the yacht

has ever fully accounted for. And Roger Smith was the county's supervising rescue boat captain on duty that night. And once he reached the splendor, he wanted to know why it had taken so long for anyone to call. And according to a sworn statement, Wagner's answer was, quote, we thought she was off on another boat screwing around because that's the kind of woman she is, unquote. And by Wagner's telling, he knew she was gone by roughly midnight, and nobody reached out for help until an hour and a half later. And even then, the call had nothing to do with searching the ocean. It was to the restaurant, asking if she'd come back on her own. And Finstead framed the gap bluntly saying, quote, the first call isn't made until 1.30 a.m. in the morning,

and that's two and a half hours between the time that someone has heard screaming in the water, unquote. And the Coast Guard didn't hear from anyone until after 3 a.m. And that was two more hours gone. And then there was the question of what Wagner himself has said over the years, and how many times it's changed. Because his first version, given the ratcher in 1981, contained no mention of an argument. And the shattered glass was from waves, he said. Then five years later, in the 1986 book, called Heart to Heart with Robert Wagner,

the story evolved, and now it was a political debate that had bored Natalie enough to send her off to bed. Math isn't mathing for me, personally. And in pieces of my heart, he conceded far more. And he admitted that Wachan had urged Natalie to throw herself completely into her work, and that it sent him over the edge,

and he admitted picking up a wine bottle and smashing it on the table in anger. And for the first time, he put it in writing that he and Natalie had fought before she went missing. So with every retelling, Wagner's account drifted further from what he'd originally claimed and closer to the version Davern had been pushing for years. And once the investigation started up again,

Wagner stopped talking altogether. And detectives say he hasn't agreed to a single interview since. And Lieutenant Carina said his team had gone to Wagner more than 10 separate times asking to talk, and the answer was no every single time. And Wagner's attorney pushed back saying, quote, Mr. Wagner has fully cooperated over the last 30 years in the investigation of the accidental drowning of his wife in 1981. He has been interviewed on multiple occasions by the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department and answered every single question asked of him by detectives during those interviews, unquote.

And Lieutenant Carina wasn't pursuing. He told reporters that Wagner's version of events didn't line up with what other witnesses had said. And Christopher Walken's approach to the case has been different from Wagner's in nearly every single way. And in 1986, People Magazine asked him what happened. And he said, quote, I don't know what happened. She slipped and fell in the water. I was in bed then. It was a terrible thing. Look, we're in a conversation I won't have. It's a fucking bore, unquote. That sounds a lot different.

She slipped and fell. What? I thought she got into the boat. I thought she was going ashore, right? And why is talking about a woman that died under your watch? Oh, bore. That is so, this makes me really not like Christopher Walken. But he would stay quiet for more than a decade after that.

And the next time he spoke publicly about it was 1997 when Playboy got him to open up a little more, saying, quote, anybody there saw the logistics at the boat, the night, where we were. that it was raining and would know exactly what happened. 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, and the dingy 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, and she was probably half asleep, and she was wearing a coat. Unquote. Took you 10 years to come up with that? Okay, great, great.

And morning host, Gail King tried once more, but Waukin shut it down, saying, quote, I stopped talking about that 30 years ago and there's so much information, books and internet, anything you want to know, just go luck, unquote. And once the case was back open, Wachan brought on an attorney and sat for questioning and gave detectives what they asked for. The detectives confirmed to 48 hours that he has never been considered a person of interest. And Wagner, the one who won't sit down with them, carries that designation alone. Now, Dennis Davern was the captain of the splendor, as we know, working for Wagner and Wood. And he was the fourth person aboard that night, and for decades, he was the quietest.

And his original statement to Detective Rasher matched Wagner's nearly word for word. And Lieutenant Carina later noted, quote, if you look at Robert Wagner's statement at the time, they almost parrot each other, unquote. And that version held for years, almost like they talked about it before talking to the police, allegedly. But piece by piece, Davern started telling a different story, because, you know, when you lie, it's hard to remember the lie, you know, allegedly. And Marty Ruelly, who would later co-write his book, said that Davern had contacted her as early as 1983 just two years after the drowning, though he wasn't ready to go public. And through the late 80s and 90s, he shopped his account around to publishers and tabloid outlets looking for someone

willing to run it, and few would bite. In the first time his version of events reached a mainstream audience was March of 2000, and Vanity Fair published a feature in which Davern laid out what he had said he'd witnessed. Waukin and Natalie flirting all weekend, and the situation turning volatile after dinner once everyone was back aboard the yacht. Finally, in September of 2009, The book came out, and it was called Goodbye Natalie, Goodbye Splendor, co-written with Rowley. And the day after the sheriff's departments made its announcement about reopening the investigation, Davern appeared on NBC's Today Show and said out loud what he'd been circling for over a decade. Quote, I made some terrible decisions and mistakes.

I did lie on a report several years ago. I made mistakes by not telling the honest truth in a police report, unquote. That's against law. By the way, that's obstruction of justice. Statute of limitations or whatever, I don't know. But anyway, what Davern now described was a night defined by rage and silence. And in his revised account, Davern said the friction between Wagner and Natalie had been escalating since Friday, two full days before everything fell apart.

And back on the boat after dinner, Natalie had already changed into her flannel nightgown at a pair of warm socks. And she came out to the salon where the three men, were gathered and she put the kettle on for tea. And Davern lit candles and opened a bottle of wine and Natalie and Waukin were laughing together and it was pretty relaxed. And then out of nowhere Wagner snatched the wine bottle off the table and broke it. And Natalie stood up and said, quote unquote, I cannot take this. And she walked out and Wachan left two, heading for the guest cabin. But the argument didn't end. And Davern said Wagner went after her and it wasn't long

before the sounds of another argument started coming through the walls. And he told CNN, he cranked up his stereo because the whole thing embarrassed him, and at some point he glanced through the pilot house window, and Wagner and Natalie were outside on the deck now. And the way they were moving left no doubt the fight had gotten worse. And in his accounts to Vanity Fair, he described the fight as unlike anything he'd ever witnessed between them. Quote, saying, fighting like crazy, I'd never in a a million years seen them fight like that before, unquote. And he said the argument moved from inside the cabin out to the cockpit. And then he heard the boat being untied and then silence.

And when Wagner came back inside, something had changed. And Davern described him as, quote unquote, tussled, sweating profusely, as if he had been in a terrible fight, an ordeal of some kind, unquote. And Wagner told him he couldn't find Natalie. And Davern says his instinct, was to act immediately, turn on the searchlight and radio for help. And co-author Ruelly described it on the Today Show saying, quote,

Dennis wanted to do everything, make a phone call, turn on his search light, his instincts told him something was terribly wrong and Robert Wagner asked him not to, unquote. You're still complicit. Then Wagner pulled out a bottle of scotch and the two of them sat there drinking, doing nothing, while the minutes kept ticking away. And what Davern says happened after Natalie's death. is in some ways just as troubling as what happened during.

In Howard Temple, the polygraph examiner who later tested Davern, said Davern told him that once Natalie was dead, Wagner gave him a direct order. Quote, Davern made the statement that he stayed at the Wagner home. Told not to talk, Wagner paid for his therapy, and Davern could not leave the estate without bodyguards, unquote. And for 12 months after the drowning, Davern stayed on Wagner's payroll. And years later, he said that year felt like he was a hostage and really elaborated, saying, quote, the first year after Daverin stayed with Wagner, he wanted Dennis under his wing, so it was

very hard to talk with his family, his family, and his friends, unquote. And Lana Wood says Davern eventually told her what he believed he saw that night, saying quote, it appeared to him as though RJ or Wagner shoved her away and she went overboard. And Dennis panicked and RJ said, leave her there, tea. her a lesson." How is no one in jail at this point, Davern included. He saw her get pushed off the bone and she can't swim. Anyway, she said, Davern describes sitting there waiting for the moment they'd go rescue

her, quote unquote, until all the sound stop. The sound of somebody drowning and screaming for help. I have no sympathy for this man. Like there's not a bone in my body that I will offer empathy or sympathy to Davern. Complicit, completely, in my opinion, allegedly, you know. And in a sworn declaration, he submitted to the sheriff's department. And Daverne described the explosive fight between Wagner and Natalie that had erupted over her

relationship with Wauken. And the declaration also contained an admission that Davern had supplied quailudes to passengers during the weekend. And both Davern and Lana Wood later appeared on a 12-part podcast that launched in 2018 under the title Fatal Voyage, the mysterious death of Natalie Wood. And the question of whether Dennis Davern can be trusted has divided everyone

who's looked into the case. And his critics point to the obvious. He sat on the truth for decades, then started cashing in, tabloid interviews, a book deal, and a podcast. And every revelation came with a price tag. And Detective Rescher, who originally handled the case,

was dismissive, saying, quote, he's just made himself to look good in his book. and obviously he's trying to sell a book and make money off of it. And I think that's the whole purpose behind his writing this book, unquote. And his supporters point to something else though. Davern sat for a polygraph test and examiner Howard Temple said the results indicated he was telling the truth, which who the fuck cares?

He watched a woman die, he listened to her die, he thought she was in the water and didn't look. Okay, that makes him the good guy? What? Lieutenant Karina found Davern credible. Quote, I find his story. Find his story and his version of events when he talked to us, everything fit, makes more sense of what happened and his cooperated by other people, unquote. So where's Wagner in this? He killed his wife, it seems allegedly, looks like, seems like. The independent witnesses who came forward after the reopening were people Lieutenant Karina described as, quote unquote, very credible, and what they reported matched what Davern had been saying.

And Lieutenant Karina also gave a simple explanation for why Davern had the lied in 1981 saying, quote, you got to understand. Davern back then, people mischaracterized him as the captain of the boat. He's not the captain of the boat. He's the caretaker of the boat. Robert Wagner's the guy who pays him. That's his meal ticket, unquote. I don't give a flying fuck if you're getting paid. There's no excuse. I literally can't. To anybody that defends that, that's just insane. Whether Davern changed his story. story because the truth finally demanded it or because the market finally rewarded it is something only he knows for certain. I think both make him look terrible. But the investigators who spent the

most time with the case believed him, which in that case, she got murdered. So for three decades, the record on Natalie Wood's death collected dust. And then in November of 2011, the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department officially announced it was taking another look. And they Lieutenant John Carina said, quote, recently we have received information, which we felt was substantial enough to make us take another look at this case, unquote, and much of that information traced back to Davern, his account, and the questions it raised. And Wagner's camp responded through a publicist saying, quote, although no one in the Wagner family has heard from the L.A. County Sheriff's Department about this matter, they fully support the efforts

of the L.A. County Sheriff's Department and trusts they will evaluate whether any new information relating to the death of Natalie Wood, Wagner is valid, and that it comes from a credible source or sources other than those simply trying to profit from the 30-year anniversary of her tragic death, unquote. At the press conference, Lieutenant Karina said Wagner was not a suspect, at least not yet. But after the announcement, the phone started ringing, and roughly 100 people reached out to investigators with information. And over the following year, detectives tracked down witnesses nobody had spoken to before. And for the first time, they were able to map out what happened across the entire weekend leading up to Natalie's death. Two witnesses in particular changed the shape of the

case. And Detective Ralph Fernandez said they, quote, saw figures on the back of the splendor, a male and a female, whose voices they recognized as being Robert Wagner and Natalie Wood, arguing back and forth on the boat, unquote. And one of those witnesses told detectives she'd watched the confrontation happen with her own eyes. And Lieutenant Karina found both witnesses credible, and the splendor had changed hands since 1981 and was sitting in a Hawaiian harbor. And investigators made two separate trips out there to go through it. And the new investigation didn't just turn up witnesses. It sent investigators back to the physical evidence, actually. And Dr. Lakshmanen reviewed the original autopsy findings and produced a 10-page supplemental

report. And what he found didn't match the story the case had been telling for three decades. And among the findings, fresh bruises on her right forearm, left wrist and right knee that nobody had ever accounted for, a scratch on her neck, a scrape on her forehead, and the chief medical examiner's conclusions were careful but damning, saying, quote, the location of the bruises, the multiplicity of the bruises, lack of head trauma or facial bruising support bruising having occurred prior to entry in the water, unquote. And the last part mattered, because the original theory held that Natalie had slipped and struck her head while trying to to board the boat, but there was no head trauma and no facial bruising consistent with a fall.

So the pattern of injuries didn't support an accident on the boat. And then in 2020, someone who'd been in the room during the original autopsy came forward, and he was a medical doctor now, but back in 1981, he'd been one of Noguchi's interns. And according to him, the bruising was not minor. And the pattern looked like what you'd expect to see on a person who'd been thrown off a vessel and into the water. and he said he told Noguchi as much at the time. And forensic pathologist Michael Hunter offered a counterpoint. And his theory was that thyroid drug Natalie had been on could have made her skin bruise far more easily than normal.

No homicide designation came out of the review. And the timing of the bruises remained impossible to nail down. And in 2012, the doctor took the step that nobody had taken in 31 years. And he amended Natalie Wood's death certificate saying the cause of death was, was changed from accidental drowning to drowning and other undetermined factors. And the manner of death was revised to undetermined. And buried in the language was a line

that carried enormous weight. The coroner wrote that it was not clearly established, how Natalie wound up in the ocean. And two months later in January of 2013, a 10-page supplemental document came out of the Los Angeles County Coroner's office revisiting the original autopsy findings, in detail. And the language in that document was measured, but its implications were not.

Saying, quote, with the presence of fresh bruises in the upper extremities in the right forearm, left wrist area, and small scratch in the anterior neck, this examiner is unable to exclude non-accidental mechanisms causing these injuries, unquote. And the addendum flagged another problem, and people gave different answers about what time Natalie disappeared, and they agreed on whether she and Wagner had been fighting. And it included a line that no official document had ever contained before saying, quote, this medical examiner is unable to exclude non-volitional unplanned entry into the water, unquote.

In other words, someone may have pushed her in, basically. The document also addressed the question of whether Natalie might have taken her own life. But there was just no proof to prove that theory. But when detectives went looking for physical evidence from the original case, some of it was simply gone. And items that had been collected during the 1981 autopsy and investigation had disappeared from the record.

And in February of 2018, CBS's 48 hours broke the news that the sheriff's department had designated Robert Wagner as a person of interest in his wife's death. And it had been 36 years at this point. And Lieutenant Carina stated, quote, as we've investigated the case

over the last six years, I think he's more of a person of interest now. I mean, we know now that he was the last person to be with Natalie before she disappeared, unquote. And of course, the term person of interest carries no legal weight. It doesn't mean suspect, and it doesn't trigger any sort of arrest, and it doesn't compel anyone to speak necessarily. And Wagner continued not to consistently turning the away, which seems pretty guilty to me. I don't know. And as publicists released a statement saying, quote, after 30 years, neither Mr.

Wagner nor his daughters have any new information to add to this latest investigation." And the rest of the statement took aim at people Wagner's team believed were using Natalie's death for personal gain. But the investigators weren't asking for new information, they were asking him to explain the old information. Specifically, why his account of that night kept shifting. Again, lies are really hard to keep up after a few decades. Because in, pieces of my heart, Wagner wrote his most detailed version of the evening saying, quote, I went below and Natalie wasn't there. Strange. I went back up on the deck and looked around for her and noticed the dinghy was gone. Stranger. I remember wondering if she had taken the dinghy because of the argument.

And then I thought, no way, because she was terrified of dark water. And besides that, the dingy fired up so loudly and we would have heard it. Yes, I blamed myself. Natalie would have felt the same way. had it happened to me. Why wasn't I there? Why wasn't I watching? I would have done anything in the world to make her life better or protect her, unquote. And he and Natalie had been arguing that night before she was gone, as we know, and investigators noted that Wagner's story had moved over the decades. And Lieutenant Carina said, quote, I haven't seen him tell the details that match. All the other witnesses in this case. I think he's constantly, he's changed the, his story a little bit and his version of events just don't add up, unquote.

Meanwhile, Christopher Walken cooperated with the reopened investigation, and he hired an attorney, sat for an interview, and answered detective's questions. And in his original statement to police, Watkin framed what happened that night as a heated back and forth between husband and wife over how much Natalie was spending on her career. And he told police he'd jumped in for a moment, then left the room and went out on deck.

And by the time he walked back inside, Waukin said the tension had cooled, saying, quote, unquote, everybody was apologizing. And Natalie headed back to the master cabin after that. And Wachan has never been named a person of interest. But Wagner has, and he has never sat down with the detectives investigating his wife's death. Detective Hernandez notes, quote, we have not been able to prove that this was a homicide, and we haven't been able to prove that this was an accident either.

And the ultimate problem is we don't know how she ended up in the water, unquote. But let's strip away the celebrity, the gossip, the tabloid headlines. And what's left is a set of facts that have never been reconciled. Natalie Wood's body showed fresh bruising across her upper arms, her forearms, her wrists, and her legs, and even her head. And Hernandez says, quote, she looked like the victim of an assault, unquote. And the coroner's supplemental report reinforced that impression and the pattern and placement of the bruises combined with the absence of any head injury or

facial trauma suggested something other than a fall. If she'd slipped and hit her head on the boat, the injury should have looked different. And multiple witnesses, independent of the captain, heard a man and a woman fighting on the back of the splendor. And their accounts matched Daverns, and the argument was loud and intense and then it stopped all at once. And Daverd said, quote, and then all of the sudden there was nothing complete silence, unquote. And Lieutenant Karinik affirmed, quote, no one saw anybody go in the water. Nobody heard a splash. nobody heard anything." And that leads to the question that has hung over this case from the beginning.

Why would a woman who'd been terrified of the water since childhood climb into a diggy by herself in a flannel nightgown and socks at midnight in the rain with the ocean rough enough to rock the boat? It makes no sense at all. Lieutenant Karina said the story, quote, made absolutely no sense if you really think about it, unquote. And those who believe this wasn't an accident point to motive as well as opportunity. An author and former federal prosecutor Sam Peroni spent years investigating the financial dimensions of the case. And at Peroni's telling, the financial picture was pretty damning. And he argued that the evidence was beyond dispute.

Wagner's wealth expanded significantly because of Natalie's death. And more significantly, Peroni argued Wagner had something to lose. Because if Natalie divorced him a second time, the financial and reputational consequences would have been devastating. Jealousy was the accelerant, and investigators confirmed that Wagner had been angry all weekend about the closeness between his wife and Christopher Walken, and that anger reached its peak on the night she died. And CBS put the question to Carina directly. Did the evidence point them towards something other than an accident?

And he said, it does. Quote, I think it's suspicious enough to make us think that something happened, unquote. No one heard the small boat's engine start that night, and no one heard it pull away, and the key was off, and the oars were tied up, saying, quote, it didn't add up. So why hasn't anyone been charged? Why the hell hasn't anyone been charged? Every other possible charge has passed its statute of limitations. That's why.

Why is this a thing? Why does the statute of limitations exist? I don't understand. I genuinely will never understand. I don't. But only murder remains on the table. Prosecutors would need to show that somebody deliberately forced Natalie into the ocean. If she fell in during an argument, even a violent one, that's not murder under California law, necessarily. And Peroni believed the failure wasn't in the evidence. It was in the investigator's

grasp of the law, which I don't really understand that, because if you push someone in the ocean and then let them drown, that's murder, you're complicit, that's a, that's a, you're not assisting in the murder. It's still a charge, whatever, dude. But he said they got tripped up on the corpus delicti, the legal principle that requires proof a crime was actually committed. And never realized they had enough for circumstantial second-degree murder case. Because it wasn't planned necessarily, but he also didn't do anything about it, and he let her die. allegedly. So what is that, what is the legal system doing? Dude, I'm a, I'm a YouTuber. I know that. Anyway, legal experts, though, were more cautious. And Lori Levinson, professor of law at loyal law

school said, quote, it's too easy for attorneys to undermine the credibility of a witness that has changed his testimony after such a long time, unquote. And what prosecutors actually win convictions on decades-old cases, it's almost always because a lab found something new, which is very true. I understand that. It's just frustrating. But, you know, they need DNA, essentially a fingerprint match, something more concrete. And a recanting witness with a book deal is a different situation entirely, unfortunately. And there are counterarguments that carry real weight, though, because Natalie's blood, alcohol was 0.14% that night. And on top of that, the painkillers and motion sickness medication in her system would have compounded the impairment shore.

And the original coroner had concluded she slipped trying to board the boat, which, as we know now, seems extremely unlikely. And Wagner's spokesman maintained she'd taken it out on her own before. And in 1983, Christopher Walken offered what may be the most honest assessment anyone has ever given, saying, quote, the real story of her death is that she drowned. And nobody knows how she drowned or what happened, except her. That's what it is. There is no real story. Nobody will ever know, unquote.

Which at this point, I think is true. Like, that is where it's going to stay and that's what it's going to be, which is unfortunate. I think he's extremely flippant with it, but I really don't think there can be anything done about it because the clock has only worked against the truth. And Lieutenant Karina pointed out, quote, Our biggest challenge is time. Many witnesses have passed away, who were on boats nearby.

The original investigator has passed away, unquote. Some of the physical evidence collected during the original autopsy couldn't be found. The boat itself was gone. In May of 2022, the Sheriff's Department announced that all leads had been exhausted, and no criminal charges have ever been filed. And the case sits where it always has sat. Somewhere between an accident that doesn't make sense and a crime that can't be proved. All right, let's take a quick pause to talk about something that has plagued all of us,

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And an additional $10 off if you use promo code CCCM. Thank you so much to Brotto for sponsoring the video and supporting the channel and let's get back to it. Now, we've discussed the facts of what happened to Natalie Wood as a teenager and what matters now isn't any single event, but it's a pattern. and Finstad in her biographical work cataloged Natalie's inner world with a kind of forensic precision saying, quote, as I plumbed her past, Natalie Woods' demons and their origins revealed themselves as if released from a genie's lamp.

Family violence, alcoholic father, pathological attachment to her Svengali stage mother, psychological abuse as a child star, paranoia phobia's bedroom of storybook dolls she believed were alive and spoke to her, pimped at 15 years old to Frank Frickin Sinatra, forced to return an engagement ring to her high school sweetheart who tried to himself afterward, exploited as a teenager into a sexual liaison with a 42-year-old director, Nicholas Ray, to prove that she could play a bad girl in Rebel Without a Cause, unquote, and so on, and so on. And every time, that list traces back to the same source, Maria taught her daughter one rule above all others.

The career comes first. And when 10-year-old Natalie broke her wrist on the set of The Green Promise, Maria hid the injury. And when 16-year-old Natalie came back from a hotel room shaking and disheveled, Maria told her to absorb it. Just shake it off. Maria's own words, as Lana remembered them, were the same both times. She would never work again as an actress, and she would lose everything if she became one of those complaining people. Just suck it up. A broken bone, a rape, handled with the identical.

instruction. Say nothing. Protect the career. Endure. Finstead said it straight forward, saying, quote. I'm sure it was always in her psyche. When you've been raped, it never really disappears, particularly when it's someone you've idolized and when your mother conspires to keep it a secret, unquote. Lana saw the aftermath play out for years, and you could tell how much it affected her. And it changed the way she looked at men, and the men who allegedly did it lived the rest of of his life, untouched. And in 1981, the same year, Natalie drowned the Pacific,

Kirk Douglas received the Presidential Medal of Freedom. And in 1996, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences handed him an honorary Oscar, celebrating him as, quote unquote, a creative and moral force. Moral force. And he died on February 5th, 2020 at the age of 103, with no charges, no public reckoning,

and no accountability of any kind. And Douglas never denied his reputation, and he admitted public. that fidelity wasn't something he practiced personally. An actress and dancer Neil Adams speaking to the Associated Press in 2016 described her friend with a laugh, saying, quote, you could not sit beside him without his hand crawling up your leg. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. What the fuck?

The rumors about what he'd done to Natalie were never really a secret. The day the news of Douglas' death broke, Natalie Wood's name started trending on Twitter right next to his. The connection was that widely understood. And for decades, Lana had kept a promise she'd made to her sister, to never publicly name him, and she'd held that promise through Natalie's death, even, through decades of whispered speculation and through the reopened investigation. And it was the hashtag Me Too movement that finally changed her mind. And she said in an interview that it gave her the courage to say what she'd been carrying. And then her memoir, Little Sister, came out in 2021.

And it was the first time she'd ever put Kirk Douglas' name to the accusation. publicly. Quote, with no one still around to protect, I'm sure she'll forgive me for finally breaking that promise, unquote. And after her sister's death, Lana kept returning to the same questions. How could Natalie, with her lifelong terror of dark water, have ended up alone in the ocean? Because Natalie didn't swim and her fear of dark water was deeply ingrained. And the woman who'd been groomed since childhood to endure anything to silence every wound and to never make trouble for powerful men was found floating face down in the one place she feared more than anywhere on earth. And Natalie spoke about it herself more than once, and there was never any ambiguity.

And in a segment from A&E's biography series, she said, quote, I've always been terrified, still am of water, dark water, sea water, unquote. And in a separate interview, she was even more direct saying, quote, I'm frightened to death of water. I can swim a little bit, but I'm afraid of water that is dark, unquote. And director Elia Kazan, who worked with her on Splendor in the Grass, wrote in his memoir that Natalie had confided to him before a difficult scene, and she told him she had, quote, a terror of water, particularly dark water, and being helpless in it, unquote.

And that scene required her to throw herself into a lake, fighting to stay afloat as her character tried to drown. And for most actors, it would have been a technical challenge, but for Natalie, it was just an all-out crisis. And to get her through it, Kazan and Charlie McGuire, his assistant lowered himself into the water right next to her, positioned where the camera couldn't see him. And even with Charlie beside her, the fear didn't let up. And still, she performed the scene anyway, and she nailed it. And once they pulled her out, she grabbed onto Charlie and would not let go. And back on solid ground, her whole body was shaking, saying, quote, she continued to shake with fear, then laughed hysterically

with relief, unquote. And her sister put it in the simplest possible term, saying, quote, she hated the water, hated it, unquote. So the fear wasn't like abstract or occasional, it governed how she moved through the world and through her career. Everyone close to her knew it was there, but few knew where it started. And with that story, her mother told her when she was still too young to understand what it meant. Maria repeated that prophecy to her children for years. And she said it was meant to keep them safe. What it actually did was plant a terror in Natalie that never loosened its grip. And then that stunt went wrong on the set of the green promise when Natalie was 10 and she was plunged into rushing water when that bridge collapsed underneath her.

The fortune teller's warning, the near-drowning fused together inside her and neither ever let go. And if her death was an accident, then what happened on November 29, 1981 was the cruelest kind of coincidence. The woman who'd been told since childhood that dark water would take her life died exactly that way. Her mother's prophecy whispered into a little girl's ear decade after decade fulfilled itself in the Pacific. And if it wasn't an accident, the meaning shifts into something harder to sit with,

a woman who was taught from birth to be silent, to absorb pain without complaint, and to protect the careers and reputations of people who had power over her that that woman was silenced for good, in the one element she feared since before she could understand why. Either way, it's absolutely, be heartbreaking. In either way, nobody came to help her. So in May of 2022, Lieutenant Hugo Renega of the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department made a quiet announcement that carried 40 years of

weight behind it, saying, quote, all leads in the Natalie Wood case have been exhausted, and the case remains open, unsolved case, unquote. And the detective who had been assigned to it, Ralph Fernandez, had retired two months earlier, and no one replaced him. And Robert Wagner, now 95 years old, was formerly cleared as a person of interest. So every time I say he maybe did it, this is alleged, and I just have an opinion, and I'm not saying he actually did it for legal reasons. Thank you. The file stays open on paper, and if something new shows up, they say that they will put an investigator on the case to look at it. But the people who know these cases understand what that language means. It means the act of pursuit is over.

And the official record never called it a homicide, but it also started. stopped calling it an accident. And what's left is a family divided by what they believe happened that night and a silence that each side has interpreted in opposite directions. And Natalie's sister, Lana Wood, has never wavered. And in 2021, she said clearly, quote, of course Robert Wagner killed her, unquote. I'm on her side.

And she told a podcast host that she believes there was a violent argument on the yacht that spiraled beyond anyone's control, quote, I think that things got out of hand. I know Natalie can verbally push, and Natalie was a very by the rules person. She did not put up with a great deal that she felt was harmful to her, unquote. And Lana has spent decades pointing to the details

she says make the accidental version impossible. At CrimeCon, she told the audience something worth hearing, saying, quote, Natalie would not go anywhere, not fully made up, wearing something terrific. She certainly would not get into a dingy in her nightgown by her stuff. she would get dressed, put on full makeup, and have Dennis Davern take her ashore to stay in a motel on Catalina,

which is exactly what she did the night before when she wanted to leave, unquote. And she demanded one thing above all others, that Wagner, quote unquote, tell the truth for once and for all. And Lana told the New York Times, quote, protecting Natalie, that's what I really feel I have to do now. If it's not me, it's not going to happen, unquote. And Detective Hernandez confirmed as much, quote, She is the one family member willing to cooperate in this investigation, unquote. And others have picked up the fight alongside her. And Peroni, the former assistant U.S. attorney turned author,

walked into the Los Angeles County Coroner's office and personally filed a petition. And he wanted a new inquest into how Natalie Wood died. And the petition was built on evidence he'd spent years compiling on his own. And Marty Ruelly, Daverin's co-author and Lana's longtime ally, said in November of 2024, what many close to the, the case believe, quote, the case will remain open as long as Robert Wagner is alive because he is the suspect, unquote. And Natalie's daughters see it differently, though. And Natasha Gregson, Wagner told the New York Times, says, quote, unquote, I know it was an accident. And in 2020,

she produced an HBO documentary called Natalie Wood, what remains behind, an effort to shift the public conversation away from conspiracy and back towards her mother's life. And she described Wagner as, quote, unquote, courageous for participating, and quote unquote, he's one of the great loves of my life. And in her memoir, More Than Love, Natasha wrote what amounts to a closing argument, saying, quote, my mother no longer has a voice of her own, but I do, and this is what I know. Wagner loved Natalie more than love. No one in my world questioned my dad's love for my mom, or his utter despair at her loss, unquote. And Courtney Wagner, who was seven when her mother died, So I feel like we really don't know our parents at seven years old.

But I am sympathetic because she did lose her mother. And Lord knows what her father has told her. I don't know. And you know what? I don't know what happened. But I don't know. You're just looking at it from outside, looking in. I can only assume there's manipulation happening, in my opinion.

And I may be wrong. But she would go on to say, quote, I remember walking up to my sister screaming. And luckily, I had a nanny that I was very close to. that was by my side." But both daughters stood behind the man who raised them, and their aunts stand on the other side alone, and the case keeps losing ground to time. And Chief of Detective's McSweeney once said, quote, we don't close these cases. These cases have active periods and more passive periods, unquote.

And this one has been passive for a long time now. But for more than 40 years, the mystery of how Natalie Wood died has consumed nearly everything about who she was while she was alive. And the case still remains open. And I wanted to do this video to mainly focus on her life and all of her accomplishments and what really happened to learn who she was as a person and to honor that part of her life. And I truly just want justice for her because this seems so just disheartening. And I'd like her family to be at peace with it. And it sounds like some of her family is, like her daughters. But like her sister, I feel like her sister knows the most about her,

especially given the time where she was, you know, around the same age and adult. And yeah, the questions still remain unanswered, though. And before November 29th, 1981, there was just a woman who fought for every role she ever played, who survived a childhood that should have broken her and who loved her daughters fiercely. and who spent her whole life trying to become something more than what people needed her to be. And she deserved better than the silence that followed. But that is that for Natalie Wood.

Let me know what you guys think down below. I'm sure we can have a lot of conversation about it down below. Yeah, this case, I don't know, it really makes me angry. It really makes me angry. And I'm curious to know what you guys think. And also, what other cases you want me to deep dive into? Let me know. and I will see your beautiful face in the next one. Okay? Bye.