November 14, 2023 • 50 mins
Natalie Wood was Hollywood royalty who tragically drowned after a long night of partying with her husband, Robert Wagner, and actor Christopher Walken. Over the last 40 plus years, stories have changed and the investigation has moved from closed to open. Listen in to learn this tragic story.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and Chuck's
here too, and Jerry's here too, and this is stuff
you should know part of our ongoing, indefinitely continuous through
prime edition.
Speaker 3 (00:22):
That's right, and weirdly, our second paulap Tompkins reference is
coming on this episode. Oh yeah, yeah, because Paul's wonderful,
hysterical wife, Jannie looks like Natalie Would.
Speaker 1 (00:36):
Okay, is she known for that?
Speaker 3 (00:38):
I mean, I don't know if she's internationally known, but
I think Janie knows it and her friends know it,
and it has been said out loud.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
I got, So that's that's what I'm after. I mean,
if this is just your observation or not.
Speaker 3 (00:51):
Oh no, no, no, it's it's been It's been said before.
It's on record.
Speaker 2 (00:55):
So if you don't know who Natalie Would is, first
go look up Jennie Tompkins. You get a pretty good idea.
You could also look up Natalie Wood herself, sure, but
you probably are familiar with her one way or another.
First of all, she probably captured your heart as the
little girl who doubted the existence of Santa Claus a
Miracle on thirty fourth Street, the original one. She might
(01:19):
have also captured your heart as the kind of good
girl gone bad in Rubble without a Cause. She also
may have been like I like that girl in West
Side Story, or I like that girl in Splundor in
the Grass, or I like that girl in the nineteen
seventy six made for TV remake of Cat on a
(01:40):
Hot Tin Roof. Well, then you like Natalie Wood.
Speaker 3 (01:43):
Guys, yeah, Or if you grew up like we did
in the eighties, you might like her from the sci
fi classic, not classic eighties, early eighties sci fi classic Brainstorm.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
I never saw it.
Speaker 3 (01:59):
Oh really, yeah, you should check it out. It was
sort of one of those It was in the early eighties.
Like there were a few a few of those movies
that were kind of in the same vein of do
you remember the movie Looker, Yes, like with Albert Finney,
And then there was the Tom seliquin about the Little
Rope with Jeene Simmons, with the little Robo run Away.
It was in that vein.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
Oh, okay, well, definitely that sounds like a great triple
feature if you ask me.
Speaker 3 (02:23):
It's kind of right up your alley. I bet you'd
like it.
Speaker 2 (02:25):
Okay, I'll check that one out. I have not seen that.
I was familiar with her from Rebel without a Cause
because I went through a real big James Dean phase
in high school. Oh yeah, you might also be familiar. Yeah,
you might also be familiar with her sister Lana would. Yeah,
she was plenty of tool and diamonds are forever. She
was very well known for that. And both of these
(02:47):
sisters were originally named Zacharenko. They were the daughters of
Russian immigrants, Maria and Nick Zakarenko, who moved to San
Francisco and had these two kids, and their mom said,
you're both going to be stars, especially you. Natalie born Natalia.
Speaker 3 (03:03):
That's right, and Lana was born what Svetlana?
Speaker 2 (03:08):
Mm hm.
Speaker 3 (03:09):
So they, you know, they kind of americanized their names
kind of kind of and you know, we're going to
be reading through a few different Olivia helped us with this,
but she got a lot of this stuff from a
few different biographies. So if we reference like Suzanne Finnstad's
biography or maybe Robert Wagner's biography or autobiography, that's that's
(03:30):
what we're talking about.
Speaker 2 (03:31):
Yeah, our Sam Kashner wrote a very great Vanity Fair
article on it.
Speaker 3 (03:36):
Oh that's right, very good one. But Suzanne Finnstad's biography
recounts the childhood that wasn't as great as it seemed
from the outside. That her her father was an alcoholic,
her mother was a very controlling sort of manager of
her career and would organize meetings with the very experienced
(03:59):
men and acts trying to get her foot in the door,
including one incident where she did so with Kirk Douglas
where she was well. She says she was raped by
Kirk Douglas when she was sixteen at one of these
meetings at the Chateau Marmont. And I was kept secret
(04:19):
for many, many years until Kirk Douglas died, and then
Lana came out and said, well, I feel like I
should reveal who this person was now. And I think
this was in her book that she wrote about her sister,
so there was also that account of her life.
Speaker 2 (04:33):
Yeah, so that's just Kirk Douglas. Apparently her mom arranged
sexual liaison when she was fifteen with Frank Sinatra to
get this part in Rubble without a cause. She apparently
had to prove she was capable of being a bad
girl by sleeping with the director, who was forty four
at the time. I think she was sixteen then too,
(04:53):
And her mom was like complicit in all of this,
Like she's just like, this is the price for entry
into Hollywood. Sorry, just keep your mouth shutting your chin up,
which is I just can't imagine the damage of just
these these instances, but then of being like that, dismissed
and unsupported by you know, your mom. Just I can't.
(05:16):
It's just awful. But what's amazing is that she managed
to stay alive and actually thrive over the years, because
she did develop a really amazing career, especially early on
in the sixties.
Speaker 3 (05:28):
Yeah, you mentioned all those, you know, classic movies she
was in. In nineteen fifty seven, she married for the
first time Robert Wagner, who you and I Josh would
go on to know as the lead actor in the
eighties TV show Heart to Heart.
Speaker 2 (05:42):
Co starring Stephanie Powers.
Speaker 3 (05:44):
Stephanie Powers. But in the nineteen fifties he was an
actor kind of you know, it wasn't super famous, but
he acted a lot, and then his star rose as
hers was kind of fading. But they divorced in nineteen
sixty one on their first marriage. People. You know, some
people say magazines, especially back then, said that, you know,
(06:07):
Natalie would they broke up because he had she had
an affair with Warren Batty. Her Splendor in the Grass
co star Sam Kashner in his article says, yeah, this
basically is what happened. But in the Finnstad biography, she's like, no, no, no,
that is not true at all, and including including Lana
will back this up, says, you know, Natalie stumbled upon
(06:29):
r J. Her husband, having relations with a man and
had a suicide attempt, which was one of several apparently,
and that's what happened to their first marriage.
Speaker 2 (06:39):
Yeah, but she allowed the press to say that she
had had an affair with Warren Batty. The reason that
that held water, even if it wasn't true, is because
they were very close. On the set of Splendor in
the Grass. They had like just their characters had like
just this crazy, sizzling love affair, and as actors, it's
tough to separate those things.
Speaker 3 (06:59):
I belie an Warren Beatty had a certain reputation.
Speaker 2 (07:04):
Yes, so apparently that is what Robert Wagner thought. He
thought that they were having an affair, and he was
very jealous and very protective and just felt cuckholded. I
guess by this, even though supposedly it didn't even happen.
But that's a really important point. That was one of
the reasons they broke up was he was very jealous
(07:27):
and very overprotective of his relationship with her.
Speaker 3 (07:31):
That's right. She got married to a gentleman named Richard
Gregson after that in nineteen sixty nine. He's a British
writer and actor, just sort of, you know, producer of
film industry guy. They had their daughter, Natasha, who goes
by Natasha Gregson Wagner. Although she's married now. She may
(07:52):
have added another name to the end of her name.
I'm not sure McGill cutty, mguilla cutty. But she was
an actor too. I haven't seen anything a little while.
I'm not sure she's still in doing that because she's
I know she made a documentary recently about her mom.
But I remember seeing her in a few movies back
in the day that she did a really good one
with Robert Downey Junior. And I can't think of the
(08:14):
name of it now.
Speaker 2 (08:14):
Less than zo oh oh. I know who it is.
The Last Days of Disco. No pick up artist.
Speaker 3 (08:20):
No, he wasn't in the Last Days of Disco.
Speaker 1 (08:24):
Oh I was it?
Speaker 2 (08:26):
I can't remember less than zero. No weekend at Bernie's.
Speaker 3 (08:32):
Think. I think it was just like three people in
the movie. Was a very small Oh, now you know
what it was weekend at Berney's.
Speaker 2 (08:37):
There.
Speaker 3 (08:38):
So she married wag I'm sorry, Gregson. And during that
same period, Wagner married a woman named Mary and Marshall.
They had a daughter named Katie in sixty four, and
then they eventually remarried in seventy two and had a
daughter named Courtney. So now there are our three daughters,
one that Wood and Wagner had together, and one of
(08:58):
each from previous marriages. For her part, Lana Wood was like,
why did why are you getting back together with this guy?
And as recounted in her book, Natalie said, sometimes the
devil you know is better than the devil you don't.
Speaker 1 (09:12):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (09:12):
And the reason why Lana Wood Orlana Wood was even
questioning her was because they had a tumultuous relationship. Well,
they were married the first time, but apparently they never
fell out of love or they never stopped loving each
other's how I saw it put think in an investigation
discovery documentary, and so they remarried in nineteen seventy two.
(09:34):
They had Courtney in nineteen seventy four and basically just
went back to married life, but now with a family
with three daughters. That was a big difference between their
first go round. They were trying to make the family
work and apparently it was going fairly well.
Speaker 3 (09:48):
Yeah, he was a little older when he like seven
or eight years older, eight I think eight years older,
and yeah, he got that role in Heart to Heart,
and so he started, you know, doing pretty we well
in the industry while you know, and you know, it's
just the same as true today and an actress in
(10:08):
her forties they start looking elsewhere, generally speaking, unless you're
you know, like a Meryl Streep or somebody, you're not
gonna get the calls that he used to get. And
that's what happened certainly with Natalie Wood after great, great
fame in the nineteen sixties, fifties into the sixties, and
then it started to sort of tail off into the seventies.
Speaker 2 (10:27):
Yes, but if you're a man in Hollywood and as
you start to age you become distinguished, it's a different
right of your career, and that's certainly what happened with
Robert Wagner.
Speaker 3 (10:35):
No, he wasn't washed up at forty three. I guess
he would have been almost fifty.
Speaker 2 (10:39):
Yeah, he actually his star started to rise again. So
they had oppositional careers as far as time went.
Speaker 3 (10:50):
And that figures in, by the way, that's the reason
we're I'm talking about this right.
Speaker 2 (10:55):
So it's November nineteen eighty one. They've been married again
for nine years, and Natalie Wood's forty three, Robert Wagner's
fifty one, and I say we take our first break
and come back and start talking about the problem.
Speaker 1 (11:11):
We'll be right back, okay, Chuck.
Speaker 2 (11:40):
So in Thanksgiving nineteen eighty one, the weekend after, Robert
Wagner and Natalie Wood took their yacht out, the Splendor
sixty foot yacht. Pretty nice. Apparently it had five state rooms,
the whole deal. It was like a legit yacht. Robert
Wagner was a boat guy, a yacht guy. Really. I
think they took it to Santa Catalina Island better known
(12:03):
as Catalina Island. I think like twenty miles off the
coast of Los Angeles and I've never been there, but
I get the impression that it is very yacht friendly,
almost like the South coast of France is how I
kind of take it, where very rich people put their
yachts in and then go and party in town and
(12:23):
then go party from yacht to yacht. And so they
showed up Thanksgiving weekend at Catalina Island looking to have
a good time.
Speaker 3 (12:33):
Yeah, they originally were going to have a lot more
friends on board, but apparently the weather was the forecast
was a little dodgy, and so the only person that
came along was Christopher Walkin, who said, it takes more
than a few rain drops to frighten me.
Speaker 1 (12:51):
It's not bad.
Speaker 2 (12:52):
Didn't you interview Christopher Walkin on movie Crush once?
Speaker 1 (12:56):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (12:57):
Sure, I did.
Speaker 2 (12:57):
Pretty cool.
Speaker 3 (12:58):
Listen to that episode great, and also listened to the
Kevin Pollock episode.
Speaker 2 (13:04):
So the reason that Christopher Walkin was there because you're
just like, well, that's a little random, Natalie Wood, Robert Wagner.
Christopher Walkin, he was an up and coming actor at
the time. I'm not even sure did he have the
Dead Zone under his belt yet?
Speaker 3 (13:18):
M I mean he had done he did The Deer
Hunter by then Annie Hall and The Deer Hunter and
I don't know if Dead Zone it was right around there,
but he was, Yeah, he was doing his thing a
little bit.
Speaker 2 (13:29):
He was like Hollywood's it guy actor at the time,
like he was in demand, and he was co starring
in this movie Brainstorm with Natalie Wood. So she invited
her co star friend to the yacht and he was
the only one that came out of this whole group.
And then very noteworthy as the fourth person, Dennis Davern
(13:52):
He was the captain of the yacht and so the
four of them were on this yachting weekend after Thanksgiving.
Speaker 3 (14:00):
Right actually Dead Zone came out that very year, so
he was This was kind of early peak walkin Okay.
So on Saturday, the twenty eighth of Thanksgiving weekend, they
ate dinner at Doug's Harbor reef on Catalina. They got very,
very drunk. The manager there said that he was even
(14:21):
worried that they couldn't get back. They had a little
inflatable motorized dingy, you know, that's what you do when
you have a yacht to go to shore. It was
called the Prince Valiant, which is also the name of
an early Robert Wagner movie, and obviously Splendor was named
after Splendor in the Grass, so they had their little boats.
Hers was the yacht name. His was the dinghy name,
(14:41):
which is interesting.
Speaker 2 (14:42):
And he hated his role in Prince Valiant. He felt
it was his worst role. He was apparently mocked for
it widely, so it was kind of like tongue in
cheek that he named kell boat Valiant.
Speaker 3 (14:53):
Yeah, yeah, that makes sense then. But the night manager
there at Doug's harbor reef was like, I don't even
know if these guys are so drunk the I fear
for their safety of just getting back onto the Splendor.
So he said, hey, harbor patrol person, can you make
sure they get back safely? They left about ten ten
thirty at night, and then at one thirty in the morning,
(15:14):
Robert Wagner and Captain Dabn made a call to the
shore saying, you know, Natalie what has gone missing? We
need your help this one thirty am. Two hours later,
at three thirty they called the Coastguard to get a
formal search going, and then very tragically, at seven forty
five in the morning, Davern identified the body of Natalie
(15:35):
Wood about a mile south of where the yacht was anchored,
and a flannel nightgown, socks, and a red down jacket.
Speaker 2 (15:43):
Yep, the dinghy they found washed up on the shore
and very very importantly, the oars were locked, so they
had not been used to row. The ignition was off,
so it had not been turned on, and yet it
was just kind of washed away from the boat. This
was an enormous deal. I mean, like, Natalie Wood was
(16:08):
already like Hollywood legend. And what's more, she was one
of the reasons she was having trouble getting parts was
not just her age, but she was old Hollywood, and
Hollywood had started to transition in the seventies into like
a newer version of itself and kind of resented the
old studios and stuff. So she was like Hollywood royalty
(16:28):
at this time already. And the idea that she died
from unnatural causes was just I mean, it was just
a sensation right out of the gate.
Speaker 3 (16:38):
Yeah, I mean, I remember this. I was a kid,
but I was a kid who devoured entertainment. Tonight the
TV show when that first came out, which was somewhere
around here, I remember being about that age when that
TV show premiered and I would watch it every night
and keep up with that stuff. And I remember very
distinctly Natalie would die and drowning and her husband I
(17:01):
was like the heart to heart guy, and kind of
out of the gate, it was portrayed as as an accident.
And that's sort of what you know this podcast is
going to detail is the way the story has changed
over the years, the suspicions that it wasn't just a
simple accident. And it kind of started off with the autopsy.
There was a medical examiner named Joseph Troy who said
(17:25):
that Nellie Wood's blood alcohol content level was point one four,
just very high.
Speaker 2 (17:31):
Yeah, let me just I look that up because I'm like, okay,
what does that actually mean in like like physical behavioral terms. Yeah,
according to the South Australia government, point zero eight two
point one five, So just above what Natalie Wood had
in her bloodstream, you can expect slurred speech, impaired balance,
unstable emotions, possible nausea and vomiting. Just above point one five,
(17:57):
you can't control your bladder and you probably will need
help walking around. So she was very drunk at the
time she died.
Speaker 3 (18:06):
Yeah, And uh, if you want to be very very
technically bored. You should go listen to our episode on breathalyzers.
Speaker 2 (18:13):
Yeah, they were really difficult to explain.
Speaker 3 (18:16):
That was a beast and I'm surprised we don't remember
that more often when we're asked what episodes have been
the hardest or worst.
Speaker 2 (18:24):
Definitely the hardest because there's like a crystal involved that
somehow like tells your fortune and then they translate that
and the ones and zeros.
Speaker 3 (18:31):
A very very tough episode, but it's out there. He
uh so, Troy said point one four percent, and also
a medical examiner, right, yeah, and also said that there
were bruises on her arms and legs and face and
basically said, you know, it looks like she probably fell overboard.
She was trying to get into the dinghy. She was
(18:52):
very drunk, and this these bruises and things were is
evidence of her kind of doggedly trying to get back
on unsuccessfully. There was a chief medical examiner named Thomas
Nogucci for the county who said, yeah, and if you
look at the dinghy here, there's scratches on the side
of it. Clearly she was trying to pull herself back
(19:13):
up on this thing. But she was in that down
jacket and it became very very heavy, and she probably
just held onto that dinghy and got hypothermia and exhausted
and she drowned and it's an accident.
Speaker 2 (19:24):
Yeah, So that was the official line for a very
long time. For some reason, Natalie Wood decades tried to, yeah,
tried to get into the Valiant, the dinghy late at night.
She was very drunk, and as she was trying to
get into the dinghy, she slipped and fell and drowned.
She was well known as a strong swimmer, or not
a strong swimmer, not very good at swimming at all,
(19:44):
the opposite of a strong swimmer. The thing is is
that doesn't explain why she tried to get into the
dinghy at night. That was It's always been an outstanding question.
And so Thomas Nogucci, the chief medical Examiner for the
Los Angeles County Coroner's Office, come to psychological autopsy, which
is a thing, but from what I can tell, it's
(20:05):
a thing that you commission when you're trying to show
that a suspicious death that seems accidental was actually suicide.
Like they take into account like the person's life history,
their family history, social interactions, what they were doing right
before they died. So it's kind of odd that he
(20:25):
had this commissioned. It was even odder that when he
got it back, he's like, I'm not releasing to the public,
and he said that he was afraid that he would
be accused of sensationalism that ship had already sailed. He
was very much despised by Natalie Wood's friends and just
Hollywood in general because he made the grave mistake of
(20:47):
mentioning that she was drunk when she died accidentally at
the press conference about her death and their findings, and
he received the ire of Frank Sinatra, Screen Actors Guild
and generally all of Hollywood, and ended up being demoted
from his position at the top of the coroner's office
to not chief. They actually assigned him the title not
(21:07):
Chief Examiner anymore. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (21:10):
I think it was definitely one of those cases where
she was Hollywood royalty, like you said, and no one
in the world wants to hear that Natalie Wood got
so drunk that she slipped and fell into the water
and drowned. No, it's tawdry, Yeah, And so they tried to,
you know, they tried to keep that quiet. It was
a you know, when he mentioned it the press conference,
(21:32):
it was a big deal. And now we get into
sort of the you know what happened after three decades
and how this story has changed over the years.
Speaker 2 (21:41):
Yeah, because just one thing, Chuck. If that were it
and like the story stayed straight all these years and
nothing ever changed, it would be fishy, but not a
big deal. The reason that it's a big deal and
we're talking about it today is that over the years,
the people who were there changed their stories, and that's
why it goes from kind of fishy to an all
(22:03):
out mystery.
Speaker 3 (22:05):
Yeah, an all out mystery and scandal really that you know,
how many years later is this people are still sort
of talking about it, some people are still obsessed with
it and writing books about it. For Wagner's part, he
has done. Like I mentioned earlier, there was an eighty
six authorized biography, Heart to Heart spelled with an E
(22:27):
this time, not like the TV show because on the
TV show they were the Hearts the Harts.
Speaker 2 (22:31):
But he couldn't get the use his studio.
Speaker 3 (22:35):
He didn't want to pay for that, so Heart to
Heart with Robert Wagner and he said in nineteen eighty
six that me and Chris walking gotten an argument about politics.
There was another biography in two thousand and eight called
Pieces of My Heart. I'm Sorry. This is the autobiography
that he himself wrote, obviously probably with some help, where
(22:56):
he said, actually, the fight was about my wife. We
were having an argument about her, like, you know, forget
about this career. You know, you had your day, you
should just be mom. Now we got these three girls,
I've got this great acting career going, so let me
do that. And Christopher Walker was like, no, she's Natalie
(23:17):
wood Man.
Speaker 2 (23:18):
Wait wait, wait, wait, you gotta do it as walking.
Speaker 3 (23:21):
Nook Korea, Matta's Robert God.
Speaker 2 (23:27):
That's great. Jay tied for first with Sammy Davis Junior.
Speaker 3 (23:31):
No, well, but it's also like probably one of the
worst walkings because everyone does walking, and most of them
are pretty great.
Speaker 2 (23:38):
I don't do walking. I admire your walking. I'm just
gonna put.
Speaker 3 (23:42):
It, give it a shut nothing.
Speaker 2 (23:44):
H No, you know what happens when I actually try
to do a voice of Go South.
Speaker 3 (23:51):
Same year, So no matter how it shakes out, Wagner
basically said, you know, as far as what the fight
was about, was that, even though that is key, that
he changed his story because you know first is about
politics and it was personal. Yeah, that's a bad change,
it's a big change. But either way, he said, Natalie,
you know, was annoyed, she was put off by all this,
(24:12):
or she just got bored. She went to the master
cabin and the last thing I saw of her was
when I went to check on her and she was
doing her hair the vanity and basically shut the door.
Speaker 2 (24:22):
On right, and Christopher Walkin supported this. They were in
an argument. Natalie Wood left and then apparently according to
Robert Wagner's autobiography, after Natalie Wood left, they continued their
argument and it got so heated that Robert Wagner smashed
a wine bottle on the table.
Speaker 3 (24:43):
And where to do if.
Speaker 2 (24:44):
You're younger and you're like, this is bizarre behavior, you
need to take into account. These people were ruinously drunk
this night. They were as drunk as you can be
and still be standing up and talking that drunk. So
that's why they were doing things like yelling about careers
and smashing wine bottles on the table, and all sorts
(25:04):
of other things that will come up. But the line
throughout was that Natalie Wood went to bed, Christopher Walking
and Robert Wagner eventually parted ways Robert Robert Wagner I
think went out to the bridge or outside, Christopher Walkin
went to bed, and it wasn't for another hour or
so that they noticed that Natalie Wood was gone, and
(25:27):
so is the dinghy.
Speaker 3 (25:28):
That's right. Natalie Wood's lawyer said after her death that
she often took the dinghy out alone. Robert Wagner apparently,
as far as this initial story goes, wasn't super worried
because this is something that they say she was known
to do. But like you said, she was not a
strong swimmer. And there's an interview that has been played
time and time again throughout all of this sort of
(25:51):
trying to piece together what happened where not too long
before her death, where she said, I'm frightened to death
of the water. I can swim a little bit, but
I'm afraid of the water. I'm afraid of the water
in the dark of water that is dark. So immediately
there's a suspicion of like, why in the world would
she have gone out there in this dinghy, Like sure
she had had some drinks and was maybe drunk. Robert
(26:13):
Wagner in that Autobiograhy said, well, that's exactly the point.
She went out there and realized that, oh wait, I
am too drunk, I'm not a great swimmer, I'm scared
of the water at night. And they didn't hear the
engine start up, so again it was just an accident
that happened. Or maybe she even you know, couldn't get
(26:34):
to sleep because this dinghy wasn't secured and it was
banging against you know, the stateroom near the stateroom, so
she got out to do that to tie it up better,
and then slipped in right.
Speaker 2 (26:45):
Yeah. Because when people are like, why would she go
out and the dinghy if she was afraid of water,
She didn't know how to drive the dinghy, and she
was wearing a night gown, He's like, well, probably it
was banging and making noise. She was just trying to
retie it. Those were the two. That was his first one.
People question it was the second one. The thing is is,
throughout this all the other witnesses supported what he was saying,
(27:06):
including Christopher Walkin. Apparently the last time he talked about
it was in nineteen ninety seven in a Playboy magazine interview,
where he said that she slipped and fell in the water.
And then one of the things that has never changed
over the entire life of this story is that Christopher
Walkin was in bed when all this happened, asleep. No
(27:26):
one's ever changed that little nugget.
Speaker 3 (27:29):
Yeah. He has not talked about it much over the years.
Speaker 2 (27:33):
No, but when he has, he supported Robert Wagner's version.
Speaker 3 (27:37):
Yeah, but he didn't write biographies and go into detail
or anything like that. He's there are a couple of
random interviews where he talks about it, but otherwise he
is like just basically stay mom exactly.
Speaker 2 (27:48):
I mean, talk about it like a terrible weekend on
the boat as a guest, you know.
Speaker 3 (27:53):
Yeah, absolutely so right off the bat. There are people
that are like, this sounds pretty fishy. In nineteen ninety two,
it's like nine years later, Entertainment Weekly had a story.
You know, they you know, journalists kept following up over
the years. Basically it's like, what's up with this story?
Like it's not adding up. There are certain things that
(28:13):
just don't make any sense. Different people came out over
the years that supposedly heard things that was in the
Entertainment Weekly story that was a boat nearby the Capricorn
with John Payne and Marilyn Wayne on board, and they
supposedly heard a woman yelling for help in the direction of.
Speaker 2 (28:31):
The splendor for fifteen minutes.
Speaker 3 (28:33):
Yeah, and that Kashner Vanity Fair article. They said, you know,
they thought it could have just been people goofing off,
like everyone's out there getting drunk and being loud, probably,
and it was hard to tell if it was real
like worried, you know, in panic, screaming, or people just
having a good time. But the last thing they said
was they claim that they heard a man's slurred voice saying, okay, honey,
(28:57):
we'll get you.
Speaker 2 (28:59):
Yeah. The thing is is the cops never interviewed Wayne
and Pain. They just were disincluded, I guess. And as
you'll see, like this first investigation wrapped up pretty quick,
so it's not surprising that they weren't interview but it
is egregious they weren't. There's one other thing that Marilyn
(29:20):
Wayne said. She said, three days after Natalie Wood's death,
she received a little message in scribbled handwriting saying, if
you value your life, keep quiet about what you know,
which is not just a threat, it also is a
very desperate act from a guilty conscience. If you do
(29:40):
something like that, you're really worried about things, because that's
a really over extension of your yourself in that case,
just FYI, I guess yeah.
Speaker 3 (29:52):
And if you picture Christopher Walking saying it, it's bone.
Speaker 2 (29:54):
Chilling, let's hear it.
Speaker 3 (29:56):
No, there's no hay, that's too far.
Speaker 2 (29:59):
How about the same Davis Tunior doing it.
Speaker 3 (30:02):
That'd be kind of fun. Actually, yeah, if you value
your lash, bab keep quiet about what you know. Man,
very nice.
Speaker 2 (30:10):
So that's like, I mean, that's bombshell stuff. But because
it wasn't included in the police investigation, it's treated as
conjecture rumor maybe Marilyn Wayne is trying to get her
fifteen minutes of fame. From what I could tell, she
was not like that at all. She didn't seem to
be prone to confabulations. She seemed like a reliable witness. Yeah,
(30:32):
she wasn't included in the original investigation, but she was
included in subsequent journalism and books on the subject.
Speaker 3 (30:40):
That's right from the beginning. Wana Wood was someone who
has sort of beat the drum of Hey, let's get
this investigation going again. I'm not buying all this stuff.
One of the biggest reasons why is because Dennis Davern,
that ship captain, that yacht captain, his story really changed.
(31:02):
At first, he went along with that official narrative like
you were saying, like all three men did. But later on,
and some of these were paid appearances, we should point
out he said, I was lying about some stuff in
nineteen eighty one. In that Cashner book in two thousand,
he said this whole trip was not great. In fact,
she didn't even spend the night on the boat the
(31:24):
day before, she stayed on shore because there was so
much kind of unpleasantness in fighting going on, and it
stemmed from jealousy, like he didn't like, you know, this
was her co star in her new movie that she
was in, and he thought that they were flirting too
much and that there might be something going on and
he was getting too much attention Christopher Walken, and I
didn't say this stuff back then, Yeah, he said that.
Speaker 2 (31:47):
I think on the Today Show they said, well, what
were you you know, what did you tell the police?
And he said, I told them the story that RJ
came up with.
Speaker 3 (31:58):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (31:58):
So there's another thing too. Dennis Evan has over the
year has been very much accused of being like a
publicity hound. Yeah, trying he's after the money or what
he writ and whatever. He did write a book. But
if you start to dig into him too, and you
watch some interviews with him, he genuinely seems uncomfortable. He
doesn't seem like he's seeking the limelight. He does seem,
(32:21):
I mean, at least at first glance, a person with
a guilty conscience that's trying to come clean. And then
more most importantly, I think he doesn't paint himself in
like this this angelic light, like he lied to police,
he went along with a conspiracy to cover up a murder. Potentially,
like he's he's admitting his own his own culpability while
(32:43):
he's you know, revealing the truth. He's not trying to
keep himself out of it.
Speaker 3 (32:47):
That's a good point. Yeah, that's a very good point.
He also said in this Kashner book, the yacht captain said,
after we got back from dinner on the twenty eighth,
they were drunk. They kept drinking, and Wagner was again
still upset because you know, they were sort of giggling together,
Natalie Wood and Chris Walkin were That's when the wine
(33:10):
bottle got smashed and he yelled, what are you trying
to do? F my wife. That's when, supposedly, according to Dabne,
Wood went to her room and walk in went to
his room.
Speaker 2 (33:24):
Because it's a party foul to smash your wine bottle
on the table and say that to your guest.
Speaker 1 (33:30):
Yeah, it's a big party foul.
Speaker 3 (33:32):
Like the party's over. At that point exactly, they went
to their separate rooms. After a little while. According to Dabne,
Robert Wagner went to Natalie Woods, you know, to their room,
and he heard them quote fighting like crazy, things being
thrown around. Then he said he heard the dinghy being untied.
And in the Finstad book that just came out a
(33:52):
few years ago, apparently the last words that Dennis Dabren
heard Wagner say were get off my effing boat.
Speaker 2 (33:58):
A lot of f words from that guy that night.
Speaker 3 (34:00):
Yeah, that's not hard to heart.
Speaker 2 (34:02):
So one other account that he gave of it was
that there was this scuffle, a lot of physical sounds
of fighting, not just from the stateroom but now outside
on the deck of the boat. Yeah, in earshot, but
out of eyesight, and he hears get off my effing boat,
a little more of a scuffle and then silence. That's eerie,
(34:25):
but it doesn't vibe with Marilyn Wayne's ear witness account,
which was that she heard somebody calling for help for
fifteen minutes. It's possible that Davern's telling what an accurate
He's portraying the story accurately, and that Marilyn Wayne really
did hear somebody else goofing around. Who knows, but those
(34:46):
two it's important that those two accounts earwitness accounts don't
wine up necessarily.
Speaker 3 (34:52):
So around eleven thirty, according to Dabn, Wagner came back
to the bridge, was shovelled looking apparently, and they got
drunk together, apparently on more than wine.
Speaker 2 (35:05):
Right, yeah, I think they moved to Scotch.
Speaker 3 (35:08):
So at one point thirty in the morning, Dabren says
that Wagner said he was going to go check on
her in her room, came back and said she was gone.
That's when they noticed that Dinghy was gone, and he's like,
I gotta turn on these lights and start looking. According
to Davren, Wagner said, don't do that, don't turn on
the engine, don't do anything, because we don't want to
alert all these people.
Speaker 2 (35:29):
It's a very weird thing to say if your wife
is missing off.
Speaker 1 (35:32):
Of a boat, very weird.
Speaker 2 (35:34):
Even if you're ruinously drunk, that is a weird thing
to say, because also take into account Dennis Davren is
ruinously drunk at this time too, and his first instinct
is to turn on the floodlights and start looking around
the boat. Yeah, so Davren said that this is all news.
He's admitting that he lied to the police. At the time.
(35:55):
He was interviewed twice by the police on the morning
of at the boat and then a few days later
in the presence of two of Robert Wagner's lawyers. And
this is not what he told the police. This is
all very new and scandalous stuff. That he's basically pointing
the finger at Robert Wagner without coming out and saying
it overtly. And he's saying that he lied to the
(36:16):
police because he had a really unusual experience. At the time.
He was fairly young. I think he was in his
twenties at the time. He was just some boat dude
who they'd hired to be their captain and had become
friends as close as friends as you can be with
somebody you employer who employs you, right, But he kind
of took them to be friends. And so right after
(36:38):
Natalie Wood died, he essentially moved in with Robert Wagner.
Robert Wagner moved him into his house in Beverly Hills
for a few weeks, and later on Dennis Davren said
it was akin to a hostage situation.
Speaker 3 (36:52):
Yeah, Like, according to Davren, it was like, let me
get this guy in here and just let's keep him
drunk and get drunk, and you know, they're all so
you know, drowning their sorrows and I imagine deeply upset.
But he, yeah, like he said, he felt like he
was not allowed to leave. Almost.
Speaker 2 (37:11):
Yeah. Well, supposedly one of his girlfriends showed up to
speak to him and was turned away at the door.
There wasn't a phone in the bedroom that he had,
and at night when they turned on the security system,
he couldn't leave the bedroom or else it would set
the security system off. So it's not like anybody was like,
you stay here, but he, like you said, he didn't
feel like he could leave. It's a very weird thing
to say, but that is his explanation for why he
(37:33):
didn't say this and why he lied to police at first.
Speaker 3 (37:37):
That's right, I think, now a.
Speaker 2 (37:39):
Break, Yes, yeah, let's do it.
Speaker 3 (37:41):
All right, We'll take a break, and we'll be right
back to talk about what's happened since then. All right.
(38:13):
We mentioned earlier that Davren wrote a book it is
called Goodbye Natalie, Goodbye Splendor. That was in two thousand
and nine. In November of twenty eleven, the LA Sheriff's
Department reopened the investigation, and I remember this is very
big news, saying we have some new information from some
(38:34):
unnamed sources. Lana, like I mentioned, Lana had been beating
the drum to kind of get this thing reopened for years.
A publicist for the Wagner family said, you know, these
are people trying to get their fifteen minutes. They're trying
to profit on the thirty year anniversary of the death.
They didn't specifically mention Dabren's book, but Dabren, for his part,
(38:57):
was like, man, my book's out of print at this point,
and like, no one's trying to sell a book here.
Speaker 2 (39:02):
Well. He also supposedly turned down a fifty thousand dollars
offer from a tabloid to tell the story again, he
didn't do it, so, yeah, he was apparently not out
for the money exactly.
Speaker 3 (39:12):
Well, you know, these are all accounts of people, so
we can just report it, right.
Speaker 2 (39:17):
Yes, Yes, I'm glad you said that, because i don't
want to give the impression that I'm like in Dennis
Davern's corner. I'm just trying to give the full picture.
I'm not trying to push him on anybody as a
reliable person. That's not what I mean to be doing.
So I'm glad you said that.
Speaker 3 (39:31):
Yeah, so officials said that Wagner and Walking like they're
not suspects right now. In twenty eleven, Walking lawyered up
immediately though, which is interesting. And here's the rub. At
this point, the statute of limitations had run out for
anything but murder, So they couldn't you go after him
(39:54):
for assault or anything like that unless it was assault
with intent to murder her. And they're like, we don't
have a case for that. We don't have new physical evidence.
This story has changed, Davern has admitted to lying, So like,
unless we have some ironclad sort of you know, figured
of smoking gun, we can't go after Robert Wagner, you know,
(40:19):
for murdering Natalie Wood.
Speaker 2 (40:21):
Right, But at the same time, Robert Wagner doesn't want
this talked about any longer because whether he did it
or not, it's his name invariably is dragged through the
mud now anytime this story comes up in the press,
especially now that the Sheriff's Department has reopened the case,
So it couldn't have been very comfortable for him. Dennis
(40:42):
Davern did the rounds. He was on today's show. He
was asked directly about lying to the police and admitted
that he had, and apparently other people came forward to
something like one hundred different people contacted the Sheriff's Department
in Los Angeles, and one of the people that the
detectives talked to, one of the lead investigators, was named
(41:03):
Ralph Fernandez. He was put together with a confidential source
of Finstad, the biographer who had done like years of
research on this, and apparently Hernandez found the person credible
enough that this kind of became an extra part of
the case, which was that this person had heard Walkin
(41:26):
say that Wagner and Wood have been fighting and that
Wagner pushed Wood didn't they pushed him over pushed her overboard,
killed her, nothing like that. But it's enough that like
it breaks or it veers away from Walkin's like solid
line throughout the whole time, which is that he was
in bed, it was an accident.
Speaker 3 (41:47):
Yeah, And other people came forward just sort of verifying
that there was like yelling, crashing around people on the boat, arguing.
You know, I think it's basically agreed on at this
point that everyone, you know, it was loud and there
was arguing, and that was fighting. I don't think anyone,
(42:09):
I mean, even from the beginning it was just like, yeah,
we're arguing about politics. But that changed pretty quickly too
because there were so many ear witnesses.
Speaker 1 (42:16):
Basically yeah.
Speaker 2 (42:17):
But it's important to point out though Chuck is Wagner
is never acknowledged that he fought with Wood. It was
always an argument really between him and Walkin, maybe as
far as it was about Wood's career, right, He's never
said he was in an argument directly with Wood, and
especially that he didn't have any like throwing stuff around
(42:38):
the room fight with Natalie Wood. So that's important to
remember too. His explanation is way back in the rear view.
Now as far as we've gone with all of these
different explanations.
Speaker 3 (42:50):
Yeah, absolutely so. Summer of twenty twelve, the cause of
death was formally changed to undetermined and drowning and other
determined factors was the description of the accidental drowning. The
La County corner said, you know, we have to explain
this to the family. There has been a new analysis
(43:13):
of these bruises. You know, some of them indicate that
they were, you know, before she drowned, like they were
from a fight. There were bruises on her wrist that
suggest assault happened, and like they had to tell their
family this.
Speaker 2 (43:30):
Yeah. Also, there was another person named Vidal Herrera who
took photos of Natalie Wood's body for the coroner's office,
and he said that he saw significant wounds on her
head that were bad enough that she might have been
unconscious before she even hit the water from the head wounds. Right,
that's a new piece of information. There was another new
(43:51):
piece of information that came forward in twenty twenty. Who
was someone else that worked at the coroner's office named
Michael Franco.
Speaker 3 (43:58):
Right, yeah, so, and then again this is from Finstad's
book Franco said that these friction burns and striations from
the wrist and on her body were in the opposite
direction or what you would think you would get as
she's trying to climb onto a boat, and there was
bruising on her thighs, bruising on her shins, and to me,
(44:20):
chuck to Franco said, to me, it looked like, you know,
it was someone who had been you know, pushed and
was in a physical altercation with another human.
Speaker 2 (44:30):
Yeah. And back in the day in nineteen eighty two,
when he was an intern at the coroner's office, he
went to Chief Examiner Thomas Nogucci and said all this
stuff to him, and Nogucci apparently told Michael Franco that
some things are better left unsaid and that, however it
was written up, that's all you need to know. She's
a very weird thing for a chief medical examiner to say,
(44:52):
because they're the ones who are responsible for determining cause
of death.
Speaker 3 (44:55):
Yeah. Absolutely, where we stand today as of about a
year and a half ago, in May twenty twenty two,
the Sheriff's Department has ended the investigation, but it remains
a quote open unsolved case. You know, it's become a
thing that has divided as family because on one side
(45:16):
you have Lana sort of beating the drum to keep
this thing going and very suspicious of Robert Wagner. And
then you have all the daughters have remained steadfast behind
their dad, and they were like, he loved her very
very much. Things may have been volatile, but he did
not kill her, although Lana also says like, I don't
(45:37):
think he had some murders and tent I think they
were drunk and things got out of hand and he
flew into a moment of rage that ended in her death,
which is a different accusation than you know, he was
some abusive husband and this was bound to happen or
something right exactly.
Speaker 2 (45:55):
So she said this in a twenty twenty one memoir
that you mentioned before. It's called Little Sister Colon my
investigation into the mysterious death of Natalie Wood, and she
says that Robert Wagner told her that after the funeral,
She's like, what happened? And Robert Wagner told her, Natalie
Wood's sister, that Natalie had probably taken the dinghy out
to party hop and again she didn't know how to
(46:17):
use the dinghy. She was afraid of the water, especially
in the dark, and she was wearing a nightgown and
socks and a coat and that was it. So it
didn't hold water. And I think that really kind of
triggered Lona woods decades long suspicion of this whole thing.
So yeah, like you said, the family's been divided basically
ever since, and the whole thing is still it's an
(46:38):
open case. It's unsolved, but they've exhausted all the leads
that came out of the twenty eleven re examination of it,
so it's essentially back on the shelf for now.
Speaker 3 (46:48):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (46:49):
Pretty nuts, man, it is.
Speaker 3 (46:51):
It's a story that I think we will never know
truly what happened Wagner's in his nineties unless there's some
sort of deathbed confession from he or Chris Walkin, like
it's going to go to their graves. I would imagine.
Speaker 2 (47:06):
I don't know, man, because think about it, after Kirk Douglas,
Lana Wood named him as the as her sister's rapist
when she was sixteen. So I'm wondering if one of
these people are going to say, here finally is the evidence. Yes,
Robert Wagner totally killed Natalie Wood, and now that he's dead,
I feel comfortable explaining how. Who knows.
Speaker 3 (47:25):
I think it's a possibility, but it would have to
be a recording of him saying that, otherwise it would
just be another person saying, well, he told me, sure, sure,
you know what I mean. Like, the only three people
that know what happened are Daborn, Walkin and Wagner.
Speaker 2 (47:41):
Right, and all Walkin wants to do is focus on
cow bell and dance. I would say, probably the most
important clue out of this whole thing, though, Chuck, is
that Robert Wagner and Dennis Davern switched to Scotch on
the bridge.
Speaker 3 (47:56):
Is that the one? Yeah, that's a that's a powered
drinking move late at night, for sure. I've seen it happen.
Speaker 2 (48:03):
Do you have anything else?
Speaker 3 (48:05):
I got nothing else. It's just tragic story.
Speaker 2 (48:08):
Yeah, that's the thing to remember.
Speaker 3 (48:09):
Yeah, you know it was. It's easy to get caught
up in this Hollywood mystery, but there was a real
human with a family that died. And I hope people
don't forget that. And I hope we were respectful.
Speaker 2 (48:21):
Yeah, I think we were. That's a rule of thumb.
For all true crime stuff. You know.
Speaker 3 (48:25):
Absolutely.
Speaker 2 (48:27):
Well, since Chuck said absolutely, I'm going to end on
a high note for me and we'll go to a listener.
Speaker 1 (48:32):
Man.
Speaker 3 (48:35):
Hey, guys, this is one from a long time ago
actually that I forgot to read from Gareth. I was
listening to the Diaries episode and thought you guys might
like to hear about ingratitude lists because we were talking
about gratitude lists when I was working in mental health support.
We learned about them and the basic premises sometimes your
life is full of problems and you feel terrible. It's
not always that helpful to be told to write down
(48:57):
what you feel grateful for, and some people find it
a bit like their problems aren't being taken seriously or
being brushed under the rug. So sometimes it can actually
be helpful to write down everything that's wrong, everything is
hurting you or generally just taking you off, as a
way to vent and hopefully understand why you feel, why
you feel how you feel, and possibly being able to
(49:18):
process it and make a plan on how to change it.
Speaker 2 (49:21):
Nice.
Speaker 3 (49:22):
Yeah, anyway, I thought it could be of interest to
you and potentially helpful to some listeners who have a
lot going on To feel vindicated in their distress. And
just to be clear, it's not about dwelling on the bad.
It's mostly about just being able to say, yeah, fair
play me, I'm dealing with a lot nice.
Speaker 2 (49:40):
That's really awesome, And that is from again, Gareth. Thanks
a lot, Gareth. I would say Gareth is sitting in
the best recent email chair for now. Huh.
Speaker 3 (49:49):
Yeah, that's a good one.
Speaker 2 (49:50):
Yeah, that was a very good one. Thanks for letting
everybody know about that, because I'm sure there are some
people out there that listen to that Diaries episode and
thought the very same thing, and now they're vindicated undismissed.
If you want to be like Gareth and try or
shot at being in the best recent email chair, you
can do that. Send it off to Stuff Podcasts at
iHeartRadio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a production
(50:14):
of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the
iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and Chuck's
here too, and Jerry's here too, and this is stuff
you should know part of our ongoing, indefinitely continuous through
prime edition.
Speaker 3 (00:22):
That's right, and weirdly, our second paulap Tompkins reference is
coming on this episode. Oh yeah, yeah, because Paul's wonderful,
hysterical wife, Jannie looks like Natalie Would.
Speaker 1 (00:36):
Okay, is she known for that?
Speaker 3 (00:38):
I mean, I don't know if she's internationally known, but
I think Janie knows it and her friends know it,
and it has been said out loud.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
I got, So that's that's what I'm after. I mean,
if this is just your observation or not.
Speaker 3 (00:51):
Oh no, no, no, it's it's been It's been said before.
It's on record.
Speaker 2 (00:55):
So if you don't know who Natalie Would is, first
go look up Jennie Tompkins. You get a pretty good idea.
You could also look up Natalie Wood herself, sure, but
you probably are familiar with her one way or another.
First of all, she probably captured your heart as the
little girl who doubted the existence of Santa Claus a
Miracle on thirty fourth Street, the original one. She might
(01:19):
have also captured your heart as the kind of good
girl gone bad in Rubble without a Cause. She also
may have been like I like that girl in West
Side Story, or I like that girl in Splundor in
the Grass, or I like that girl in the nineteen
seventy six made for TV remake of Cat on a
(01:40):
Hot Tin Roof. Well, then you like Natalie Wood.
Speaker 3 (01:43):
Guys, yeah, Or if you grew up like we did
in the eighties, you might like her from the sci
fi classic, not classic eighties, early eighties sci fi classic Brainstorm.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
I never saw it.
Speaker 3 (01:59):
Oh really, yeah, you should check it out. It was
sort of one of those It was in the early eighties.
Like there were a few a few of those movies
that were kind of in the same vein of do
you remember the movie Looker, Yes, like with Albert Finney,
And then there was the Tom seliquin about the Little
Rope with Jeene Simmons, with the little Robo run Away.
It was in that vein.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
Oh, okay, well, definitely that sounds like a great triple
feature if you ask me.
Speaker 3 (02:23):
It's kind of right up your alley. I bet you'd
like it.
Speaker 2 (02:25):
Okay, I'll check that one out. I have not seen that.
I was familiar with her from Rebel without a Cause
because I went through a real big James Dean phase
in high school. Oh yeah, you might also be familiar. Yeah,
you might also be familiar with her sister Lana would. Yeah,
she was plenty of tool and diamonds are forever. She
was very well known for that. And both of these
(02:47):
sisters were originally named Zacharenko. They were the daughters of
Russian immigrants, Maria and Nick Zakarenko, who moved to San
Francisco and had these two kids, and their mom said,
you're both going to be stars, especially you. Natalie born Natalia.
Speaker 3 (03:03):
That's right, and Lana was born what Svetlana?
Speaker 2 (03:08):
Mm hm.
Speaker 3 (03:09):
So they, you know, they kind of americanized their names
kind of kind of and you know, we're going to
be reading through a few different Olivia helped us with this,
but she got a lot of this stuff from a
few different biographies. So if we reference like Suzanne Finnstad's
biography or maybe Robert Wagner's biography or autobiography, that's that's
(03:30):
what we're talking about.
Speaker 2 (03:31):
Yeah, our Sam Kashner wrote a very great Vanity Fair
article on it.
Speaker 3 (03:36):
Oh that's right, very good one. But Suzanne Finnstad's biography
recounts the childhood that wasn't as great as it seemed
from the outside. That her her father was an alcoholic,
her mother was a very controlling sort of manager of
her career and would organize meetings with the very experienced
(03:59):
men and acts trying to get her foot in the door,
including one incident where she did so with Kirk Douglas
where she was well. She says she was raped by
Kirk Douglas when she was sixteen at one of these
meetings at the Chateau Marmont. And I was kept secret
(04:19):
for many, many years until Kirk Douglas died, and then
Lana came out and said, well, I feel like I
should reveal who this person was now. And I think
this was in her book that she wrote about her sister,
so there was also that account of her life.
Speaker 2 (04:33):
Yeah, so that's just Kirk Douglas. Apparently her mom arranged
sexual liaison when she was fifteen with Frank Sinatra to
get this part in Rubble without a cause. She apparently
had to prove she was capable of being a bad
girl by sleeping with the director, who was forty four
at the time. I think she was sixteen then too,
(04:53):
And her mom was like complicit in all of this,
Like she's just like, this is the price for entry
into Hollywood. Sorry, just keep your mouth shutting your chin up,
which is I just can't imagine the damage of just
these these instances, but then of being like that, dismissed
and unsupported by you know, your mom. Just I can't.
(05:16):
It's just awful. But what's amazing is that she managed
to stay alive and actually thrive over the years, because
she did develop a really amazing career, especially early on
in the sixties.
Speaker 3 (05:28):
Yeah, you mentioned all those, you know, classic movies she
was in. In nineteen fifty seven, she married for the
first time Robert Wagner, who you and I Josh would
go on to know as the lead actor in the
eighties TV show Heart to Heart.
Speaker 2 (05:42):
Co starring Stephanie Powers.
Speaker 3 (05:44):
Stephanie Powers. But in the nineteen fifties he was an
actor kind of you know, it wasn't super famous, but
he acted a lot, and then his star rose as
hers was kind of fading. But they divorced in nineteen
sixty one on their first marriage. People. You know, some
people say magazines, especially back then, said that, you know,
(06:07):
Natalie would they broke up because he had she had
an affair with Warren Batty. Her Splendor in the Grass
co star Sam Kashner in his article says, yeah, this
basically is what happened. But in the Finnstad biography, she's like, no, no, no,
that is not true at all, and including including Lana
will back this up, says, you know, Natalie stumbled upon
(06:29):
r J. Her husband, having relations with a man and
had a suicide attempt, which was one of several apparently,
and that's what happened to their first marriage.
Speaker 2 (06:39):
Yeah, but she allowed the press to say that she
had had an affair with Warren Batty. The reason that
that held water, even if it wasn't true, is because
they were very close. On the set of Splendor in
the Grass. They had like just their characters had like
just this crazy, sizzling love affair, and as actors, it's
tough to separate those things.
Speaker 3 (06:59):
I belie an Warren Beatty had a certain reputation.
Speaker 2 (07:04):
Yes, so apparently that is what Robert Wagner thought. He
thought that they were having an affair, and he was
very jealous and very protective and just felt cuckholded. I
guess by this, even though supposedly it didn't even happen.
But that's a really important point. That was one of
the reasons they broke up was he was very jealous
(07:27):
and very overprotective of his relationship with her.
Speaker 3 (07:31):
That's right. She got married to a gentleman named Richard
Gregson after that in nineteen sixty nine. He's a British
writer and actor, just sort of, you know, producer of
film industry guy. They had their daughter, Natasha, who goes
by Natasha Gregson Wagner. Although she's married now. She may
(07:52):
have added another name to the end of her name.
I'm not sure McGill cutty, mguilla cutty. But she was
an actor too. I haven't seen anything a little while.
I'm not sure she's still in doing that because she's
I know she made a documentary recently about her mom.
But I remember seeing her in a few movies back
in the day that she did a really good one
with Robert Downey Junior. And I can't think of the
(08:14):
name of it now.
Speaker 2 (08:14):
Less than zo oh oh. I know who it is.
The Last Days of Disco. No pick up artist.
Speaker 3 (08:20):
No, he wasn't in the Last Days of Disco.
Speaker 1 (08:24):
Oh I was it?
Speaker 2 (08:26):
I can't remember less than zero. No weekend at Bernie's.
Speaker 3 (08:32):
Think. I think it was just like three people in
the movie. Was a very small Oh, now you know
what it was weekend at Berney's.
Speaker 2 (08:37):
There.
Speaker 3 (08:38):
So she married wag I'm sorry, Gregson. And during that
same period, Wagner married a woman named Mary and Marshall.
They had a daughter named Katie in sixty four, and
then they eventually remarried in seventy two and had a
daughter named Courtney. So now there are our three daughters,
one that Wood and Wagner had together, and one of
(08:58):
each from previous marriages. For her part, Lana Wood was like,
why did why are you getting back together with this guy?
And as recounted in her book, Natalie said, sometimes the
devil you know is better than the devil you don't.
Speaker 1 (09:12):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (09:12):
And the reason why Lana Wood Orlana Wood was even
questioning her was because they had a tumultuous relationship. Well,
they were married the first time, but apparently they never
fell out of love or they never stopped loving each
other's how I saw it put think in an investigation
discovery documentary, and so they remarried in nineteen seventy two.
(09:34):
They had Courtney in nineteen seventy four and basically just
went back to married life, but now with a family
with three daughters. That was a big difference between their
first go round. They were trying to make the family
work and apparently it was going fairly well.
Speaker 3 (09:48):
Yeah, he was a little older when he like seven
or eight years older, eight I think eight years older,
and yeah, he got that role in Heart to Heart,
and so he started, you know, doing pretty we well
in the industry while you know, and you know, it's
just the same as true today and an actress in
(10:08):
her forties they start looking elsewhere, generally speaking, unless you're
you know, like a Meryl Streep or somebody, you're not
gonna get the calls that he used to get. And
that's what happened certainly with Natalie Wood after great, great
fame in the nineteen sixties, fifties into the sixties, and
then it started to sort of tail off into the seventies.
Speaker 2 (10:27):
Yes, but if you're a man in Hollywood and as
you start to age you become distinguished, it's a different
right of your career, and that's certainly what happened with
Robert Wagner.
Speaker 3 (10:35):
No, he wasn't washed up at forty three. I guess
he would have been almost fifty.
Speaker 2 (10:39):
Yeah, he actually his star started to rise again. So
they had oppositional careers as far as time went.
Speaker 3 (10:50):
And that figures in, by the way, that's the reason
we're I'm talking about this right.
Speaker 2 (10:55):
So it's November nineteen eighty one. They've been married again
for nine years, and Natalie Wood's forty three, Robert Wagner's
fifty one, and I say we take our first break
and come back and start talking about the problem.
Speaker 1 (11:11):
We'll be right back, okay, Chuck.
Speaker 2 (11:40):
So in Thanksgiving nineteen eighty one, the weekend after, Robert
Wagner and Natalie Wood took their yacht out, the Splendor
sixty foot yacht. Pretty nice. Apparently it had five state rooms,
the whole deal. It was like a legit yacht. Robert
Wagner was a boat guy, a yacht guy. Really. I
think they took it to Santa Catalina Island better known
(12:03):
as Catalina Island. I think like twenty miles off the
coast of Los Angeles and I've never been there, but
I get the impression that it is very yacht friendly,
almost like the South coast of France is how I
kind of take it, where very rich people put their
yachts in and then go and party in town and
(12:23):
then go party from yacht to yacht. And so they
showed up Thanksgiving weekend at Catalina Island looking to have
a good time.
Speaker 3 (12:33):
Yeah, they originally were going to have a lot more
friends on board, but apparently the weather was the forecast
was a little dodgy, and so the only person that
came along was Christopher Walkin, who said, it takes more
than a few rain drops to frighten me.
Speaker 1 (12:51):
It's not bad.
Speaker 2 (12:52):
Didn't you interview Christopher Walkin on movie Crush once?
Speaker 1 (12:56):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (12:57):
Sure, I did.
Speaker 2 (12:57):
Pretty cool.
Speaker 3 (12:58):
Listen to that episode great, and also listened to the
Kevin Pollock episode.
Speaker 2 (13:04):
So the reason that Christopher Walkin was there because you're
just like, well, that's a little random, Natalie Wood, Robert Wagner.
Christopher Walkin, he was an up and coming actor at
the time. I'm not even sure did he have the
Dead Zone under his belt yet?
Speaker 3 (13:18):
M I mean he had done he did The Deer
Hunter by then Annie Hall and The Deer Hunter and
I don't know if Dead Zone it was right around there,
but he was, Yeah, he was doing his thing a
little bit.
Speaker 2 (13:29):
He was like Hollywood's it guy actor at the time,
like he was in demand, and he was co starring
in this movie Brainstorm with Natalie Wood. So she invited
her co star friend to the yacht and he was
the only one that came out of this whole group.
And then very noteworthy as the fourth person, Dennis Davern
(13:52):
He was the captain of the yacht and so the
four of them were on this yachting weekend after Thanksgiving.
Speaker 3 (14:00):
Right actually Dead Zone came out that very year, so
he was This was kind of early peak walkin Okay.
So on Saturday, the twenty eighth of Thanksgiving weekend, they
ate dinner at Doug's Harbor reef on Catalina. They got very,
very drunk. The manager there said that he was even
(14:21):
worried that they couldn't get back. They had a little
inflatable motorized dingy, you know, that's what you do when
you have a yacht to go to shore. It was
called the Prince Valiant, which is also the name of
an early Robert Wagner movie, and obviously Splendor was named
after Splendor in the Grass, so they had their little boats.
Hers was the yacht name. His was the dinghy name,
(14:41):
which is interesting.
Speaker 2 (14:42):
And he hated his role in Prince Valiant. He felt
it was his worst role. He was apparently mocked for
it widely, so it was kind of like tongue in
cheek that he named kell boat Valiant.
Speaker 3 (14:53):
Yeah, yeah, that makes sense then. But the night manager
there at Doug's harbor reef was like, I don't even
know if these guys are so drunk the I fear
for their safety of just getting back onto the Splendor.
So he said, hey, harbor patrol person, can you make
sure they get back safely? They left about ten ten
thirty at night, and then at one thirty in the morning,
(15:14):
Robert Wagner and Captain Dabn made a call to the
shore saying, you know, Natalie what has gone missing? We
need your help this one thirty am. Two hours later,
at three thirty they called the Coastguard to get a
formal search going, and then very tragically, at seven forty
five in the morning, Davern identified the body of Natalie
(15:35):
Wood about a mile south of where the yacht was anchored,
and a flannel nightgown, socks, and a red down jacket.
Speaker 2 (15:43):
Yep, the dinghy they found washed up on the shore
and very very importantly, the oars were locked, so they
had not been used to row. The ignition was off,
so it had not been turned on, and yet it
was just kind of washed away from the boat. This
was an enormous deal. I mean, like, Natalie Wood was
(16:08):
already like Hollywood legend. And what's more, she was one
of the reasons she was having trouble getting parts was
not just her age, but she was old Hollywood, and
Hollywood had started to transition in the seventies into like
a newer version of itself and kind of resented the
old studios and stuff. So she was like Hollywood royalty
(16:28):
at this time already. And the idea that she died
from unnatural causes was just I mean, it was just
a sensation right out of the gate.
Speaker 3 (16:38):
Yeah, I mean, I remember this. I was a kid,
but I was a kid who devoured entertainment. Tonight the
TV show when that first came out, which was somewhere
around here, I remember being about that age when that
TV show premiered and I would watch it every night
and keep up with that stuff. And I remember very
distinctly Natalie would die and drowning and her husband I
(17:01):
was like the heart to heart guy, and kind of
out of the gate, it was portrayed as as an accident.
And that's sort of what you know this podcast is
going to detail is the way the story has changed
over the years, the suspicions that it wasn't just a
simple accident. And it kind of started off with the autopsy.
There was a medical examiner named Joseph Troy who said
(17:25):
that Nellie Wood's blood alcohol content level was point one four,
just very high.
Speaker 2 (17:31):
Yeah, let me just I look that up because I'm like, okay,
what does that actually mean in like like physical behavioral terms. Yeah,
according to the South Australia government, point zero eight two
point one five, So just above what Natalie Wood had
in her bloodstream, you can expect slurred speech, impaired balance,
unstable emotions, possible nausea and vomiting. Just above point one five,
(17:57):
you can't control your bladder and you probably will need
help walking around. So she was very drunk at the
time she died.
Speaker 3 (18:06):
Yeah, And uh, if you want to be very very
technically bored. You should go listen to our episode on breathalyzers.
Speaker 2 (18:13):
Yeah, they were really difficult to explain.
Speaker 3 (18:16):
That was a beast and I'm surprised we don't remember
that more often when we're asked what episodes have been
the hardest or worst.
Speaker 2 (18:24):
Definitely the hardest because there's like a crystal involved that
somehow like tells your fortune and then they translate that
and the ones and zeros.
Speaker 3 (18:31):
A very very tough episode, but it's out there. He
uh so, Troy said point one four percent, and also
a medical examiner, right, yeah, and also said that there
were bruises on her arms and legs and face and
basically said, you know, it looks like she probably fell overboard.
She was trying to get into the dinghy. She was
(18:52):
very drunk, and this these bruises and things were is
evidence of her kind of doggedly trying to get back
on unsuccessfully. There was a chief medical examiner named Thomas
Nogucci for the county who said, yeah, and if you
look at the dinghy here, there's scratches on the side
of it. Clearly she was trying to pull herself back
(19:13):
up on this thing. But she was in that down
jacket and it became very very heavy, and she probably
just held onto that dinghy and got hypothermia and exhausted
and she drowned and it's an accident.
Speaker 2 (19:24):
Yeah, So that was the official line for a very
long time. For some reason, Natalie Wood decades tried to, yeah,
tried to get into the Valiant, the dinghy late at night.
She was very drunk, and as she was trying to
get into the dinghy, she slipped and fell and drowned.
She was well known as a strong swimmer, or not
a strong swimmer, not very good at swimming at all,
(19:44):
the opposite of a strong swimmer. The thing is is
that doesn't explain why she tried to get into the
dinghy at night. That was It's always been an outstanding question.
And so Thomas Nogucci, the chief medical Examiner for the
Los Angeles County Coroner's Office, come to psychological autopsy, which
is a thing, but from what I can tell, it's
(20:05):
a thing that you commission when you're trying to show
that a suspicious death that seems accidental was actually suicide.
Like they take into account like the person's life history,
their family history, social interactions, what they were doing right
before they died. So it's kind of odd that he
(20:25):
had this commissioned. It was even odder that when he
got it back, he's like, I'm not releasing to the public,
and he said that he was afraid that he would
be accused of sensationalism that ship had already sailed. He
was very much despised by Natalie Wood's friends and just
Hollywood in general because he made the grave mistake of
(20:47):
mentioning that she was drunk when she died accidentally at
the press conference about her death and their findings, and
he received the ire of Frank Sinatra, Screen Actors Guild
and generally all of Hollywood, and ended up being demoted
from his position at the top of the coroner's office
to not chief. They actually assigned him the title not
(21:07):
Chief Examiner anymore. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (21:10):
I think it was definitely one of those cases where
she was Hollywood royalty, like you said, and no one
in the world wants to hear that Natalie Wood got
so drunk that she slipped and fell into the water
and drowned. No, it's tawdry, Yeah, And so they tried to,
you know, they tried to keep that quiet. It was
a you know, when he mentioned it the press conference,
(21:32):
it was a big deal. And now we get into
sort of the you know what happened after three decades
and how this story has changed over the years.
Speaker 2 (21:41):
Yeah, because just one thing, Chuck. If that were it
and like the story stayed straight all these years and
nothing ever changed, it would be fishy, but not a
big deal. The reason that it's a big deal and
we're talking about it today is that over the years,
the people who were there changed their stories, and that's
why it goes from kind of fishy to an all
(22:03):
out mystery.
Speaker 3 (22:05):
Yeah, an all out mystery and scandal really that you know,
how many years later is this people are still sort
of talking about it, some people are still obsessed with
it and writing books about it. For Wagner's part, he
has done. Like I mentioned earlier, there was an eighty
six authorized biography, Heart to Heart spelled with an E
(22:27):
this time, not like the TV show because on the
TV show they were the Hearts the Harts.
Speaker 2 (22:31):
But he couldn't get the use his studio.
Speaker 3 (22:35):
He didn't want to pay for that, so Heart to
Heart with Robert Wagner and he said in nineteen eighty
six that me and Chris walking gotten an argument about politics.
There was another biography in two thousand and eight called
Pieces of My Heart. I'm Sorry. This is the autobiography
that he himself wrote, obviously probably with some help, where
(22:56):
he said, actually, the fight was about my wife. We
were having an argument about her, like, you know, forget
about this career. You know, you had your day, you
should just be mom. Now we got these three girls,
I've got this great acting career going, so let me
do that. And Christopher Walker was like, no, she's Natalie
(23:17):
wood Man.
Speaker 2 (23:18):
Wait wait, wait, wait, you gotta do it as walking.
Speaker 3 (23:21):
Nook Korea, Matta's Robert God.
Speaker 2 (23:27):
That's great. Jay tied for first with Sammy Davis Junior.
Speaker 3 (23:31):
No, well, but it's also like probably one of the
worst walkings because everyone does walking, and most of them
are pretty great.
Speaker 2 (23:38):
I don't do walking. I admire your walking. I'm just
gonna put.
Speaker 3 (23:42):
It, give it a shut nothing.
Speaker 2 (23:44):
H No, you know what happens when I actually try
to do a voice of Go South.
Speaker 3 (23:51):
Same year, So no matter how it shakes out, Wagner
basically said, you know, as far as what the fight
was about, was that, even though that is key, that
he changed his story because you know first is about
politics and it was personal. Yeah, that's a bad change,
it's a big change. But either way, he said, Natalie,
you know, was annoyed, she was put off by all this,
(24:12):
or she just got bored. She went to the master
cabin and the last thing I saw of her was
when I went to check on her and she was
doing her hair the vanity and basically shut the door.
Speaker 2 (24:22):
On right, and Christopher Walkin supported this. They were in
an argument. Natalie Wood left and then apparently according to
Robert Wagner's autobiography, after Natalie Wood left, they continued their
argument and it got so heated that Robert Wagner smashed
a wine bottle on the table.
Speaker 3 (24:43):
And where to do if.
Speaker 2 (24:44):
You're younger and you're like, this is bizarre behavior, you
need to take into account. These people were ruinously drunk
this night. They were as drunk as you can be
and still be standing up and talking that drunk. So
that's why they were doing things like yelling about careers
and smashing wine bottles on the table, and all sorts
(25:04):
of other things that will come up. But the line
throughout was that Natalie Wood went to bed, Christopher Walking
and Robert Wagner eventually parted ways Robert Robert Wagner I
think went out to the bridge or outside, Christopher Walkin
went to bed, and it wasn't for another hour or
so that they noticed that Natalie Wood was gone, and
(25:27):
so is the dinghy.
Speaker 3 (25:28):
That's right. Natalie Wood's lawyer said after her death that
she often took the dinghy out alone. Robert Wagner apparently,
as far as this initial story goes, wasn't super worried
because this is something that they say she was known
to do. But like you said, she was not a
strong swimmer. And there's an interview that has been played
time and time again throughout all of this sort of
(25:51):
trying to piece together what happened where not too long
before her death, where she said, I'm frightened to death
of the water. I can swim a little bit, but
I'm afraid of the water. I'm afraid of the water
in the dark of water that is dark. So immediately
there's a suspicion of like, why in the world would
she have gone out there in this dinghy, Like sure
she had had some drinks and was maybe drunk. Robert
(26:13):
Wagner in that Autobiograhy said, well, that's exactly the point.
She went out there and realized that, oh wait, I
am too drunk, I'm not a great swimmer, I'm scared
of the water at night. And they didn't hear the
engine start up, so again it was just an accident
that happened. Or maybe she even you know, couldn't get
(26:34):
to sleep because this dinghy wasn't secured and it was
banging against you know, the stateroom near the stateroom, so
she got out to do that to tie it up better,
and then slipped in right.
Speaker 2 (26:45):
Yeah. Because when people are like, why would she go
out and the dinghy if she was afraid of water,
She didn't know how to drive the dinghy, and she
was wearing a night gown, He's like, well, probably it
was banging and making noise. She was just trying to
retie it. Those were the two. That was his first one.
People question it was the second one. The thing is is,
throughout this all the other witnesses supported what he was saying,
(27:06):
including Christopher Walkin. Apparently the last time he talked about
it was in nineteen ninety seven in a Playboy magazine interview,
where he said that she slipped and fell in the water.
And then one of the things that has never changed
over the entire life of this story is that Christopher
Walkin was in bed when all this happened, asleep. No
(27:26):
one's ever changed that little nugget.
Speaker 3 (27:29):
Yeah. He has not talked about it much over the years.
Speaker 2 (27:33):
No, but when he has, he supported Robert Wagner's version.
Speaker 3 (27:37):
Yeah, but he didn't write biographies and go into detail
or anything like that. He's there are a couple of
random interviews where he talks about it, but otherwise he
is like just basically stay mom exactly.
Speaker 2 (27:48):
I mean, talk about it like a terrible weekend on
the boat as a guest, you know.
Speaker 3 (27:53):
Yeah, absolutely so right off the bat. There are people
that are like, this sounds pretty fishy. In nineteen ninety two,
it's like nine years later, Entertainment Weekly had a story.
You know, they you know, journalists kept following up over
the years. Basically it's like, what's up with this story?
Like it's not adding up. There are certain things that
(28:13):
just don't make any sense. Different people came out over
the years that supposedly heard things that was in the
Entertainment Weekly story that was a boat nearby the Capricorn
with John Payne and Marilyn Wayne on board, and they
supposedly heard a woman yelling for help in the direction of.
Speaker 2 (28:31):
The splendor for fifteen minutes.
Speaker 3 (28:33):
Yeah, and that Kashner Vanity Fair article. They said, you know,
they thought it could have just been people goofing off,
like everyone's out there getting drunk and being loud, probably,
and it was hard to tell if it was real
like worried, you know, in panic, screaming, or people just
having a good time. But the last thing they said
was they claim that they heard a man's slurred voice saying, okay, honey,
(28:57):
we'll get you.
Speaker 2 (28:59):
Yeah. The thing is is the cops never interviewed Wayne
and Pain. They just were disincluded, I guess. And as
you'll see, like this first investigation wrapped up pretty quick,
so it's not surprising that they weren't interview but it
is egregious they weren't. There's one other thing that Marilyn
(29:20):
Wayne said. She said, three days after Natalie Wood's death,
she received a little message in scribbled handwriting saying, if
you value your life, keep quiet about what you know,
which is not just a threat, it also is a
very desperate act from a guilty conscience. If you do
(29:40):
something like that, you're really worried about things, because that's
a really over extension of your yourself in that case,
just FYI, I guess yeah.
Speaker 3 (29:52):
And if you picture Christopher Walking saying it, it's bone.
Speaker 2 (29:54):
Chilling, let's hear it.
Speaker 3 (29:56):
No, there's no hay, that's too far.
Speaker 2 (29:59):
How about the same Davis Tunior doing it.
Speaker 3 (30:02):
That'd be kind of fun. Actually, yeah, if you value
your lash, bab keep quiet about what you know. Man,
very nice.
Speaker 2 (30:10):
So that's like, I mean, that's bombshell stuff. But because
it wasn't included in the police investigation, it's treated as
conjecture rumor maybe Marilyn Wayne is trying to get her
fifteen minutes of fame. From what I could tell, she
was not like that at all. She didn't seem to
be prone to confabulations. She seemed like a reliable witness. Yeah,
(30:32):
she wasn't included in the original investigation, but she was
included in subsequent journalism and books on the subject.
Speaker 3 (30:40):
That's right from the beginning. Wana Wood was someone who
has sort of beat the drum of Hey, let's get
this investigation going again. I'm not buying all this stuff.
One of the biggest reasons why is because Dennis Davern,
that ship captain, that yacht captain, his story really changed.
(31:02):
At first, he went along with that official narrative like
you were saying, like all three men did. But later on,
and some of these were paid appearances, we should point
out he said, I was lying about some stuff in
nineteen eighty one. In that Cashner book in two thousand,
he said this whole trip was not great. In fact,
she didn't even spend the night on the boat the
(31:24):
day before, she stayed on shore because there was so
much kind of unpleasantness in fighting going on, and it
stemmed from jealousy, like he didn't like, you know, this
was her co star in her new movie that she
was in, and he thought that they were flirting too
much and that there might be something going on and
he was getting too much attention Christopher Walken, and I
didn't say this stuff back then, Yeah, he said that.
Speaker 2 (31:47):
I think on the Today Show they said, well, what
were you you know, what did you tell the police?
And he said, I told them the story that RJ
came up with.
Speaker 3 (31:58):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (31:58):
So there's another thing too. Dennis Evan has over the
year has been very much accused of being like a
publicity hound. Yeah, trying he's after the money or what
he writ and whatever. He did write a book. But
if you start to dig into him too, and you
watch some interviews with him, he genuinely seems uncomfortable. He
doesn't seem like he's seeking the limelight. He does seem,
(32:21):
I mean, at least at first glance, a person with
a guilty conscience that's trying to come clean. And then
more most importantly, I think he doesn't paint himself in
like this this angelic light, like he lied to police,
he went along with a conspiracy to cover up a murder. Potentially,
like he's he's admitting his own his own culpability while
(32:43):
he's you know, revealing the truth. He's not trying to
keep himself out of it.
Speaker 3 (32:47):
That's a good point. Yeah, that's a very good point.
He also said in this Kashner book, the yacht captain said,
after we got back from dinner on the twenty eighth,
they were drunk. They kept drinking, and Wagner was again
still upset because you know, they were sort of giggling together,
Natalie Wood and Chris Walkin were That's when the wine
(33:10):
bottle got smashed and he yelled, what are you trying
to do? F my wife. That's when, supposedly, according to Dabne,
Wood went to her room and walk in went to
his room.
Speaker 2 (33:24):
Because it's a party foul to smash your wine bottle
on the table and say that to your guest.
Speaker 1 (33:30):
Yeah, it's a big party foul.
Speaker 3 (33:32):
Like the party's over. At that point exactly, they went
to their separate rooms. After a little while. According to Dabne,
Robert Wagner went to Natalie Woods, you know, to their room,
and he heard them quote fighting like crazy, things being
thrown around. Then he said he heard the dinghy being untied.
And in the Finstad book that just came out a
(33:52):
few years ago, apparently the last words that Dennis Dabren
heard Wagner say were get off my effing boat.
Speaker 2 (33:58):
A lot of f words from that guy that night.
Speaker 3 (34:00):
Yeah, that's not hard to heart.
Speaker 2 (34:02):
So one other account that he gave of it was
that there was this scuffle, a lot of physical sounds
of fighting, not just from the stateroom but now outside
on the deck of the boat. Yeah, in earshot, but
out of eyesight, and he hears get off my effing boat,
a little more of a scuffle and then silence. That's eerie,
(34:25):
but it doesn't vibe with Marilyn Wayne's ear witness account,
which was that she heard somebody calling for help for
fifteen minutes. It's possible that Davern's telling what an accurate
He's portraying the story accurately, and that Marilyn Wayne really
did hear somebody else goofing around. Who knows, but those
(34:46):
two it's important that those two accounts earwitness accounts don't
wine up necessarily.
Speaker 3 (34:52):
So around eleven thirty, according to Dabn, Wagner came back
to the bridge, was shovelled looking apparently, and they got
drunk together, apparently on more than wine.
Speaker 2 (35:05):
Right, yeah, I think they moved to Scotch.
Speaker 3 (35:08):
So at one point thirty in the morning, Dabren says
that Wagner said he was going to go check on
her in her room, came back and said she was gone.
That's when they noticed that Dinghy was gone, and he's like,
I gotta turn on these lights and start looking. According
to Davren, Wagner said, don't do that, don't turn on
the engine, don't do anything, because we don't want to
alert all these people.
Speaker 2 (35:29):
It's a very weird thing to say if your wife
is missing off.
Speaker 1 (35:32):
Of a boat, very weird.
Speaker 2 (35:34):
Even if you're ruinously drunk, that is a weird thing
to say, because also take into account Dennis Davren is
ruinously drunk at this time too, and his first instinct
is to turn on the floodlights and start looking around
the boat. Yeah, so Davren said that this is all news.
He's admitting that he lied to the police. At the time.
(35:55):
He was interviewed twice by the police on the morning
of at the boat and then a few days later
in the presence of two of Robert Wagner's lawyers. And
this is not what he told the police. This is
all very new and scandalous stuff. That he's basically pointing
the finger at Robert Wagner without coming out and saying
it overtly. And he's saying that he lied to the
(36:16):
police because he had a really unusual experience. At the time.
He was fairly young. I think he was in his
twenties at the time. He was just some boat dude
who they'd hired to be their captain and had become
friends as close as friends as you can be with
somebody you employer who employs you, right, But he kind
of took them to be friends. And so right after
(36:38):
Natalie Wood died, he essentially moved in with Robert Wagner.
Robert Wagner moved him into his house in Beverly Hills
for a few weeks, and later on Dennis Davren said
it was akin to a hostage situation.
Speaker 3 (36:52):
Yeah, Like, according to Davren, it was like, let me
get this guy in here and just let's keep him
drunk and get drunk, and you know, they're all so
you know, drowning their sorrows and I imagine deeply upset.
But he, yeah, like he said, he felt like he
was not allowed to leave. Almost.
Speaker 2 (37:11):
Yeah. Well, supposedly one of his girlfriends showed up to
speak to him and was turned away at the door.
There wasn't a phone in the bedroom that he had,
and at night when they turned on the security system,
he couldn't leave the bedroom or else it would set
the security system off. So it's not like anybody was like,
you stay here, but he, like you said, he didn't
feel like he could leave. It's a very weird thing
to say, but that is his explanation for why he
(37:33):
didn't say this and why he lied to police at first.
Speaker 3 (37:37):
That's right, I think, now a.
Speaker 2 (37:39):
Break, Yes, yeah, let's do it.
Speaker 3 (37:41):
All right, We'll take a break, and we'll be right
back to talk about what's happened since then. All right.
(38:13):
We mentioned earlier that Davren wrote a book it is
called Goodbye Natalie, Goodbye Splendor. That was in two thousand
and nine. In November of twenty eleven, the LA Sheriff's
Department reopened the investigation, and I remember this is very
big news, saying we have some new information from some
(38:34):
unnamed sources. Lana, like I mentioned, Lana had been beating
the drum to kind of get this thing reopened for years.
A publicist for the Wagner family said, you know, these
are people trying to get their fifteen minutes. They're trying
to profit on the thirty year anniversary of the death.
They didn't specifically mention Dabren's book, but Dabren, for his part,
(38:57):
was like, man, my book's out of print at this point,
and like, no one's trying to sell a book here.
Speaker 2 (39:02):
Well. He also supposedly turned down a fifty thousand dollars
offer from a tabloid to tell the story again, he
didn't do it, so, yeah, he was apparently not out
for the money exactly.
Speaker 3 (39:12):
Well, you know, these are all accounts of people, so
we can just report it, right.
Speaker 2 (39:17):
Yes, Yes, I'm glad you said that, because i don't
want to give the impression that I'm like in Dennis
Davern's corner. I'm just trying to give the full picture.
I'm not trying to push him on anybody as a
reliable person. That's not what I mean to be doing.
So I'm glad you said that.
Speaker 3 (39:31):
Yeah, so officials said that Wagner and Walking like they're
not suspects right now. In twenty eleven, Walking lawyered up
immediately though, which is interesting. And here's the rub. At
this point, the statute of limitations had run out for
anything but murder, So they couldn't you go after him
(39:54):
for assault or anything like that unless it was assault
with intent to murder her. And they're like, we don't
have a case for that. We don't have new physical evidence.
This story has changed, Davern has admitted to lying, So like,
unless we have some ironclad sort of you know, figured
of smoking gun, we can't go after Robert Wagner, you know,
(40:19):
for murdering Natalie Wood.
Speaker 2 (40:21):
Right, But at the same time, Robert Wagner doesn't want
this talked about any longer because whether he did it
or not, it's his name invariably is dragged through the
mud now anytime this story comes up in the press,
especially now that the Sheriff's Department has reopened the case,
So it couldn't have been very comfortable for him. Dennis
(40:42):
Davern did the rounds. He was on today's show. He
was asked directly about lying to the police and admitted
that he had, and apparently other people came forward to
something like one hundred different people contacted the Sheriff's Department
in Los Angeles, and one of the people that the
detectives talked to, one of the lead investigators, was named
(41:03):
Ralph Fernandez. He was put together with a confidential source
of Finstad, the biographer who had done like years of
research on this, and apparently Hernandez found the person credible
enough that this kind of became an extra part of
the case, which was that this person had heard Walkin
(41:26):
say that Wagner and Wood have been fighting and that
Wagner pushed Wood didn't they pushed him over pushed her overboard,
killed her, nothing like that. But it's enough that like
it breaks or it veers away from Walkin's like solid
line throughout the whole time, which is that he was
in bed, it was an accident.
Speaker 3 (41:47):
Yeah, And other people came forward just sort of verifying
that there was like yelling, crashing around people on the boat, arguing.
You know, I think it's basically agreed on at this
point that everyone, you know, it was loud and there
was arguing, and that was fighting. I don't think anyone,
(42:09):
I mean, even from the beginning it was just like, yeah,
we're arguing about politics. But that changed pretty quickly too
because there were so many ear witnesses.
Speaker 1 (42:16):
Basically yeah.
Speaker 2 (42:17):
But it's important to point out though Chuck is Wagner
is never acknowledged that he fought with Wood. It was
always an argument really between him and Walkin, maybe as
far as it was about Wood's career, right, He's never
said he was in an argument directly with Wood, and
especially that he didn't have any like throwing stuff around
(42:38):
the room fight with Natalie Wood. So that's important to
remember too. His explanation is way back in the rear view.
Now as far as we've gone with all of these
different explanations.
Speaker 3 (42:50):
Yeah, absolutely so. Summer of twenty twelve, the cause of
death was formally changed to undetermined and drowning and other
determined factors was the description of the accidental drowning. The
La County corner said, you know, we have to explain
this to the family. There has been a new analysis
(43:13):
of these bruises. You know, some of them indicate that
they were, you know, before she drowned, like they were
from a fight. There were bruises on her wrist that
suggest assault happened, and like they had to tell their
family this.
Speaker 2 (43:30):
Yeah. Also, there was another person named Vidal Herrera who
took photos of Natalie Wood's body for the coroner's office,
and he said that he saw significant wounds on her
head that were bad enough that she might have been
unconscious before she even hit the water from the head wounds. Right,
that's a new piece of information. There was another new
(43:51):
piece of information that came forward in twenty twenty. Who
was someone else that worked at the coroner's office named
Michael Franco.
Speaker 3 (43:58):
Right, yeah, so, and then again this is from Finstad's
book Franco said that these friction burns and striations from
the wrist and on her body were in the opposite
direction or what you would think you would get as
she's trying to climb onto a boat, and there was
bruising on her thighs, bruising on her shins, and to me,
(44:20):
chuck to Franco said, to me, it looked like, you know,
it was someone who had been you know, pushed and
was in a physical altercation with another human.
Speaker 2 (44:30):
Yeah. And back in the day in nineteen eighty two,
when he was an intern at the coroner's office, he
went to Chief Examiner Thomas Nogucci and said all this
stuff to him, and Nogucci apparently told Michael Franco that
some things are better left unsaid and that, however it
was written up, that's all you need to know. She's
a very weird thing for a chief medical examiner to say,
(44:52):
because they're the ones who are responsible for determining cause
of death.
Speaker 3 (44:55):
Yeah. Absolutely, where we stand today as of about a
year and a half ago, in May twenty twenty two,
the Sheriff's Department has ended the investigation, but it remains
a quote open unsolved case. You know, it's become a
thing that has divided as family because on one side
(45:16):
you have Lana sort of beating the drum to keep
this thing going and very suspicious of Robert Wagner. And
then you have all the daughters have remained steadfast behind
their dad, and they were like, he loved her very
very much. Things may have been volatile, but he did
not kill her, although Lana also says like, I don't
(45:37):
think he had some murders and tent I think they
were drunk and things got out of hand and he
flew into a moment of rage that ended in her death,
which is a different accusation than you know, he was
some abusive husband and this was bound to happen or
something right exactly.
Speaker 2 (45:55):
So she said this in a twenty twenty one memoir
that you mentioned before. It's called Little Sister Colon my
investigation into the mysterious death of Natalie Wood, and she
says that Robert Wagner told her that after the funeral,
She's like, what happened? And Robert Wagner told her, Natalie
Wood's sister, that Natalie had probably taken the dinghy out
to party hop and again she didn't know how to
(46:17):
use the dinghy. She was afraid of the water, especially
in the dark, and she was wearing a nightgown and
socks and a coat and that was it. So it
didn't hold water. And I think that really kind of
triggered Lona woods decades long suspicion of this whole thing.
So yeah, like you said, the family's been divided basically
ever since, and the whole thing is still it's an
(46:38):
open case. It's unsolved, but they've exhausted all the leads
that came out of the twenty eleven re examination of it,
so it's essentially back on the shelf for now.
Speaker 3 (46:48):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (46:49):
Pretty nuts, man, it is.
Speaker 3 (46:51):
It's a story that I think we will never know
truly what happened Wagner's in his nineties unless there's some
sort of deathbed confession from he or Chris Walkin, like
it's going to go to their graves. I would imagine.
Speaker 2 (47:06):
I don't know, man, because think about it, after Kirk Douglas,
Lana Wood named him as the as her sister's rapist
when she was sixteen. So I'm wondering if one of
these people are going to say, here finally is the evidence. Yes,
Robert Wagner totally killed Natalie Wood, and now that he's dead,
I feel comfortable explaining how. Who knows.
Speaker 3 (47:25):
I think it's a possibility, but it would have to
be a recording of him saying that, otherwise it would
just be another person saying, well, he told me, sure, sure,
you know what I mean. Like, the only three people
that know what happened are Daborn, Walkin and Wagner.
Speaker 2 (47:41):
Right, and all Walkin wants to do is focus on
cow bell and dance. I would say, probably the most
important clue out of this whole thing, though, Chuck, is
that Robert Wagner and Dennis Davern switched to Scotch on
the bridge.
Speaker 3 (47:56):
Is that the one? Yeah, that's a that's a powered
drinking move late at night, for sure. I've seen it happen.
Speaker 2 (48:03):
Do you have anything else?
Speaker 3 (48:05):
I got nothing else. It's just tragic story.
Speaker 2 (48:08):
Yeah, that's the thing to remember.
Speaker 3 (48:09):
Yeah, you know it was. It's easy to get caught
up in this Hollywood mystery, but there was a real
human with a family that died. And I hope people
don't forget that. And I hope we were respectful.
Speaker 2 (48:21):
Yeah, I think we were. That's a rule of thumb.
For all true crime stuff. You know.
Speaker 3 (48:25):
Absolutely.
Speaker 2 (48:27):
Well, since Chuck said absolutely, I'm going to end on
a high note for me and we'll go to a listener.
Speaker 1 (48:32):
Man.
Speaker 3 (48:35):
Hey, guys, this is one from a long time ago
actually that I forgot to read from Gareth. I was
listening to the Diaries episode and thought you guys might
like to hear about ingratitude lists because we were talking
about gratitude lists when I was working in mental health support.
We learned about them and the basic premises sometimes your
life is full of problems and you feel terrible. It's
not always that helpful to be told to write down
(48:57):
what you feel grateful for, and some people find it
a bit like their problems aren't being taken seriously or
being brushed under the rug. So sometimes it can actually
be helpful to write down everything that's wrong, everything is
hurting you or generally just taking you off, as a
way to vent and hopefully understand why you feel, why
you feel how you feel, and possibly being able to
(49:18):
process it and make a plan on how to change it.
Speaker 2 (49:21):
Nice.
Speaker 3 (49:22):
Yeah, anyway, I thought it could be of interest to
you and potentially helpful to some listeners who have a
lot going on To feel vindicated in their distress. And
just to be clear, it's not about dwelling on the bad.
It's mostly about just being able to say, yeah, fair
play me, I'm dealing with a lot nice.
Speaker 2 (49:40):
That's really awesome, And that is from again, Gareth. Thanks
a lot, Gareth. I would say Gareth is sitting in
the best recent email chair for now. Huh.
Speaker 3 (49:49):
Yeah, that's a good one.
Speaker 2 (49:50):
Yeah, that was a very good one. Thanks for letting
everybody know about that, because I'm sure there are some
people out there that listen to that Diaries episode and
thought the very same thing, and now they're vindicated undismissed.
If you want to be like Gareth and try or
shot at being in the best recent email chair, you
can do that. Send it off to Stuff Podcasts at
iHeartRadio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a production
(50:14):
of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the
iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows.
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