Robert Wagner named person of interest in Natalie Wood’s drowning death
February 2, 2018 by admin
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Almost four decades after the tragic death of Hollywood star Natalie Wood, investigators reveal there is a new person of interest in the case: her then-husband, Robert Wagner. Susana Victoria Perez (@susana_vp) has more.
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Thirty-six years after Natalie Wood’s mysterious drowning death, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department has reopened the investigation and named her then-husband, Robert Wagner, a person of interest in the case.
CBS reported the new detail Thursday as part of its upcoming 48 Hours report Natalie Wood: Death in Dark Water (Saturday, 10 p.m. ET/PT).
Wood, the 43-year-old Oscar-nominated star of films such as Splendor in the Grass and West Side Story, drowned off the coast of Catalina Island in California the night of Nov. 29, 1981, after taking her family yacht, Splendour, out with Wagner and her Brainstorm co-star Christopher Walken. Boat captain Dennis Davern was also on board.
She was found wearing a flannel nightgown, socks and a red down jacket and Davern identified her body for authorities, according to an autopsy report. Her body had superficial bruises, according to the report, but those were considered consistent with drowning.
“She looked like a victim of an assault,” Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department Detective Ralph Hernandez tells CBS per 48 Hours. ”We have not been able to prove this was a homicide. And we haven’t been able to prove that this was an accident, either. The ultimate problem is we don’t know how she ended up in the water.”
Her death was ruled an accident in 1981, but the sheriff’s department reopened the case in 2011, ultimately changing the cause of death on her death certificate from an accidental drowning to “drowning and other undetermined factors” in 2012.
In a 2011 interview with NBC’s Today show, Davern said he had come forward to police with new information. “I made mistakes by not telling the honest truth in the (initial) police report,” Davern said.
When asked if Wagner had more of a responsibility in the case, Davern said, “Yes, I would say so, yes.” But he refused to elaborate.
However, when asked if Wagner was a suspect, Lt. John Corina, the lead detective on the reopened case, said he was not.
For his part, Wagner had pledged his “full support” to the 2011 investigation, with the caveat that he hoped any new leads “would come from a credible source or sources other than those simply trying to profit from the 30 year anniversary of the tragic death.”
Representatives for Wagner and the L.A. County Sheriff’s office did not immediately respond to USA TODAY’s request for comment.
Contributing: Bryan Alexander, The Associated Press
