The Backstory: The sinister death of movie star Natalie Wood

Talent, glamour, fame, sex, and possibly murder. What really happened to Natalie Wood more than 40 years ago? One guy who was there has been talking about her death. But nobody’s listening.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Well, nothing screens Hollywood like movies, murders, and love affairs.
And when you wrap all three together, you have a blockbuster,
especially when it's a true story. Superstar actress Natalie Wood
turned up dead in the icy waters off Catalina Island
in November of nineteen eighty one, and none of it
makes any sense. I'm Patti Steele. Only one person there

(00:22):
that night is talking. That's next on the backstory. The
backstory is back. Hollywood is famous for keeping mysterious, dark
stories just out of reach. They like to protect their
big stars at all costs, and if that means hiding
the truth, they find a way to do it. It's been

(00:44):
over forty years since the death of an A list
movie star Natalie Wood. Was it an accident or murder?
Her husband Robert Wagner, now ninety four years old, and
her then co star Christopher Walkin, still a huge Hollywood
presence today is eighty Neither of them were talking, but
somebody else there that night is talking. Now, the question

(01:06):
is why did his story get so little attention. We're
talking about movie stars, So, guys at the stage right,
Natalie Wood was this beautiful, incredibly talented actress. She starred
in iconic flicks like West Side Story and Rebel Without
a Cause. She was nominated for a Best Actress Oscar
for Splendor in the Grass. All those flicks and so

(01:28):
many more during the sexy, glamorous nineteen fifties and sixties
in Hollywood, but she started out as a really successful
child actress. She was the eight year old co star
in the original version of Miracle on thirty Fourth Street,
the classic from nineteen forty seven. Her success continued through
the fifties, sixties and into the very early seventies, but

(01:51):
that's when she took a hiatus slowed her down a
little bit to raise her kids. Natalie was married in
the early sixties to one of the biggest names in
Hollywood at the time, Robert Wagner. They divorced, she married
again for several years, then divorced that guy to remarry Wagner.
Very Hollywood right. Well now, it's November twenty ninth, nineteen

(02:12):
eighty one, the day after Thanksgiving. Natalie is co starring
in a new movie called Brainstorm with Christopher Walkin, who
starred in Annie Hall and won an Oscar for The
Deer Hunter. You probably know him better these days for
the TV series Severance and the hugely successful Dune Part two,
which just opened in theaters a few weeks ago. Anyway,

(02:36):
so how did Natalie wind up dead in those icy
waters off Catalina Island in the middle of a cold
November night. Her body was found the next morning, floating
off the coast, wearing her nightgown, a puffy jacket, and
wool socks. It all started when Natalie and her husband
Robert invited Christopher out on their yacht right after Thanksgiving

(02:57):
to get away for the weekend. Here's the problem. Neither
Robert nor Christopher seemed to have any idea what happened,
and neither seems inclined to talk about it. Police did investigate,
and while Wagner changed his story a few times, investigators
finally decided it had simply been a heartbreaking accident. They
said she had probably gotten on the small dinghy tied

(03:20):
to the boat, and just fallen into the water unsteady
after a night of drinking. But let's go forward. Decades later,
the yachts captain finally shares his story. Dennis Davern says
Natalie and Robert got into a huge fight after that
night of drinking, there was loud arguing shouting between Robert
and Natalie, as well as between Robert and Christopher Walking,

(03:42):
and Davern says that ultimately, sometime just before midnight, he
believes Robert pushed Natalie off the boat. Davern says he
wanted to turn on the yacht's searchlights so they could
try to rescue her, but he says Robert wouldn't let him,
claiming it would bother folks on nearby yachts talk about
a problem with the one percent. Oh the lights from
your yacht as you search for your dead wife for

(04:05):
keeping me awake. Wow. Anyway, While in autopsy placed Natalie's
death at right around midnight, Robert didn't call in a
missing person report until one thirty am, and the rescue
boat captain Roger Smith, who helped pull Natalie's body from
the water, says he didn't get a call to even
look for until after five am. On top of that,

(04:27):
a corner's report thirty years after the fact says Natalie
had fresh bruises on her arms and knee, along with
a scratch on her neck and a scrape on her forehead,
and the report specifically says she might have been assaulted
before she drowned. Dennis Davern says Robert was so intense
about keeping him quiet in the aftermath he basically held

(04:49):
him hostage for over a year to keep him from talking.
He had Davern live in his home and gave him
a job on the set of his big nineteen eighties
TV show Heart to Heart. Davern says, in the morning,
Robert's driver would pick me up at the house and
drop me at the studio. At the end of the day,
the driver would bring me back to the house. When

(05:09):
I went to bed at night, the door to my
room would close, and there was a magnetic lock which
wouldn't let me open the door. I couldn't get myself
out of my own room in Robert's house. What's Robert
Wagner's side of all of this, Well, he originally told
Copps he Natalie and Walkin had dinner on shore that
night and then went back to the Splendor. Pretty soon

(05:32):
he got into an argument with Walking about Natalie's career,
saying he thought she should slow down and raise their kids,
but Walking disagreed, saying she should chase her career even
more aggressively. When things got really heated, Robert says Natalie
walked away from the argument. An hour later, he says
he went to check on her and she was gone.

(05:52):
Simple as that, he thought she might have taken the
dinghy back to shore, but that didn't make any sense
given Natalie's way well known fear of the ocean at night.
I mean, really, wouldn't you be frantic to rescue someone
you loved if you even thought they might have accidentally
fallen into the ocean. When Davern finally told investigators the
real story in twenty eighteen, they asked him to take

(06:15):
a polygraph. He says he passed it with flying colors
when he wrote a book about that night. The LAPD
reopened the case, and they finally named Robert Wagner a
person of interest in Natalie's death, but after a few
years they quietly dropped the investigation, saying they'd reopen it
if any new evidence popped up. For now, they're not

(06:37):
interested in where this could take them in stirring up
a case against a ninety four year old longtime movie
and TV star. There's been talk that the fight between Wagner,
Walking and Natalie really centered on the possibility that Walking
and Natalie were having an affair. But unless somebody talks, well,
probably never know. Once again, Hollywood, the press, and Hollywood

(07:00):
law enforcement have a longtime reputation for protecting big stars
at all costs, and maybe that's still the case. I
hope you're enjoying the Backstory with me, Patty Steele. Please like, follow,
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(07:21):
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Patty Steele or on Instagram at Real Patty Steele. I'm
Patty Steele. The Backstories a production of iHeartMedia, Premiere Networks,
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is Doug Fraser. Our writer Jake Kushner. We have new

(07:44):
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Thanks for listening to the Backstory with Patty Steele. The
pieces of history no you needed to know