The mysterious death of Natalie Wood, star of West Side Story and Rebel Without a Cause, has intrigued people for years. Fresh scrapes and bruises on her body and a conflicting version of events from the night she died have made it one of Hollywood’s biggest mysteries.

Now, 30 years after her death, a sheriff’s detective has reopened the investigation and the medical examiner changed the cause of death from accidental drowning to undetermined factors. Keep reading the article below to learn more about Who Killed Natalie Wood.

When Natalie Wood vanished from a yacht and her body washed up the next morning, it made front-page news. She was a leading Hollywood actress and her husband, Robert Wagner, and co-star Christopher Walken were on board. Wagner and Walken claimed she fell overboard accidentally, and they told the Los Angeles homicide detectives on the case to believe them.

But the bruises on her neck, arms, and legs, the absence of nail clippings from her hands, and a 2013 report that said her injuries seemed to indicate she was assaulted before she went into the water didn’t sit well with authorities. They reopened the investigation and named Wagner a person of interest, but no charges were ever filed in the case.

Natalie’s sister, Lana, never bought the official story. “None of the things that Wagner or Walken or Dennis Davern said at that time rang true to me,” she says. “Even when I talked to Dennis, he was telling me that she wouldn’t get in a dinghy by herself at night in a bathing suit with socks on and her down jacket.”

The expanding story of Splendour captain Dennis Davern, who admitted lying to investigators the day Wood’s body was found, 37 years later rings even more false for Lana. He says that Wagner was angry that she was flirting with Walken, and he kept Davern from turning on the search lights or notifying authorities when Wood disappeared. He also claims that he overheard an argument on the deck of the boat and saw wood struggling to climb into a dinghy.

In this podcast episode, we explore all of the evidence against Dennis Davern, including his aforementioned admissions of lying to investigators, as well as the striking contradictions he made in a February 2018 interview. But we also talk to the investigators who examined the case, and they tell us that they still don’t know what really happened on November 28, 1981.

The Night

Hollywood legend Natalie Wood died in 1981 off the coast of Catalina Island, and her mysterious death remains one of Tinsel Town’s most controversial unsolved mysteries. In this unique book, investigative reporter Sam Perroni brings together a wide array of new and original sources to produce the most far-reaching examination of the case that has been done to date. By combining official records and photographs, never-before-seen confidential documents, and dozens of interviews with witnesses and forensic experts, Perroni sheds light on the glossed-over investigation by local law enforcement and Hollywood insiders that helped suppress the truth for four decades.

The book begins by examining Wood’s tumultuous personal life. In the years leading up to her death, she struggled in a career that seemed to be going nowhere and her marriage was at an all-time low. Her husband, Robert Wagner, was a successful actor himself but seemed unable to support his wife’s stardom and her own insecurity made her doubt her ability to carry on. Ultimately, her professional and personal decline coincided with a downward spiral in her marriage that resulted in two suicide attempts, daily psychoanalysis, and a fear of being alone at night so primal it drove her to regress to childhood and become a child again.

In her final days, Wood was spending the weekend on a yacht with her husband and their friend Christopher Walken, whom she had been co-starring with in the film Brainstorm. The two men reportedly got into an argument during which she was convinced Walken wanted to sleep with her. The next morning, she vanished from the yacht and was found in a rubber dinghy. The initial investigation determined she drowned, but her body bore a number of bruises that made police suspicious.

After her death, the shadow of suspicion fell squarely on Wagner, and it still hangs over his inner circle. His daughter Courtney and stepdaughter, actress Natasha Gregson Wagner, steadfastly believe in his innocence. But many others, including ship’s captain Dennis Davern and her sister Lena, claim he’s guilty. A never-before-heard autopsy report and a growing list of eyewitness accounts, along with the author’s own startling discoveries about some of the known facts in the case, confirm that the original investigators were correct to consider Wagner a person of interest.

The Bruises

In her lifetime, Natalie Wood starred in a mix of classics and lesser known movies. She was a beautiful woman with a reputation for sex and scandal. She played a number of strong, independent women and was always able to capture the audience’s attention. But real life was tougher for the actress than her glitzy movie roles. Wood’s death in 1981 was one of Hollywood’s biggest mysteries and it continues to fascinate fans today.

Wood was just 43 when she died after falling overboard on a boat. Her body was found the next day, floating a mile from her yacht and near a small dinghy that had been beached nearby. The cause of death was originally ruled to be drowning, but investigators later changed it to accidental homicide. The new autopsy found bruises on her arms and a face abrasion, along with traces of motion sickness medication and painkillers in her blood.

The bruises and abrasions were a clue that something had gone wrong during the night of her death, but it wasn’t enough to hold anyone accountable. Investigators questioned Wagner and Walken about the events of the night time and again, but their accounts never added up. The bruises were still fresh and they didn’t look like anything that could have been sustained by a fall off a boat.

The case was reopened in 2011 after Davern’s 2009 memoir alleged that he and Wagner had argued the night before she disappeared. Investigators re-examined the evidence, including 10 histology slides of the bruises, a review of witness statements and the fact that Wood had no history of suicide attempts. The coroner eventually changed the cause of death to homicide and designated Wagner as a person of interest in the case.

It’s unclear what really happened to Wood, but the fact that her body was discovered so close to the boat and a dinghy was located so quickly leads many to believe that the actor was murdered. But no charges have ever been filed, and the mystery surrounding her death continues to intrigue people.

The Death

The case of Natalie Wood’s mysterious death has long been an object of fascination. But after decades of speculation, it remains unsolved. Many of the theories that have been floated—from a “bad accident” to foul play—have failed to add up. Wagner and Walken have been questioned, time and again, but their accounts of what happened have conflicted and no one has ever been held accountable for her death.

The author begins his investigation of the death by introducing readers to Natalie Wood and her stormy relationship with husband Robert Wagner. He then dives into the events of the fateful weekend in November 1981 when she was found floating near the island of Catalina.

Using evidence that has never been disclosed before, the author shows how inconsistencies in witness testimony and holes in the investigation have left a void where the truth should be. He reveals how the dinghy in which she was found was found far from Wagner’s yacht, Splendour, and that she could not have operated the dinghy as she had no experience with boats and a profound fear of water due to a prophecy told to her superstitious Russian mother by a Gypsy fortune teller that her daughter would drown.

He exposes how Dr. Thomas Noguchi, the chief medical examiner at the time of Wood’s death, used his celebrity status to grab the spotlight with sensational press conferences and questionable forensic autopsy reporting. He reveals how Noguchi manipulated and cherry-picked evidence in the case of Marilyn Monroe, rock singer Janis Joplin, United States Senator Robert Kennedy, SLA leader Donald DeFreeze, and Natalie Wood.

The author also reveals, for the first time, a confidential memo from boating expert Paul Miller to Noguchi that contradicts Wagner’s decades-old claim that Wood got up in the middle of the night to retie the banging Zodiac dinghy and slipped into it where she drowned. And he sheds light on the controversial autopsy photos that remain under lock and key to this day. These new revelations help prove that Natalie Wood’s death was no accident. She was murdered.