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The Life _ Mysterious Death Of Natalie Wood · The conspiracy

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: She was four years old the first time she appeared
• 0:02
  Speaker 1: on a movie screen. And by eight, she starred in
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: a Christmas classic. Three Oscar nominations before she turned 26.
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: America watched Natalie Wood grow up. But on November 29th, 1981,
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: she would be found dead in the Pacific Ocean. And
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: she would be 43 years old. And the coroner would
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: rule it an accident, but not everyone believed that. And
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: more than four decades later, not everyone believes it still.
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: This is Natalie Wood's story.
• 0:34
  Speaker 2: Crime, conspiracy, cults, serial killers, and murder, all things that
• 0:39
  Speaker 2: I love to consume, and I know you do too,
• 0:41
  Speaker 2: you sick, twisted, beautiful, intellectually minded freak. Today, we are
• 0:45
  Speaker 2: talking about an extremely infamous case, I feel like lesser
• 0:48
  Speaker 2: known than, say, Marilyn Monroe or Princess Diana, and that
• 0:52
  Speaker 2: is the case of Natalie Wood. So without further ado,
• 0:54
  Speaker 2: let's unbuckle our seat belts, go Mach 5 down the highway,
• 0:56
  Speaker 2: slam on the brakes, and bust through this windshield into
• 0:58
  Speaker 2: this Natalie Wood case together. All right, let's take a
• 1:15
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• 1:18
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• 2:43
  Speaker 1: back to it. The woman the world would come to
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: know as Natalie Wood was born Natalia Nikolayevna Zakarenko on
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: July 20th, 1938 in San Francisco. And her parents were
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: Russian immigrants. Both had fled a country torn apart by
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: revolution carrying with them the scars of leaving what they
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: knew and the stubborn hope that America might give them
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: something better. And her mother, Maria, would come from Barnaul,
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: a city in southwestern Siberia. The family had money once.
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  Speaker 1: Maria's father ran soap and candle factories and kept an
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: estate on the outskirts of Barnaul. But the Russian Civil
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: War wiped out everything they had. So the family got
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: out of the country and ended up in Harbin, China,
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: living as refugees. And it was in Harbin that something
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: strange allegedly happened. Maria and her sisters visited a gypsy
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: fortune teller that made two predictions about Maria's future. The
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: first was her second child would be a great beauty
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: known throughout the world. And the second was, quote unquote,
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: beware of dark water. And Maria never let go of
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  Speaker 1: either prophecy, but she would eventually leave China and marry
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  Speaker 1: an American mechanic named Alexander Tyteloff in 1925. And Olga,
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  Speaker 1: Natalie's older half-sister, was born in 1928, and two years later,
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: the family sailed to America. And the marriage ended six
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: years later. And Natalie's father, Nicholas Zakarenko, came from Uzursk
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: in Russia's Far East. And Nicholas's father had been employed
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  Speaker 1: at the Primorsky Condor Chocolate Factory. But when the civil
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: war broke out, he took up with the anti-Bolshevik civilian
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: forces and he would be killed in a street fight
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: between Red Army and white Russian soldiers in Vladivostok. But
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  Speaker 1: after his death, the family then fled to Shanghai, then
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: to Vancouver, and eventually settled in the United States by 1933,
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  Speaker 1: just like Nicholas's future wife. And Nicholas found work as
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: a carpenter and a day laborer in San Francisco. But
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: he was also an alcoholic. Now, Maria was still Tatulov's
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  Speaker 1: wife when she and Nicholas began seeing each other. You know?
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  Speaker 1: But their eventual wedding took place in February 1938, and
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  Speaker 1: Natalie arrived months later. And Nicholas would rename the family
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: Gurdon when Natalie was about a year old. And the
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  Speaker 1: name Wood would come a bit later when studio executives
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  Speaker 1: picked it for her at the age of six. And
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: they named her that as a nod to director Sam
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: Wood and to swap out the family name for something
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  Speaker 1: American audiences could pronounce. So when they obtained U.S. citizenship,
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  Speaker 1: Maria finally settled on one first name after cycling through several,
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: including Mary, Marie, and Lucia. And then a second daughter
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  Speaker 1: from this relationship, the third overall, third daughter overall, keep up,
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  Speaker 1: came along in 1946. And they named her Svetlana, and
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: she was born in Santa Monica. And she'd later become
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: known as the actress Lana Wood. But it was the
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: second child, the one the gypsy had supposedly prophesized, who
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: consumed Maria's attention entirely. Because Maria used to lean close
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: and whisper to Natalie. One ear got the fairy tale, fame, beauty,
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  Speaker 1: the whole world watching, and the other ear got the warning,
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  Speaker 1: stay away from dark water. The prophecy left Natalie shaken
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: from a very young age. and she carried it with
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  Speaker 1: her for the rest of her life, never once even
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: learning to swim. Every ambition Maria had never been able
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  Speaker 1: to fulfill herself, she just poured into Natalie specifically, and
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  Speaker 1: she would stop at nothing to make those dreams real.
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  Speaker 1: So while the family lived in Santa Rosa, a production
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  Speaker 1: company happened to be filming at the area where someone
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: on the crew noticed the four-year-old Natalie. And her first
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: movie was then The Moon is Dawn, a John Steinbeck
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  Speaker 1: adaptation that hit theaters in spring of 1943. And she
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  Speaker 1: popped up again that same year in Happyland, receiving 15
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  Speaker 1: seconds of screen time. And both were directed by Irving Pichelle.
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  Speaker 1: And he took a liking to the girl immediately. And
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: for the next two years, Pichelle kept up a relationship
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  Speaker 1: with the Gurdons, Natalie's family. And eventually a part opened
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  Speaker 1: up and Pichelle reached out and he wanted Natalie in
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  Speaker 1: Los Angeles to test for it. Maria didn't just bring Natalie,
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  Speaker 1: Maria uprooted their entire family. The whole family moved to
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  Speaker 1: Los Angeles for good. And Nicholas didn't really want to go.
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  Speaker 1: And he made that pretty clear, but Maria didn't care.
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  Speaker 1: Her mind was made up and nothing he said was
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  Speaker 1: going to change it. So biographer Suzanne Finstead wrote that
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  Speaker 1: Maria had been desperately pushing her daughter into the business
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  Speaker 1: from the very start. Classic show mom living vicariously through
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  Speaker 1: her daughter, even if it means putting her into situations
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  Speaker 1: she shouldn't be in, you know? But in 1946, Pichelle
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  Speaker 1: got her in the door for Tomorrow is Forever, a
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: romance film, and she tested for the part of a
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: European war orphan opposite Orson Welles and won it. And
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: allegedly on set, she couldn't cry on cue. So Maria
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  Speaker 1: grabbed a live butterfly and ripped its wings off right
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: in front of her, and the tears came instantly. It worked. Obviously,
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  Speaker 1: you know, if she has a shred of empathy in her,
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  Speaker 1: my God, can you imagine just your mom mutilating a
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  Speaker 1: beautiful butterfly in front of you to make you cry?
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  Speaker 1: That's going to do something to you. That's something you're
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  Speaker 1: going to talk about in therapy later in life, I
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  Speaker 1: tell you what. Wells himself was stunned by the child's ability.
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  Speaker 1: And he later said she was so good, she was terrifying.
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  Speaker 1: And that, quote, Natalie doesn't act from the script, she
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  Speaker 1: acts from the heart, unquote. And Maria rehearsed her over
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  Speaker 1: and over until Natalie barely ever needed a second take,
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  Speaker 1: in which earned her the nickname, quote-unquote, One Take Natalie.
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  Speaker 1: And the following year brought Miracle on 34th Street. And
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  Speaker 1: Natalie was eight years old at this point. But the
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  Speaker 1: role was perfect for her. A skeptical kid convinced there's
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  Speaker 1: no such thing as Santa, who slowly realizes the man
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  Speaker 1: working in the department store might be the real deal.
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  Speaker 1: And the film starred Maureen O'Hara and John Payne, but
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: it was Natalie who audiences remembered. And it's been a
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  Speaker 1: holiday staple ever since. And after it came out, Natalie
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  Speaker 1: was suddenly one of the biggest child actors in Hollywood.
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  Speaker 1: And Macy's even invited her to appear in the Thanksgiving
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  Speaker 1: Day Parade. And Parents Magazine gave her a title before
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  Speaker 1: she turned 10. Quote-unquote, most exciting juvenile motion picture star
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  Speaker 1: of the year. Behind the spotlight, there was no real
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  Speaker 1: childhood to speak of, which we hear so much with
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  Speaker 1: child actors. I feel so bad for them. It's just
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: not right. Like, I know there has to be child actors,
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  Speaker 1: but it just seems like it never goes right, unfortunately,
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  Speaker 1: especially in those days where stuff just wasn't monitored or
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  Speaker 1: cared about at all. And the work that followed her
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  Speaker 1: big hit was mostly lightweight stuff, family-friendly comedies that nobody
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  Speaker 1: really remembers today. And they didn't win awards, but they
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  Speaker 1: earned steady money. And Maria made sure every dollar went
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  Speaker 1: through her hands. And Natalie was tutored on set instead
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  Speaker 1: of going to school. Maria made sure to keep her
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  Speaker 1: daughter away from kids her own age and away from
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  Speaker 1: anything that didn't serve the career. And on top of
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  Speaker 1: all of that, not having any sort of childhood, you know,
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  Speaker 1: any sort of social life and having a mom that
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  Speaker 1: mutilates bugs in front of you to make you cry
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  Speaker 1: on cue. Her father's heart was also starting to fail.
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  Speaker 1: and Natalie was still very young. And after that, Natalie
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  Speaker 1: was the family's only real source of income. So just
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  Speaker 1: put the pressure of that on this eight-year-old girl, my God.
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  Speaker 1: So Maria doubled down on the pressure. Work more, audition better,
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  Speaker 1: be perfect. You can't be anything less than perfect. And
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: she racked up more than 20 film credits before she
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  Speaker 1: turned 16. And one of them nearly killed her. During
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: the production of The Green Promise in 1949, there was
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: a stunt involving a bridge collapse during a storm, and
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: the scene called for a 10-year-old girl to sprint across
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  Speaker 1: the bridge that would fall apart the second she made
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: it to safety. But the timing failed and gave way
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  Speaker 1: too early, And she was only halfway across and the
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: fall snapped her left wrist and she went straight into
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: the water and Maria buried the whole thing. And the
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: wrist was never taken care of. And Lana described quote,
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: mom didn't trust doctors or hospitals. So Natalie's broken wrist
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  Speaker 1: was never treated or set unquote. And because of this
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: intentional avoidance, the bone healed wrong showing the deformity. If
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: you looked closely, And Natalie covered it with bracelets for
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  Speaker 1: the rest of her life. It's just so heartbreaking. Mom
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  Speaker 1: not even taking her to the hospital to get her fixed. Like,
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: I can't even imagine the pain she still felt and everything.
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: It just breaks my heart. And the injury should have
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: been the breaking point. But instead, it became a template
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: for them. Just hide it, protect the career, and just
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: say nothing. That was the rule Maria lived by. And
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: it extended far beyond broken bones. And Lana told Closer Weekly, quote, unquote.
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: And Finstead described the dynamic bluntly saying, quote, she was
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: groomed by her mom to succeed at all costs, to
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: be a pleaser, to do whatever directors and producers, even co-stars,
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  Speaker 1: wanted her to do, unquote. And at one point, Maria
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: went even further. Quote, her mother brought her over to
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  Speaker 1: Frank Sinatra's house, basically bartering Natalie's virginity to try to
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  Speaker 1: help her career, unquote. this woman belongs in the deepest
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  Speaker 1: hole there is. Are you kidding me? Pimping out your
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: child to a disgusting old man? I don't know. Hollywood's
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: already so corrupt. And back then, like I said, the
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: amount of stuff that was probably hidden that we have
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: no idea about is just So, so upsetting. And you
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: never want to think a mother can do that to
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: their child, but the world is extremely evil. And some
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: people will do anything for fame, even if it means
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: giving up their child's innocence. It's disgusting. But the relationship
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: that developed between Natalie and Sinatra became something else entirely
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: over time. and somewhat paternal in nature. And Finstad explained, quote,
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: Natalie's own father had a drinking problem and was very
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: emasculated by her mother. And Frank became very protective of Natalie, unquote.
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: And like, you can talk about him being a, like
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: Sinatra being a father figure or whatever, but her mom
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: was pimping her out when she was 15 years old. Sinatra? Oh,
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: was 38. He was almost 40 years old. Okay. So
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: I don't know. It smells really bad. I don't like it. Um,
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: and it, it just makes my heart very sad for Natalie,
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: but Natalie who earned millions for her family before she
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: was old enough to drive, sadly never had the chance
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: to even be a child. And she got a career
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: instead and a mother who would trade anything to keep
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: it going. So the hardest thing a child star can
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: do is grow up on screen and survive it. And
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: most don't, honestly. And the audience that adored them at
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: eight years old doesn't quite know what to do with
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: them at 16. And Natalie signed a contract with Warner
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: Brothers hoping for serious work. Instead, the studio kept handing
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: her the same kind of part. The pretty girl standing
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: next to the lead. Nothing with any real substance. And
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: Warner Brothers tried matching her on screen with Tab Hunter,
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: the biggest teen heartthrob around. And the idea was that
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: putting the two of them together would pack theaters. But
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: it didn't. And one exception to the supporting pretty girl
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: typecast was Marjorie Morningstar in 1958. And she played a
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: Jewish girl trying to carve out a life on her
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: own terms while her family pushes towards something more conventional.
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: And critics responded well, and the movie landed at exactly
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: the right moment. And as the 1950s were full of
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: films about young people pushing back against the world they'd inherited.
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: But the role that actually changed everything for her came
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: three years before, in 1955, when director Nicholas Ray was
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: casting Rebel Without a Cause, and the part of Judy
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: was exactly what Natalie needed. A chance to prove she
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: could do more than just be a pretty face on screen.
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: And she was 16 at the time, and Ray... was 43.
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: Oh my god. The competition for the role was enormous.
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: Names like Debbie Reynolds and Jane Mansfield were in the mix,
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: and multiple sources say the same thing. Somewhere between her
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: initial meeting with Ray and the screen test that followed,
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: a relationship would begin. And they met at a bungalow
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: in the Chateau Mormont. And Finstead describes, quote, when she
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: was 16, the director of Rebel Without a Cause manipulated
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: her into having sex with him by saying he wasn't
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: convinced that she would realistically play a bad girl, unquote.
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: Lord knows that Maria encouraged her to do the unthinkable,
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: to lose her innocence to a disgusting pervert. but she
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: would get the part. Dennis Hopper was also seeing Natalie
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: during production, and he and Ray clashed because of it,
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: and it just poisoned the atmosphere on set. But still,
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: Maria was in the loop on all of it. She
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: knew everything. She knew her daughter was being taken advantage
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: of just to get a role, but she only complained
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: about Hopper. The director, after all, controlled the movie. And
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: Natalie earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: with Rebel Without a Cause, a career-defining performance, born from
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: exploitation that no one around her had the courage or
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: decency to stop. And that same year, something far worse
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: allegedly happened. And in the summer of 1955, while The
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: Searchers was in production, Maria arranged a meeting between Natalie
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: and one of the most powerful actors in Hollywood. And
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: Maria was convinced that one word of approval from a
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: star at his level would change everything for Natalie. And
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: Lana Wood was nine years old at this time. And
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: in her 2021 memoir, Little Sister... she identified the man
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: as Kirk Douglas. And Natalie was still a teenager at
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: this point. 16, maybe 17, the ages aren't fully known,
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: but a teenager nonetheless. And Douglas was nearly 40. And
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: in July 2018, Lana went into detail on a podcast
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: about her sister's life. And she said this took place
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: at the Chateau Mormont behind closed doors under the pretense
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: of an audition. And she said it went on for hours.
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: And Lana remembered when Natalie eventually told her about that night, saying,
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: And Finstad's 2001 biography had described the assault years earlier
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: without naming the attacker. But over the years, Natalie told
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: a handful of people she trusted, what had happened to her,
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: with Dennis Hopper being one of them. And she described
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: the man as a former screen idol. And Douglas wasn't
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: named publicly until Lana's memoir, published in 2021, nearly two
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: years after he died at the age of 103. The
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: bastard had the audacity to live past 100. God, I
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: hope he was suffering in the end. Truly. I know that's...
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: You know what? No, I hope he was suffering. And
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: his son, Michael Douglas, responded through a publicist, saying, quote-unquote,
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: may they both rest in peace. And the silence that
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: followed the assault was immediate and absolute. And Natalie told
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: her mother all that happened, and Maria's advice, according to Lana,
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: was cold and calloused, saying, quote-unquote, suck it up. I
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: can't stand it. these mothers. I mean, this is like
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: next level horrendous, but you know, every, every time I
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: see a child on screen in general, um, especially in
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: content creation, because there are zero rules essentially for them. Uh,
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: I just think you're a disgusting human being that's taking
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: advantage of your child and exploiting them. And this is just,
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: this just triggers me in a way I cannot even explain.
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: It makes me so upset. Poor, poor Natalie. My God.
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: But for as long as she lived, Natalie never said
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: a word about it in the public. And I feel
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: like that is just by every fault of her mother
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: because she just instilled in her that she can't say
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: anything and that her fame is the most important thing.
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: And if she can't act, then her family will be
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: in destitute. Like it's just, So much manipulation and toxic
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: stuff going on, it's disgusting. But when she and Douglas
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: ended up up in the same room, she acted as
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: though nothing had ever happened between them because her mother
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: had taught her too well how Hollywood worked. You didn't
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: go after someone with that kind of power. And years later,
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: actor Scott Marlowe helped Natalie begin to see her mother's
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: manipulation for what it really was, The damage, though, had
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: already rooted itself. Natalie allegedly saw her therapist every single day.
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: In the 1967 production of Body and Clyde, wanted her
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: for the lead now. And she said no, as the
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: film required weeks away from Los Angeles. And Natalie wouldn't
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: go that long without seeing her therapist. How much does
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: that say? Like, even just a couple weeks? And she's like, no. No.
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: I need to speak to my therapist. Like, the trauma
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: that that involves, I can't even imagine. Yet, through all
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: of it, she did keep working. And after Rebel Without
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: a Cause, John Ford's The Searchers came out in 1956.
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: Then West Side Story and Splendor in the Grass, both
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: in 1961. And then Gypsy in 1962 and The Love
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: with the Proper Stranger in 1963. And Splendor in the
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: Grass earned her a nomination for Best Actress. And Love
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: with a Proper Stranger earned her another. So she had
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: three Oscar nominations before turning 26, one of the youngest
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: people in Hollywood history to reach that number. So three
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: nominations earned while carrying a weight that would have broken
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: most people twice her age. So Natalie was 10 years
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: old the first time she saw Robert Wagner. And he
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: was 18 years old walking down a corridor at 20th
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: Century Fox. And she told People Magazine in 1976, quote, unquote.
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: And eight years later, the studio system made that meeting
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: happen on purpose. And their first date was arranged as
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: a publicity stunt, designed to get both their names in papers.
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: And it fell on July 20th, 1956, Natalie's 18th birthday.
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: And whatever the studio's intentions were, the connection, at least,
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: was actually real. And on December 28th, 1957, they married
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: in Scottsdale, Arizona, where Wagner's parents lived. And she was
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: 19 at the time and he was 27. I mean,
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: I have nothing to say. Like for the time, it
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: doesn't seem that bad, I guess, but given the history
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: that her mom put her through, she probably like only
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: saw significantly older people as an option to marry. You know,
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: I don't know. There's again, so much psychological trauma that
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: happened to her. But word would get out as to
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: where they were getting married and several hundred people showed
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: up outside the Scottsdale Methodist Church. So the staff taped
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: butcher paper across every window to block the view. And
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: the press called it the glittering union of the 20th century.
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: Because two of the most beautiful faces in Hollywood riding
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: a Corvette across America together while radio stations tracked their progress.
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: And Wood recalled it years later saying, quote, radio stations
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: would announce we had just passed through and people would
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: wait for us in every little town, unquote. And for
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: their honeymoon, the two of them took a yacht out
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: into the Florida Keys. because both of them loved the ocean,
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: and it was one of the things that drew them together. Though,
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: even then, Natalie mentioned her fear of the water. And
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: for a while, it looked like a love story the
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: public could believe in. Unfortunately, it wasn't. And the couple
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: announced their separation on June 20th, 1961, only a few
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: years later, and the divorce was finalized on April 27th, 1962.
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: And the official story was pretty vague. And the gossip
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: columns filled in their own versions, of course, and rumors
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: spread that Natalie had started an affair with Warren Beatty,
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: her co-star in Splendor in the Grass. And over the years,
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: the press stopped treating it as gossip and just started
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: printing it as though it were true. But that wasn't
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: what happened. And the truth of what ended the marriage
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: didn't come out for years. And multiple sources have since
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: confirmed the same story. Because sometime in early 1961, Natalie
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: discovered Wagner in a sexual relationship with a man, crisscross.
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: What kind of plot twist is this? And Finn's dad
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: heard the account from five separate people. And three were
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: close friends of Natalie's. And one was Maria's best friend.
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: And the fifth was Lana. And she walked into their
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: Beverly Hills house and found him with another man. And
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: Lana described what she saw that night saying, quote, I
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: had never seen her that bad. I was asked to
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: leave the room and that something bad had happened and
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: that Natalie was leaving RJ. It wasn't until later that
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: she said she caught him with someone and that someone
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: was another man. Oh my God, unquote. She showed up
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: at her parents' door that night, barely holding it together.
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: And once inside, she shut herself in the bedroom she'd
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: grown up in and would not come out. And the
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: next thing she knew, she was in a hospital bed
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: because she had- on sleeping pills. But to protect Wagner's
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: public image, Natalie said nothing. Again, because her mom trained her,
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: never say anything that might make you look bad or
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: anybody else in power make them look bad. Terrible. She
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: absorbed the blame for the divorce in silence and let
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: the Beattie rumors stand unchallenged, following the pattern she'd been
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: taught since childhood. Protect the person with more power. Swallow
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: the truth. And in pages from what's been described as
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: her unpublished memoir, she wrote about the end of the marriage, saying, quote,
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: so shattering it destroyed the relationship. It was more than
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: a final straw. It was a reality crushing the fragile
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: web of romantic fantasies with sledgehammer force, unquote. And she
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: later told people, quote, we knew each other better than
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: we knew ourselves. I always knew he was okay. It
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: was myself I didn't know about, unquote. So after the divorce,
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: Natalie was 24 and one of the highest paid actresses
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: in Hollywood. She certainly didn't lack company. And Warren Beatty,
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: Michael Caine, David Niven Jr., Frank Sinatra, who'd she known
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: since she was 15? Yee. And in 1965, she was
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: briefly engaged to a Venezuelan shoe manufacturer named Ladislav Batnik,
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: but none of it lasted. And their relationship with Beattie
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: was the most volatile. Quote, unquote. And she threw herself
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: into psychoanalysis after the divorce. sessions nearly every day for years.
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: She once joked that her therapy bills were, quote-unquote, at
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: least the equal of the annual defense budget of most
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: Central American nations. I don't blame her. As if it's
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: every day? Oh my god. But again, who can blame her? Like,
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: everything she's been through, it's horrible. But the therapy couldn't
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: outpace what was happening underneath. And Finstad traced the habit
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: back to age 15. And the barbiturate second all became
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: the constant she reached for at bedtime. And as late
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: as 1978, she admitted in an interview with Ladies Home
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: Journal that second all was still part of her nightly routine.
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: And three times between 1961 and 1966, the pills nearly
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: killed her. The first was the that landed her in
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: the hospital the night she discovered Wagner's affair. And the
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: second came in November of 1964, and her stomach was
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: pumped at a Hollywood hospital. Nobody outside her inner circle
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: ever knew. And the third in January of 1966 was different,
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: because there are two versions of what triggered it specifically.
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: And Warren G. Harris's biography tells it this way, which
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: is Beattie showed up unannounced trying to persuade her to
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: star in Bonnie and Clyde, And instead, she spit a
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: fistful of barbiturates. Either way, doctors saved her life at
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: a Hollywood hospital. And afterwards, she told Lana the truth
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: that she hadn't been trying to survive. And Lana's memoir
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: tells a different story about the trigger. She wrote that
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: during the production of This Property is Condemned in 1965,
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: Natalie had a passionate affair with the film's director, Sidney Pollack.
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: And Pollack broke it off and Natalie fell apart. And
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: according to Lana, it was Pollock's rejection, not Beattie or Wagner,
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: that pushed her sister to that point. So three overdoses
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: in five years. And after the third time, she would
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: stop working because she had been in front of the
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: camera since she was four years old and she had
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: never stopped before. But this time, survival came first and
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: everything else could wait. And in 1966, she paid Warner
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: Brothers $ 175, 000 to buy her out of her contract. Then
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: she cleaned house, cutting every agent, every manager, the publicist,
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: the accountant, and the lawyers loose. And that same year,
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: the Harvard Lampoon handed her an award for worst actress
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: of last year. This year, And next, unquote, what the
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: actual hell is that? What? Why does that even exist?
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: But nobody had ever actually shown up to collect it before,
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: but Natalie did. And the Harvard Crimson noted she was,
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: quote unquote, quite a good sport. And Penelope landed with
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: a thud in 1966. And with that poor reception, Natalie
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: walked away from Hollywood and didn't come back for three years.
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: And when she did come back, it was with a
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: new film and a new relationship. And the introduction came
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: through Robert Redford, who knew them both. And Richard Gregson
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: was a British producer who also knew happened to be
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: Redford's agent. And the courtship lasted close to three years,
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: and they married on May 30th, 1969, and Redford served
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: as the best man. And her comeback vehicle was Bob
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: and Carol and Ted and Alice in 1969, a sharp
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: comedy that took aim at the era's obsession with free love.
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: And it was a hit by all accounts, and it
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: showed audiences something that the industry had doubted, and the
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: child star from the studio era could hold her own
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: in a landscape that had completely changed. And on September 29th, 1970,
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: she and Gregson welcomed a daughter, Natasha. And motherhood would
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: change Natalie profoundly. And she poured everything she had into
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: being a mother. Unlike her own mother, she actually was
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: a good mother. And she made a home that actually
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: felt real. A family that wasn't built around a camera.
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: But then the familiar pattern surfaced again. And Gregson had
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: an affair with Natalie's secretary. God. It's just predictable as hell.
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: And she filed for divorce on August 4th, 1971. And
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: it was finalized on April 12th, 1972. And after a
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: brief relationship with future California governor, Jerry Brown, Natalie picked
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: up the phone and she called someone she already knew
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: better than anyone. And by the end of January, 1972,
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: she and Robert Wagner were back in each other's lives.
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: I'd like to take a quick pause to talk about
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: something that's a little bit embarrassing to admit. And that
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: is that I genuinely don't mind scooping my cat's litter
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: box anymore. And it's because of Smalls. Thank you to
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: Smalls for sponsoring this video. Now Smalls, for those of
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: you who don't know, is fresh human grade cat food.
• 31:21
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• 31:25
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• 31:29
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• 31:32
  Speaker 1: my cat's poops are smaller and honestly just way less smelly.
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: And their coats are absolutely insane. They are so shiny
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: and soft. And they go absolutely feral as soon as
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: their bowls hit the floor. My cats are my babies
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: and they deserve the best. Not to mention Forbes ranks
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: Smalls the best overall cat food. And after switching, 88%
• 31:53
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• 31:57
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• 32:00
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• 32:04
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• 32:07
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• 32:29
  Speaker 1: Thank you so much to Smalls for sponsoring the video
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: and supporting the channel. And let's get back to it. Now,
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: while Natalie had been rebuilding her life through the 1960s,
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: Wagner had been doing the same. And after their divorce,
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: he'd moved to Rome where he reconnected with actress, Marian Marshall,
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: an old friend. And they married on July 21st, 1963
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: at the Bronx Courthouse, and their daughter, Katie, was born
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: on May 11th, 1964. The marriage lasted seven years before
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: they separated in June of 1970, and their divorce was
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: finalized on October 14th, 1971. So by the time Natalie
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: reached out, they were both freshly single, both carrying the
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: wreckage of second marriages, and both older than they'd been
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: the first time around. And they just started with phone calls.
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: And by January of 1972, the phone calls had turned
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: into something more. And Wagner had asked her to come
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: see him at his Palm Desert home. And Natalie later
• 33:23
  Speaker 1: told People, quote, friends told me to put on the brakes.
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: We were both in shock. We talked about what had
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: happened to our marriage. he had become a man instead
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: of a boy, unquote. And looking back, she felt she
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: needed every single one of those years away from each
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: other to get it right, and that they couldn't have
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: found their way back without first losing each other. So
• 33:43
  Speaker 1: in April, they made it public in the most Hollywood
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: way possible. And their first public appearance as a couple
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: came at the 1972 Oscars. And from there, it was
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: a flight to New York, and next was a transatlantic
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: crossing on the Queen Elizabeth II. And on July 16th, 1972,
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: they married for the second time. And they said their
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: vows on the deck of the 55-foot yacht, the Ramblin' Rose,
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: floating just off Paradise Cove in Malibu. And the guest
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: list was pretty tiny. Close friends, family, and both of
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: their daughters from previous marriages, and that was it. It
• 34:20
  Speaker 1: was nothing like the first wedding, This time, it was
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: just quiet and intimate. And in People's 1976 profile, the
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: magazine described the reunion as, quote, the triumph of hope
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: over dismal experience, unquote. The balance of power had shifted
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: since the first marriage. The first time around, it was
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: Wagner who was on the rise, though not in movies,
• 34:40
  Speaker 1: on TV. And his role in ABC's It Takes a Thief,
• 34:44
  Speaker 1: which premiered in 1968, had made him a household name
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: on the small screen. And that show opened the door
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: to Heart to Heart. And it premiered in 1979, ran
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: five seasons, and turned out to be the defining role
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: of his career. Behind the scenes, though, the couple had
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: quietly built something more lucrative than any single role. And
• 35:03
  Speaker 1: their compensation for The Affair, a TV movie they appeared
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: in together in 1973, included something unusual. Producers Aaron Spelling
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: and Leonard Goldberg gave them a 50% ownership stake in
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: three TV series the pair were developing for ABC. And
• 35:21
  Speaker 1: only one made it to air, and it was called
• 35:24
  Speaker 1: Charlie's Angels. And Natalie, meanwhile, had settled into something she'd
• 35:28
  Speaker 1: never really experienced before. a family. And on March 9th, 1974,
• 35:33
  Speaker 1: Natalie and Wagner welcomed their daughter, Courtney. And Gregson returned
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: to England after the split. And with her biological father
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: across an ocean, Natasha grew up with Wagner as the
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: only dad she really knew, but there was never a
• 35:47
  Speaker 1: formal adoption. But Natasha would take Wagner's name and has
• 35:51
  Speaker 1: always called him father. And Natalie told biography.com, quote,' Work
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: doesn't play the same role in my life it used to,' unquote.
• 35:59
  Speaker 1: and she meant it. From that point on, she pulled
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: back from the industry almost entirely, and only a few
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: projects made it to screen before the end. Three years
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: after the affair, she and Wagner joined Lawrence Oliver for
• 36:12
  Speaker 1: a television production of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof,
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: and she popped on two of Wagner's TV series as well.
• 36:19
  Speaker 1: And in 1979, she won a Golden Globe for the
• 36:21
  Speaker 1: miniseries From Here to Eternity. And from the outside, it
• 36:25
  Speaker 1: looked like Natalie Wood had finally gotten everything she wanted,
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: A stable marriage, children, financial security, and a career on
• 36:32
  Speaker 1: her own terms. But Wagner had been carrying something he
• 36:36
  Speaker 1: didn't talk about. And in his 2008 memoir, Pieces of
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: My Heart, Wagner wrote about a darkness that had lived
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: inside him for years. And he admitted to being consumed
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: by jealousy over Natalie's earlier relationship with Warren Beatty. And
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: he described waiting outside Beattie's home with a gun, seriously
• 36:55
  Speaker 1: contemplating murder. Quote, I was pretty young and I don't
• 36:59
  Speaker 1: think I could have ever gone through with that act,
• 37:01
  Speaker 1: but I was pretty frustrated and upset. Unquote. But that
• 37:04
  Speaker 1: possessiveness didn't fade with time. But for most of the
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: second marriage, it didn't have a target because Natalie was
• 37:10
  Speaker 1: home with her daughters and her career was small and
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: selective and there was nothing to really set it off.
• 37:17
  Speaker 1: And then in 1981, Natalie took on her first major
• 37:20
  Speaker 1: film role in years in Brainstorm, a science fiction film
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: directed by Douglas Trumbull, was supposed to be her comeback.
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: And her co-star was Christopher Walken, who'd won an Academy
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: Award for The Deer Hunter. The production moved to North
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: Carolina that September, and the shoot was scheduled for six
• 37:38
  Speaker 1: weeks on location. And Wagner visited the set during a
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: break from Heart to Heart, and he didn't like what
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: he found. And in his memoir, he wrote, quote, And
• 37:47
  Speaker 1: her medicine cabinet at the time told its own story,
• 37:50
  Speaker 1: because she was on at least eight different prescriptions. One
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: of them was the painkiller, Darvin. And she had plans
• 38:10
  Speaker 1: that stretched well beyond brainstorm. And she agreed to appear
• 38:14
  Speaker 1: on Anastasia at the Amundsen Theater, set to open February 12, 1982,
• 38:19
  Speaker 1: with Wendy Hiller as her co-star. And it would have
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: been her first time on a live stage. And on
• 38:25
  Speaker 1: top of that, she bought the rights to Barbara Worsbaugh's
• 38:28
  Speaker 1: Country of the Heart and was developing it as a film.
• 38:32
  Speaker 1: and Timothy Hutton was lined up as her co-star. But sadly,
• 38:36
  Speaker 1: none of it would ever happen. So the Brainstorm cast
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: had been shooting on location in North Carolina since September.
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: And by late October of 1981, they were back in
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: Los Angeles to finish what was left of the film.
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: And the couple threw a Thanksgiving dinner at their house.
• 38:52
  Speaker 1: And the plan for after Thanksgiving was simple. They'd take
• 38:55
  Speaker 1: the Splendor, the boat they named after the 1961 film
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: that earned Natalie her second Oscar nomination, Splendor in the Grass,
• 39:02
  Speaker 1: out to Catalina Island and spend just a few days
• 39:06
  Speaker 1: on the water. Friday, November 27th through Sunday to November 29th.
• 39:11
  Speaker 1: And nothing was out of the ordinary. But people close
• 39:13
  Speaker 1: to Wagner later told investigators that two to four other
• 39:16
  Speaker 1: guests had been invited along for the weekend. But none
• 39:20
  Speaker 1: of them could make it. So when the Splendor headed
• 39:23
  Speaker 1: out of the Marina del Rey that Friday afternoon, there
• 39:25
  Speaker 1: were only four people on board. Natalie Wagner. and Walken,
• 39:31
  Speaker 1: and the boat's skipper, Dennis Davern. And the weather was
• 39:35
  Speaker 1: just absolutely miserable, just cold and raining. And nobody has
• 39:40
  Speaker 1: ever said publicly why Walken's wife, Georgianne, stayed behind. But
• 39:45
  Speaker 1: from the moment Walken stepped aboard, the atmosphere was wrong.
• 39:50
  Speaker 1: And allegedly, Walken came aboard wearing a peacoat with the
• 39:53
  Speaker 1: collar flipped up and Wagner disliked him on sight. And
• 39:57
  Speaker 1: people were already whispering that the two of them were
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: more than co-stars. and Davern saw it from the first hour, saying, quote,
• 40:06
  Speaker 1: you could see a little bit of jealousy from Robert Wagner.
• 40:09
  Speaker 1: It just kept getting more tense every minute of the day, unquote. Now,
• 40:14
  Speaker 1: Lieutenant John Carina of the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department
• 40:17
  Speaker 1: later described that Wagner felt that Natalie was paying far
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: more attention to Walken than she was to him, and
• 40:24
  Speaker 1: the whole trip was just tense. And according to Davern,
• 40:27
  Speaker 1: Wood and Wagner thought constantly, and the root of it
• 40:30
  Speaker 1: was always the same. Natalie and Walken were drawn to
• 40:34
  Speaker 1: each other, and everyone could see it. So Saturday night,
• 40:38
  Speaker 1: November 28th, the weather was no better than it had
• 40:41
  Speaker 1: been all weekend. Rain was off and on, temperatures were dropping,
• 40:45
  Speaker 1: and when they weren't together, they were treated to separate
• 40:47
  Speaker 1: quarters on the boat. And what we know for certain
• 40:50
  Speaker 1: about that evening is limited. All four of them were
• 40:54
  Speaker 1: together on the Splendor. And by 8 o'clock the next morning,
• 40:58
  Speaker 1: Natalie would be dead. But here is what we do know.
• 41:02
  Speaker 1: So Saturday afternoon, Walken and Natalie left the yacht and
• 41:05
  Speaker 1: headed to a place called Doug's Harbor Reef, a waterfront
• 41:09
  Speaker 1: restaurant run by the local harbor manager, Doug Bombard. And
• 41:12
  Speaker 1: they started drinking. And Wagner and Davern joined them later.
• 41:16
  Speaker 1: And once dinner rolled around, all four of them sat
• 41:19
  Speaker 1: down together. And the tab was pretty heavy. Champagne, two
• 41:22
  Speaker 1: bottles of wine, cocktails on top of that. And at
• 41:25
  Speaker 1: some point during dinner, a glass shattered against the wall
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: and staff couldn't agree on who threw it, but it
• 41:32
  Speaker 1: was either Wagner or Walken. And the server working their table,
• 41:36
  Speaker 1: Christina Quinn, noticed that Natalie barely touched her food and
• 41:40
  Speaker 1: she described Wood as restless and unsettled. Quote, did not
• 41:45
  Speaker 1: eat much of her dinner and was doing a lot
• 41:46
  Speaker 1: of complaining about small things such as there was too
• 41:49
  Speaker 1: much light on the table, the table was too big,
• 41:52
  Speaker 1: the fish was not fresh, unquote. And Quinn added that Natalie, quote,
• 41:56
  Speaker 1: appeared to be in changing moods, sometimes laughing and sometimes solemn, unquote.
• 42:01
  Speaker 1: And Ted Bauer, the bartender that night, backed up what
• 42:03
  Speaker 1: everyone else was noticing, saying, quote, unquote, Natalie was pretty shaky.
• 42:08
  Speaker 1: And Don Whiting, who managed the restaurant, got worried enough
• 42:11
  Speaker 1: to pull the harbormaster aside. And he told him to
• 42:14
  Speaker 1: watch the group and make sure they actually got back
• 42:17
  Speaker 1: to the Splendor safely. And Whiting's statements to investigators painted
• 42:21
  Speaker 1: a pretty clear picture. And he said it looked to
• 42:23
  Speaker 1: him like there was trouble between Wagner and his wife.
• 42:27
  Speaker 1: And Wagner seemed annoyed with Natalie. And the whole party
• 42:30
  Speaker 1: had been drinking really hard. And he wanted the harbormaster
• 42:34
  Speaker 1: to know. So around 10 p.m., the four of them
• 42:37
  Speaker 1: left the restaurant and headed for the pier, where the
• 42:40
  Speaker 1: small boat was tied up to take them back to
• 42:42
  Speaker 1: the Splendor. And it was called the Prince Valiant. And
• 42:45
  Speaker 1: William Peterson, who operated the shore boat... was watching them leave.
• 42:49
  Speaker 1: And he saw Natalie lose her footing on the pier
• 42:52
  Speaker 1: and let out what he described as a, quote, little
• 42:55
  Speaker 1: yell as if she had slipped, unquote. And she got
• 42:58
  Speaker 1: into the boat after that, and they made it back
• 43:01
  Speaker 1: to the yacht. And what happens next depends on who
• 43:04
  Speaker 1: you believe. Now, Davern's most revealing account came in a
• 43:07
  Speaker 1: Vanity Fair piece published in March of 2000. And he
• 43:11
  Speaker 1: described a weekend where the attraction between Natalie and Walken
• 43:14
  Speaker 1: was impossible to miss. And by the time they got
• 43:17
  Speaker 1: back to the Splendor after dinner, Wagner had reached his limit.
• 43:21
  Speaker 1: And he picked up a wine bottle and slammed it
• 43:23
  Speaker 1: down hard enough to break it. And then he looked
• 43:26
  Speaker 1: at Walken and shouted, quote unquote, what are you trying
• 43:29
  Speaker 1: to do, my wife? Unquote. And Natalie walked out. And
• 43:34
  Speaker 1: the door to her room slammed shut behind her. And
• 43:37
  Speaker 1: Wagner went after her. And minutes later, the sound of
• 43:41
  Speaker 1: them fighting carried through the walls, and Davern cranked his
• 43:44
  Speaker 1: stereo ladder so he wouldn't have to listen. And at
• 43:46
  Speaker 1: one point, Davern peered outside and caught both of them
• 43:49
  Speaker 1: standing at the back of the yacht, and the fight
• 43:51
  Speaker 1: had moved to the open air. And their body language
• 43:54
  Speaker 1: made it obvious it hadn't cooled down at all. And
• 43:58
  Speaker 1: then everything went quiet. In Wagner's book, Pieces of My
• 44:01
  Speaker 1: Heart confirmed there had been a fight between him and
• 44:04
  Speaker 1: Natalie before she went missing, but his version of what
• 44:07
  Speaker 1: happened looked nothing like Davern's. And on other boats nearby,
• 44:11
  Speaker 1: people were listening because people who anchored in the same
• 44:14
  Speaker 1: cove heard this too. Sound carries on water really far
• 44:19
  Speaker 1: and really well. And multiple witnesses on neighboring boats told
• 44:22
  Speaker 1: investigators about loud fighting that carried across the water from
• 44:25
  Speaker 1: the Splendor that night. And one recalled yelling and the
• 44:28
  Speaker 1: sound of things crashing inside what seemed to be the stateroom.
• 44:33
  Speaker 1: And others picked up a man's voice and a woman's
• 44:35
  Speaker 1: voice going at each other on the yacht's rear deck.
• 44:38
  Speaker 1: And they were sure it was Wood and Wagner. And
• 44:40
  Speaker 1: then came the cries. And about 40 yards from the splendor,
• 44:45
  Speaker 1: a woman named Marilyn Wayne was asleep on a sailboat
• 44:48
  Speaker 1: called the Capricorn. And Wayne was a commodities broker from
• 44:52
  Speaker 1: Los Angeles, and her cabin window had been left open.
• 44:55
  Speaker 1: And in a sworn statement to investigators, Wayne said a
• 44:58
  Speaker 1: woman's voice woke her boyfriend first and then woke her. Quote,
• 45:03
  Speaker 1: help me, someone please help me, I'm drowning, unquote. And
• 45:07
  Speaker 1: the words came again and again. And Wayne's son was
• 45:11
  Speaker 1: on the Capricorn as well, and he heard the same thing.
• 45:15
  Speaker 1: And he looked down at the digital watch he'd just gotten,
• 45:17
  Speaker 1: and the time was a few minutes past 11 o'clock.
• 45:20
  Speaker 1: Mixed in with the woman's screams, Wayne and the others
• 45:23
  Speaker 1: heard a man responding, and his voice was thick with alcohol, saying, quote-unquote, Okay, honey,
• 45:29
  Speaker 1: we'll get you. Then, repeated multiple times, quote-unquote, we're coming
• 45:33
  Speaker 1: to get you. So Wayne stayed where she was. And
• 45:37
  Speaker 1: at the time, she just figured it was some kind
• 45:39
  Speaker 1: of rowdy party. and sounded like the people out there
• 45:42
  Speaker 1: already knew the woman was in trouble. And the cries
• 45:45
  Speaker 1: went on for what Wayne estimated was 15 minutes or more.
• 45:49
  Speaker 1: 15 minutes. Someone's screaming for help. And you don't go, look, it's,
• 45:54
  Speaker 1: that's something. I don't know about that, but okay. And
• 45:58
  Speaker 1: they stopped around 1210 a.m. And official records state that
• 46:02
  Speaker 1: Natalie Wood went missing from the Splendor at approximately 11.05 p.m.
• 46:07
  Speaker 1: And according to Wagner, by the time he turned in
• 46:09
  Speaker 1: for the night, Natalie was gone. One fact was never
• 46:13
  Speaker 1: in dispute. Wagner was the last person seen with her
• 46:17
  Speaker 1: before she vanished. And forensic analysis placed the time of
• 46:21
  Speaker 1: death somewhere between midnight and one in the morning. And
• 46:24
  Speaker 1: the contents of her stomach backed that up. And there
• 46:27
  Speaker 1: were still about 500 cc's of food that hadn't fully digested,
• 46:31
  Speaker 1: consistent with a meal eaten three to four hours earlier,
• 46:35
  Speaker 1: which lined up with an 8 to 9 p.m. dinner.
• 46:38
  Speaker 1: And what followed was a slow, staggered response that would
• 46:41
  Speaker 1: become one of the central mysteries of the case. And
• 46:44
  Speaker 1: it wasn't until roughly 1.30 in the morning that Wagner
• 46:48
  Speaker 1: got on the radio. And he reached out to Doug's
• 46:51
  Speaker 1: Harbor Reef and wanted to know if Natalie had shown
• 46:53
  Speaker 1: up there. And he had people checking for her on
• 46:56
  Speaker 1: land and on shore, but not in the ocean. And
• 47:00
  Speaker 1: at around 2 30 AM, the restaurant manager alerted the
• 47:03
  Speaker 1: harbor master and the coast guard didn't get a call
• 47:06
  Speaker 1: about Natalie until 3 20 AM. And Roger Smith lifeguard
• 47:10
  Speaker 1: on duty didn't find out until after 5 AM that morning.
• 47:15
  Speaker 1: And by then Natalie had been in the water for
• 47:17
  Speaker 1: roughly six hours. And the whole time, a lifeguard boat
• 47:21
  Speaker 1: had been sitting about 100 feet from the Splendor. And
• 47:25
  Speaker 1: by 5.30 a.m., the small boat had been found beached
• 47:29
  Speaker 1: on shore. And Doug Bombard ran the harbor at Ithmas
• 47:33
  Speaker 1: Cove and had lived on Catalina for years. And searchers
• 47:36
  Speaker 1: woke him about 30 minutes before sunrise. And they told
• 47:40
  Speaker 1: him they thought Natalie had slipped and gone into the
• 47:42
  Speaker 1: water sometime around three in the morning. And by the
• 47:45
  Speaker 1: time Bombard was up and moving, the small boat had
• 47:47
  Speaker 1: already been pulled in. And he went out onto the
• 47:50
  Speaker 1: water toward Blue Cavern Point, and a hundred yards out,
• 47:54
  Speaker 1: something red caught his eye on the water. A small shape,
• 47:58
  Speaker 1: like a bubble sitting on the surface. And it was Natalie.
• 48:02
  Speaker 1: An air had gotten trapped inside her red down jacket,
• 48:05
  Speaker 1: keeping that one patch of fabric visible above the waterline.
• 48:09
  Speaker 1: And Bombard radioed for a second vessel to assist, and
• 48:13
  Speaker 1: her down jacket had taken on so much seawater that
• 48:16
  Speaker 1: it added roughly 40 pounds to her weight. and he
• 48:19
  Speaker 1: couldn't pull her out alone. And when they turned her over,
• 48:23
  Speaker 1: she was dressed in a flannel nightgown, a down jacket,
• 48:26
  Speaker 1: and a pair of wool socks, and nothing else. So
• 48:29
  Speaker 1: the next day, on November 30th, Chief Medical Examiner Thomas
• 48:33
  Speaker 1: Noguchi released his findings, and he called it accidental drowning,
• 48:37
  Speaker 1: complicated by hypothermia. And the bruises covering Natalie's body, Noguchi said,
• 48:42
  Speaker 1: were quote-unquote superficial, and he believed they came from her
• 48:46
  Speaker 1: struggle in the water. And scratches found on the small boat,
• 48:49
  Speaker 1: in his view, showed she tried to haul herself aboard,
• 48:53
  Speaker 1: but lost the fight against exhaustion and cold. And the
• 48:56
  Speaker 1: autopsy told a fuller story, because her blood tested at 0.14% alcohol.
• 49:03
  Speaker 1: And on top of that, toxicology picked up both a
• 49:06
  Speaker 1: motion sickness medication and a painkiller. And either one would
• 49:09
  Speaker 1: have made the alcohol hit a lot harder. And together,
• 49:13
  Speaker 1: that combination was very dangerous. and Noguchi documented, quote, superficial
• 49:18
  Speaker 1: skin bruises on the extremities. and abrasions on the left
• 49:21
  Speaker 1: side of the face, unquote. And he noted there was,
• 49:24
  Speaker 1: quote unquote, no evidence of strangulation. And ocean temperatures that
• 49:28
  Speaker 1: night hovered around 57 degrees. And according to forensic analysis,
• 49:32
  Speaker 1: she didn't survive long once she was in. And then
• 49:35
  Speaker 1: there was the small boat. And it told its own story.
• 49:39
  Speaker 1: because the key sat in the ignition, switched off. The
• 49:43
  Speaker 1: gear was in neutral and the oars hadn't been untied.
• 49:46
  Speaker 1: And the report noted that it looked, quote unquote, as
• 49:50
  Speaker 1: if the boat had not even been used. No one
• 49:53
  Speaker 1: collected nail clippings from Natalie's fingers, so there was never
• 49:56
  Speaker 1: any way to confirm whether the scratches on the boat
• 49:58
  Speaker 1: came from her. And when detectives finally went looking for
• 50:01
  Speaker 1: the boat decades later, it had vanished. And lifeguard Roger Smith,
• 50:06
  Speaker 1: who'd been called six hours after Natalie went into the water,
• 50:09
  Speaker 1: had his own assessment. And he told the LA Times, quote, unquote.
• 50:17
  Speaker 1: And he said he always believed she could have been saved, saying, quote,
• 50:21
  Speaker 1: Her fingers were still pliable when she was pulled from
• 50:24
  Speaker 1: the water, suggesting she had not been dead for hours, unquote.
• 50:29
  Speaker 1: Smith got a look at the boat before it was lost,
• 50:31
  Speaker 1: and inside, the seats had been knocked out of place.
• 50:34
  Speaker 1: And along with the walls of the raft, he saw
• 50:37
  Speaker 1: what looked like marks left by fingernails, scratched in by
• 50:40
  Speaker 1: someone fighting to drag themselves over the edge. And his
• 50:44
  Speaker 1: conclusion was blunt, saying, quote, I think she was at
• 50:47
  Speaker 1: least alive for three of the hours hanging on that skiff, unquote.
• 50:51
  Speaker 1: And then there was the question no one could answer.
• 50:54
  Speaker 1: What was Natalie Wood doing near that boat in the
• 50:57
  Speaker 1: first place? And by every account, she had never once
• 51:00
  Speaker 1: taken the boat out by herself. And her terror of
• 51:04
  Speaker 1: dark water had been part of her identity for as
• 51:07
  Speaker 1: long as anyone knew her. And Lieutenant John Carina asked directly, quote, unquote.
• 51:22
  Speaker 1: And this was a woman who refused to set foot
• 51:24
  Speaker 1: in a swimming pool in her own backyard. And when
• 51:27
  Speaker 1: Lana Wood was asked whether there was any chance her
• 51:30
  Speaker 1: sister would have gotten into the boat and left the
• 51:32
  Speaker 1: yacht on her own, she didn't hesitate saying, quote unquote, no, no,
• 51:37
  Speaker 1: not with a gun to her head. Lana also spoke
• 51:40
  Speaker 1: about what it felt like to imagine her sister's final hours, saying, quote,
• 51:44
  Speaker 1: when I think of her in the water, in the dark,
• 51:47
  Speaker 1: in the cold, and the one thing that she feared
• 51:49
  Speaker 1: was water, and that's where she finishes her life, unquote.
• 51:54
  Speaker 1: Lieutenant Carina added further, quote, she got in the water somehow,
• 51:58
  Speaker 1: and I don't think she got in the water by herself, unquote.
• 52:02
  Speaker 1: So Detective Dwayne Rasher, working out of the Los Angeles
• 52:06
  Speaker 1: County Sheriff's Homicide Bureau, caught the case, and he spoke
• 52:09
  Speaker 1: to all three men who'd been aboard the Splendor that night. Wagner, Walken,
• 52:14
  Speaker 1: and Davern each told him the same thing. They believed
• 52:17
  Speaker 1: Natalie had climbed into the boat and motored ashore on
• 52:20
  Speaker 1: her own. And Rasher told 48 Hours in 2011, quote,
• 52:22
  Speaker 1: Not one of them said a word about any fighting
• 52:23
  Speaker 1: that night, which is... interesting, given that there was a
• 52:43
  Speaker 1: massive blowout fight. And according to Wagner, the two of
• 52:47
  Speaker 1: them had spent the evening together on the yacht, and
• 52:50
  Speaker 1: he figured she'd turned in for the night. And he
• 52:52
  Speaker 1: eventually went looking for her and found the master bedroom empty.
• 52:56
  Speaker 1: And Davern, meanwhile, realized the Zodiac was missing, and they
• 53:00
  Speaker 1: figured she had taken it and left. And Rasher also
• 53:02
  Speaker 1: asked about something he'd observed on the yacht. Broken glass
• 53:06
  Speaker 1: scattered across the salon. And Wagner blamed it on the ocean,
• 53:10
  Speaker 1: choppy conditions during the crossing, he said. And Rascher accepted
• 53:14
  Speaker 1: the explanation without pressing any further. And years later, in
• 53:17
  Speaker 1: Pieces of My Heart, Wagner told a very different story
• 53:20
  Speaker 1: about the glass. In the book, he admitted to grabbing
• 53:24
  Speaker 1: a wine bottle, like we said before, in the middle
• 53:26
  Speaker 1: of the confrontation with Walken and slamming it hard enough
• 53:29
  Speaker 1: to shatter it. And back in 1981, every man on
• 53:32
  Speaker 1: the boat had pointed to rough seas as the explanation
• 53:34
  Speaker 1: for the glass. And Wagner's own book contradicted them. And
• 53:38
  Speaker 1: the retired detective sergeant said he, quote, never really got
• 53:41
  Speaker 1: suspicious of a murder. I think he told me the truth, unquote.
• 53:45
  Speaker 1: And after the initial conversation, Rusher sat down with Wagner
• 53:48
  Speaker 1: just once more. And that second interview took place the
• 53:51
  Speaker 1: day after the funeral. And Wagner was in bed and
• 53:55
  Speaker 1: his lawyer was sitting right there with him. And Natalie
• 53:58
  Speaker 1: was buried on December 2nd. And within days of the burial,
• 54:01
  Speaker 1: a spokesman for the coroner's office announced that the case
• 54:04
  Speaker 1: was closed. closed. And when asked how long the whole
• 54:06
  Speaker 1: thing took, Brasher put the total at around five weeks.
• 54:11
  Speaker 1: That's it. Five weeks. But not everyone involved was as
• 54:14
  Speaker 1: satisfied with the outcome. And Mokuchi, who'd ruled the death
• 54:18
  Speaker 1: an accidental drowning... later wrote about the morning after Natalie's
• 54:22
  Speaker 1: body was recovered, saying, quote, the whispers were of murder
• 54:26
  Speaker 1: and I could not deny them, unquote. Natalie was 43
• 54:30
  Speaker 1: years old when she died. She left behind two daughters,
• 54:34
  Speaker 1: a sister, and a career that spanned nearly four decades.
• 54:37
  Speaker 1: And the case that was supposed to explain what happened
• 54:40
  Speaker 1: to her lasted only five weeks. So now the case
• 54:44
  Speaker 1: may have been closed, but the physical state of the
• 54:47
  Speaker 1: boat raised its own set of questions. Its condition told
• 54:50
  Speaker 1: the same story it had told from the beginning. Nothing
• 54:54
  Speaker 1: about it suggested anyone had used it that night, and
• 54:57
  Speaker 1: Noguchi cataloged three pieces of physical evidence that told a
• 55:00
  Speaker 1: consistent story. Scratches from fingernails on the boat's exterior, an
• 55:05
  Speaker 1: abrasion across Natalie's own cheek, and algae on the yacht's
• 55:08
  Speaker 1: swim step that hadn't been disturbed. That's very important. And
• 55:13
  Speaker 1: all of it suggested she'd been in the water, clawing
• 55:17
  Speaker 1: at the boat, not standing on the boat, adjusting a rope.
• 55:21
  Speaker 1: And Davern called Wagner's version of the boat story a lie, saying, quote,
• 55:28
  Speaker 1: The dinghy really wasn't banging because it was tied off
• 55:31
  Speaker 1: with two lines securely to the boat, unquote. And then
• 55:34
  Speaker 1: there was the delay that no one on the yacht
• 55:37
  Speaker 1: has ever fully accounted for. And Roger Smith was the
• 55:40
  Speaker 1: county's supervising rescue boat captain on duty that night. And
• 55:44
  Speaker 1: once he reached the Splendor, he wanted to know why
• 55:46
  Speaker 1: it had taken so long for anyone to call. And
• 55:49
  Speaker 1: according to a sworn statement, Wagner's answer was, quote, we
• 55:53
  Speaker 1: thought she was off on another boat screwing around because
• 55:56
  Speaker 1: that's the kind of woman she is, unquote. And by
• 55:59
  Speaker 1: Wagner's telling, he knew she was gone by roughly midnight
• 56:03
  Speaker 1: and nobody reached out for help until an hour and
• 56:06
  Speaker 1: a half later. And even then, the call had nothing
• 56:09
  Speaker 1: to do with searching the ocean. It was to the
• 56:13
  Speaker 1: restaurant asking if she'd come back on her own. And
• 56:16
  Speaker 1: Finstead framed the gap bluntly saying, quote, the first call
• 56:20
  Speaker 1: isn't made until 1.30 a.m. in the morning. And that's
• 56:23
  Speaker 1: two and a half hours between the time that someone
• 56:26
  Speaker 1: is heard screaming in the water, unquote. And the Coast
• 56:29
  Speaker 1: Guard didn't hear from anyone until after 3 a.m. And
• 56:33
  Speaker 1: that was two more hours gone. And then there was
• 56:35
  Speaker 1: the question of what Wagner himself has said over the
• 56:38
  Speaker 1: years and how many times it's changed. Because his first version,
• 56:43
  Speaker 1: given the rasher in 1981, contained no mention of an argument.
• 56:47
  Speaker 1: And the shattered glass was from waves, he said. Then
• 56:50
  Speaker 1: five years later in the 1986 book called Heart to
• 56:53
  Speaker 1: Heart with Robert Wagner, the story evolved and now it
• 56:57
  Speaker 1: was a political debate that had bored Natalie enough to
• 57:00
  Speaker 1: send her off to bed. Math isn't mathing for me personally.
• 57:06
  Speaker 1: And in pieces of my heart, he conceded far more.
• 57:09
  Speaker 1: And he admitted that Walken had urged Natalie to throw
• 57:12
  Speaker 1: herself completely into her work and that it sent him
• 57:15
  Speaker 1: over the edge. And he admitted picking up a wine
• 57:18
  Speaker 1: bottle and smashing it on the table in anger. And
• 57:21
  Speaker 1: for the first time, he put it in writing that
• 57:23
  Speaker 1: he and Natalie had fought before she went missing. So
• 57:26
  Speaker 1: with every retelling, Wagner's account drifted further from what he'd
• 57:30
  Speaker 1: originally claimed and closer to the version Davern had been
• 57:34
  Speaker 1: pushing for years. And once the investigation started up again,
• 57:38
  Speaker 1: Wagner stopped talking altogether. And detectives say he hasn't agreed
• 57:42
  Speaker 1: to a single interview since. And Lieutenant Carina said his
• 57:46
  Speaker 1: team had gone to Wagner more than 10 separate times
• 57:49
  Speaker 1: asking to talk, and the answer was no every single time.
• 57:53
  Speaker 1: And Wagner's attorney pushed back, saying, quote, Mr. Wagner has
• 57:57
  Speaker 1: fully cooperated over the last 30 years in the investigation
• 58:00
  Speaker 1: of the accidental drowning of his wife in 1981. He
• 58:03
  Speaker 1: has been interviewed on multiple occasions by the Los Angeles
• 58:06
  Speaker 1: Sheriff's Department and answered every single question asked of him
• 58:10
  Speaker 1: by detectives during those interviews, unquote. Lieutenant Carina wasn't persuaded.
• 58:15
  Speaker 1: He told reporters that Wagner's version of events didn't line
• 58:17
  Speaker 1: up with what other witnesses had said. And Christopher Walken's
• 58:21
  Speaker 1: approach to the case has been different from Wagner's in
• 58:24
  Speaker 1: nearly every single way. And in 1986, People magazine asked
• 58:28
  Speaker 1: him what happened. And he said, quote, I don't know
• 58:31
  Speaker 1: what happened. She slipped and fell in the water. I
• 58:34
  Speaker 1: was in bed then. It was a terrible thing. Look,
• 58:37
  Speaker 1: we're in a conversation I won't have. It's a bore, unquote.
• 58:42
  Speaker 1: That sounds a lot different. She slipped and fell?
• 58:45
  Speaker 2: What?
• 58:46
  Speaker 1: I thought she got into the boat. I thought she
• 58:48
  Speaker 1: was going ashore, right? And why is talking about a
• 58:51
  Speaker 1: woman that died under your watch a bore? That is so,
• 58:56
  Speaker 1: this makes me really not like Christopher Walken. But he
• 58:59
  Speaker 1: would stay quiet for more than a decade after that.
• 59:02
  Speaker 1: And the next time he spoke publicly about it was
• 59:04
  Speaker 1: 1997 when Playboy got him to open up a little more, saying, quote,
• 59:10
  Speaker 1: anybody there saw the logistics of the boat the night
• 59:13
  Speaker 1: where we were that it was raining and would know
• 59:16
  Speaker 1: exactly what happened what happened that night only she knows
• 59:19
  Speaker 1: because she was alone she had gone to bed before
• 59:22
  Speaker 1: us and her room was at the back and the
• 59:25
  Speaker 1: dinghy was bouncing against the side of the boat and
• 59:27
  Speaker 1: i think she went out to move it It was slippery.
• 59:33
  Speaker 1: I had walked on it myself. She had told me
• 59:36
  Speaker 1: she couldn't swim. In fact, they had to cut a
• 59:38
  Speaker 1: swimming scene from Brainstorm. And she was probably half asleep
• 59:42
  Speaker 1: and she was wearing a coat.
• 59:44
  Speaker 2: Unquote.
• 59:44
  Speaker 1: Took you 10 years to come up with that? Okay, great. Great.
• 59:48
  Speaker 1: And morning host Gayle King tried once more, but Walken
• 59:51
  Speaker 1: shut it down, saying, quote, I stopped talking about that
• 59:54
  Speaker 1: 30 years ago and there's so much information, books and internet,
• 59:58
  Speaker 1: anything you want to know, just go look, unquote. And
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 1: once the case was back open, Walken brought on an
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 1: attorney and sat for questioning and gave detectives what they
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 1: asked for. Detectives confirmed to 48 Hours that he has
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 1: never been considered a person of interest. And Wagner, the
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 1: one who won't sit down with them, carries that designation alone. Now,
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 1: Dennis Davern was the captain of the Splendor, as we know.
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 1: working for Wagner and Wood. And he was the fourth
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 1: person aboard that night, and for decades, he was the quietest.
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 1: And his original statement to Detective Rasher matched Wagner's nearly
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 1: word for word. And Lieutenant Carina later noted, quote, if
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 1: you look at Robert Wagner's statement at the time, they
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 1: almost parrot each other, unquote. And that version held for years,
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 1: almost like they talked about it before talking to the police. allegedly.
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 1: But piece by piece, Davern started telling a different story.
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 1: Cause you know, when you lie, it's hard to remember
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 1: the lie, you know, allegedly. And Marty Rooley, who would
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 1: later co-write his book, said that Davern had contacted her
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 1: as early as 1983, just two years after the drowning,
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 1: though he wasn't ready to go public. And through the
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 1: late eighties and nineties, he shopped his account around to
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 1: publishers and tabloid outlets, looking for someone willing to run it,
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 1: and few would bite. The first time his version of
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 1: events reached a mainstream audience was March of 2000, and
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 1: Vanity Fair published a feature in which Davern laid out
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 1: what he had said he'd witnessed, Walken and Natalie flirting
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 1: all weekend, and the situation turning volatile after dinner once
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 1: everyone was back aboard the yacht. Finally, in September of 2009,
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 1: the book came out, And it was called Goodbye Natalie,
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 1: Goodbye Splendor, co-written with Rowley. And the day after the
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 1: sheriff's departments made its announcement about reopening the investigation, Davern
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 1: appeared on NBC's Today Show and said out loud what
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 1: he'd been circling for over a decade.
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 2: Quote, unquote.
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 1: That's against the law. By the way, that's obstruction of justice.
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 1: Statute of limitations or whatever. I don't know. But anyway,
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 1: what Davern now described was a night defined by rage
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 1: and silence. And in his revised account, Davern said the
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 1: friction between Wagner and Natalie had been escalating since Friday,
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 1: two full days before everything fell apart. And back on
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 1: the boat after dinner, Natalie had already changed into her
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 1: flannel nightgown and a pair of warm socks. And she
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 1: came out to the salon where the three men were gathered,
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 1: and she put the kettle on for tea. And Davern
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 1: lit candles and opened a bottle of wine, and Natalie
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 1: and Walken were laughing together, and it was pretty relaxed.
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 1: And then out of nowhere, Wagner snatched the wine bottle
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 1: off the table and broke it. And Natalie stood up
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 1: and said, quote unquote, I cannot take this. And she
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 1: walked out. And Walken left too, heading for the guest cabin.
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 1: But the argument didn't end. And Davern said Wagner went
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 1: after her. And it wasn't long before the sounds of
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 1: another argument started coming through the walls. And he told
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 1: CNN he cranked up his stereo because the whole thing
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 1: embarrassed him. And at some point he glanced through the
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 1: pilot house window and Wagner and Natalie were outside on
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 1: the deck now. And the way they were moving left
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 1: no doubt the fight had gotten worse. And in his
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 1: accounts to Vanity Fair, he described the fight as unlike
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 1: anything he'd ever witnessed between them. Quote saying, fighting like crazy,
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 1: I've never in a million years seen them fight like
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 1: that before, unquote. And he said the argument moved from
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 1: inside the cabin out to the cockpit. And then he
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 1: heard the boat being untied and then silence. And when
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 1: Wagner came back inside, something had changed. And Davern described
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 1: him as, quote-unquote, tussled, sweating profusely, as if he had
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 1: been in a terrible fight, an ordeal of some kind, unquote.
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 1: And Wagner told him he couldn't find Natalie. And Davern
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 1: says his instinct was to act immediately, turn on the
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 1: searchlight and radio for help. And co-author Rooley described it
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 1: on the Today Show, saying, quote, Dennis wanted to do everything,
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 1: make a phone call, turn on his searchlight, His instincts
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 1: told him something was terribly wrong and Robert Wagner asked
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 1: him not to, unquote. You're still complicit. Then Wagner pulled
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 1: out a bottle of scotch and the two of them
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 1: sat there drinking, doing nothing. while the minutes kept ticking away.
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 1: And what Davern says happened after Natalie's death is in
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 1: some ways just as troubling as what happened during. And
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 1: Howard Temple, the polygraph examiner who later tested Davern, said
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 1: Davern told him that once Natalie was dead, Wagner gave
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 1: him a direct order. Quote, Davern made the statement that
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 1: he stayed at the Wagner home. Told not to talk,
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 1: Wagner paid for his therapy and Davern could not leave
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 1: the estate without bodyguards, unquote. And for 12 months after
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 1: the drowning, Davern stayed on Wagner's payroll. And years later,
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 1: he said that year felt like he was a hostage.
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 1: And really elaborated, saying, quote, the first year after Davern
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 1: stayed with Wagner, he wanted Dennis under his wing, so
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 1: it was very hard to talk with his family, his family,
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 1: and his friends, unquote. And Lana Wood says Davern eventually
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 1: told her what he believed he saw that night, saying, quote,
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 1: it appeared to him as though RJ, or Wagner, shoved
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 1: her away and she went overboard. And Dennis panicked and
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 1: RJ said, leave her there, teach her a lesson, unquote.
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 1: How is no one in jail at this point? Davern included.
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 1: He saw her get pushed off the boat and she
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 1: can't swim. Anyway, she said, Davern described sitting there waiting
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 1: for the moment they'd go rescue her, quote unquote, until
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 1: all the sound stopped. The sound. the sound of somebody
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 1: drowning and screaming for help. I have no sympathy for
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 1: this man. Like, there's not a bone in my body
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 1: that I will offer empathy or sympathy to Davern. Complicit, completely,
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 1: in my opinion, allegedly, you know? And in a sworn declaration,
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 1: he submitted to the sheriff's department, and Davern described the
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 1: explosive fight between Wagner and Natalie that had erupted over
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 1: her relationship with Walken. The declaration also contained an admission
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 1: that Davern had supplied quaaludes to passengers during the weekend.
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 1: And both Davern and Lana Wood later appeared on a
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 1: 12-part podcast that launched in 2018 under the title Fatal Voyage,
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 1: The Mysterious Death of Natalie Wood. And the question of
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 1: whether Dennis Davern can be trusted has divided everyone who's
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 1: looked into the case. And his critics point to the obvious.
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 1: He sat on the truth. for decades, then started cashing in.
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 1: Tabloid interviews, a book deal, and a podcast. And every
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 1: revelation came with a price tag. Detective Rescher, who originally
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 1: handled the case, was dismissive, saying, quote, he's just made
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 1: himself to look good in his book, and obviously he's
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 1: trying to sell a book and make money off of it.
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 1: And I think that's the whole purpose behind his writing
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 1: this book, unquote. And his supporters point to something else, though.
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 1: Davern sat for a polygraph test, and examiner Howard Temple
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 1: said the results indicated he was telling the truth. Which,
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 1: who the f * * * cares? He watched a
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 1: woman die. He listened to her die. He thought she
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 1: was in the water and didn't look. Okay? That makes
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 1: him the good guy? What? Lieutenant Carina found Davern credible. Quote,
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 1: I find his story and his version of events when
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 1: he talked to us everything fit. Makes more sense of
• 1:07:38
  Speaker 1: what happened and his cooperated by other people. Unquote. so
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 1: where's Wagner in this? He killed his wife, it seems, allegedly,
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 1: looks like, seems like. The independent witnesses who came forward
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 1: after the reopening were people Lieutenant Carina described as, quote unquote,
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 1: very credible, and what they reported matched what Davern had
• 1:07:58
  Speaker 1: been saying. And Lieutenant Carina also gave a simple explanation
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 1: for why Davern had lied in 1981, saying, quote, you
• 1:08:05
  Speaker 1: gotta understand, Davern back then, people mischaracterized him as the
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 1: captain of the boat, He's not the captain of the boat.
• 1:08:12
  Speaker 1: He's the caretaker of the boat. Robert Wagner's the guy
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 1: who pays him. That's his meal ticket, unquote. I don't
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 1: give a flying f * * * if you're getting paid.
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 1: There's no excuse. I literally can't. To anybody that defends that,
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 1: that's just insane. Weatherer. Davern changed his story because the
• 1:08:34
  Speaker 1: truth finally demanded it, or because the market finally rewarded it,
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 1: is something only he knows for certain. I think both
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 1: make him look terrible. But the investigators who spent the
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 1: most time with the case believed him. Which in that case,
• 1:08:50
  Speaker 1: she got murdered. So for three decades, the record on
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 1: Natalie Wood's death collected dust. And then in November of 2011,
• 1:08:57
  Speaker 1: the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department officially announced it was
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 1: taking another look. And Lieutenant John Carina said, quote, Recently,
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 1: we have received information which we felt was substantial enough
• 1:09:09
  Speaker 1: to make us take another look at this case, unquote.
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 1: And much of that information traced back to Davern, his account,
• 1:09:14
  Speaker 1: and the questions it raised. At Wagner's camp responded through
• 1:09:18
  Speaker 1: a publicist saying, quote, although no one in the Wagner
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 1: family has heard from the L.A. County Sheriff's Department about
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 1: this matter, They fully support the efforts of the L.A.
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 1: County Sheriff's Department and trust they will evaluate whether any
• 1:09:31
  Speaker 1: new information relating to the death of Natalie Wood, Wagner,
• 1:09:34
  Speaker 1: is valid and that it comes from a credible source
• 1:09:38
  Speaker 1: or sources other than those simply trying to profit from
• 1:09:40
  Speaker 1: the 30-year anniversary of her tragic death. At the press conference, Lt.
• 1:09:46
  Speaker 1: Karina said Wagner was not a suspect, at least not yet.
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 1: But after the announcement, the phone started ringing and roughly
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 1: 100 people reached out to investigators with information. And over
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 1: the following year, detectives tracked down witnesses nobody had spoken
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 1: to before. And for the first time, they were able
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 1: to map out what happened across the entire weekend leading
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 1: up to Natalie's death. Two witnesses in particular changed the
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 1: shape of the case. And Detective Ralph Fernandez said they, quote,
• 1:10:15
  Speaker 1: saw figures on the back of the Splendor, a male
• 1:10:17
  Speaker 1: and a female, whose voices they recognized as being Robert
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 1: Wagner and Natalie Wood arguing back and forth on the boat, unquote.
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 1: And one of those witnesses told detectives she'd watched the
• 1:10:26
  Speaker 1: confrontation happen with her own eyes. And Lieutenant Carina found
• 1:10:30
  Speaker 1: both witnesses credible. And the Splendor had changed hands since
• 1:10:34
  Speaker 1: 1981 and was sitting in a Hawaiian harbor. And investigators
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 1: made two separate trips out there to go through it.
• 1:10:41
  Speaker 1: And the new investigation didn't just turn up witnesses. It
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 1: sent investigators back to the physical evidence, actually. And Dr.
• 1:10:48
  Speaker 1: Lakshmanan reviewed the original autopsy findings and produced a 10-page
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 1: supplemental report. And what he found didn't match the story
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 1: the case had been telling for three decades. And among
• 1:11:00
  Speaker 1: the findings, fresh bruises on her right forearm, left wrist,
• 1:11:03
  Speaker 1: and right knee that nobody had ever accounted for, a
• 1:11:06
  Speaker 1: scratch on her neck, a scrape on her forehead, The
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 1: chief medical examiner's conclusions were careful but damning, saying, quote,
• 1:11:14
  Speaker 1: the location of the bruises, the multiplicity of the bruises,
• 1:11:17
  Speaker 1: lack of head trauma or facial bruising support bruising having
• 1:11:21
  Speaker 1: occurred prior to entry in the water, unquote. And the
• 1:11:24
  Speaker 1: last part mattered because the original theory held that Natalie
• 1:11:27
  Speaker 1: had slipped and struck her head while trying to board
• 1:11:31
  Speaker 1: the boat. But there was no head trauma and no
• 1:11:33
  Speaker 1: facial bruising consistent with a fall. So the pattern of
• 1:11:37
  Speaker 1: injuries didn't support an accident on the boat. And then
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 1: in 2020, someone who'd been in the room during the
• 1:11:43
  Speaker 1: original autopsy came forward. And he was a medical doctor now,
• 1:11:47
  Speaker 1: but back in 1981, he'd been one of Noguchi's interns.
• 1:11:51
  Speaker 1: And according to him, the bruising was not minor. And
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 1: the pattern looked like what you'd expect to see on
• 1:11:57
  Speaker 1: a person who'd been thrown off a vessel and into
• 1:11:59
  Speaker 1: the water. And he said he told Noguchi as much
• 1:12:02
  Speaker 1: at the time. And forensic pathologist Michael Hunter offered a counterpoint.
• 1:12:07
  Speaker 1: And his theory was that thyroid drug Natalie had been
• 1:12:10
  Speaker 1: on could have made her skin bruise far more easily
• 1:12:13
  Speaker 1: than normal. No homicide designation came out of the review.
• 1:12:17
  Speaker 1: And the timing of the bruises remained impossible to nail down.
• 1:12:21
  Speaker 1: And in 2012, the doctor took the step that nobody
• 1:12:23
  Speaker 1: had taken in 31 years. And he amended Natalie Wood's
• 1:12:27
  Speaker 1: death certificate, saying the cause of death was changed from
• 1:12:31
  Speaker 1: accidental drowning to drowning and other undetermined factors. And the
• 1:12:36
  Speaker 1: matter of death was revised to undetermined. Buried in the
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 1: language was a line that carried enormous weight. The coroner
• 1:12:45
  Speaker 1: wrote that it was not clearly established how Natalie wound
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 1: up in the ocean. And two months later, in January
• 1:12:52
  Speaker 1: of 2013, a 10-page supplemental document came out of the
• 1:12:56
  Speaker 1: Los Angeles County Coroner's Office, revisiting the original autopsy findings
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 1: in detail. And the language in that document was measured,
• 1:13:03
  Speaker 1: but its implications were not. Saying, quote, with the presence
• 1:13:07
  Speaker 1: of fresh bruises in the upper extremities in the right forearm,
• 1:13:11
  Speaker 1: left wrist area, and small scratch in the anterior neck...
• 1:13:14
  Speaker 1: this examiner is unable to exclude non-accidental mechanisms causing these injuries, unquote.
• 1:13:20
  Speaker 1: And the addendum flagged another problem. And people gave different
• 1:13:23
  Speaker 1: answers about what time Natalie disappeared. And they agreed on
• 1:13:28
  Speaker 1: whether she and Wagner had been fighting. And it included
• 1:13:31
  Speaker 1: a line that no official document had ever contained before saying, quote,
• 1:13:35
  Speaker 1: this medical examiner is unable to exclude non-volitional unplanned entry
• 1:13:39
  Speaker 1: into the water, unquote. In other words, someone may have
• 1:13:43
  Speaker 1: pushed her in. Basically. And the document also addressed the
• 1:13:47
  Speaker 1: question of whether Natalie might have taken her life. But
• 1:13:50
  Speaker 1: there was just no proof to prove that theory. But
• 1:13:54
  Speaker 1: when detectives went looking for physical evidence from the original case,
• 1:13:57
  Speaker 1: some of it was simply gone. and items that had
• 1:14:00
  Speaker 1: been collected during the 1981 autopsy and investigation had disappeared
• 1:14:05
  Speaker 1: from the record. And in February of 2018, CBS's 48
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 1: Hours broke the news that the Sheriff's Department had designated
• 1:14:13
  Speaker 1: Robert Wagner as a person of interest in his wife's death.
• 1:14:16
  Speaker 1: And it had been 36 years at this point. And
• 1:14:19
  Speaker 1: Lieutenant Carina stated, quote,' As we've investigated the case over
• 1:14:22
  Speaker 1: the last six years,' I think he's more of a
• 1:14:25
  Speaker 1: person of interest now. I mean, we know now that
• 1:14:28
  Speaker 1: he was the last person to be with Natalie before
• 1:14:31
  Speaker 1: she disappeared, unquote. And of course, the term person of
• 1:14:34
  Speaker 1: interest carries no legal weight. It doesn't mean suspect and
• 1:14:39
  Speaker 1: it doesn't trigger any sort of arrest and it doesn't
• 1:14:42
  Speaker 1: compel anyone to speak necessarily. And Wagner continued not to,
• 1:14:47
  Speaker 1: consistently turning them away, which seems pretty guilty to me.
• 1:14:51
  Speaker 1: I don't know. And his publicist released a statement saying, quote, unquote.
• 1:15:02
  Speaker 1: And the rest of the statement took aim at people
• 1:15:04
  Speaker 1: Wagner's team believed were using Natalie's death for personal gain.
• 1:15:08
  Speaker 1: But the investigators weren't asking for new information. They were
• 1:15:11
  Speaker 1: asking him to explain the old information. Specifically, why his
• 1:15:16
  Speaker 1: account of that night kept shifting. Again, lies are really
• 1:15:19
  Speaker 1: hard to keep up after a few decades. Because in
• 1:15:22
  Speaker 1: Pieces of My Heart, Wagner wrote his most detailed version
• 1:15:25
  Speaker 1: of the evening saying, quote, I went below and Natalie
• 1:15:29
  Speaker 1: wasn't there. Strange. I went back up on the deck
• 1:15:32
  Speaker 1: and looked around for her and noticed the dinghy was gone. Stranger.
• 1:15:35
  Speaker 1: I remember wondering if she had taken the dinghy because
• 1:15:38
  Speaker 1: of the argument. And then I thought, no way. because
• 1:15:42
  Speaker 1: she was terrified of dark water. And besides that, the
• 1:15:46
  Speaker 1: dinghy fired up so loudly and we would have heard it. Yes,
• 1:15:50
  Speaker 1: I blamed myself. Natalie would have felt the same way
• 1:15:54
  Speaker 1: had it happened to me. Why wasn't I there? Why
• 1:15:56
  Speaker 1: wasn't I watching? I would have done anything in the
• 1:15:59
  Speaker 1: world to make her life better or protect her. And
• 1:16:03
  Speaker 1: he and Natalie had been arguing that night before she
• 1:16:05
  Speaker 1: was gone, as we know. And investigators noted that Wagner's
• 1:16:07
  Speaker 1: story had moved over the decades. And Lieutenant Carina said, quote,
• 1:16:11
  Speaker 1: I haven't seen him tell the details that match all
• 1:16:14
  Speaker 1: the other witnesses in this case. I think he's constantly,
• 1:16:18
  Speaker 1: he's changed his story a little bit and his version
• 1:16:22
  Speaker 1: of events just don't add up, unquote. Meanwhile, Christopher Walken
• 1:16:26
  Speaker 1: cooperated with the reopened investigation, and he hired an attorney,
• 1:16:31
  Speaker 1: sat for an interview, and answered detectives' questions. And in
• 1:16:34
  Speaker 1: his original statement to police, Walken framed what happened that
• 1:16:37
  Speaker 1: night as a heated back and forth between husband and
• 1:16:39
  Speaker 1: wife over how much Natalie was spending on her career.
• 1:16:42
  Speaker 1: And he told police he jumped in for a moment,
• 1:16:45
  Speaker 1: then left the room and went out on deck. And
• 1:16:48
  Speaker 1: by the time he walked back inside, Walken said the
• 1:16:50
  Speaker 1: tension had cooled, saying, quote-unquote, Everybody was apologizing. And Natalie
• 1:16:55
  Speaker 1: headed back to the master cabin after that. And Walken
• 1:16:58
  Speaker 1: has never been named a person of interest. But Wagner has.
• 1:17:03
  Speaker 1: And he has never sat down with the detectives investigating
• 1:17:06
  Speaker 1: his wife's death. Detective Hernandez notes, quote, We have not
• 1:17:09
  Speaker 1: been able to prove that this was a homicide. And
• 1:17:12
  Speaker 1: we haven't been able to prove that this was an
• 1:17:14
  Speaker 1: accident either. And the ultimate problem is we don't know
• 1:17:17
  Speaker 1: how she ended up in the water. Unquote. But let's
• 1:17:20
  Speaker 1: strip away the celebrity, the gossip, the tabloid headlines. And
• 1:17:26
  Speaker 1: what's left is a set of facts that have never
• 1:17:28
  Speaker 1: been reconciled. Natalie Wood's body showed fresh bruising across her
• 1:17:33
  Speaker 1: upper arms, her forearms, her wrists, and her legs, and
• 1:17:36
  Speaker 1: even her head. And Hernandez says, quote, she looked like
• 1:17:39
  Speaker 1: the victim of an assault, unquote. And the coroner's supplemental
• 1:17:43
  Speaker 1: report reinforced that impression even And the pattern and placement
• 1:17:46
  Speaker 1: of the bruises, combined with the absence of any head
• 1:17:49
  Speaker 1: injury or facial trauma, suggested something other than a fall.
• 1:17:53
  Speaker 1: If she'd slipped and hit her head on the boat,
• 1:17:55
  Speaker 1: the injury should have looked different. And multiple witnesses, independent
• 1:17:59
  Speaker 1: of the captain, heard a man and a woman fighting
• 1:18:01
  Speaker 1: on the back of the Splendor. And their accounts matched Davern's.
• 1:18:04
  Speaker 1: And the argument was loud and intense, and then it
• 1:18:06
  Speaker 1: stopped all at once. And Davern said, quote, And then
• 1:18:10
  Speaker 1: all of a sudden there was nothing, complete silence. And
• 1:18:14
  Speaker 1: Lieutenant Karinik affirmed, quote, no one saw anybody go in
• 1:18:17
  Speaker 1: the water. Nobody heard a splash. Nobody heard anything, unquote.
• 1:18:22
  Speaker 1: And that leads to the question that has hung over
• 1:18:24
  Speaker 1: this case from the beginning. Why would a woman who'd
• 1:18:28
  Speaker 1: been terrified of the water since childhood climb into a
• 1:18:31
  Speaker 1: diggy by herself in a flannel nightgown and socks at
• 1:18:35
  Speaker 1: midnight in the rain with the ocean rough enough to
• 1:18:38
  Speaker 1: rock the boat. It makes no sense at all. Lieutenant
• 1:18:43
  Speaker 1: Karina said the story, quote, made absolutely no sense if
• 1:18:47
  Speaker 1: you really think about it, unquote. Those who believe this
• 1:18:50
  Speaker 1: wasn't an accident point to motive as well as opportunity.
• 1:18:54
  Speaker 1: An author and former federal prosecutor, Sam Peroni, spent years
• 1:18:57
  Speaker 1: investigating the financial dimensions of the case. And at Peroni's telling,
• 1:19:01
  Speaker 1: the financial picture was pretty damning. And he argued that
• 1:19:05
  Speaker 1: the evidence was beyond dispute. Wagner's wealth expanded significantly because
• 1:19:10
  Speaker 1: of Natalie's death. And more significantly, Peroni argued, Wagner had
• 1:19:15
  Speaker 1: something to lose. Because if Natalie divorced him a second time,
• 1:19:19
  Speaker 1: the financial and reputational consequences would have been devastating. Jealousy
• 1:19:24
  Speaker 1: was the accelerant, and investigators confirmed that Wagner had been
• 1:19:28
  Speaker 1: angry all weekend about the closeness between his wife and
• 1:19:31
  Speaker 1: Christopher Walken. And that anger reached its peak on the
• 1:19:34
  Speaker 1: night she died. And CBS put the question to Carina directly.
• 1:19:38
  Speaker 1: Did the evidence point them towards something other than an accident?
• 1:19:42
  Speaker 1: And Keefe said it does. Quote, I think it's suspicious
• 1:19:46
  Speaker 1: enough to make us think that something happened, unquote. No
• 1:19:49
  Speaker 1: one heard the small boat's engine start that night and
• 1:19:51
  Speaker 1: no one heard it pull away and the key was
• 1:19:53
  Speaker 1: off and the oars were tied up. Saying, quote, it
• 1:19:56
  Speaker 1: didn't add up. So why hasn't anyone been charged? Why
• 1:20:00
  Speaker 1: the hell hasn't anyone been charged? Every other possible charge
• 1:20:06
  Speaker 1: has passed its statute of limitations. That's why. Why is
• 1:20:10
  Speaker 1: this a thing? Why does the statute of limitations exist?
• 1:20:15
  Speaker 1: I don't understand. I genuinely will never understand it. I don't.
• 1:20:19
  Speaker 1: But only murder remains on the table. Prosecutors would need
• 1:20:24
  Speaker 1: to show that somebody deliberately forced Natalie into the ocean.
• 1:20:27
  Speaker 1: If she fell in during an argument, even a violent one,
• 1:20:30
  Speaker 1: that's not murder under California law necessarily. And Peroni believed
• 1:20:36
  Speaker 1: the failure wasn't in the evidence. It was in the
• 1:20:38
  Speaker 1: investigator's grasp of the law, which I don't really understand
• 1:20:43
  Speaker 1: that because if you push someone in the ocean and
• 1:20:45
  Speaker 1: then let them drown, That's murder. You're complicit. You're not
• 1:20:53
  Speaker 1: assisting in the murder. It's still a charge. Whatever, dude.
• 1:20:57
  Speaker 1: But he said they got tripped up on the corpus delicti,
• 1:21:00
  Speaker 1: the legal principle that requires proof a crime was actually committed,
• 1:21:05
  Speaker 1: and never realized they had enough for circumstantial second-degree murder case.
• 1:21:11
  Speaker 1: Because it wasn't planned, necessarily, but he also didn't do
• 1:21:14
  Speaker 1: anything about it, and he let her die, allegedly. So
• 1:21:18
  Speaker 1: what is that? What is the legal system doing, dude?
• 1:21:21
  Speaker 1: I'm a YouTuber, I know that. Anyway, legal experts, though,
• 1:21:25
  Speaker 1: were more cautious and Lori Levinson, professor of law at
• 1:21:29
  Speaker 1: Loyal Law School said, quote, it's too easy for attorneys
• 1:21:33
  Speaker 1: to undermine the credibility of a witness that has changed
• 1:21:36
  Speaker 1: his testimony after such a long time, unquote. And when
• 1:21:40
  Speaker 1: prosecutors actually win convictions on decades old cases, It's almost
• 1:21:45
  Speaker 1: always because a lab found something new, which is very true.
• 1:21:49
  Speaker 1: I understand that. It's just frustrating. But, you know, they
• 1:21:53
  Speaker 1: need DNA, essentially. A fingerprint match, something more concrete. And
• 1:21:58
  Speaker 1: a recanting witness with a book deal is a different
• 1:22:01
  Speaker 1: situation entirely, unfortunately. And there are counter arguments that carry
• 1:22:06
  Speaker 1: real weight, though, because Natalie's blood alcohol was 0.14% that night.
• 1:22:11
  Speaker 1: And on top of that, the painkillers and motion sickness
• 1:22:13
  Speaker 1: medication in her system would have compounded the impairment, sure.
• 1:22:17
  Speaker 1: And the original coroner had concluded she slipped trying to
• 1:22:21
  Speaker 1: board the boat, which, as we know now, seems extremely unlikely.
• 1:22:26
  Speaker 1: And Wagner's spokesman maintained she'd taken it out. on her
• 1:22:30
  Speaker 1: own before. And in 1983, Christopher Walken offered what may
• 1:22:34
  Speaker 1: be the most honest assessment anyone has ever given, saying, quote,
• 1:22:38
  Speaker 1: the real story of her death is that she drowned,
• 1:22:41
  Speaker 1: and nobody knows how she drowned or what happened, except her.
• 1:22:44
  Speaker 1: That's what it is. There is no real story. Nobody
• 1:22:47
  Speaker 1: will ever know, unquote. Which, at this point, I think
• 1:22:51
  Speaker 1: is true. Like, that is where it's gonna stay, and
• 1:22:55
  Speaker 1: that's what it's gonna be, which is unfortunate. I think
• 1:22:57
  Speaker 1: he's extremely flippant with it, but I really don't think
• 1:23:01
  Speaker 1: there can be anything done about it because the clock
• 1:23:04
  Speaker 1: has only worked against the truth. And Lieutenant Carina pointed out, quote,
• 1:23:08
  Speaker 1: our biggest challenge is time. Many witnesses have passed away
• 1:23:12
  Speaker 1: who were on boats nearby. The original investigator has passed away, unquote.
• 1:23:17
  Speaker 1: Some of the physical evidence collected during the original autopsy
• 1:23:19
  Speaker 1: couldn't be found. The boat itself was gone. And in
• 1:23:22
  Speaker 1: May of 2022, the Sheriff's Department announced that all leads
• 1:23:25
  Speaker 1: had been exhausted and no criminal charges have ever been filed.
• 1:23:29
  Speaker 1: and the case sits where it always has sat, somewhere
• 1:23:33
  Speaker 1: between an accident that doesn't make sense and a crime
• 1:23:36
  Speaker 1: that can't be proved. All right, let's take a quick
• 1:23:38
  Speaker 1: pause to talk about something that has plagued all of us,
• 1:23:41
  Speaker 1: and that's that mid-afternoon energy crash, where your only other
• 1:23:45
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• 1:23:51
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• 1:23:53
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• 1:24:04
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• 1:25:24
  Speaker 1: the video and supporting the channel and let's get back
• 1:25:26
  Speaker 1: to it. Now we've discussed the facts of what happened
• 1:25:29
  Speaker 1: to Natalie Wood as a teenager and what matters now
• 1:25:32
  Speaker 1: isn't any single event, but it's a pattern. And Finstad
• 1:25:36
  Speaker 1: in her biographical work cataloged Natalie's inner world with a
• 1:25:40
  Speaker 1: kind of forensic precision saying, quote, as I plumbed her past,
• 1:25:44
  Speaker 1: Natalie Wood's demons and their origins revealed themselves as if
• 1:25:47
  Speaker 1: released from a genie's lamp. Family violence, alcoholic father, pathological
• 1:25:52
  Speaker 1: attachment to her Svengali stage mother, psychological abuse as a
• 1:25:56
  Speaker 1: child star, paranoia, phobias, bedroom of storybook dolls she believed
• 1:26:01
  Speaker 1: were alive and spoke to her, pimped at 15 years
• 1:26:04
  Speaker 1: old to Frank freaking Sinatra. forced to return an engagement
• 1:26:07
  Speaker 1: ring to her high school sweetheart, who tried to afterward,
• 1:26:12
  Speaker 1: exploited as a teenager into a sexual liaison with a
• 1:26:16
  Speaker 1: 42-year-old director, Nicholas Ray, to prove that she could play
• 1:26:19
  Speaker 1: a bad girl in Rebel Without a Cause, unquote, and
• 1:26:22
  Speaker 1: so on, and so on. And every time, that list
• 1:26:25
  Speaker 1: traces back to the same source. Maria taught her daughter
• 1:26:29
  Speaker 1: one rule above all others. The career comes first. And
• 1:26:33
  Speaker 1: when 10-year-old Natalie broke her wrist on the set of
• 1:26:36
  Speaker 1: The Green Promise, Maria hid the injury. And when 16-year-old
• 1:26:40
  Speaker 1: Natalie came back from a hotel room shaking and disheveled,
• 1:26:43
  Speaker 1: Maria told her to absorb it. Just shake it off.
• 1:26:47
  Speaker 1: Maria's own words, as Lana remembered them, were the same
• 1:26:51
  Speaker 1: both times. She would never work again as an actress,
• 1:26:54
  Speaker 1: and she would lose everything if she became one of
• 1:26:57
  Speaker 1: those complaining people. Just suck it up. A broken bone. A...
• 1:27:01
  Speaker 1: handled with the identical instruction, say nothing, protect the career, endure.
• 1:27:08
  Speaker 1: Finstead said it straight forward saying, quote, I'm sure it
• 1:27:11
  Speaker 1: was always in her psyche. When you've been, it never
• 1:27:15
  Speaker 1: really disappears, particularly when it's someone you've idolized and when
• 1:27:19
  Speaker 1: your mother He conspires to keep it a secret, unquote.
• 1:27:23
  Speaker 1: Lana saw the aftermath play out for years, and you
• 1:27:26
  Speaker 1: could tell how much it affected her. And it changed
• 1:27:28
  Speaker 1: the way she looked at men, and the men who
• 1:27:31
  Speaker 1: allegedly did it lived the rest of his life untouched.
• 1:27:35
  Speaker 1: And in 1981, the same year Natalie drowned at the Pacific,
• 1:27:38
  Speaker 1: Kirk Douglas received the Presidential Medal of Freedom. And in 1996,
• 1:27:42
  Speaker 1: the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences handed him
• 1:27:45
  Speaker 1: an honorary Oscar, celebrating him as, quote unquote, a creative
• 1:27:49
  Speaker 1: and moral force. Moral force. And he died on February 5th, 2020,
• 1:27:54
  Speaker 1: at the age of 103, with no charges, no public reckoning,
• 1:27:57
  Speaker 1: and no accountability of any kind. And Douglas never denied
• 1:28:01
  Speaker 1: his reputation, and he admitted publicly that fidelity wasn't something
• 1:28:05
  Speaker 1: he practiced personally. An actress and dancer, Neal Adams, speaking
• 1:28:09
  Speaker 1: to the Associated Press in 2016, described her friend with
• 1:28:12
  Speaker 1: a laugh, saying, quote, you could not sit beside him
• 1:28:15
  Speaker 1: without his hand crawling up your leg. Ha ha ha
• 1:28:18
  Speaker 1: ha ha. What the f * * *? The rumors
• 1:28:22
  Speaker 1: about what he'd done to Natalie were never really a secret.
• 1:28:25
  Speaker 1: The day the news of Douglas' death broke, Natalie Wood's
• 1:28:28
  Speaker 1: name started trending on Twitter right next to his. The
• 1:28:31
  Speaker 1: connection was that widely understood. And for decades, Lana had
• 1:28:35
  Speaker 1: kept a promise she'd made to her sister to never
• 1:28:37
  Speaker 1: publicly name him, and she'd held that promise. through Natalie's
• 1:28:40
  Speaker 1: death even, through decades of whispered speculation and through the
• 1:28:44
  Speaker 1: reopened investigation. And it was the hashtag MeToo movement that
• 1:28:48
  Speaker 1: finally changed her mind. And she said in an interview
• 1:28:51
  Speaker 1: that it gave her the courage to say what she'd
• 1:28:53
  Speaker 1: been carrying. And then her memoir, Little Sister, came out
• 1:28:56
  Speaker 1: in 2021. And it was the first time she'd ever
• 1:28:59
  Speaker 1: put Kirk Douglas's name to the accusation publicly. Quote, with
• 1:29:03
  Speaker 1: no one still around to protect, I'm sure she'll forgive
• 1:29:06
  Speaker 1: me for finally breaking that promise, unquote. And after her
• 1:29:09
  Speaker 1: sister's death, Lana kept returning to the same questions. How
• 1:29:13
  Speaker 1: could Natalie, with her lifelong terror of dark water, have
• 1:29:16
  Speaker 1: ended up alone in the ocean? Because Natalie didn't swim
• 1:29:19
  Speaker 1: and her fear of dark water was deeply ingrained. And
• 1:29:22
  Speaker 1: the woman who'd been groomed since childhood to endure anything
• 1:29:25
  Speaker 1: to silence every wound And to never make trouble for
• 1:29:28
  Speaker 1: powerful men was found floating face down in the one
• 1:29:31
  Speaker 1: place she feared more than anywhere on earth. And Natalie
• 1:29:34
  Speaker 1: spoke about it herself more than once, and there was
• 1:29:37
  Speaker 1: never any ambiguity. And in a segment from A &
• 1:29:40
  Speaker 1: E' s biography series, she said, quote, I've always been terrified,
• 1:29:44
  Speaker 1: still am, of water, dark water, seawater, unquote. And in
• 1:29:48
  Speaker 1: a separate interview, she was even more direct, saying, quote,
• 1:29:50
  Speaker 1: I'm frightened to death of water. I can swim a
• 1:29:54
  Speaker 1: little bit, but I'm afraid of water that is dark, unquote.
• 1:29:57
  Speaker 1: And director Elia Kazan, who worked with her on Splendor
• 1:30:00
  Speaker 1: in The Grass, wrote in his memoir that Natalie had
• 1:30:03
  Speaker 1: confided to him before a difficult scene, and she told
• 1:30:07
  Speaker 1: him she had, quote, a terror of water, particularly dark water.
• 1:30:11
  Speaker 1: and being helpless in it, unquote. And that scene required
• 1:30:14
  Speaker 1: her to throw herself into a lake, fighting to stay
• 1:30:17
  Speaker 1: afloat as her character tried to drown. And for most actors,
• 1:30:21
  Speaker 1: it would have been a technical challenge, but for Natalie,
• 1:30:23
  Speaker 1: it was just an all-out crisis. And to get her
• 1:30:26
  Speaker 1: through it, Kazan and Charlie Maguire, his assistant, lowered himself
• 1:30:29
  Speaker 1: into the water right next to her, positioned where the
• 1:30:32
  Speaker 1: camera couldn't see him. And even with Charlie beside her,
• 1:30:35
  Speaker 1: the fear didn't let up. And still, she performed the
• 1:30:38
  Speaker 1: scene anyway, and she nailed it. And once they pulled
• 1:30:41
  Speaker 1: her out, she grabbed onto Charlie and would not let go.
• 1:30:44
  Speaker 1: And back on solid ground, her whole body was shaking, saying, quote,
• 1:30:47
  Speaker 1: she continued to shake with fear, then laughed hysterically with relief, unquote.
• 1:30:51
  Speaker 1: And her sister put it in the simplest possible term, saying, quote,
• 1:30:55
  Speaker 1: she hated the water, hated it, unquote. So the fear
• 1:30:58
  Speaker 1: wasn't like abstract or occasional. It governed how she moved
• 1:31:03
  Speaker 1: through the world and through her career. Everyone close to
• 1:31:07
  Speaker 1: her knew it was there, but few knew where it started.
• 1:31:10
  Speaker 1: And with that story, her mother told her when she
• 1:31:12
  Speaker 1: was still too young to understand what it meant. Maria
• 1:31:15
  Speaker 1: repeated that prophecy to her children for years. And she
• 1:31:19
  Speaker 1: said it was meant to keep them safe. What it
• 1:31:21
  Speaker 1: actually did was plant a terror in Natalie that never
• 1:31:24
  Speaker 1: loosened its grip. And then that stunt went wrong on
• 1:31:26
  Speaker 1: the set of The Green Promise when Natalie was 10.
• 1:31:29
  Speaker 1: and she was plunged into rushing water when that bridge
• 1:31:32
  Speaker 1: collapsed underneath her. The fortune teller's warning, the near drowning
• 1:31:36
  Speaker 1: fused together inside her and neither ever let go. And
• 1:31:39
  Speaker 1: if her death was an accident, then what happened on
• 1:31:42
  Speaker 1: November 29th, 1981 was the cruelest kind of coincidence. The
• 1:31:47
  Speaker 1: woman who'd been told since childhood that dark water would
• 1:31:50
  Speaker 1: take her life died exactly that way. Her mother's prophecy,
• 1:31:54
  Speaker 1: whispered into a little girl's ear decade after decade, fulfilled
• 1:31:57
  Speaker 1: itself in the Pacific. And if it wasn't an accident,
• 1:32:00
  Speaker 1: the meaning shifts into something harder to sit with. A
• 1:32:03
  Speaker 1: woman who was taught from birth to be silent, to
• 1:32:06
  Speaker 1: absorb pain without complaint, and to protect the careers and
• 1:32:09
  Speaker 1: reputations of people who had power over her, that that
• 1:32:12
  Speaker 1: woman was silenced for good. in the one element she
• 1:32:16
  Speaker 1: feared since before she could understand why. Either way, it's
• 1:32:20
  Speaker 1: absolutely heartbreaking. And either way, nobody came to help her.
• 1:32:24
  Speaker 1: So in May of 2022, Lieutenant Hugo Renega of the
• 1:32:28
  Speaker 1: Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department made a quiet announcement that
• 1:32:32
  Speaker 1: carried 40 years of weight behind it saying, quote, all
• 1:32:35
  Speaker 1: leads in the Natalie Wood case have been exhausted and
• 1:32:38
  Speaker 1: the case remains open unsolved case, unquote. And the detective
• 1:32:43
  Speaker 1: who'd been assigned to it, Ralph Fernandez, had retired two
• 1:32:45
  Speaker 1: months earlier and no one replaced him. And Robert Wagner,
• 1:32:49
  Speaker 1: now 95 years old, was formally cleared as a person
• 1:32:52
  Speaker 1: of interest. So every time I say he maybe did it,
• 1:32:55
  Speaker 1: this is alleged and I just have an opinion and
• 1:32:57
  Speaker 1: I'm not saying he actually did it for legal reasons.
• 1:33:00
  Speaker 1: Thank you. And the file stays open on paper. And
• 1:33:04
  Speaker 1: if something new shows up, they say that they will
• 1:33:06
  Speaker 1: put an investigator on the case to look at it.
• 1:33:09
  Speaker 1: But the people who know these cases understand what that
• 1:33:12
  Speaker 1: language means. It means the act of pursuit is over.
• 1:33:15
  Speaker 1: And the official record never called it a homicide, but
• 1:33:18
  Speaker 1: it also stopped calling it an accident. And what's left
• 1:33:21
  Speaker 1: is a family divided by what they believe happened that
• 1:33:24
  Speaker 1: night and a silence that each side has interpreted in
• 1:33:28
  Speaker 1: opposite directions. And Natalie's sister, Lana Wood, has never wavered.
• 1:33:33
  Speaker 1: And in 2021, she said clearly, quote, of course Robert
• 1:33:36
  Speaker 1: Wagner killed her, unquote. I'm on her side. She told
• 1:33:40
  Speaker 1: a podcast host that she believes there was a violent
• 1:33:44
  Speaker 1: argument on the yacht that spiraled beyond anyone's control. Quote,
• 1:33:47
  Speaker 1: I think that things got out of hand. I know
• 1:33:49
  Speaker 1: Natalie can verbally push and Natalie was a very by
• 1:33:53
  Speaker 1: the rules person. She did not put up with a
• 1:33:55
  Speaker 1: great deal that she felt was harmful to her. Unquote.
• 1:33:59
  Speaker 1: And Lana has spent decades pointing to the details she
• 1:34:01
  Speaker 1: says make the accidental version impossible. At CrimeCon, she told
• 1:34:06
  Speaker 1: the audience something worth hearing, saying, quote, Natalie would not
• 1:34:09
  Speaker 1: go anywhere not fully made up, wearing something terrific. She
• 1:34:14
  Speaker 1: certainly would not get into a dinghy in her nightgown
• 1:34:17
  Speaker 1: by herself. She would get dressed, put on full makeup,
• 1:34:20
  Speaker 1: and have Dennis Davern take her ashore to stay in
• 1:34:23
  Speaker 1: a motel on Catalina, which is exactly what she did
• 1:34:26
  Speaker 1: the night before when she wanted to leave, unquote. And
• 1:34:29
  Speaker 1: she demanded one thing above all others, that Wagner, quote, unquote,
• 1:34:34
  Speaker 1: Tell the truth for once and for all. And Lana
• 1:34:36
  Speaker 1: told the New York Times, quote, protecting Natalie, that's what
• 1:34:40
  Speaker 1: I really feel I have to do now. If it's
• 1:34:42
  Speaker 1: not me, it's not going to happen, unquote. And Detective
• 1:34:45
  Speaker 1: Hernandez confirmed as much, quote, she is the one family
• 1:34:48
  Speaker 1: member willing to cooperate in this investigation, unquote. And others
• 1:34:52
  Speaker 1: have picked up the fight alongside her. And Peroni, the
• 1:34:55
  Speaker 1: former assistant US attorney turned author, walked into the Los
• 1:34:59
  Speaker 1: Angeles County coroner's office and personally filed a petition. And
• 1:35:02
  Speaker 1: he wanted a new inquest into how Natalie Wood died.
• 1:35:06
  Speaker 1: And the petition was built on evidence he'd spent years
• 1:35:08
  Speaker 1: compiling on his own. And Marty Rooley, Davern's co-author and
• 1:35:12
  Speaker 1: Lana's longtime ally, said in November of 2024 what many
• 1:35:16
  Speaker 1: close to the case believe, quote, the case will remain
• 1:35:20
  Speaker 1: open as long as Robert Wagner is alive because he
• 1:35:23
  Speaker 1: is the suspect, unquote. And Natalie's daughters see it differently, though.
• 1:35:27
  Speaker 1: And Natasha Gregson, Wagner told the New York Times, says, quote, unquote,
• 1:35:32
  Speaker 1: I know it was an accident. And in 2020, she
• 1:35:34
  Speaker 1: produced an HBO documentary called Natalie Wood, What Remains Behind,
• 1:35:38
  Speaker 1: in an effort to shift the public conversation away from
• 1:35:41
  Speaker 1: conspiracy and back towards her mother's life. And she described
• 1:35:44
  Speaker 1: Wagner as, quote unquote, courageous for participating, and quote unquote,
• 1:35:49
  Speaker 1: he's one of the great loves of my life. And
• 1:35:51
  Speaker 1: in her memoir, More Than Love, Natasha wrote what amounts
• 1:35:54
  Speaker 1: to a closing argument, saying, quote, my mother no longer
• 1:35:58
  Speaker 1: has a voice of her own, but I do, and
• 1:36:00
  Speaker 1: this is what I know. Wagner loved Natalie more than love.
• 1:36:04
  Speaker 1: No one in my world questioned my dad's love for
• 1:36:07
  Speaker 1: my mom or his utter despair at her loss, unquote.
• 1:36:11
  Speaker 1: And Courtney Wagner, who was seven when her mother died.
• 1:36:14
  Speaker 1: So I feel like we really don't know our parents
• 1:36:17
  Speaker 1: at seven years old, but I am sympathetic because she
• 1:36:20
  Speaker 1: did lose her mother and Lord knows what her father
• 1:36:23
  Speaker 1: has told her. I don't know. And you know what?
• 1:36:25
  Speaker 1: I don't know what happened, but I don't know, you're
• 1:36:28
  Speaker 1: just looking at it from outside, looking in. I can
• 1:36:31
  Speaker 1: only assume there's manipulation happening, in my opinion, and I
• 1:36:37
  Speaker 1: may be wrong. But she would go on to say, quote,
• 1:36:39
  Speaker 1: I remember walking up to my sister screaming, and luckily
• 1:36:42
  Speaker 1: I had a nanny that I was very close to
• 1:36:44
  Speaker 1: that was by my side, unquote. But both daughters stood
• 1:36:47
  Speaker 1: behind the man who raised them, and their aunts stand
• 1:36:50
  Speaker 1: on the other side alone. And the case keeps losing
• 1:36:53
  Speaker 1: ground to time. And chief of detectives McSweeney once said, quote,
• 1:36:58
  Speaker 1: we don't close these cases. These cases have active periods
• 1:37:02
  Speaker 1: and more passive periods, unquote. And this one has been
• 1:37:05
  Speaker 1: passive for a long time now. But for more than
• 1:37:08
  Speaker 1: 40 years, the mystery of how Natalie Wood died has
• 1:37:11
  Speaker 1: consumed nearly everything about who she was while she was alive.
• 1:37:16
  Speaker 1: the case still remains open. And I wanted to do
• 1:37:18
  Speaker 1: this video to mainly focus on her life and all
• 1:37:21
  Speaker 1: of her accomplishments and what really happened to her and
• 1:37:23
  Speaker 1: who she was as a person and to honor that
• 1:37:27
  Speaker 1: part of her life. And I truly just want justice
• 1:37:32
  Speaker 1: for her because this seems so just disheartening and I'd
• 1:37:37
  Speaker 1: like her family to be at peace with it. And
• 1:37:40
  Speaker 1: it sounds like some of her family is, like her daughters,
• 1:37:43
  Speaker 1: but like her sister, I feel like her sister knows
• 1:37:45
  Speaker 1: the most about her, especially given the time where she
• 1:37:48
  Speaker 1: was around the same age and adult. And yeah, the
• 1:37:53
  Speaker 1: questions still remain unanswered though. And before November 29th, 1981,
• 1:37:58
  Speaker 1: there was just a woman who fought for every role
• 1:38:02
  Speaker 1: she ever played, who survived a childhood that should have
• 1:38:05
  Speaker 1: broken her, and who loved her daughters fiercely. and who
• 1:38:08
  Speaker 1: spent her whole life trying to become something more than
• 1:38:11
  Speaker 1: what people needed her to be. And she deserved better
• 1:38:15
  Speaker 1: than the silence that followed. But that is that for
• 1:38:18
  Speaker 1: Natalie Wood. Let me know what you guys think down below.
• 1:38:21
  Speaker 1: I'm sure we can have a lot of conversation about
• 1:38:24
  Speaker 1: it down below. Um, yeah, this case, I don't know.
• 1:38:28
  Speaker 1: It really, it really makes me angry. It really makes
• 1:38:31
  Speaker 1: me angry. And, uh, I'm curious to know what you
• 1:38:33
  Speaker 1: guys think and also what other cases you want me
• 1:38:35
  Speaker 1: to deep dive into. Let me know and I will
• 1:38:38
  Speaker 1: see your beautiful face in the next one. Okay.