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The Tragic Death of Natalie Wood · Stuff You Should Know

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of iHeartRadio.
0:11
Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and Chuck's
0:13
Speaker 2: here too, and Jerry's here too, and this is stuff
0:16
Speaker 2: you should know part of our ongoing, indefinitely continuous through
0:21
Speaker 2: prime edition.
0:22
Speaker 3: That's right, and weirdly, our second paulap Tompkins reference is
0:27
Speaker 3: coming on this episode. Oh yeah, yeah, because Paul's wonderful,
0:32
Speaker 3: hysterical wife, Jannie looks like Natalie Would.
0:36
Speaker 1: Okay, is she known for that?
0:38
Speaker 3: I mean, I don't know if she's internationally known, but
0:42
Speaker 3: I think Janie knows it and her friends know it,
0:45
Speaker 3: and it has been said out loud.
0:47
Speaker 2: I got, So that's that's what I'm after. I mean,
0:49
Speaker 2: if this is just your observation or not.
0:51
Speaker 3: Oh no, no, no, it's it's been It's been said before.
0:54
Speaker 3: It's on record.
0:55
Speaker 2: So if you don't know who Natalie Would is, first
1:00
Speaker 2: go look up Jennie Tompkins. You get a pretty good idea.
1:03
Speaker 2: You could also look up Natalie Wood herself, sure, but
1:06
Speaker 2: you probably are familiar with her one way or another.
1:09
Speaker 2: First of all, she probably captured your heart as the
1:13
Speaker 2: little girl who doubted the existence of Santa Claus a
1:15
Speaker 2: Miracle on thirty fourth Street, the original one. She might
1:19
Speaker 2: have also captured your heart as the kind of good
1:24
Speaker 2: girl gone bad in Rubble without a Cause. She also
1:30
Speaker 2: may have been like I like that girl in West
1:33
Speaker 2: Side Story, or I like that girl in Splundor in
1:35
Speaker 2: the Grass, or I like that girl in the nineteen
1:38
Speaker 2: seventy six made for TV remake of Cat on a
1:40
Speaker 2: Hot Tin Roof. Well, then you like Natalie Wood.
1:43
Speaker 3: Guys, yeah, Or if you grew up like we did
1:48
Speaker 3: in the eighties, you might like her from the sci
1:50
Speaker 3: fi classic, not classic eighties, early eighties sci fi classic Brainstorm.
1:58
Speaker 2: I never saw it.
1:59
Speaker 3: Oh really, yeah, you should check it out. It was
2:01
Speaker 3: sort of one of those It was in the early eighties.
2:03
Speaker 3: Like there were a few a few of those movies
2:05
Speaker 3: that were kind of in the same vein of do
2:08
Speaker 3: you remember the movie Looker, Yes, like with Albert Finney,
2:13
Speaker 3: And then there was the Tom seliquin about the Little
2:15
Speaker 3: Rope with Jeene Simmons, with the little Robo run Away.
2:18
Speaker 3: It was in that vein.
2:20
Speaker 2: Oh, okay, well, definitely that sounds like a great triple
2:22
Speaker 2: feature if you ask me.
2:23
Speaker 3: It's kind of right up your alley. I bet you'd
2:25
Speaker 3: like it.
2:25
Speaker 2: Okay, I'll check that one out. I have not seen that.
2:28
Speaker 2: I was familiar with her from Rebel without a Cause
2:30
Speaker 2: because I went through a real big James Dean phase
2:32
Speaker 2: in high school. Oh yeah, you might also be familiar. Yeah,
2:35
Speaker 2: you might also be familiar with her sister Lana would. Yeah,
2:41
Speaker 2: she was plenty of tool and diamonds are forever. She
2:44
Speaker 2: was very well known for that. And both of these
2:47
Speaker 2: sisters were originally named Zacharenko. They were the daughters of
2:52
Speaker 2: Russian immigrants, Maria and Nick Zakarenko, who moved to San
2:55
Speaker 2: Francisco and had these two kids, and their mom said,
2:59
Speaker 2: you're both going to be stars, especially you. Natalie born Natalia.
3:03
Speaker 3: That's right, and Lana was born what Svetlana?
3:08
Speaker 2: Mm hm.
3:09
Speaker 3: So they, you know, they kind of americanized their names
3:12
Speaker 3: kind of kind of and you know, we're going to
3:16
Speaker 3: be reading through a few different Olivia helped us with this,
3:19
Speaker 3: but she got a lot of this stuff from a
3:20
Speaker 3: few different biographies. So if we reference like Suzanne Finnstad's
3:25
Speaker 3: biography or maybe Robert Wagner's biography or autobiography, that's that's
3:30
Speaker 3: what we're talking about.
3:31
Speaker 2: Yeah, our Sam Kashner wrote a very great Vanity Fair
3:35
Speaker 2: article on it.
3:36
Speaker 3: Oh that's right, very good one. But Suzanne Finnstad's biography
3:40
Speaker 3: recounts the childhood that wasn't as great as it seemed
3:44
Speaker 3: from the outside. That her her father was an alcoholic,
3:49
Speaker 3: her mother was a very controlling sort of manager of
3:52
Speaker 3: her career and would organize meetings with the very experienced
3:59
Speaker 3: men and acts trying to get her foot in the door,
4:03
Speaker 3: including one incident where she did so with Kirk Douglas
4:07
Speaker 3: where she was well. She says she was raped by
4:12
Speaker 3: Kirk Douglas when she was sixteen at one of these
4:16
Speaker 3: meetings at the Chateau Marmont. And I was kept secret
4:19
Speaker 3: for many, many years until Kirk Douglas died, and then
4:22
Speaker 3: Lana came out and said, well, I feel like I
4:24
Speaker 3: should reveal who this person was now. And I think
4:27
Speaker 3: this was in her book that she wrote about her sister,
4:30
Speaker 3: so there was also that account of her life.
4:33
Speaker 2: Yeah, so that's just Kirk Douglas. Apparently her mom arranged
4:37
Speaker 2: sexual liaison when she was fifteen with Frank Sinatra to
4:41
Speaker 2: get this part in Rubble without a cause. She apparently
4:45
Speaker 2: had to prove she was capable of being a bad
4:48
Speaker 2: girl by sleeping with the director, who was forty four
4:50
Speaker 2: at the time. I think she was sixteen then too,
4:53
Speaker 2: And her mom was like complicit in all of this,
4:55
Speaker 2: Like she's just like, this is the price for entry
4:58
Speaker 2: into Hollywood. Sorry, just keep your mouth shutting your chin up,
5:03
Speaker 2: which is I just can't imagine the damage of just
5:07
Speaker 2: these these instances, but then of being like that, dismissed
5:11
Speaker 2: and unsupported by you know, your mom. Just I can't.
5:16
Speaker 2: It's just awful. But what's amazing is that she managed
5:19
Speaker 2: to stay alive and actually thrive over the years, because
5:23
Speaker 2: she did develop a really amazing career, especially early on
5:26
Speaker 2: in the sixties.
5:28
Speaker 3: Yeah, you mentioned all those, you know, classic movies she
5:30
Speaker 3: was in. In nineteen fifty seven, she married for the
5:33
Speaker 3: first time Robert Wagner, who you and I Josh would
5:37
Speaker 3: go on to know as the lead actor in the
5:40
Speaker 3: eighties TV show Heart to Heart.
5:42
Speaker 2: Co starring Stephanie Powers.
5:44
Speaker 3: Stephanie Powers. But in the nineteen fifties he was an
5:48
Speaker 3: actor kind of you know, it wasn't super famous, but
5:52
Speaker 3: he acted a lot, and then his star rose as
5:56
Speaker 3: hers was kind of fading. But they divorced in nineteen
5:59
Speaker 3: sixty one on their first marriage. People. You know, some
6:03
Speaker 3: people say magazines, especially back then, said that, you know,
6:07
Speaker 3: Natalie would they broke up because he had she had
6:09
Speaker 3: an affair with Warren Batty. Her Splendor in the Grass
6:13
Speaker 3: co star Sam Kashner in his article says, yeah, this
6:17
Speaker 3: basically is what happened. But in the Finnstad biography, she's like, no, no, no,
6:22
Speaker 3: that is not true at all, and including including Lana
6:25
Speaker 3: will back this up, says, you know, Natalie stumbled upon
6:29
Speaker 3: r J. Her husband, having relations with a man and
6:34
Speaker 3: had a suicide attempt, which was one of several apparently,
6:37
Speaker 3: and that's what happened to their first marriage.
6:39
Speaker 2: Yeah, but she allowed the press to say that she
6:42
Speaker 2: had had an affair with Warren Batty. The reason that
6:44
Speaker 2: that held water, even if it wasn't true, is because
6:48
Speaker 2: they were very close. On the set of Splendor in
6:51
Speaker 2: the Grass. They had like just their characters had like
6:54
Speaker 2: just this crazy, sizzling love affair, and as actors, it's
6:57
Speaker 2: tough to separate those things.
6:59
Speaker 3: I belie an Warren Beatty had a certain reputation.
7:04
Speaker 2: Yes, so apparently that is what Robert Wagner thought. He
7:09
Speaker 2: thought that they were having an affair, and he was
7:11
Speaker 2: very jealous and very protective and just felt cuckholded. I
7:18
Speaker 2: guess by this, even though supposedly it didn't even happen.
7:21
Speaker 2: But that's a really important point. That was one of
7:23
Speaker 2: the reasons they broke up was he was very jealous
7:27
Speaker 2: and very overprotective of his relationship with her.
7:31
Speaker 3: That's right. She got married to a gentleman named Richard
7:35
Speaker 3: Gregson after that in nineteen sixty nine. He's a British
7:39
Speaker 3: writer and actor, just sort of, you know, producer of
7:42
Speaker 3: film industry guy. They had their daughter, Natasha, who goes
7:47
Speaker 3: by Natasha Gregson Wagner. Although she's married now. She may
7:52
Speaker 3: have added another name to the end of her name.
7:54
Speaker 3: I'm not sure McGill cutty, mguilla cutty. But she was
7:59
Speaker 3: an actor too. I haven't seen anything a little while.
8:01
Speaker 3: I'm not sure she's still in doing that because she's
8:03
Speaker 3: I know she made a documentary recently about her mom.
8:06
Speaker 3: But I remember seeing her in a few movies back
8:09
Speaker 3: in the day that she did a really good one
8:11
Speaker 3: with Robert Downey Junior. And I can't think of the
8:14
Speaker 3: name of it now.
8:14
Speaker 2: Less than zo oh oh. I know who it is.
8:17
Speaker 2: The Last Days of Disco. No pick up artist.
8:20
Speaker 3: No, he wasn't in the Last Days of Disco.
8:24
Speaker 1: Oh I was it?
8:26
Speaker 2: I can't remember less than zero. No weekend at Bernie's.
8:32
Speaker 3: Think. I think it was just like three people in
8:33
Speaker 3: the movie. Was a very small Oh, now you know
8:35
Speaker 3: what it was weekend at Berney's.
8:37
Speaker 2: There.
8:38
Speaker 3: So she married wag I'm sorry, Gregson. And during that
8:43
Speaker 3: same period, Wagner married a woman named Mary and Marshall.
8:46
Speaker 3: They had a daughter named Katie in sixty four, and
8:49
Speaker 3: then they eventually remarried in seventy two and had a
8:51
Speaker 3: daughter named Courtney. So now there are our three daughters,
8:55
Speaker 3: one that Wood and Wagner had together, and one of
8:58
Speaker 3: each from previous marriages. For her part, Lana Wood was like,
9:02
Speaker 3: why did why are you getting back together with this guy?
9:05
Speaker 3: And as recounted in her book, Natalie said, sometimes the
9:08
Speaker 3: devil you know is better than the devil you don't.
9:12
Speaker 1: Yeah.
9:12
Speaker 2: And the reason why Lana Wood Orlana Wood was even
9:15
Speaker 2: questioning her was because they had a tumultuous relationship. Well,
9:18
Speaker 2: they were married the first time, but apparently they never
9:22
Speaker 2: fell out of love or they never stopped loving each
9:24
Speaker 2: other's how I saw it put think in an investigation
9:27
Speaker 2: discovery documentary, and so they remarried in nineteen seventy two.
9:34
Speaker 2: They had Courtney in nineteen seventy four and basically just
9:38
Speaker 2: went back to married life, but now with a family
9:40
Speaker 2: with three daughters. That was a big difference between their
9:43
Speaker 2: first go round. They were trying to make the family
9:45
Speaker 2: work and apparently it was going fairly well.
9:48
Speaker 3: Yeah, he was a little older when he like seven
9:50
Speaker 3: or eight years older, eight I think eight years older,
9:55
Speaker 3: and yeah, he got that role in Heart to Heart,
9:57
Speaker 3: and so he started, you know, doing pretty we well
10:00
Speaker 3: in the industry while you know, and you know, it's
10:04
Speaker 3: just the same as true today and an actress in
10:08
Speaker 3: her forties they start looking elsewhere, generally speaking, unless you're
10:13
Speaker 3: you know, like a Meryl Streep or somebody, you're not
10:15
Speaker 3: gonna get the calls that he used to get. And
10:17
Speaker 3: that's what happened certainly with Natalie Wood after great, great
10:20
Speaker 3: fame in the nineteen sixties, fifties into the sixties, and
10:24
Speaker 3: then it started to sort of tail off into the seventies.
10:27
Speaker 2: Yes, but if you're a man in Hollywood and as
10:29
Speaker 2: you start to age you become distinguished, it's a different
10:32
Speaker 2: right of your career, and that's certainly what happened with
10:34
Speaker 2: Robert Wagner.
10:35
Speaker 3: No, he wasn't washed up at forty three. I guess
10:38
Speaker 3: he would have been almost fifty.
10:39
Speaker 2: Yeah, he actually his star started to rise again. So
10:44
Speaker 2: they had oppositional careers as far as time went.
10:50
Speaker 3: And that figures in, by the way, that's the reason
10:52
Speaker 3: we're I'm talking about this right.
10:55
Speaker 2: So it's November nineteen eighty one. They've been married again
10:58
Speaker 2: for nine years, and Natalie Wood's forty three, Robert Wagner's
11:04
Speaker 2: fifty one, and I say we take our first break
11:07
Speaker 2: and come back and start talking about the problem.
11:11
Speaker 1: We'll be right back, okay, Chuck.
11:40
Speaker 2: So in Thanksgiving nineteen eighty one, the weekend after, Robert
11:44
Speaker 2: Wagner and Natalie Wood took their yacht out, the Splendor
11:48
Speaker 2: sixty foot yacht. Pretty nice. Apparently it had five state rooms,
11:51
Speaker 2: the whole deal. It was like a legit yacht. Robert
11:55
Speaker 2: Wagner was a boat guy, a yacht guy. Really. I
11:59
Speaker 2: think they took it to Santa Catalina Island better known
12:03
Speaker 2: as Catalina Island. I think like twenty miles off the
12:07
Speaker 2: coast of Los Angeles and I've never been there, but
12:11
Speaker 2: I get the impression that it is very yacht friendly,
12:14
Speaker 2: almost like the South coast of France is how I
12:17
Speaker 2: kind of take it, where very rich people put their
12:21
Speaker 2: yachts in and then go and party in town and
12:23
Speaker 2: then go party from yacht to yacht. And so they
12:26
Speaker 2: showed up Thanksgiving weekend at Catalina Island looking to have
12:32
Speaker 2: a good time.
12:33
Speaker 3: Yeah, they originally were going to have a lot more
12:36
Speaker 3: friends on board, but apparently the weather was the forecast
12:40
Speaker 3: was a little dodgy, and so the only person that
12:43
Speaker 3: came along was Christopher Walkin, who said, it takes more
12:48
Speaker 3: than a few rain drops to frighten me.
12:51
Speaker 1: It's not bad.
12:52
Speaker 2: Didn't you interview Christopher Walkin on movie Crush once?
12:56
Speaker 1: Yeah?
12:57
Speaker 3: Sure, I did.
12:57
Speaker 2: Pretty cool.
12:58
Speaker 3: Listen to that episode great, and also listened to the
13:01
Speaker 3: Kevin Pollock episode.
13:04
Speaker 2: So the reason that Christopher Walkin was there because you're
13:07
Speaker 2: just like, well, that's a little random, Natalie Wood, Robert Wagner.
13:10
Speaker 2: Christopher Walkin, he was an up and coming actor at
13:14
Speaker 2: the time. I'm not even sure did he have the
13:16
Speaker 2: Dead Zone under his belt yet?
13:18
Speaker 3: M I mean he had done he did The Deer
13:21
Speaker 3: Hunter by then Annie Hall and The Deer Hunter and
13:26
Speaker 3: I don't know if Dead Zone it was right around there,
13:27
Speaker 3: but he was, Yeah, he was doing his thing a
13:29
Speaker 3: little bit.
13:29
Speaker 2: He was like Hollywood's it guy actor at the time,
13:34
Speaker 2: like he was in demand, and he was co starring
13:37
Speaker 2: in this movie Brainstorm with Natalie Wood. So she invited
13:41
Speaker 2: her co star friend to the yacht and he was
13:44
Speaker 2: the only one that came out of this whole group.
13:47
Speaker 2: And then very noteworthy as the fourth person, Dennis Davern
13:52
Speaker 2: He was the captain of the yacht and so the
13:55
Speaker 2: four of them were on this yachting weekend after Thanksgiving.
14:00
Speaker 3: Right actually Dead Zone came out that very year, so
14:03
Speaker 3: he was This was kind of early peak walkin Okay.
14:07
Speaker 3: So on Saturday, the twenty eighth of Thanksgiving weekend, they
14:12
Speaker 3: ate dinner at Doug's Harbor reef on Catalina. They got very,
14:16
Speaker 3: very drunk. The manager there said that he was even
14:21
Speaker 3: worried that they couldn't get back. They had a little
14:23
Speaker 3: inflatable motorized dingy, you know, that's what you do when
14:26
Speaker 3: you have a yacht to go to shore. It was
14:28
Speaker 3: called the Prince Valiant, which is also the name of
14:30
Speaker 3: an early Robert Wagner movie, and obviously Splendor was named
14:33
Speaker 3: after Splendor in the Grass, so they had their little boats.
14:38
Speaker 3: Hers was the yacht name. His was the dinghy name,
14:41
Speaker 3: which is interesting.
14:42
Speaker 2: And he hated his role in Prince Valiant. He felt
14:46
Speaker 2: it was his worst role. He was apparently mocked for
14:49
Speaker 2: it widely, so it was kind of like tongue in
14:51
Speaker 2: cheek that he named kell boat Valiant.
14:53
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, that makes sense then. But the night manager
14:56
Speaker 3: there at Doug's harbor reef was like, I don't even
14:58
Speaker 3: know if these guys are so drunk the I fear
15:00
Speaker 3: for their safety of just getting back onto the Splendor.
15:03
Speaker 3: So he said, hey, harbor patrol person, can you make
15:07
Speaker 3: sure they get back safely? They left about ten ten
15:10
Speaker 3: thirty at night, and then at one thirty in the morning,
15:14
Speaker 3: Robert Wagner and Captain Dabn made a call to the
15:19
Speaker 3: shore saying, you know, Natalie what has gone missing? We
15:22
Speaker 3: need your help this one thirty am. Two hours later,
15:25
Speaker 3: at three thirty they called the Coastguard to get a
15:27
Speaker 3: formal search going, and then very tragically, at seven forty
15:32
Speaker 3: five in the morning, Davern identified the body of Natalie
15:35
Speaker 3: Wood about a mile south of where the yacht was anchored,
15:40
Speaker 3: and a flannel nightgown, socks, and a red down jacket.
15:43
Speaker 2: Yep, the dinghy they found washed up on the shore
15:47
Speaker 2: and very very importantly, the oars were locked, so they
15:52
Speaker 2: had not been used to row. The ignition was off,
15:55
Speaker 2: so it had not been turned on, and yet it
15:59
Speaker 2: was just kind of washed away from the boat. This
16:03
Speaker 2: was an enormous deal. I mean, like, Natalie Wood was
16:08
Speaker 2: already like Hollywood legend. And what's more, she was one
16:12
Speaker 2: of the reasons she was having trouble getting parts was
16:14
Speaker 2: not just her age, but she was old Hollywood, and
16:17
Speaker 2: Hollywood had started to transition in the seventies into like
16:21
Speaker 2: a newer version of itself and kind of resented the
16:23
Speaker 2: old studios and stuff. So she was like Hollywood royalty
16:28
Speaker 2: at this time already. And the idea that she died
16:33
Speaker 2: from unnatural causes was just I mean, it was just
16:36
Speaker 2: a sensation right out of the gate.
16:38
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, I remember this. I was a kid,
16:41
Speaker 3: but I was a kid who devoured entertainment. Tonight the
16:46
Speaker 3: TV show when that first came out, which was somewhere
16:49
Speaker 3: around here, I remember being about that age when that
16:51
Speaker 3: TV show premiered and I would watch it every night
16:54
Speaker 3: and keep up with that stuff. And I remember very
16:56
Speaker 3: distinctly Natalie would die and drowning and her husband I
17:01
Speaker 3: was like the heart to heart guy, and kind of
17:04
Speaker 3: out of the gate, it was portrayed as as an accident.
17:08
Speaker 3: And that's sort of what you know this podcast is
17:10
Speaker 3: going to detail is the way the story has changed
17:12
Speaker 3: over the years, the suspicions that it wasn't just a
17:16
Speaker 3: simple accident. And it kind of started off with the autopsy.
17:21
Speaker 3: There was a medical examiner named Joseph Troy who said
17:25
Speaker 3: that Nellie Wood's blood alcohol content level was point one four,
17:30
Speaker 3: just very high.
17:31
Speaker 2: Yeah, let me just I look that up because I'm like, okay,
17:34
Speaker 2: what does that actually mean in like like physical behavioral terms. Yeah,
17:39
Speaker 2: according to the South Australia government, point zero eight two
17:43
Speaker 2: point one five, So just above what Natalie Wood had
17:46
Speaker 2: in her bloodstream, you can expect slurred speech, impaired balance,
17:51
Speaker 2: unstable emotions, possible nausea and vomiting. Just above point one five,
17:57
Speaker 2: you can't control your bladder and you probably will need
18:01
Speaker 2: help walking around. So she was very drunk at the
18:05
Speaker 2: time she died.
18:06
Speaker 3: Yeah, And uh, if you want to be very very
18:10
Speaker 3: technically bored. You should go listen to our episode on breathalyzers.
18:13
Speaker 2: Yeah, they were really difficult to explain.
18:16
Speaker 3: That was a beast and I'm surprised we don't remember
18:19
Speaker 3: that more often when we're asked what episodes have been
18:22
Speaker 3: the hardest or worst.
18:24
Speaker 2: Definitely the hardest because there's like a crystal involved that
18:26
Speaker 2: somehow like tells your fortune and then they translate that
18:29
Speaker 2: and the ones and zeros.
18:31
Speaker 3: A very very tough episode, but it's out there. He
18:36
Speaker 3: uh so, Troy said point one four percent, and also
18:39
Speaker 3: a medical examiner, right, yeah, and also said that there
18:42
Speaker 3: were bruises on her arms and legs and face and
18:45
Speaker 3: basically said, you know, it looks like she probably fell overboard.
18:50
Speaker 3: She was trying to get into the dinghy. She was
18:52
Speaker 3: very drunk, and this these bruises and things were is
18:56
Speaker 3: evidence of her kind of doggedly trying to get back
18:59
Speaker 3: on unsuccessfully. There was a chief medical examiner named Thomas
19:03
Speaker 3: Nogucci for the county who said, yeah, and if you
19:08
Speaker 3: look at the dinghy here, there's scratches on the side
19:10
Speaker 3: of it. Clearly she was trying to pull herself back
19:13
Speaker 3: up on this thing. But she was in that down
19:15
Speaker 3: jacket and it became very very heavy, and she probably
19:18
Speaker 3: just held onto that dinghy and got hypothermia and exhausted
19:22
Speaker 3: and she drowned and it's an accident.
19:24
Speaker 2: Yeah, So that was the official line for a very
19:27
Speaker 2: long time. For some reason, Natalie Wood decades tried to, yeah,
19:30
Speaker 2: tried to get into the Valiant, the dinghy late at night.
19:33
Speaker 2: She was very drunk, and as she was trying to
19:35
Speaker 2: get into the dinghy, she slipped and fell and drowned.
19:38
Speaker 2: She was well known as a strong swimmer, or not
19:41
Speaker 2: a strong swimmer, not very good at swimming at all,
19:44
Speaker 2: the opposite of a strong swimmer. The thing is is
19:47
Speaker 2: that doesn't explain why she tried to get into the
19:50
Speaker 2: dinghy at night. That was It's always been an outstanding question.
19:54
Speaker 2: And so Thomas Nogucci, the chief medical Examiner for the
19:57
Speaker 2: Los Angeles County Coroner's Office, come to psychological autopsy, which
20:02
Speaker 2: is a thing, but from what I can tell, it's
20:05
Speaker 2: a thing that you commission when you're trying to show
20:08
Speaker 2: that a suspicious death that seems accidental was actually suicide.
20:16
Speaker 2: Like they take into account like the person's life history,
20:18
Speaker 2: their family history, social interactions, what they were doing right
20:22
Speaker 2: before they died. So it's kind of odd that he
20:25
Speaker 2: had this commissioned. It was even odder that when he
20:29
Speaker 2: got it back, he's like, I'm not releasing to the public,
20:33
Speaker 2: and he said that he was afraid that he would
20:35
Speaker 2: be accused of sensationalism that ship had already sailed. He
20:40
Speaker 2: was very much despised by Natalie Wood's friends and just
20:43
Speaker 2: Hollywood in general because he made the grave mistake of
20:47
Speaker 2: mentioning that she was drunk when she died accidentally at
20:50
Speaker 2: the press conference about her death and their findings, and
20:53
Speaker 2: he received the ire of Frank Sinatra, Screen Actors Guild
20:57
Speaker 2: and generally all of Hollywood, and ended up being demoted
21:00
Speaker 2: from his position at the top of the coroner's office
21:03
Speaker 2: to not chief. They actually assigned him the title not
21:07
Speaker 2: Chief Examiner anymore. Yeah.
21:10
Speaker 3: I think it was definitely one of those cases where
21:13
Speaker 3: she was Hollywood royalty, like you said, and no one
21:17
Speaker 3: in the world wants to hear that Natalie Wood got
21:21
Speaker 3: so drunk that she slipped and fell into the water
21:23
Speaker 3: and drowned. No, it's tawdry, Yeah, And so they tried to,
21:27
Speaker 3: you know, they tried to keep that quiet. It was
21:30
Speaker 3: a you know, when he mentioned it the press conference,
21:32
Speaker 3: it was a big deal. And now we get into
21:35
Speaker 3: sort of the you know what happened after three decades
21:39
Speaker 3: and how this story has changed over the years.
21:41
Speaker 2: Yeah, because just one thing, Chuck. If that were it
21:46
Speaker 2: and like the story stayed straight all these years and
21:48
Speaker 2: nothing ever changed, it would be fishy, but not a
21:52
Speaker 2: big deal. The reason that it's a big deal and
21:55
Speaker 2: we're talking about it today is that over the years,
21:57
Speaker 2: the people who were there changed their stories, and that's
22:00
Speaker 2: why it goes from kind of fishy to an all
22:03
Speaker 2: out mystery.
22:05
Speaker 3: Yeah, an all out mystery and scandal really that you know,
22:09
Speaker 3: how many years later is this people are still sort
22:12
Speaker 3: of talking about it, some people are still obsessed with
22:15
Speaker 3: it and writing books about it. For Wagner's part, he
22:19
Speaker 3: has done. Like I mentioned earlier, there was an eighty
22:21
Speaker 3: six authorized biography, Heart to Heart spelled with an E
22:27
Speaker 3: this time, not like the TV show because on the
22:29
Speaker 3: TV show they were the Hearts the Harts.
22:31
Speaker 2: But he couldn't get the use his studio.
22:35
Speaker 3: He didn't want to pay for that, so Heart to
22:37
Speaker 3: Heart with Robert Wagner and he said in nineteen eighty
22:40
Speaker 3: six that me and Chris walking gotten an argument about politics.
22:46
Speaker 3: There was another biography in two thousand and eight called
22:49
Speaker 3: Pieces of My Heart. I'm Sorry. This is the autobiography
22:53
Speaker 3: that he himself wrote, obviously probably with some help, where
22:56
Speaker 3: he said, actually, the fight was about my wife. We
23:01
Speaker 3: were having an argument about her, like, you know, forget
23:04
Speaker 3: about this career. You know, you had your day, you
23:07
Speaker 3: should just be mom. Now we got these three girls,
23:11
Speaker 3: I've got this great acting career going, so let me
23:14
Speaker 3: do that. And Christopher Walker was like, no, she's Natalie
23:17
Speaker 3: wood Man.
23:18
Speaker 2: Wait wait, wait, wait, you gotta do it as walking.
23:21
Speaker 3: Nook Korea, Matta's Robert God.
23:27
Speaker 2: That's great. Jay tied for first with Sammy Davis Junior.
23:31
Speaker 3: No, well, but it's also like probably one of the
23:35
Speaker 3: worst walkings because everyone does walking, and most of them
23:37
Speaker 3: are pretty great.
23:38
Speaker 2: I don't do walking. I admire your walking. I'm just
23:42
Speaker 2: gonna put.
23:42
Speaker 3: It, give it a shut nothing.
23:44
Speaker 2: H No, you know what happens when I actually try
23:49
Speaker 2: to do a voice of Go South.
23:51
Speaker 3: Same year, So no matter how it shakes out, Wagner
23:56
Speaker 3: basically said, you know, as far as what the fight
23:59
Speaker 3: was about, was that, even though that is key, that
24:02
Speaker 3: he changed his story because you know first is about
24:04
Speaker 3: politics and it was personal. Yeah, that's a bad change,
24:07
Speaker 3: it's a big change. But either way, he said, Natalie,
24:10
Speaker 3: you know, was annoyed, she was put off by all this,
24:12
Speaker 3: or she just got bored. She went to the master
24:14
Speaker 3: cabin and the last thing I saw of her was
24:17
Speaker 3: when I went to check on her and she was
24:19
Speaker 3: doing her hair the vanity and basically shut the door.
24:22
Speaker 2: On right, and Christopher Walkin supported this. They were in
24:26
Speaker 2: an argument. Natalie Wood left and then apparently according to
24:31
Speaker 2: Robert Wagner's autobiography, after Natalie Wood left, they continued their
24:37
Speaker 2: argument and it got so heated that Robert Wagner smashed
24:41
Speaker 2: a wine bottle on the table.
24:43
Speaker 3: And where to do if.
24:44
Speaker 2: You're younger and you're like, this is bizarre behavior, you
24:47
Speaker 2: need to take into account. These people were ruinously drunk
24:51
Speaker 2: this night. They were as drunk as you can be
24:55
Speaker 2: and still be standing up and talking that drunk. So
24:59
Speaker 2: that's why they were doing things like yelling about careers
25:01
Speaker 2: and smashing wine bottles on the table, and all sorts
25:04
Speaker 2: of other things that will come up. But the line
25:07
Speaker 2: throughout was that Natalie Wood went to bed, Christopher Walking
25:12
Speaker 2: and Robert Wagner eventually parted ways Robert Robert Wagner I
25:17
Speaker 2: think went out to the bridge or outside, Christopher Walkin
25:21
Speaker 2: went to bed, and it wasn't for another hour or
25:23
Speaker 2: so that they noticed that Natalie Wood was gone, and
25:27
Speaker 2: so is the dinghy.
25:28
Speaker 3: That's right. Natalie Wood's lawyer said after her death that
25:33
Speaker 3: she often took the dinghy out alone. Robert Wagner apparently,
25:38
Speaker 3: as far as this initial story goes, wasn't super worried
25:40
Speaker 3: because this is something that they say she was known
25:43
Speaker 3: to do. But like you said, she was not a
25:45
Speaker 3: strong swimmer. And there's an interview that has been played
25:48
Speaker 3: time and time again throughout all of this sort of
25:51
Speaker 3: trying to piece together what happened where not too long
25:53
Speaker 3: before her death, where she said, I'm frightened to death
25:56
Speaker 3: of the water. I can swim a little bit, but
25:57
Speaker 3: I'm afraid of the water. I'm afraid of the water
26:00
Speaker 3: in the dark of water that is dark. So immediately
26:03
Speaker 3: there's a suspicion of like, why in the world would
26:06
Speaker 3: she have gone out there in this dinghy, Like sure
26:10
Speaker 3: she had had some drinks and was maybe drunk. Robert
26:13
Speaker 3: Wagner in that Autobiograhy said, well, that's exactly the point.
26:16
Speaker 3: She went out there and realized that, oh wait, I
26:21
Speaker 3: am too drunk, I'm not a great swimmer, I'm scared
26:23
Speaker 3: of the water at night. And they didn't hear the
26:27
Speaker 3: engine start up, so again it was just an accident
26:31
Speaker 3: that happened. Or maybe she even you know, couldn't get
26:34
Speaker 3: to sleep because this dinghy wasn't secured and it was
26:37
Speaker 3: banging against you know, the stateroom near the stateroom, so
26:41
Speaker 3: she got out to do that to tie it up better,
26:43
Speaker 3: and then slipped in right.
26:45
Speaker 2: Yeah. Because when people are like, why would she go
26:47
Speaker 2: out and the dinghy if she was afraid of water,
26:49
Speaker 2: She didn't know how to drive the dinghy, and she
26:51
Speaker 2: was wearing a night gown, He's like, well, probably it
26:54
Speaker 2: was banging and making noise. She was just trying to
26:56
Speaker 2: retie it. Those were the two. That was his first one.
26:59
Speaker 2: People question it was the second one. The thing is is,
27:01
Speaker 2: throughout this all the other witnesses supported what he was saying,
27:06
Speaker 2: including Christopher Walkin. Apparently the last time he talked about
27:09
Speaker 2: it was in nineteen ninety seven in a Playboy magazine interview,
27:13
Speaker 2: where he said that she slipped and fell in the water.
27:17
Speaker 2: And then one of the things that has never changed
27:20
Speaker 2: over the entire life of this story is that Christopher
27:23
Speaker 2: Walkin was in bed when all this happened, asleep. No
27:26
Speaker 2: one's ever changed that little nugget.
27:29
Speaker 3: Yeah. He has not talked about it much over the years.
27:33
Speaker 2: No, but when he has, he supported Robert Wagner's version.
27:37
Speaker 3: Yeah, but he didn't write biographies and go into detail
27:40
Speaker 3: or anything like that. He's there are a couple of
27:42
Speaker 3: random interviews where he talks about it, but otherwise he
27:45
Speaker 3: is like just basically stay mom exactly.
27:48
Speaker 2: I mean, talk about it like a terrible weekend on
27:50
Speaker 2: the boat as a guest, you know.
27:53
Speaker 3: Yeah, absolutely so right off the bat. There are people
27:58
Speaker 3: that are like, this sounds pretty fishy. In nineteen ninety two,
28:02
Speaker 3: it's like nine years later, Entertainment Weekly had a story.
28:06
Speaker 3: You know, they you know, journalists kept following up over
28:08
Speaker 3: the years. Basically it's like, what's up with this story?
28:11
Speaker 3: Like it's not adding up. There are certain things that
28:13
Speaker 3: just don't make any sense. Different people came out over
28:16
Speaker 3: the years that supposedly heard things that was in the
28:19
Speaker 3: Entertainment Weekly story that was a boat nearby the Capricorn
28:23
Speaker 3: with John Payne and Marilyn Wayne on board, and they
28:26
Speaker 3: supposedly heard a woman yelling for help in the direction of.
28:31
Speaker 2: The splendor for fifteen minutes.
28:33
Speaker 3: Yeah, and that Kashner Vanity Fair article. They said, you know,
28:39
Speaker 3: they thought it could have just been people goofing off,
28:41
Speaker 3: like everyone's out there getting drunk and being loud, probably,
28:45
Speaker 3: and it was hard to tell if it was real
28:47
Speaker 3: like worried, you know, in panic, screaming, or people just
28:50
Speaker 3: having a good time. But the last thing they said
28:53
Speaker 3: was they claim that they heard a man's slurred voice saying, okay, honey,
28:57
Speaker 3: we'll get you.
28:59
Speaker 2: Yeah. The thing is is the cops never interviewed Wayne
29:02
Speaker 2: and Pain. They just were disincluded, I guess. And as
29:09
Speaker 2: you'll see, like this first investigation wrapped up pretty quick,
29:14
Speaker 2: so it's not surprising that they weren't interview but it
29:17
Speaker 2: is egregious they weren't. There's one other thing that Marilyn
29:20
Speaker 2: Wayne said. She said, three days after Natalie Wood's death,
29:25
Speaker 2: she received a little message in scribbled handwriting saying, if
29:29
Speaker 2: you value your life, keep quiet about what you know,
29:33
Speaker 2: which is not just a threat, it also is a
29:36
Speaker 2: very desperate act from a guilty conscience. If you do
29:40
Speaker 2: something like that, you're really worried about things, because that's
29:45
Speaker 2: a really over extension of your yourself in that case,
29:50
Speaker 2: just FYI, I guess yeah.
29:52
Speaker 3: And if you picture Christopher Walking saying it, it's bone.
29:54
Speaker 2: Chilling, let's hear it.
29:56
Speaker 3: No, there's no hay, that's too far.
29:59
Speaker 2: How about the same Davis Tunior doing it.
30:02
Speaker 3: That'd be kind of fun. Actually, yeah, if you value
30:04
Speaker 3: your lash, bab keep quiet about what you know. Man,
30:08
Speaker 3: very nice.
30:10
Speaker 2: So that's like, I mean, that's bombshell stuff. But because
30:14
Speaker 2: it wasn't included in the police investigation, it's treated as
30:18
Speaker 2: conjecture rumor maybe Marilyn Wayne is trying to get her
30:21
Speaker 2: fifteen minutes of fame. From what I could tell, she
30:25
Speaker 2: was not like that at all. She didn't seem to
30:27
Speaker 2: be prone to confabulations. She seemed like a reliable witness. Yeah,
30:32
Speaker 2: she wasn't included in the original investigation, but she was
30:36
Speaker 2: included in subsequent journalism and books on the subject.
30:40
Speaker 3: That's right from the beginning. Wana Wood was someone who
30:45
Speaker 3: has sort of beat the drum of Hey, let's get
30:49
Speaker 3: this investigation going again. I'm not buying all this stuff.
30:54
Speaker 3: One of the biggest reasons why is because Dennis Davern,
30:57
Speaker 3: that ship captain, that yacht captain, his story really changed.
31:02
Speaker 3: At first, he went along with that official narrative like
31:05
Speaker 3: you were saying, like all three men did. But later on,
31:08
Speaker 3: and some of these were paid appearances, we should point
31:10
Speaker 3: out he said, I was lying about some stuff in
31:13
Speaker 3: nineteen eighty one. In that Cashner book in two thousand,
31:17
Speaker 3: he said this whole trip was not great. In fact,
31:21
Speaker 3: she didn't even spend the night on the boat the
31:24
Speaker 3: day before, she stayed on shore because there was so
31:26
Speaker 3: much kind of unpleasantness in fighting going on, and it
31:30
Speaker 3: stemmed from jealousy, like he didn't like, you know, this
31:33
Speaker 3: was her co star in her new movie that she
31:35
Speaker 3: was in, and he thought that they were flirting too
31:37
Speaker 3: much and that there might be something going on and
31:40
Speaker 3: he was getting too much attention Christopher Walken, and I
31:44
Speaker 3: didn't say this stuff back then, Yeah, he said that.
31:47
Speaker 2: I think on the Today Show they said, well, what
31:51
Speaker 2: were you you know, what did you tell the police?
31:53
Speaker 2: And he said, I told them the story that RJ
31:56
Speaker 2: came up with.
31:58
Speaker 3: Yeah.
31:58
Speaker 2: So there's another thing too. Dennis Evan has over the
32:02
Speaker 2: year has been very much accused of being like a
32:04
Speaker 2: publicity hound. Yeah, trying he's after the money or what
32:08
Speaker 2: he writ and whatever. He did write a book. But
32:11
Speaker 2: if you start to dig into him too, and you
32:13
Speaker 2: watch some interviews with him, he genuinely seems uncomfortable. He
32:17
Speaker 2: doesn't seem like he's seeking the limelight. He does seem,
32:21
Speaker 2: I mean, at least at first glance, a person with
32:24
Speaker 2: a guilty conscience that's trying to come clean. And then
32:27
Speaker 2: more most importantly, I think he doesn't paint himself in
32:30
Speaker 2: like this this angelic light, like he lied to police,
32:34
Speaker 2: he went along with a conspiracy to cover up a murder. Potentially,
32:38
Speaker 2: like he's he's admitting his own his own culpability while
32:43
Speaker 2: he's you know, revealing the truth. He's not trying to
32:46
Speaker 2: keep himself out of it.
32:47
Speaker 3: That's a good point. Yeah, that's a very good point.
32:50
Speaker 3: He also said in this Kashner book, the yacht captain said,
32:55
Speaker 3: after we got back from dinner on the twenty eighth,
32:58
Speaker 3: they were drunk. They kept drinking, and Wagner was again
33:03
Speaker 3: still upset because you know, they were sort of giggling together,
33:07
Speaker 3: Natalie Wood and Chris Walkin were That's when the wine
33:10
Speaker 3: bottle got smashed and he yelled, what are you trying
33:14
Speaker 3: to do? F my wife. That's when, supposedly, according to Dabne,
33:20
Speaker 3: Wood went to her room and walk in went to
33:23
Speaker 3: his room.
33:24
Speaker 2: Because it's a party foul to smash your wine bottle
33:27
Speaker 2: on the table and say that to your guest.
33:30
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a big party foul.
33:32
Speaker 3: Like the party's over. At that point exactly, they went
33:35
Speaker 3: to their separate rooms. After a little while. According to Dabne,
33:39
Speaker 3: Robert Wagner went to Natalie Woods, you know, to their room,
33:42
Speaker 3: and he heard them quote fighting like crazy, things being
33:45
Speaker 3: thrown around. Then he said he heard the dinghy being untied.
33:49
Speaker 3: And in the Finstad book that just came out a
33:52
Speaker 3: few years ago, apparently the last words that Dennis Dabren
33:55
Speaker 3: heard Wagner say were get off my effing boat.
33:58
Speaker 2: A lot of f words from that guy that night.
34:00
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's not hard to heart.
34:02
Speaker 2: So one other account that he gave of it was
34:05
Speaker 2: that there was this scuffle, a lot of physical sounds
34:10
Speaker 2: of fighting, not just from the stateroom but now outside
34:12
Speaker 2: on the deck of the boat. Yeah, in earshot, but
34:15
Speaker 2: out of eyesight, and he hears get off my effing boat,
34:21
Speaker 2: a little more of a scuffle and then silence. That's eerie,
34:25
Speaker 2: but it doesn't vibe with Marilyn Wayne's ear witness account,
34:30
Speaker 2: which was that she heard somebody calling for help for
34:33
Speaker 2: fifteen minutes. It's possible that Davern's telling what an accurate
34:39
Speaker 2: He's portraying the story accurately, and that Marilyn Wayne really
34:42
Speaker 2: did hear somebody else goofing around. Who knows, but those
34:46
Speaker 2: two it's important that those two accounts earwitness accounts don't
34:51
Speaker 2: wine up necessarily.
34:52
Speaker 3: So around eleven thirty, according to Dabn, Wagner came back
34:57
Speaker 3: to the bridge, was shovelled looking apparently, and they got
35:01
Speaker 3: drunk together, apparently on more than wine.
35:05
Speaker 2: Right, yeah, I think they moved to Scotch.
35:08
Speaker 3: So at one point thirty in the morning, Dabren says
35:11
Speaker 3: that Wagner said he was going to go check on
35:13
Speaker 3: her in her room, came back and said she was gone.
35:17
Speaker 3: That's when they noticed that Dinghy was gone, and he's like,
35:20
Speaker 3: I gotta turn on these lights and start looking. According
35:23
Speaker 3: to Davren, Wagner said, don't do that, don't turn on
35:25
Speaker 3: the engine, don't do anything, because we don't want to
35:28
Speaker 3: alert all these people.
35:29
Speaker 2: It's a very weird thing to say if your wife
35:31
Speaker 2: is missing off.
35:32
Speaker 1: Of a boat, very weird.
35:34
Speaker 2: Even if you're ruinously drunk, that is a weird thing
35:36
Speaker 2: to say, because also take into account Dennis Davren is
35:39
Speaker 2: ruinously drunk at this time too, and his first instinct
35:42
Speaker 2: is to turn on the floodlights and start looking around
35:46
Speaker 2: the boat. Yeah, so Davren said that this is all news.
35:52
Speaker 2: He's admitting that he lied to the police. At the time.
35:55
Speaker 2: He was interviewed twice by the police on the morning
35:58
Speaker 2: of at the boat and then a few days later
36:00
Speaker 2: in the presence of two of Robert Wagner's lawyers. And
36:04
Speaker 2: this is not what he told the police. This is
36:06
Speaker 2: all very new and scandalous stuff. That he's basically pointing
36:10
Speaker 2: the finger at Robert Wagner without coming out and saying
36:13
Speaker 2: it overtly. And he's saying that he lied to the
36:16
Speaker 2: police because he had a really unusual experience. At the time.
36:19
Speaker 2: He was fairly young. I think he was in his
36:21
Speaker 2: twenties at the time. He was just some boat dude
36:25
Speaker 2: who they'd hired to be their captain and had become
36:29
Speaker 2: friends as close as friends as you can be with
36:31
Speaker 2: somebody you employer who employs you, right, But he kind
36:35
Speaker 2: of took them to be friends. And so right after
36:38
Speaker 2: Natalie Wood died, he essentially moved in with Robert Wagner.
36:41
Speaker 2: Robert Wagner moved him into his house in Beverly Hills
36:44
Speaker 2: for a few weeks, and later on Dennis Davren said
36:48
Speaker 2: it was akin to a hostage situation.
36:52
Speaker 3: Yeah, Like, according to Davren, it was like, let me
36:54
Speaker 3: get this guy in here and just let's keep him
36:57
Speaker 3: drunk and get drunk, and you know, they're all so
37:00
Speaker 3: you know, drowning their sorrows and I imagine deeply upset.
37:07
Speaker 3: But he, yeah, like he said, he felt like he
37:08
Speaker 3: was not allowed to leave. Almost.
37:11
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, supposedly one of his girlfriends showed up to
37:14
Speaker 2: speak to him and was turned away at the door.
37:16
Speaker 2: There wasn't a phone in the bedroom that he had,
37:18
Speaker 2: and at night when they turned on the security system,
37:21
Speaker 2: he couldn't leave the bedroom or else it would set
37:23
Speaker 2: the security system off. So it's not like anybody was like,
37:26
Speaker 2: you stay here, but he, like you said, he didn't
37:28
Speaker 2: feel like he could leave. It's a very weird thing
37:30
Speaker 2: to say, but that is his explanation for why he
37:33
Speaker 2: didn't say this and why he lied to police at first.
37:37
Speaker 3: That's right, I think, now a.
37:39
Speaker 2: Break, Yes, yeah, let's do it.
37:41
Speaker 3: All right, We'll take a break, and we'll be right
37:43
Speaker 3: back to talk about what's happened since then. All right.
38:13
Speaker 3: We mentioned earlier that Davren wrote a book it is
38:15
Speaker 3: called Goodbye Natalie, Goodbye Splendor. That was in two thousand
38:21
Speaker 3: and nine. In November of twenty eleven, the LA Sheriff's
38:25
Speaker 3: Department reopened the investigation, and I remember this is very
38:30
Speaker 3: big news, saying we have some new information from some
38:34
Speaker 3: unnamed sources. Lana, like I mentioned, Lana had been beating
38:38
Speaker 3: the drum to kind of get this thing reopened for years.
38:42
Speaker 3: A publicist for the Wagner family said, you know, these
38:47
Speaker 3: are people trying to get their fifteen minutes. They're trying
38:49
Speaker 3: to profit on the thirty year anniversary of the death.
38:53
Speaker 3: They didn't specifically mention Dabren's book, but Dabren, for his part,
38:57
Speaker 3: was like, man, my book's out of print at this point,
39:00
Speaker 3: and like, no one's trying to sell a book here.
39:02
Speaker 2: Well. He also supposedly turned down a fifty thousand dollars
39:05
Speaker 2: offer from a tabloid to tell the story again, he
39:08
Speaker 2: didn't do it, so, yeah, he was apparently not out
39:11
Speaker 2: for the money exactly.
39:12
Speaker 3: Well, you know, these are all accounts of people, so
39:16
Speaker 3: we can just report it, right.
39:17
Speaker 2: Yes, Yes, I'm glad you said that, because i don't
39:20
Speaker 2: want to give the impression that I'm like in Dennis
39:22
Speaker 2: Davern's corner. I'm just trying to give the full picture.
39:25
Speaker 2: I'm not trying to push him on anybody as a
39:27
Speaker 2: reliable person. That's not what I mean to be doing.
39:30
Speaker 2: So I'm glad you said that.
39:31
Speaker 3: Yeah, so officials said that Wagner and Walking like they're
39:37
Speaker 3: not suspects right now. In twenty eleven, Walking lawyered up
39:41
Speaker 3: immediately though, which is interesting. And here's the rub. At
39:46
Speaker 3: this point, the statute of limitations had run out for
39:49
Speaker 3: anything but murder, So they couldn't you go after him
39:54
Speaker 3: for assault or anything like that unless it was assault
39:58
Speaker 3: with intent to murder her. And they're like, we don't
40:02
Speaker 3: have a case for that. We don't have new physical evidence.
40:05
Speaker 3: This story has changed, Davern has admitted to lying, So like,
40:10
Speaker 3: unless we have some ironclad sort of you know, figured
40:14
Speaker 3: of smoking gun, we can't go after Robert Wagner, you know,
40:19
Speaker 3: for murdering Natalie Wood.
40:21
Speaker 2: Right, But at the same time, Robert Wagner doesn't want
40:25
Speaker 2: this talked about any longer because whether he did it
40:27
Speaker 2: or not, it's his name invariably is dragged through the
40:31
Speaker 2: mud now anytime this story comes up in the press,
40:35
Speaker 2: especially now that the Sheriff's Department has reopened the case,
40:38
Speaker 2: So it couldn't have been very comfortable for him. Dennis
40:42
Speaker 2: Davern did the rounds. He was on today's show. He
40:45
Speaker 2: was asked directly about lying to the police and admitted
40:48
Speaker 2: that he had, and apparently other people came forward to
40:53
Speaker 2: something like one hundred different people contacted the Sheriff's Department
40:57
Speaker 2: in Los Angeles, and one of the people that the
41:00
Speaker 2: detectives talked to, one of the lead investigators, was named
41:03
Speaker 2: Ralph Fernandez. He was put together with a confidential source
41:07
Speaker 2: of Finstad, the biographer who had done like years of
41:12
Speaker 2: research on this, and apparently Hernandez found the person credible
41:17
Speaker 2: enough that this kind of became an extra part of
41:21
Speaker 2: the case, which was that this person had heard Walkin
41:26
Speaker 2: say that Wagner and Wood have been fighting and that
41:29
Speaker 2: Wagner pushed Wood didn't they pushed him over pushed her overboard,
41:34
Speaker 2: killed her, nothing like that. But it's enough that like
41:37
Speaker 2: it breaks or it veers away from Walkin's like solid
41:43
Speaker 2: line throughout the whole time, which is that he was
41:45
Speaker 2: in bed, it was an accident.
41:47
Speaker 3: Yeah, And other people came forward just sort of verifying
41:51
Speaker 3: that there was like yelling, crashing around people on the boat, arguing.
41:58
Speaker 3: You know, I think it's basically agreed on at this
42:01
Speaker 3: point that everyone, you know, it was loud and there
42:06
Speaker 3: was arguing, and that was fighting. I don't think anyone,
42:09
Speaker 3: I mean, even from the beginning it was just like, yeah,
42:11
Speaker 3: we're arguing about politics. But that changed pretty quickly too
42:15
Speaker 3: because there were so many ear witnesses.
42:16
Speaker 1: Basically yeah.
42:17
Speaker 2: But it's important to point out though Chuck is Wagner
42:20
Speaker 2: is never acknowledged that he fought with Wood. It was
42:23
Speaker 2: always an argument really between him and Walkin, maybe as
42:27
Speaker 2: far as it was about Wood's career, right, He's never
42:31
Speaker 2: said he was in an argument directly with Wood, and
42:34
Speaker 2: especially that he didn't have any like throwing stuff around
42:38
Speaker 2: the room fight with Natalie Wood. So that's important to
42:41
Speaker 2: remember too. His explanation is way back in the rear view.
42:45
Speaker 2: Now as far as we've gone with all of these
42:48
Speaker 2: different explanations.
42:50
Speaker 3: Yeah, absolutely so. Summer of twenty twelve, the cause of
42:54
Speaker 3: death was formally changed to undetermined and drowning and other
43:00
Speaker 3: determined factors was the description of the accidental drowning. The
43:06
Speaker 3: La County corner said, you know, we have to explain
43:10
Speaker 3: this to the family. There has been a new analysis
43:13
Speaker 3: of these bruises. You know, some of them indicate that
43:19
Speaker 3: they were, you know, before she drowned, like they were
43:22
Speaker 3: from a fight. There were bruises on her wrist that
43:25
Speaker 3: suggest assault happened, and like they had to tell their
43:28
Speaker 3: family this.
43:30
Speaker 2: Yeah. Also, there was another person named Vidal Herrera who
43:33
Speaker 2: took photos of Natalie Wood's body for the coroner's office,
43:37
Speaker 2: and he said that he saw significant wounds on her
43:40
Speaker 2: head that were bad enough that she might have been
43:43
Speaker 2: unconscious before she even hit the water from the head wounds. Right,
43:48
Speaker 2: that's a new piece of information. There was another new
43:51
Speaker 2: piece of information that came forward in twenty twenty. Who
43:54
Speaker 2: was someone else that worked at the coroner's office named
43:57
Speaker 2: Michael Franco.
43:58
Speaker 3: Right, yeah, so, and then again this is from Finstad's
44:01
Speaker 3: book Franco said that these friction burns and striations from
44:07
Speaker 3: the wrist and on her body were in the opposite
44:10
Speaker 3: direction or what you would think you would get as
44:12
Speaker 3: she's trying to climb onto a boat, and there was
44:16
Speaker 3: bruising on her thighs, bruising on her shins, and to me,
44:20
Speaker 3: chuck to Franco said, to me, it looked like, you know,
44:24
Speaker 3: it was someone who had been you know, pushed and
44:27
Speaker 3: was in a physical altercation with another human.
44:30
Speaker 2: Yeah. And back in the day in nineteen eighty two,
44:32
Speaker 2: when he was an intern at the coroner's office, he
44:35
Speaker 2: went to Chief Examiner Thomas Nogucci and said all this
44:39
Speaker 2: stuff to him, and Nogucci apparently told Michael Franco that
44:42
Speaker 2: some things are better left unsaid and that, however it
44:46
Speaker 2: was written up, that's all you need to know. She's
44:49
Speaker 2: a very weird thing for a chief medical examiner to say,
44:52
Speaker 2: because they're the ones who are responsible for determining cause
44:54
Speaker 2: of death.
44:55
Speaker 3: Yeah. Absolutely, where we stand today as of about a
45:00
Speaker 3: year and a half ago, in May twenty twenty two,
45:03
Speaker 3: the Sheriff's Department has ended the investigation, but it remains
45:08
Speaker 3: a quote open unsolved case. You know, it's become a
45:13
Speaker 3: thing that has divided as family because on one side
45:16
Speaker 3: you have Lana sort of beating the drum to keep
45:19
Speaker 3: this thing going and very suspicious of Robert Wagner. And
45:24
Speaker 3: then you have all the daughters have remained steadfast behind
45:27
Speaker 3: their dad, and they were like, he loved her very
45:30
Speaker 3: very much. Things may have been volatile, but he did
45:34
Speaker 3: not kill her, although Lana also says like, I don't
45:37
Speaker 3: think he had some murders and tent I think they
45:41
Speaker 3: were drunk and things got out of hand and he
45:44
Speaker 3: flew into a moment of rage that ended in her death,
45:48
Speaker 3: which is a different accusation than you know, he was
45:52
Speaker 3: some abusive husband and this was bound to happen or
45:54
Speaker 3: something right exactly.
45:55
Speaker 2: So she said this in a twenty twenty one memoir
45:58
Speaker 2: that you mentioned before. It's called Little Sister Colon my
46:01
Speaker 2: investigation into the mysterious death of Natalie Wood, and she
46:05
Speaker 2: says that Robert Wagner told her that after the funeral,
46:08
Speaker 2: She's like, what happened? And Robert Wagner told her, Natalie
46:11
Speaker 2: Wood's sister, that Natalie had probably taken the dinghy out
46:14
Speaker 2: to party hop and again she didn't know how to
46:17
Speaker 2: use the dinghy. She was afraid of the water, especially
46:19
Speaker 2: in the dark, and she was wearing a nightgown and
46:21
Speaker 2: socks and a coat and that was it. So it
46:23
Speaker 2: didn't hold water. And I think that really kind of
46:25
Speaker 2: triggered Lona woods decades long suspicion of this whole thing.
46:30
Speaker 2: So yeah, like you said, the family's been divided basically
46:34
Speaker 2: ever since, and the whole thing is still it's an
46:38
Speaker 2: open case. It's unsolved, but they've exhausted all the leads
46:42
Speaker 2: that came out of the twenty eleven re examination of it,
46:45
Speaker 2: so it's essentially back on the shelf for now.
46:48
Speaker 3: Yeah.
46:49
Speaker 2: Pretty nuts, man, it is.
46:51
Speaker 3: It's a story that I think we will never know
46:54
Speaker 3: truly what happened Wagner's in his nineties unless there's some
46:58
Speaker 3: sort of deathbed confession from he or Chris Walkin, like
47:03
Speaker 3: it's going to go to their graves. I would imagine.
47:06
Speaker 2: I don't know, man, because think about it, after Kirk Douglas,
47:10
Speaker 2: Lana Wood named him as the as her sister's rapist
47:14
Speaker 2: when she was sixteen. So I'm wondering if one of
47:17
Speaker 2: these people are going to say, here finally is the evidence. Yes,
47:20
Speaker 2: Robert Wagner totally killed Natalie Wood, and now that he's dead,
47:23
Speaker 2: I feel comfortable explaining how. Who knows.
47:25
Speaker 3: I think it's a possibility, but it would have to
47:28
Speaker 3: be a recording of him saying that, otherwise it would
47:30
Speaker 3: just be another person saying, well, he told me, sure, sure,
47:34
Speaker 3: you know what I mean. Like, the only three people
47:37
Speaker 3: that know what happened are Daborn, Walkin and Wagner.
47:41
Speaker 2: Right, and all Walkin wants to do is focus on
47:44
Speaker 2: cow bell and dance. I would say, probably the most
47:49
Speaker 2: important clue out of this whole thing, though, Chuck, is
47:51
Speaker 2: that Robert Wagner and Dennis Davern switched to Scotch on
47:55
Speaker 2: the bridge.
47:56
Speaker 3: Is that the one? Yeah, that's a that's a powered
48:00
Speaker 3: drinking move late at night, for sure. I've seen it happen.
48:03
Speaker 2: Do you have anything else?
48:05
Speaker 3: I got nothing else. It's just tragic story.
48:08
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's the thing to remember.
48:09
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know it was. It's easy to get caught
48:12
Speaker 3: up in this Hollywood mystery, but there was a real
48:15
Speaker 3: human with a family that died. And I hope people
48:18
Speaker 3: don't forget that. And I hope we were respectful.
48:21
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think we were. That's a rule of thumb.
48:23
Speaker 2: For all true crime stuff. You know.
48:25
Speaker 3: Absolutely.
48:27
Speaker 2: Well, since Chuck said absolutely, I'm going to end on
48:29
Speaker 2: a high note for me and we'll go to a listener.
48:32
Speaker 1: Man.
48:35
Speaker 3: Hey, guys, this is one from a long time ago
48:38
Speaker 3: actually that I forgot to read from Gareth. I was
48:40
Speaker 3: listening to the Diaries episode and thought you guys might
48:43
Speaker 3: like to hear about ingratitude lists because we were talking
48:46
Speaker 3: about gratitude lists when I was working in mental health support.
48:49
Speaker 3: We learned about them and the basic premises sometimes your
48:52
Speaker 3: life is full of problems and you feel terrible. It's
48:54
Speaker 3: not always that helpful to be told to write down
48:57
Speaker 3: what you feel grateful for, and some people find it
49:00
Speaker 3: a bit like their problems aren't being taken seriously or
49:03
Speaker 3: being brushed under the rug. So sometimes it can actually
49:07
Speaker 3: be helpful to write down everything that's wrong, everything is
49:09
Speaker 3: hurting you or generally just taking you off, as a
49:12
Speaker 3: way to vent and hopefully understand why you feel, why
49:16
Speaker 3: you feel how you feel, and possibly being able to
49:18
Speaker 3: process it and make a plan on how to change it.
49:21
Speaker 2: Nice.
49:22
Speaker 3: Yeah, anyway, I thought it could be of interest to
49:23
Speaker 3: you and potentially helpful to some listeners who have a
49:26
Speaker 3: lot going on To feel vindicated in their distress. And
49:31
Speaker 3: just to be clear, it's not about dwelling on the bad.
49:34
Speaker 3: It's mostly about just being able to say, yeah, fair
49:36
Speaker 3: play me, I'm dealing with a lot nice.
49:40
Speaker 2: That's really awesome, And that is from again, Gareth. Thanks
49:44
Speaker 2: a lot, Gareth. I would say Gareth is sitting in
49:46
Speaker 2: the best recent email chair for now. Huh.
49:49
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's a good one.
49:50
Speaker 2: Yeah, that was a very good one. Thanks for letting
49:52
Speaker 2: everybody know about that, because I'm sure there are some
49:54
Speaker 2: people out there that listen to that Diaries episode and
49:56
Speaker 2: thought the very same thing, and now they're vindicated undismissed.
50:01
Speaker 2: If you want to be like Gareth and try or
50:03
Speaker 2: shot at being in the best recent email chair, you
50:06
Speaker 2: can do that. Send it off to Stuff Podcasts at
50:09
Speaker 2: iHeartRadio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a production
50:14
Speaker 2: of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the
50:18
Speaker 2: iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
50:21
Speaker 2: favorite shows.