On the morning of 29 November 1981, the body of Natalie Wood — one of the most cherished actresses of her generation, a star since childhood — was found floating in the Pacific Ocean about a mile from her yacht, the Splendour, off the coast of Santa Catalina Island in California. She was forty-three, and she had drowned. The night before, she had been aboard the yacht with three other people: her husband, the actor Robert Wagner; her Brainstorm co-star, Christopher Walken; and the boat's captain, Dennis Davern. The Los Angeles coroner initially ruled the death an accidental drowning, theorising that she had slipped while trying to secure or board the yacht's dinghy and had been unable to climb back out of the cold water. But the account of that night was troubled from the start — there had reportedly been drinking and an argument aboard, the stories of those present shifted over the years, and Wood, it was widely known, had a lifelong fear of water. Three decades later, in 2011, the case was reopened; the cause of death was formally amended to 'drowning and other undetermined factors'; and in 2018 her husband was named a 'person of interest' — though he has always denied any wrongdoing, was never arrested or charged, and no evidence of foul play has ever been established. This is the story of the death of Natalie Wood — a genuine mystery in which the official record itself declines to say for certain what happened.
Assassinations & Disappearances
1981
