Chapters
Shownotes Transcript
Ryan Reynolds here from Int Mobile. With the price of just about everything going up during inflation, we thought we'd bring our prices down.
So to help us, we brought in a reverse auctioneer, which is apparently a thing. Mint Mobile Unlimited Premium Wireless. How did you get 30, 30, how did you get 30, how did you get 20, 20, 20, how did you get 20, 20, how did you get 15, 15, 15, 15, just 15 bucks a month? Sold! Give it a try at mintmobile.com slash switch. $45 upfront payment equivalent to $15 per month. New customers on first three-month plan only. Taxes and fees extra. Speeds lower above 40 gigabytes each detail.
The land down under has never been easier to reach. United Airlines has more flights between the U.S. and Australia than any other U.S. airline, so you can fly nonstop to destinations like Sydney, Melbourne, and Brisbane. Explore dazzling cities, savor the very best of Aussie cuisine, and get up close and personal with the wildlife. Who doesn't want to hold a koala? Go to united.com slash Australia to book your adventure.
To get this episode of Forensic Tales ad-free, please visit patreon.com slash Forensic Tales. Forensic Tales discusses topics that some listeners may find disturbing. The contents of this episode may not be suitable for everyone. Listener discretion is advised. In 1981, Hollywood actress Natalie Wood planned a Thanksgiving yachting adventure with her husband and friend.
The trip started out perfect, but then Natalie's limelight, lifestyle, and fame ended one ill-fated morning. The Coast Guard received a disturbing call. Natalie Wood had fallen overboard. And hours later, they found her body floating in the water. But no one seemed to know why, even with three other people on board.
This is Forensic Tales, episode number 164, The Mysterious Death of Natalie Wood. ♪♪ ♪♪
Welcome to Forensic Tales. I'm your host, Courtney Fretwell-Ariola. Forensic Tales is a weekly true crime podcast covering real, spine-tingling stories with a forensic science twist. Some cases have been solved with forensic science, while others have turned cold. Every remarkable story sends us a chilling reminder that not all stories have happy endings.
As a one-woman show, your support helps me find new compelling cases, conduct in-depth fact-based research, and produce and edit this weekly show. As a thank you for supporting the show, you'll get early ad-free access to weekly episodes, shout-outs and episodes, priority on case suggestions, and access to weekly bonus episodes.
To support Forensic Tales, please visit patreon.com slash Forensic Tales or simply click the link in the show notes. You can also support the show by leaving a positive rating with a review. Now let's get to this week's episode.
By the early 1980s, Natalie Wood was at the top of her career in Hollywood. At 43 years old, she had already become an Academy Award-nominated actress who starred in some of the most famous films of all time. She co-starred in Miracle on 34th Street when she was only eight, and by the time she became a teenager, she had earned her first Oscar nomination.
For over four decades, Natalie Wood cemented her reputation as one of Hollywood's most desirable and sought-after stars. Most childhood stars never achieve the same type of success when they reach adulthood. But not Natalie. The older she got, the more famous she became. She had been nominated for three Oscars before she was 25.
After Miracle on 34th Street, Natalie went on to star in several high-profile films, including Splendor in the Grass, West Side Story, and Love with the Proper Stranger. But her fame across movies and film all came to a crashing end one day in November 1981. It was an ending not even the best writers of Hollywood could create. November 27th, 1981, the weekend after the Thanksgiving holiday.
Natalie and her husband, Robert Wagner, invited some friends to take a trip on their yacht, the Splendor, a 58-foot motor yacht. But something about this trip didn't feel right for many of Natalie and Robert's friends. The weekend had had terrible weather, so no one wanted to get on the boat with them. It seemed like a much better idea to stay on dry land. The only person to accept Natalie's invitation was her friend, Christopher Walken.
Natalie and Christopher became close friends after working together on the science fiction film Brainstorm. He wasn't from Los Angeles and was only in town for the film. Besides Natalie, her husband Robert, and her friend Christopher, the only other person on the yacht that day was the boat's captain, Dennis Duverne.
The four of them headed toward Catalina Island, a small island off the coast of Southern California, around 12 o'clock noon on November 27th. This was a boat route that Natalie and Robert took all the time. They both lived in Los Angeles, so the trip to Catalina Island was quick and easy. Later reports suggested everyone on board had been drinking all morning long.
A few days after Thanksgiving, the four of them were having a good time as they set sail to Catalina. But alcohol and boating aren't always the best combination. Later that night, Natalie and her husband Robert fought. Maybe they had just a little bit too much to drink and got into an argument. So the captain, Dennis Duverne, took Natalie ashore on a dinghy. They both fell asleep and spent the night in the Pavilion Lodge Hotel on Catalina Island.
But before we get any further, this information only came out much later. Because initially, Dennis, the boat's captain, said that all four of them had spent the night on the yacht that first night. But he changed his story later on and said that he and Natalie stayed ashore while Robert and Christopher slept on the boat. The following day, this is now November 28th, Natalie went ashore again.
This time, she went with her friend Christopher, while her husband and the captain stayed on the boat. According to Christopher, the two of them spent most of the day on the island, drinking and having a good time. Later that afternoon, Dennis and Robert joined them at Doug's Harbor Reef for more drinks. Everyone seemed to be having a really good time until dinner.
By dinnertime, Natalie and Robert were reportedly arguing again. Maybe it was the alcohol or something else was happening between them.
Sometime between 10 o'clock p.m. and 10.30 p.m., the group of four left the restaurant and headed back to the yacht. But by that point, they were hammered. Reports are that they were so intoxicated that the restaurant's night manager even called the harbor patrol to make sure that they made it back to the boat okay. Now, what exactly happened after 10 or 10.30 p.m. isn't clear.
The versions of events you get depend on who you ask, but what is evident is that just a few hours later, Natalie Wood's dead body floated ashore. At 1.30 a.m. on November 29th, the Coast Guard received a distress call about a missing woman at sea. The woman was Natalie Wood, and the callers were her husband, friend, and the boat's captain.
For the next two hours, the Coast Guard searched the waters looking for Natalie. But by 3.30 a.m., the search was called off, a decision that might have proved fatal. About four hours later, this is now around 7.30 a.m., the Coast Guard eventually discovered Natalie's body floating in the water about a mile away from the yacht. She was found in an isolated cove known as the Blue Cavern Point. But they were too late.
43-year-old Natalie Wood was already dead. And not far from Natalie's body, they also found the yacht's dinghy washed up on the rocks. But the ignition was off, the gear shift was in neutral, and the oars were locked. The boat didn't appear to have been used at all.
When the Coast Guard pulled Natalie's body out of the water, she was wearing a flannel nightgown, a down jacket, and a pair of socks. And almost her entire body was covered in bruises and cuts. She had multiple bruises on her arms and legs. She also had a deep cut to the left side of her face. According to Dr. Joseph Choi, a deputy medical examiner at the Los Angeles Medical Examiner's Office, Natalie had a blood alcohol content of 0.14%.
She also had traces of a motion sickness pill and a painkiller in her system. Immediately following Natalie's autopsy on November 30th, the L.A. County Coroner's Office announced the cause of death. They were confident that Natalie had accidentally gone overboard based on the evidence, and her cause of death was a, quote, accidental drowning. The 43-year-old Hollywood star had drowned.
According to the autopsy, all the injuries to Natalie's body supported their accidental drowning theory. They said that after she fell off the yacht, she probably hit her arms and legs on the side of the boat, and that caused all the bruising on her arms and legs. Then once she was in the water, they said she probably tried to pull herself up into the rubber dinghy on the side of the boat, and as she tried to pull herself up, she scratched herself with it.
According to the medical examiner, the scratch marks found on her body were consistent with the kind of scratches trying to climb into a dinghy might have. So all of these bruises and scratches were described as being superficial and consistent with an accidental drowning off a boat. When Natalie's body was found, they also found the rubber dinghy. It was floating in the water about a mile away from the yacht.
This discovery was also consistent with this accidental drowning theory. If Natalie had fallen off the yacht and tried to get herself into the little boat, she might have accidentally detached it from the yacht before she could climb in. So that could explain why the dinghy was not attached to the yacht and why it was found near her body.
This also explains what the Coast Guard said. They said that the small boat didn't appear to have been used when they arrived. That's because the ignition was off, the gear shift was in neutral, and the oars were locked. So it's possible that once Natalie fell overboard, she tried to get back inside the little boat, but couldn't. She could only get it detached from the yacht, but possibly drowned before getting herself inside.
This explanation supports the injuries to Natalie's body and why the dinghy was found close to her and why it didn't appear to have been recently used. The toxicology report also seemed to support an accidental drowning theory. When Natalie's body was taken for an autopsy, she had a blood alcohol level of 0.14%. She also had painkillers and a motion sickness pill in her system.
A person with that level of alcohol in their system is legally considered intoxicated. And when you mix the alcohol with painkillers and motion sickness medication, you risk becoming even more intoxicated. By all accounts, Natalie, her husband, her friend, and the captain all drank that night.
They were so intoxicated that the restaurant's manager, where they had dinner that night, even called the Coast Guard to make sure that they got back to their boat okay. So the alcohol found in Natalie's system makes sense, and it could explain how she accidentally fell overboard. According to the L.A. County Coroner, as tragic as it sounded, this was simply just an accidental drowning.
Natalie was buried in the Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery in Los Angeles. Although hundreds of people from the media and her fans arrived at the cemetery, only her close friends and family were allowed inside. The rest of them had to watch from the outside of the cemetery gates. Among those who attended her funeral were Frank Sinatra and Elizabeth Taylor, just to name a few of the high-profile celebrities who wanted to be there.
For most people, their funeral is their final resting place. But Natalie Wood's funeral isn't where this story ends. It's where it begins. This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. What are some of your self-care non-negotiables? Maybe you never skip leg day or therapy day.
When your schedule is packed with kids' activities, big work projects, or podcasting like me, it's easy to let your priorities slip. Even when we know it makes us feel good, it's hard to make time for it. But when you feel like you have no time for yourself, non-negotiables like therapy are more important than ever. Therapy can help with things like how to set healthy boundaries or find ways to be the best version of yourself.
So if you're thinking about starting therapy, give BetterHelp a try. It's entirely online, designed to be convenient, flexible, and suited to your schedule. Just fill out a brief questionnaire to get matched with a licensed therapist or switch therapist anytime for no additional charge. Never skip therapy day with BetterHelp.
Visit BetterHelp.com slash tails to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp, H-E-L-P dot com slash tails. Immediately following the coroner's ruling about an accidental drowning, her family was highly skeptical about what happened. It just didn't make any sense. How could Natalie have accidentally fallen overboard?
Yes, she was drunk, and yes, she had painkillers in her system, but how could she have fallen? When the Coast Guard found her, she was wearing socks and a flannel nightgown. This seemed to suggest she was sleeping or getting ready for bed when she fell overboard. And it wasn't only Natalie's family who had their doubts.
According to the Los Angeles Times, more than 100 people contacted the L.A. authorities expressing serious doubts about whether this was an accidental drowning. One of them was a woman named Marilyn Wayne. She said she was in a boat about 80 feet away that night and that she and her boyfriend heard a woman screaming around 11 o'clock p.m.
They said that they called the harbor master who was in charge, but they didn't seem to be too concerned and didn't take the call seriously. The harbor master thought maybe it was simply some people on a nearby boat having too much fun. But Natalie wasn't on the yacht by herself that night. So what did the other three people who were with her say happened?
Besides Natalie, her husband Robert Wagner, her friend and co-star Christopher Walken, and the yacht's captain Dennis Duvern were all on board with her. So what did they say happened? Well, the short answer isn't much. None of them told what happened besides they all had dinner earlier that night on Catalina and then returned to the boat to go to sleep.
All three seemed to say that Natalie had gone to bed earlier before them and that her room was at the back of the ship, so no one heard or saw anything. No one saw her slip or fall overboard. They didn't know how or when she would have gone into the water. They only realized Natalie was missing around 1.30 a.m. when they called the Coast Guard.
But although Robert, Christopher, and Dennis said they didn't know anything, many people doubted they were telling the truth. The public and media first pointed fingers at Natalie's husband, Robert Wagner. According to Christopher and Dennis, he and Natalie had gotten into at least two separate fights that weekend. So people wondered if Robert could have had anything to do with Natalie's death.
Did they get into a fight once they returned from dinner and got back on the yacht? As a young teenage star working in Hollywood, Natalie dated around a lot. For example, when she was just a teenager, she starred in the film Rebel Without a Cause. It was a film that would later earn her an Oscar nomination.
But while filming the movie, Natalie reportedly had affairs with both the movie's director, Nicholas Ray, and her co-star, Dennis Hopper. She also dated stars like Elvis Presley before she met her future husband, Robert Wagner. At the time, she was 18 and he was 26. Like Natalie, Robert Wagner is also a movie star and has made a name for himself in Hollywood.
He has starred in several television shows and movies like It Takes a Thief, Switch, Two and a Half Men, and Austin Powers. So when the two met, it was love at first sight. Natalie and Robert got married a year after they met in December 1957, but the marriage didn't last long. After only four years together, they announced their separation in June of 1961 and were divorced by 1962.
But exactly like their short marriage, their divorce didn't last because by 1972, they were back together. Two years later, they got married for a second time. They welcomed a daughter together in March of 1974.
But at the time of their daughter's birth, there were a lot of rumors swirling around about their relationship. Especially one rumor that Natalie was having an affair with a former FBI agent from 1972 to 1977. This would have been right around the time when Natalie got pregnant with her daughter, which led some people to speculate if the FBI agent was actually her biological father.
But the FBI agent wasn't the only person she was accused of having an affair with. In November 1981, at the time of Natalie's death, she was rumored to be dating her Brainstorm co-star Christopher Walken, the other person who was on board the yacht that night. So people started to speculate. Did Robert Wagner know about this affair if it was in fact true?
Or did he happen to find out while they were at sea together that weekend? Despite the rumors of affairs and infidelity, the relationship between Natalie and Christopher Walken has only been described as friendly. So it's unclear whether or not they were dating when she died.
Although people wondered if Natalie's husband was somehow involved in her death, there wasn't any evidence to prove it. Sure, there might have been motive if he found out she and Christopher were having an affair, or if she was having an affair with someone else for that matter. But that was pure speculation. There wasn't any cold, hard evidence to point the finger at Robert. So what about Christopher Walken?
In September 1997, 16 years after Natalie's death, Christopher finally broke his silence about what happened that night. In an interview reported by The Hollywood Reporter, Christopher had this to say, "...anybody there saw the logistics of the boat, the night, where we were, that it was raining, and would know exactly what happened."
You hear about things happening to people. They slip in the bathtub, fall down the stairs, step off the curb in London because they think the cars come the other way, and they die. You feel you want to die making an effort at something. You don't want to die in some unnecessary way. 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.
End quote.
Not only was this interview the first time we heard from Christopher himself, but it was the first time we heard about this story about her going out to stop the dinghy from banging on the side of the yacht. Like Christopher said, this gave rise to the theory that she had gone to bed before everyone else that night, but she couldn't fall asleep because the dinghy was hitting the side of the boat next to her bedroom.
So she decided to get out of bed to try and move it, which explains why she was wearing a flannel nightgown with a jacket and socks. But when she tried to move it, she fell. And according to Christopher, she didn't know how to swim. Of course, this was simply his thoughts and opinion. According to the three people on board on the yacht that night, no one actually saw what happened to Natalie or how she ended up in the water.
This story almost seemed to make sense for the first time in over 16 years. But not to everyone. There were still so many people who didn't believe this story either. After Christopher's public interview in 1997, the story seemed to go quiet. But many couldn't shake what happened to Natalie, and they were determined to find out the truth.
30 years later, in 2011, the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department dropped a bombshell. It was a bombshell that nobody could see coming. In November 2011, they announced they were officially reopening the Natalie Wood case. But what happened? How did we go from accidental drowning for over 30 years to reopening the case?
Well, the spark to reopen the investigation came from a very unlikely source, the yacht's captain. By late 2011, it had already been three decades since the accident. But even after all those years, Dennis Darving, the boat's captain, was ready to come forward with new information.
Dennis sat down with L.A. investigators and said that he had been holding on to something for the last 30 years that he was finally ready to get off his chest. Not even the most experienced investigators were prepared for what he had to say. According to Dennis, he lied. He lied to the police during their first interview about what happened that night. Initially, he said Natalie and Robert weren't fighting on the first night of the trip.
but by 2011, he had a change of heart. He said that wasn't true. According to him, the fight between Natalie and Robert had gotten so bad that she decided to spend the first night of the trip on Catalina Island in a hotel while Robert stayed on the yacht. He also said the two started arguing again at dinner on the second night. They said both nights, they both drank a little bit too much and started arguing.
Now, this information was completely new to investigators because back in 1981, they had no idea that Natalie and her husband had spent most of the trip fighting. And if they had known about that, then it might have changed what they did during their initial investigation. But that's not all that Dennis had to say. He said that he noticed some unusual interactions between Natalie and Christopher Walken, her co-star.
He said their interactions were more flirty than friendly, and he wasn't the only one who noticed. According to Dennis, Natalie's husband Robert also thought that they were flirting and acting just sort of strange with each other, and this upset him. They had invited Christopher to go on this boating trip to have fun, not for him to spend the entire time flirting with his wife.
So after Robert started noticing this, he and Natalie got into this huge fight. He accused her of having an affair with Christopher and she denied it. Dennis said this fight only escalated after both spent most of the day drinking. But that's not all. Dennis still had one more thing he needed to tell investigators.
Dennis said that after he found out Natalie was missing and she wasn't on the boat, Robert told him he couldn't turn on the boat's searchlights to look for her. In Dennis's story, he said that right after he found out that Natalie was missing, he wanted to use the searchlights to start looking for her and to see if they could find her floating in the water somewhere. But Robert wouldn't let him.
He said that they weren't going to go search for her and that they weren't going to call the Coast Guard. When investigators returned to Natalie's autopsy, that seemed to line up with some critical details in the report. Because at the time of the autopsy, Natalie had recently digested food in her system. This led the medical examiner to believe that she drowned shortly after eating.
But based on the timeline, Natalie and the group left the restaurant around 10 or 10.30 p.m. that night. And the Coast Guard wasn't notified until hours later around 1.30 a.m. So this makes sense. Natalie died shortly after eating. Or in other words, she died a lot earlier and she died before the Coast Guard was called to help look for her.
This all adds up to one thing. Dennis might have been right when he said that Robert told him not to call for help and not to turn on the searchlights to look for her. As soon as Dennis implicated Robert in Natalie's death, the L.A. County Sheriff's Department immediately announced that they were reopening Natalie's case. And within hours of this announcement, Robert refused to speak with investigators and hired a lawyer.
However, Christopher Walken, the other person on board, decided to fully cooperate with investigators. This quickly led many people to suspect Robert Wagner had killed his wife. Two years later, in January 2013, the L.A. County Sheriff's Department officially changed Natalie's cause of death from an accidental drowning to drowning and other undetermined factors.
We know Natalie drowned because of water inside her lungs and other evidence gathered at the autopsy. So the question isn't about whether she drowned or not. The real question now becomes, how did Natalie drown? Did she drown because she accidentally fell overboard trying to stop the dinghy from banging on the side of the yacht so that she could go to sleep that night? Or did someone push her overboard?
After Natalie's case was reopened, they went back to her autopsy. In the original report, the medical examiner attributed the bruises and cuts on her body to falling overboard or bruising herself while trying to get on the dinghy. But they wanted to find out if the injuries could have been caused from something else. And by January 2013, they offered a 10-page addendum to Natalie's original autopsy report.
In the report, they said many of Natalie's injuries could have been caused before she drowned. However, they couldn't determine whether she had them before or after she entered the water. And because they can't determine when she got them, they can't be sure that the fall caused them like what was reported in the original autopsy. They also couldn't say if the bruising could be attributed to something else entirely.
Five years after the 10-page addendum was added to Natalie's autopsy, Robert Wagner was officially named as a person of interest in the case in February 2018 for the very first time. He was the last person to see her alive. According to Christopher and Dennis, the other two people on board, he likely had something to do with her drowning.
They both said he and Natalie were fighting and Robert didn't want to look for her after she went missing from the boat. So now that officials have finally labeled Robert Wagner a person of interest in the case, what happens now? Well, unfortunately not much. Following this announcement in February 2018, Robert has never been arrested or charged with any crime related to Natalie's death.
Although he's been labeled a person of interest, he's not considered a suspect. A person of interest is simply a term to describe someone who may have been involved in a crime and who the police are likely interested in finding out more. But at the end of the day, there isn't enough evidence to arrest or charge a person of interest.
Law enforcement has to find additional evidence against the person or be able to sit down and speak with them to get more information that might incriminate or clear them. A suspect, on the other hand, is much different. A suspect is someone who investigators believe committed a crime and they have the evidence to prove it.
So in this case, Robert Wagner is simply a person of interest, not a suspect because they simply don't have any forensic or physical evidence to prove that he murdered Natalie that night. Investigators have never been able to sit down and speak with Robert about his possible involvement because immediately following the incident, he lawyered up and refused to answer any of their questions.
Many investigators who have worked the case over the years believe that he knows more than he is saying. But according to his lawyer, this claim is merely an accusation that isn't supported by any solid evidence. As of today, no criminal charges have been filed against Robert Wagner or anyone else connected to Natalie Wood's death.
In 2020, a documentary about the case was released. It's called Natalie Wood, What Remains Behind. And the film documents Natalie's life and death. It begins with Natalie's daughter, Natasha, who was only 11 years old when her mom died. She talked about how her mom's death has overshadowed her work and the person that she was. Most people remember Natalie Wood for how she died instead of how she lived.
People have spent the last 40 years trying to figure out how she died instead of celebrating all of her accomplishments when she was alive. People have become obsessed with finding out what happened to her. Did she accidentally fall overboard or was she pushed? At the time of this recording, Robert Wagner is 97 years old.
About six months after Natalie's death, he started dating actress Jill St. John in February 1982. And after eight years of dating, they got married in May 1990. This is both their fourth marriage. Through his attorney, Robert has adamantly denied any wrongdoing in Natalie's death. And he still maintains that it was a tragic accident.
Although he's never publicly said how he thinks Natalie died, he says he had nothing to do with it. But many aren't satisfied with this. There are still a lot of people out there, including detectives with the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, who believes that he knows more about what happened that night in 1981. The forensic evidence has been a key part of Natalie Wood's story.
The evidence has raised serious doubts about whether her death was an accident or not. But what the forensic evidence hasn't done is paint the complete picture about November 29th, 1981. Did the alcohol mix with her prescription medication and the combination caused her to fall overboard?
Was Christopher's theory true? Did she try to move the dinghy so it would stop banging on the side of the boat so that she could fall asleep but accidentally fell overboard? Or, the most sinister theory, was she pushed? Natalie Wood's death investigation is considered open, and her cause of death has officially been changed as drowning and other undetermined factors.
To share your thoughts on the story, be sure to follow the show on Instagram and Facebook. To find out what I think about the case, sign up to become a patron at patreon.com slash forensic tales. After each episode, I release a bonus episode where I share my personal thoughts and opinions about the case. You'll want to listen to this one because I'm going to share with you what I think happened to Natalie Wood.
Don't forget to subscribe to Forensic Tales so you don't miss an episode. We release a new episode every Monday. If you love the show, consider leaving us a positive review or tell friends and family about us. You can also help support the show through Patreon. Thank you so much for joining me this week. Please join me next week. We'll have a brand new case and a brand new story to talk about.
Until then, remember, not all stories have happy endings.
Thank you.
To learn about how you can support the show, head over to our Patreon page, patreon.com slash Forensic Tales, or simply click the support link in the show notes. You can also support the show by leaving a positive review or telling friends and family about us. Forensic Tales is a podcast made possible by our Patreon producers.
Tony A, Nicole L, David B, Paula G, Cole G, Christine B, Karen D, Sherry A, Elizabeth M, Lisa S, Nicola, Nora, Roberto R, Jerry, Gary M, and Brian W.
If you'd like to become a producer of this show, head over to our Patreon page or send me an email at Courtney at ForensicTales.com to find out how you have become involved. For a complete list of sources used in this episode, please visit ForensicTales.com. Thank you for listening. I'll see you next week. Until then, remember, not all stories have happy endings.