The Tragic Death of Natalie Wood

SPEAKER_02: Following in your parents' footsteps is never easy, especially when mom or dad happen to be superstar athletes. What kind of lessons do Hall of Famers like, oh I don't know, NBA legend Tim Hardaway and NFL icon Kurt Warner impart on their kids as they chase professional sports stardom? How do they teach them the importance of prioritizing health and how to overcome adversity? Well, you can join Heart of the Game as they explore these questions and more with some of the greatest families in sports. Listen to Heart of the Game on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. SPEAKER_05: Regulatory fees included in $50 price for qualified accounts plus $5 per month without AutoPag debit or bank account required. SPEAKER_09: Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio. SPEAKER_04: 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. That's right and weirdly our second Paul F. Tompkins reference is coming on this episode. SPEAKER_02: Oh yeah? Yeah, cause Paul's wonderful hysterical wife Janie looks like Natalie Wood. SPEAKER_04: Okay. Is she known for that? SPEAKER_02: 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. I got you, that's what I'm after. I didn't know if this is just your observation or not. No, no, no, no. It's been said before. It's on record. SPEAKER_04: So, if you don't know who Natalie Wood is, first go look up Janie Tompkins. You'll 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 and Miracle on 34th Street, the original one. She might have also captured your heart as the kind of good girl gone bad in Rebel Without a Cause. SPEAKER_03: Mm-hmm. SPEAKER_04: She also may have been like, I like that girl in West Side Story or I like that girl in Splendor in the Grass. Or I like that girl in the 1976 made for TV remake of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. Well then you like Natalie Wood, guys. SPEAKER_02: Yeah, or if you grew up like we did in the 80s, you might like her from the sci-fi classic, not classic, 80s, early 80s sci-fi classic Brainstorm. SPEAKER_04: I never saw it. Oh, really? SPEAKER_02: Yeah. You should check it out. It was sort of one of those, it was in the early 80s, like there were a few of those movies that were kind of in the same vein of, do you remember the movie Looker? SPEAKER_02: Yes. Like with Albert Finney. Uh-huh. I remember the movie, it was the Tom Selleck one about the little, with Gene Simmons with the little robot. Runaway. Runaway. It was in that vein sort of. Oh, okay. SPEAKER_04: Well, that sounds like a great triple feature if you ask me. It's kind of right up your alley. I bet you'd like it. SPEAKER_02: Okay, I'll check that one out. I have not seen that. SPEAKER_04: 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 Wood. Yeah. She was Pliny O'Toole in Diamonds Are Forever. She was very well known for that. And both of these sisters were originally named Zakarenko. 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_02: That's right. And Lana was born what, Svetlana? Uh-huh. So they kind of Americanized their names. Kind of. Kind of. And we're going to be reading through a few different, Livia helped us with this, but she got a lot of this stuff from a few different biographies. So if we reference like Suzanne Finstead's biography or maybe Robert Wagner's biography or autobiography, that's what we're talking about. Yeah, or Sam Kashner wrote a very great Vanity Fair article on it. SPEAKER_04: Oh, that's right. Very good one. SPEAKER_02: But Suzanne Finstead's biography recounts a childhood that wasn't as great as it seemed from the outside, that her father was an alcoholic. Her mother was a very controlling sort of manager of her career and would organize meetings with very experienced men and actors 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 16 at one of these meetings at the Chateau Marmont. And it was kept secret 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. Yeah. So that's just Kirk Douglas. SPEAKER_04: Apparently her mom arranged a sexual liaison when she was 15 with Frank Sinatra to get this part in Rebel Without a Cause. She apparently had to prove she was capable of being a bad girl by sleeping with the director, who was 44 at the time. I think she was 16 then, too. And her mom was complicit in all of this. She's just like, this is the price for entry into Hollywood. Sorry, kid. Just keep your mouth shut and your chin up. I just can't imagine the damage of just these instances, but then of being that dismissed and unsupported by your mom. 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 60s. Yeah. You mentioned all those classic movies she was in. SPEAKER_02: In 1957, she married, for the first time, Robert Wagner, who you and I, Josh, would go on to know as the lead actor in the 80s TV show Heart to Heart. Co-starring Stephanie Powers. Stephanie Powers. But in the 1950s, he was an actor kind of, you know, wasn't super famous, but he acted a lot. And then his star rose as hers was kind of fading. But they divorced in 1961 on their first marriage. People, you know, some people say, magazines especially back then, said that Natalie Wood, they broke up because she had an affair with Warren Beatty, her Splendor in the Grass co-star. Sam Kashner in his article says, yeah, this basically is what happened. But in the Finstad biography, she's like, no, no, no, that is not true at all. And including Lana, we'll back this up, says, you know, Natalie stumbled upon RJ, 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. Yeah. But she allowed the press to say that she had had an affair with Warren Beatty. SPEAKER_04: 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, I believe. And Warren Beatty had a certain reputation. SPEAKER_02: Yes. So apparently that is what Robert Wagner thought. SPEAKER_04: He thought that they were having an affair and he was very jealous and very protective and just felt cuckolded, 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 and very overprotective of his relationship with her. That's right. SPEAKER_02: She got married to a gentleman named Richard Gregson after that in 1969. He is a British writer and actor, just sort of, you know, producer, film industry guy. They had their daughter, Natasha, who goes by Natasha Gregson-Wagner, although she's married now. She may have added another name to the end of her name. I'm not sure. McGillicuddy. McGillicuddy. But she is an actor, too. I haven't seen anything in a little while. I'm not sure she's still 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 Jr. And I can't think of the name of it now. SPEAKER_04: Oh, oh, I know who it is. The Last Days of Disco? No. The pickup artist? No. SPEAKER_02: He wasn't in The Last Days of Disco. Oh, why was it? SPEAKER_02: I can't remember. SPEAKER_04: Less than zero? SPEAKER_02: No. SPEAKER_04: Weekend at Bernie's. SPEAKER_02: I think it was just like three people in the movie. It was very small. Oh, no, you know what? It was Weekend at Bernie's. There. So she married – I'm sorry, Gregson. And during that same period, Waggoner married a woman named Marion Marshall. They had a daughter named Katie in 64. And then they eventually remarried in 72 and had a daughter named Courtney. So now there are three daughters, one that Wood and Waggoner had together and one of each from previous marriages. For her part, Lana Wood was like, 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_04: Yeah. And the reason why Lana Wood was even questioning her was because they had a tumultuous relationship while they were married the first time. But apparently they never fell out of love or they never stopped loving each other is how I saw it put. I think in an investigation discovery documentary. And so they remarried in 1972. They had Courtney in 1974 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. Yeah. SPEAKER_02: Yeah, he was a little older. What do you mean like seven or eight years older? SPEAKER_04: Eight, I think. Eight years older. And yeah, he got that role on Heart to Heart. SPEAKER_02: And so he started doing pretty well in the industry while, you know, and the same is true today. And an actress in her 40s, they start looking elsewhere generally speaking unless you're like a Meryl Streep or somebody. You're not going to get the calls that you used to get. And that's what happened certainly with Natalie Wood after great, great fame in the 1960s, 50s into the 60s. And then it started to sort of tail off into the 70s. Yes, but if you're a man in Hollywood and as you start to age, you become distinguished. SPEAKER_04: It's a different phase of your career. And that's certainly what happened with Robert Wagner. No, he wasn't washed up at 43. SPEAKER_02: I guess he would have been almost 50. SPEAKER_04: Yeah, he actually, his star started to rise again. So they had oppositional careers as far as time went. And that figures in, by the way. That's the reason we're talking about this. SPEAKER_04: Right. So it's November 1981. They've been married again for nine years. And Natalie Wood's 43. Robert Wagner's 51. And I say we take our first break and come back and start talking about the problem. SPEAKER_02: We'll be right back. Music You know, what if the highlight of your travels was the traveling itself? Like, picture this. Admiral's Club membership, VIP treatment and more. And your vacation hasn't even started yet. Well, with the City Advantage Executive Card, you'll be looking forward to the journey as much as the destination. SPEAKER_04: It's the only card with complimentary Admiral's Club membership. So you can feel like you're on cloud nine before you're even in the air. SPEAKER_03: And it rewards each purchase with advantage miles for your travels and loyalty points toward advantage status. SPEAKER_02: You can even earn up to 20,000 additional loyalty points after qualifying activities. So a higher level of status and the high end treatment that comes with it are more within your reach. 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SPEAKER_11: Listen to Symptomatic, a medical mystery podcast on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. SPEAKER_01: Music People are excited about what AI will do for them. At IBM, we're excited about what AI will do for business, your business. Introducing Watson X, a platform designed to multiply output by training AI with your data. When you Watson X your business, you can build AI to help coders code faster, customer service respond quicker, and employees handle repetitive tasks in less time. Let's create AI that transforms business with Watson X. Learn more at ibm.com slash watsonx. IBM. Let's create. SPEAKER_04: Music Okay, Chuck, so in Thanksgiving 1981, the weekend after, Robert Wagner and Natalie Wood took their yacht out, the Splendor, a 60-foot yacht. Pretty nice. Apparently it had five staterooms 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 as Catalina Island. I think like 20 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 then go party from yacht to yacht. And so they showed up Thanksgiving weekend at Catalina Island looking to have a good time. Yeah, they originally were going to have a lot more friends on board, but apparently the weather was, the forecast was a little dodgy. SPEAKER_03: SPEAKER_02: And so the only person that came along was Christopher Walken, who said, it takes more than a few raindrops to frighten me. Not bad. Didn't you interview Christopher Walken on Movie Crush once? SPEAKER_04: Yeah, sure I did. SPEAKER_02: Pretty cool. Listen to that episode. It's great. And also listen to the Kevin Pollak episode. SPEAKER_04: So the reason that Christopher Walken was there because you're just like, well that's a little random. Natalie Wood, Robert Wagner, Christopher Walken? 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? Mmm. SPEAKER_02: 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_04: But 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 is the fourth person, Dennis Davern. He was the captain of the yacht. And so the four of them were on this yachting weekend after Thanksgiving. SPEAKER_02: That's right. Actually Dead Zone came out that very year. So he was, this is kind of early peak Walken. Okay. So on Saturday the 28th 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 worried that they couldn't get back. They had a little inflatable motorized dinghy, 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 and the Grass. So they had their little boats. Hers was the yacht name. His was the dinghy name, which is interesting. 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 the small boat Valiant. SPEAKER_04: Yeah, yeah. That makes sense then. SPEAKER_02: But the night manager there at Doug's Harbor Reef was like, I don't even know if these guys are so drunk. 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 10, 1030 at night. And then at 1.30 in the morning, Robert Wagner and Captain Daven made a call to the shore saying, you know, Natalie Wood has gone missing. We need your help. This is 1.30 a.m. Two hours later at 3.30, they called the Coast Guard to get a formal search going. And then very tragically at 7.45 in the morning, Daven identified the body of Natalie Wood about a mile south of where the yacht was anchored in a flannel nightgown, socks and a red down jacket. 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. SPEAKER_04: And yet it was just kind of washed away from the boat. This was an enormous deal. I mean, like Natalie Wood was 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 70s into like a newer version of itself and kind of resent to the old studios and stuff. So she was like Hollywood royalty 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. 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. SPEAKER_02: 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 Wood dying and drowning and her husband. I 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 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 Choi who said that Natalie Wood's blood alcohol content level was point one four. Just very high. Yeah. Let me just I look that up because I'm like, OK, what does that actually mean in like like physical and behavioral terms? SPEAKER_04: Yeah. According to the South Australia government, point zero eight to 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, 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_02: Yeah. And if you want to be very, very technically bored, you should go listen to our episode on breathalyzers. Yeah. They were really difficult to explain. SPEAKER_02: 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_04: Definitely the hardest because there's like a crystal involved that somehow like tells you and then they translate that into ones and zeros. A very, very tough episode. But it's out there. So Choi said point one four percent. SPEAKER_02: And also the 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 very drunk. And this these bruises and things were is evidence of her kind of doggedly trying to get back on board unsuccessfully. There was a chief medical examiner named Thomas Noguchi 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 up on this thing, but she was in that down jacket and it became very, very heavy. And she probably just held on to that dinghy and got hypothermia and exhausted and she drowned. And it's an accident. Yeah. So that was the official line for a very long time. For some reason, Natalie Wood tried to get into the valley at the dinghy late at night. SPEAKER_04: 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. I'm not very good at swimming at all. 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. SPEAKER_04: And so Thomas Noguchi, the chief medical examiner for the Los Angeles County Coroner's Office, commissioned a psychological autopsy, which is a thing. But from what I can tell, it's 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 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 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 chief examiner anymore. Yeah, I think it was definitely one of those cases where she was Hollywood royalty, like you said. SPEAKER_02: 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. SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and so they tried to keep that quiet. When he mentioned it at the press conference, it was a big deal. And now we get into sort of what happened after three decades and how the story has changed over the years. Yeah, because just one thing, Chuck, if that were it and the story stayed straight all these years and nothing ever changed, it would be fishy, but not a big deal. SPEAKER_04: 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-out mystery. SPEAKER_02: 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 86-authorized biography, Heart to Heart, spelled with an E this time, not like the TV show, because on the TV show, they were the Harts, the H-A-R-Ts. But he couldn't get the use out of the studio. SPEAKER_04: Yeah, he didn't want to pay for that. So Heart to Heart with Robert Wagner, and he said in 1986 that me and Chris Walken got in an argument about politics. SPEAKER_02: There was another biography in 2008 called Pieces of My Heart. I'm sorry, this was the autobiography that he himself wrote, obviously, probably with some help, where 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 Walken was like, no, she's Natalie Wood, man. Wait, wait, wait, wait. You got to do it as Walken. SPEAKER_04: Korea matters, Robert. SPEAKER_02: God, that's great. RJ? It's tied for first with Sammy Davis Jr. SPEAKER_04: Well, but it's also, like, probably one of the worst Walkens because everyone does Walken and most of them are pretty great. SPEAKER_02: I don't do Walken. I admire your Walken. I'm just going to put it out there. SPEAKER_04: Give it a shot, nothing? No. You know what happens when I actually try to do a voice. It goes south. Same here. SPEAKER_02: 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 it was about politics and it was personal. Yeah, that's a big change. It's a big change. But either way, he said, Natalie, you know, was annoyed, she was put off by all this 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 on me. Right. And Christopher Walken supported this. They were in an argument. Natalie Wood left. SPEAKER_04: 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. That's hard to do. If 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 of other things that will come up. But the line throughout was that Natalie Wood went to bed, Christopher Walken and Robert Wagner eventually parted ways. Robert Walken, Robert, Robert Wagner, I think, went out to the bridge or outside. Christopher Walken went to bed. And it wasn't for another hour or so that they noticed that Natalie Wood was gone and so is the dinghy. That's right. Natalie Wood's lawyer said after her death that she often took the dinghy out alone. SPEAKER_02: 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 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 Wagner in that autobiography 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 couldn't get to sleep because this dinghy wasn't secured and it was banging against the state room, near the state room. So she got out to do that, to like tie it up better and then slipped in. Right. Yeah, because when people are like, why would she go out into the dinghy if she was afraid of water, she didn't know how to drive the dinghy and she was wearing a nightgown, he's like, oh, well, probably it was banging and making noise. SPEAKER_04: She was just trying to retie it. Those were the two. That was his first one. People question it. That was his second one. The thing is, is throughout this all, the other witnesses supported what he was saying, including Christopher Walken. Apparently, the last time he talked about it was in 1997 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 Walken was in bed when all of this happened, asleep. No one's ever changed that little nugget. SPEAKER_02: Yeah, he has not talked about it much over the years. No, but when he has, he supported Robert Wagner's version. SPEAKER_02: Yeah, but he didn't write biographies and go into detail or anything like that. There are a couple of random interviews where he talks about it, but otherwise he is like to basically stay mama. Exactly. SPEAKER_04: I mean, talk about like a terrible weekend on the boat as a guest, you know? SPEAKER_02: Yeah, absolutely. So, right off the bat, there are people that are like, this sounds pretty fishy. In 1992, it was like nine years later, Entertainment Weekly had a story. 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 just don't make any sense. Different people came out over the years that supposedly heard things. That was in the Entertainment Weekly story. There 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 the splendor. For 15 minutes. SPEAKER_04: Yeah, and that Cashner Vanity Fair article, they said, you know, they thought it could have just been people goofing off. SPEAKER_02: 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, we'll get you. SPEAKER_04: Yeah. The thing is, is the cops never interviewed Wayne in 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 interviewed, but it is egregious they weren't. There's one other thing that Marilyn 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 something like that, you are really worried about things, because that's a really overextension of yourself in that case. Just FYI, I guess. SPEAKER_02: Yeah. And if you picture Christopher Walken saying it, it's bone chilling. Let's hear it. SPEAKER_04: No, there's no way. That's too far. SPEAKER_04: How about Sammy Davis Jr. doing it? That'd be kind of fun, actually. SPEAKER_02: Yeah. If you value your life, babe, keep quiet about what you know, man. Very nice. So that's like, I mean, that's bombshell stuff. SPEAKER_04: But because it wasn't included in the police investigation, it's treated as conjecture, rumor, maybe Marilyn Wayne is trying to get her 15 minutes of fame. From what I could tell, she was not like that at all. She didn't seem to be prone to confabulation. She seemed like a reliable witness. Yeah. She just wasn't included in the original investigation, but she was included in subsequent journalism and books on the subject. That's right. SPEAKER_02: From the beginning, Lana 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 Davenport, that ship captain, that yacht captain, his story really changed. 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 1981. In that Cashner book in 2000, he said this whole trip was not great. In fact, she didn't even spend the night on the boat the day before. She stayed on shore because there was so much kind of unpleasantness and fighting going on. And it stemmed from jealousy. Like he didn't like, you know, this was her costar 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. SPEAKER_04: He said that, I think on the Today Show, they said, what were you, you know, what did you tell the police? And he said, I told them the story that RJ came up with. Yeah. So if you, there's another thing too, Dennis Daven has over the years been very much accused of being like a publicity hound. Yeah. He's after the money or the attention, whatever. He wrote a book. 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, 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 angelic light. Like he lied to police. He went along with a conspiracy to cover up a murder potentially. Like he's admitting his own culpability while he's, you know, revealing the truth. He's not trying to keep himself out of it. That's a good point. SPEAKER_02: SPEAKER_02: Yeah. That's a very good point. He also said in this Cashner book, the yacht captain said, after we got back from dinner on the 28th, 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 Walken were. That's when the wine bottle got smashed. And he yelled, what are you trying to do? F my wife? Yeah. That's when supposedly, according to Daven, Wood went to her room and Walken went to his room. Because that's a party foul to smash your wine bottle on the table and say that to your guest. SPEAKER_04: Yeah, it's a big party foul. SPEAKER_02: Like the party's over at that point. Exactly. They went to their separate rooms. After a little while, according to Daven, Robert Wagner went to Natalie Wood's, 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 few years ago, apparently the last words that Dennis Daven heard Wagner say were get off my effing boat. A lot of F words from that guy that night. SPEAKER_04: Yeah, that's not an heart to heart. SPEAKER_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. SPEAKER_04: Yeah. It's not an 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. But it doesn't jibe with Marilyn Wayne's ear witness account, which was that she heard somebody calling for help for 15 minutes. It's possible that Daven's telling what his inaccurate, he's portraying the story accurately, and that Marilyn Wayne really did hear somebody else goofing around. Who knows? But those two, it's important that those two accounts, ear witness accounts, don't line up necessarily. So around 1130, according to Daven, Wagner came back to the bridge, was disheveled looking apparently, and they got drunk together. SPEAKER_02: Apparently on more than wine, right? SPEAKER_04: Yeah, I think they moved to Scotch. SPEAKER_02: So at 1.30 in the morning, Daven 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 the dinghy was gone, and he's like, I've got to turn on these lights and start looking. According to Daven, 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. It's a very weird thing to say if your wife is missing off of a boat. SPEAKER_04: Very weird. Even if you're ruinously drunk, that is a weird thing to say because also take into account, Dennis Daven is ruinously drunk at this time too, and his first instinct is to turn on the floodlights and start looking around the boat. SPEAKER_02: Yeah. SPEAKER_04: So Daven said that this is all new. He's admitting that he lied to the police at the time. 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 police because he had a really unusual experience at the time. He was fairly young. I think he was in his 20s at the time. He was just some boat dude who they'd hired to be their captain and had become friends, as close a friend as you can be with somebody you employ or who employs you, right? But he kind of took them to be friends. And so right after 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 Daven said it was akin to a hostage situation. Yeah, like according to Daven, it was like, let me get this guy in here and just let's keep him drunk and get drunk. SPEAKER_02: And, you know, they're also, you know, drowning their sorrows and I imagine deeply upset. And but yeah, like you said, he felt like he was not allowed to leave almost. Yeah, well, supposedly one of his girlfriends showed up to speak to him and was turned away at the door. SPEAKER_04: 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 like you said, he didn't feel like he could leave. That's a very weird thing to say. But that is his explanation for why he didn't say this and why he lied to police at first. That's right. SPEAKER_02: I think now a break, yes? Yeah, let's do it, man. All right. We'll take a break and we'll be right back to talk about what's happened since then. SPEAKER_02: You know, what if the highlight of your travels was the traveling itself? Like, picture this, admirals club membership, VIP treatment and more, and your vacation hasn't even started yet. SPEAKER_04: Well, with the City Advantage Executive Card, you'll be looking forward to the journey as much as the destination. 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Every other week, we get to know the everyday people living with a mysterious illness and hear their firsthand stories of struggle and perseverance on their quest for answers. During the day, I'd feel like I'm just getting sick. I'd sort of have that fluish feeling. And then the next morning, I'd be fine. SPEAKER_00: Then he started getting nodules on his body. He had been to so many different doctors, and I just felt like they were just throwing a dart at what this could be and trying different things. SPEAKER_06: You couldn't imagine that anyone could be alive and have a mutation in that gene. SPEAKER_01: Watson X, a platform designed to multiply output by training A.I. with your data. When you watch an extra business, you can build A.I. to help coders code faster. Customer service respond quicker and employees handle repetitive tasks in less time. Let's create A.I. that transforms business with Watson X. Learn more at IBM dot com slash Watson X. IBM. Let's create. SPEAKER_02: All right. We mentioned earlier that Davin wrote a book. It is called Goodbye, Natalie. Goodbye, Splendor. That was in 2009. In November of 2011, the L.A. Sheriff's Department reopened the investigation. And I remember this is very big news, saying we have some new information from some 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 15 minutes. They're trying to profit on the 30 year anniversary of the death. They didn't specifically mention Davin's book, but Davin for his part was like, man, my book's out of print at this point. And like, no one's trying to sell a book here. Well, he also supposedly turned down a $50,000 offer from a tabloid to tell the story again. SPEAKER_04: He didn't do it. So, yeah, he was apparently not out for the money. Exactly. Well, you know, these are all accounts of people. SPEAKER_02: So we can just report it, right? Yes. Yes. I'm glad you said that because I don't want to give the impression that I'm like in Dennis Davin's corner. SPEAKER_04: 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. Yeah. So officials said that Wagner and Walken, like they're not suspects right now in 2011. SPEAKER_02: Walken 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 know, go after him 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. Davin has admitted to lying. So, like, unless we have some ironclad sort of, you know, figurative smoking gun, we can't go after Robert Wagner for, you know, for murdering Natalie Wood. Right. But at the same time, Robert Wagner doesn't want this talked about any longer because whether he did it or not, SPEAKER_04: his name invariably is dragged through the mud now any time the 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. Of course not. Dennis Davin 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, too. Something like 100 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 Ralph Hernandez. He was put together with the 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 Walken say that Wagner and Wood had been fighting and that Wagner pushed Wood. Didn't say pushed him over, pushed her overboard, killed her, nothing like that, but it's enough that like it breaks or it veers away from Walken's like solid line throughout the whole time, which is that he was in bed, it was an accident. SPEAKER_02: 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, there was arguing and there was fighting. I don't think anyone, 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 basically. Yeah, but it's important to point out though, Chuck, is Wagner has never acknowledged that he fought with Wood. SPEAKER_04: It was always an argument really between him and Walken, 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 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_02: Yeah, absolutely. So summer of 2012, the cause of death was formally changed to undetermined and drowning and other undetermined factors was the description of the accidental drowning. The LA County coroner said, you know, we have to explain this to the family. There's been a new analysis 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_04: 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 piece of information that came forward in 2020 who was someone else that worked at the coroner's office named Michael Franco. Right. SPEAKER_02: 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 if she's trying to climb onto a boat. And there was bruising on her thighs, bruising on her shins. And to me, not 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_04: Yeah, and back in the day in 1982 when he was an intern at the coroner's office, he went to Chief Examiner Thomas Noguchi and said all this stuff to him. And Noguchi 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. Which is a very weird thing for a chief medical examiner to say because they're the ones who are responsible for determining cause of death. Yeah, absolutely. SPEAKER_02: Where we stand today, as of about a year and a half ago in May 2022, 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 this family because on one side 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. Yeah. 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 think he had some murderous intent. I think they were drunk and things got out of hand. Right. And he flew into a moment of rage that ended in her death. Yeah. Which is a different accusation than, you know, he was some abusive husband and this was bound to happen or something. SPEAKER_04: Right, exactly. So she said this in a 2021 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 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 that didn't hold water. And I think that really kind of triggered Lana Wood's 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 open case. It's unsolved. But they've exhausted all the leads that came out of the 2011 reexamination of it. So it's essentially back on the shelf for now. Yeah. SPEAKER_04: Pretty nuts, man. SPEAKER_02: It is. It's a story that I think we will never know truly what happened. Wagner's in his 90s. Unless there's some sort of deathbed confession from he or Chris Walken, like, it's going to go to their graves, I would imagine. I don't know, man. SPEAKER_04: Because think about it, after Kirk Douglas died, Lana Wood named him as her sister's rapist when she was 16. 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? I think it's a possibility. But it would have to be a recording of him saying that. SPEAKER_02: Otherwise, it would just be another person saying, well, he told me. Sure. Sure. SPEAKER_02: You know what I mean? Only three people that know what happened are Daven Walken and Wagner. SPEAKER_04: Right. And all Walken wants to do is focus on Cowbell. SPEAKER_04: And dance. SPEAKER_02: I would say probably the most important clue out of this whole thing, though, Chuck, is that Robert Wagner and Dennis Daven switched to scotch on the bridge. SPEAKER_04: Is that the one? Yeah. SPEAKER_02: That's a power drinking move late at night. For sure. I've seen it happen. Do you have anything else? SPEAKER_04: I've got nothing else. It's just a tragic story. SPEAKER_02: Yeah, that's a thing to remember. Yeah. You know, 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. Yeah, I think we were. SPEAKER_04: That's a rule of thumb for all true crime stuff, you know? Absolutely. SPEAKER_02: Well, since Chuck said absolutely, I'm going to end on a high note for me and we'll go to listener mail. SPEAKER_02: 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 premise is sometimes your life is full of problems and you feel terrible. It's not always that helpful to be told to write down 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 that's hurting you or generally just ticking you off as a way to vent and hopefully understand why you feel how you feel and possibly being able to process it and make a plan on how to change it. Nice. 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. That's really awesome. SPEAKER_03: SPEAKER_04: And that is from, again, Gareth. SPEAKER_04: Thanks a lot, Gareth. I would say Gareth is sitting in the best recent email chair for now, huh? Yeah, that's a good one. 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 rather than dismissed. If you want to be like Gareth and try your shot at being in the best recent email chair, you can do that. Send it off to stuffpodcast.com. Stuff You Should Know is a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts, My Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. SPEAKER_07: Congratulations to the city of Bellevue, Washington, first place award winner for innovation in community at the 2023 unconventional awards presented by T-Mobile for Business. The city of Bellevue has revolutionized public safety as a leader in technological innovation to decrease road-related fatalities and injuries. In collaboration with T-Mobile 5G Solutions, Bellevue has improved the Vision Zero program, increasing real-time communications between cars, pedestrians, cyclists, and traffic infrastructure to provide early warnings on dangerous road interactions. T-Mobile for Business congratulates the city of Bellevue for their innovation and unconventional thinking. Small Business Saturday is November 25th, so let's go shop small with American Express. SPEAKER_08: Because that place around the corner always has presents that surprise. Let's go shop small with the powerful backing of American Express. SPEAKER_02: WeWork.com.