Natalie Wood died off the coast of California's Catalina Island on November 29, 1981 — but some say her drowning may not have been an accident.
Steve Schapiro/Corbis via Getty ImagesNatalie Wood’s death occurred aboard the yacht Splendour off the coast of California’s Santa Catalina Island. She’s pictured here, alongside husband Robert Wagner, aboard the Splendour several years before.
Before Natalie Wood’s death brought her life to a tragic end, she was an Academy Award-nominated actress who was in some of the most famous films of all time. She co-starred in Miracle on 34th Street when she was only eight years old. When she was a teenager, she earned her first Oscar nomination, for 1955’s Rebel Without A Cause.
Natalie Wood was so talented and widely beloved that she was nominated for three Oscars before she turned 25. And her larger-than-life presence on camera was only matched by her glamorous offscreen life.
While the San Francisco-born star took Hollywood by storm, working with legendary directors such as John Ford and Elia Kazan, her romantic conquests included the likes of Elvis Presley before she tied the knot with actor Robert Wagner in 1957.
Indeed, for decades before Natalie Wood’s death, she lived the American Dream, but one that would tragically devolve into a Hollywood nightmare. It all came crashing down during a fateful yacht trip around California’s Catalina Island in November 1981.
Tim Boxer/Getty ImagesIn an incident of eerie foreshadowing of Natalie Wood’s death at sea in the dead of night, her mother was once told by a fortune teller that the girl should “beware of dark water.”
On November 28, 1981, Wood set off aboard her yacht Splendour with Wagner, co-star Christopher Walken, and boat captain Dennis Davern. But in the early morning hours of November 29, Natalie Wood disappeared from the boat, only to be found dead in the water due to drowning at age 43 the next morning.
The discovery of her body only yielded more questions than answers. Though Natalie Wood’s death was initially classified as an accident and “probable drowning in the ocean,” Wood’s death certificate would later be updated to “drowning and other undetermined factors.” And her widowed husband has since been officially labeled a person of interest.
What really happened aboard the Splendour that night in 1981 remains a mystery. However, to this day, some suspect foul play in the death of Natalie Wood.
This is the haunting story of how Natalie Wood died and what the true cause may have been.
A Young Natalie Wood’s Meteoric Rise In Hollywood
Los Angeles Public LibraryFor three decades before Natalie Wood died on November 29, 1981, she reigned as one of Hollywood’s brightest stars.
Natalie Wood was born Natalia Nikolaevna Zakharenko on July 20, 1938, in San Francisco, California to an alcoholic father and stage mother. Studio executives changed the young starlet’s name shortly after she started acting.
Her mother Maria was highly eager to make Wood the breadwinner and regularly pushed her to audition for roles despite her young age.
Maria’s encounter with a fortune teller when she herself was a child yielded an ominous premonition. The gypsy said her second child “would be a great beauty” and famous, but that she should “beware of dark water.”
Wood quickly grew into a professional, memorizing not only her lines but also everyone else’s. Dubbed “One Take Natalie,” she was nominated for an Oscar for her role in Rebel Without a Cause when she was just a teen.
Wikimedia CommonsRobert Wagner and Natalie Wood at the Academy Awards dinner in 1960.
But behind the scenes, her love life was rocky. Wood had affairs with both the director, Nicholas Ray, and co-star Dennis Hopper. She also dated stars like Elvis Presley before she met Robert Wagner at age 18.
The two married in 1957 but divorced five years later. They found their way back to each other in 1972, remarried, and had a daughter.
Silver Screen Collection/Getty ImagesNatalie Wood at the 40th Academy Awards. She was nominated for three of them before she turned 25. April 10, 1968.
Though Wood’s career began to wane, she did act opposite Oscar winner Christopher Walken in her last picture, Brainstorm. The two became fast friends — with some suspicion that they were dating.
“It wasn’t like they were lovey-dovey on the set or anything like that, but they just had a current about them, an electricity,” said the film’s first assistant director, David McGiffert.
It was Thanksgiving weekend of 1981 when their alleged relationship became a problem. Wood and Wagner invited Walken to join their sailing trip around Catalina Island — and that’s when everything went wrong. The scene was set for the tragic death of Natalie Wood.
The Story Behind The Death Of Natalie Wood
Paul Harris/Getty ImagesThe Splendour, one day after Natalie Wood’s death.
What happened on the evening of November 28, 1981, the night Natalie Wood died, is unclear. What is clear is that authorities recovered Wood’s body the following morning, floating a mile away from the Splendour. A small dinghy was found beached nearby.
The investigator’s report chronicled the events as follows: Wood went to bed first. Wagner, having stayed up chatting with Walken, later went to join her, but noticed that both she and the dinghy were gone.
Wood’s body was found around 8 a.m. the next morning in a flannel nightgown, down jacket, and socks. The chief medical examiner in the L.A. County Coroner’s Office announced that Natalie Wood’s death was an “accidental drowning” on November 30.
Los Angeles Public LibraryCatalina harbor master Doug Bombard, the man who found Natalie Wood dead in the water on November 29, 1981.
The autopsy showed Natalie Wood had multiple bruises on her arms and an abrasion on her left cheek. The coroner explained Wood’s bruises as “superficial” and “probably sustained at the time of drowning.”
But in 2011, Captain Dennis Davern admitted that he left out key details about the night Natalie Wood died. And as the years went on, Wood’s loved ones only had more questions.
How Did Natalie Wood Die? Inside The Haunting Evidence
Davern said the weekend of Natalie Wood’s death was filled with arguments — and that the main issue was the glaring flirtation between Walken and Wood.
Los Angeles Public LibraryDennis Davern, the captain of Robert Wagner and Natalie Wood’s yacht Splendour, and one of the last people to see her alive.
“The argument started the day before,” said Davern. “The tension was going through the whole weekend. Robert Wagner was jealous of Christopher Walken.”
Davern said Wood and Walken spent hours at a Catalina Island bar before Wagner showed up, furious. All four then went to dinner at Doug’s Harbor Reef Restaurant, where they shared champagne, two bottles of wine, and cocktails.
Employees couldn’t recall whether it was Wagner or Walken, but one of them threw a glass at the wall at some point. At around 10 p.m., they used their dinghy to get back to the Splendour.
Accounts of the night of Natalie Wood’s death have changed over the years. Walken did admit to investigators that he and Wagner had a “small beef,” but that it regarded the couple’s prolonged film shoot-related absences from their child.
Paul Harris/Getty ImagesDoug’s Harbor Reef Restaurant where Christopher Walken, Robert Wagner, Dennis Davern, and Natalie Wood dined the night of her death.
Though reports initially stated that the fight died down, Davern claimed otherwise in 2011. He said everyone continued drinking when back on board and that Wagner was enraged. He allegedly broke a wine bottle over a table and screamed at Walken, “Are you trying to f–k my wife?”
Davern remembered Walken retreating to his cabin at this point, “and that was the last I saw of him.” Wagner and Wood returned to their room, too, when a shouting match ensued. Most ominously, Davern said he later heard the fight continue on deck — before “everything went silent.”
When Davern checked on them, he saw only Wagner, who said, “Natalie is missing.”
Robert Wagner’s Suspicious Behavior After His Wife’s Death
For many to this day, it’s Robert Wagner’s behavior just after Natalie Wood’s death that is strangest and perhaps most suspicious. At first, Wagner told Davern to go look for her, and then said “the dinghy is missing too.” The captain knew Natalie was “deathly afraid of water,” and doubted she’d taken the dinghy out alone.
But then Davern said that Wagner didn’t want to turn the boat’s floodlights on nor call for help — because he didn’t want to draw any attention to the situation.
Key witness Marilyn Wayne, who was in a boat 80 feet away that night, told Sheriff’s investigators she and her boyfriend heard a woman screaming around 11 p.m.
“Somebody please help me, I’m drowning,” the cries implored, until 11:30 p.m.
Their call to the harbormaster went unanswered, and with a party on another boat nearby, the pair concluded it may have been a joke. As for Wagner’s hesitance to call anyone, he did eventually did — at 1:30 a.m.
Los Angeles Public LibraryThe yacht Splendour as seen just after Natalie Wood’s death in November 1981.
This, among other things, left Wood’s sibling Lana confused.
“She would have never left the boat like that, undressed, in just a nightgown,” she said.
But that’s exactly how her body was found, mere hours later. With that, Natalie Wood was dead at age 43.
The investigation into Natalie Wood’s death continued throughout the decades, however, with new details, questions, and suspicions arising as recently as 2018.
Changing Stories About Natalie Wood’s Cause Of Death
Bettmann/Getty ImagesRobert Wagner bends over to kiss Natalie Wood’s casket at her funeral.
The case was reopened in November 2011 after Davern admitted he lied during the initial investigation and alleged that Wagner was “responsible” for Natalie Wood’s death. Since the bombshell report, Wagner has refused to talk to authorities. However, Walken has cooperated fully with investigators.
According to the BBC, Wood’s death certificate was later amended from accidental drowning to “drowning and undetermined factors.”
In 2018, a spokesperson for the Los Angeles Sheriff confirmed that Natalie Wood’s case was now undeniably a “suspicious” death. And Robert Wagner was officially named a person of interest.
“As we’ve investigated the case over the last six years, I think he’s more of a person of interest now,” said L.A. County Sheriffs Department Lieutenant John Corina. “I mean, we know now that he was the last person to be with Natalie before she disappeared.”
“I haven’t seen him tell the details that match… all the other witnesses in this case,” he added. “I think he’s constantly… he’s changed the — his story a little bit… and his version of events just don’t add up.”
Investigators digging into Natalie Wood’s death made multiple attempts to speak with him, to no avail.
“We would love to talk to Robert Wagner,” said Corina. “He’s refused to talk to us… We can never force him to talk to us. He has rights and he can not talk to us if he doesn’t want to.”
What Really Happened The Night Natalie Wood Died?
Los Angeles Public LibraryTo this day, some suspect that Robert Wagner had something to do with Natalie Wood’s death on November 29, 1981.
Walken hasn’t publicly spoken much on the events of the night that Natalie Wood died, but he did appear to believe that it was an unfortunate accident.
“Anybody there saw the logistics — of the boat, the night, where we were, that it was raining — and would know exactly what happened,” said Walken in a 1997 interview.
“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 that the cars come the other way — and they die.”
Meanwhile, Corina maintains that Natalie Wood’s death was likely no accident.
He said, “She got in the water somehow, and I don’t think she got in the water by herself.”
Wikimedia CommonsAfter Natalie Wood’s death, she was buried at Westwood Village Memorial Park in Los Angeles.
In the end, Robert Wagner’s refusal to cooperate is legal and may simply stem from a desire not to revisit the tragedy. Natalie Wood’s death may have been the result of foul play, but the truth is, we may never know for sure.
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