Unsolved Case: Natalie Wood pt. 2

The next morning on Saturday, November 28, they returned to the boat, where Wood apparently decided to stay for the reminder of the weekend based upon Walken’s expressed desire to stay. Walken and Wood went ashore that afternoon to begin drinking at Doug’s Harbor Reef where they were later joined by Wagner and Davern. The party’s waitress recalls that at dinner, the consumed two bottles of wine, two bottles of champagne and one of the men was also drinking daiquiris. She remembers that Wood did not eat much of her dinner and that she did not seem to be in a good mood at all; the waitress also recalls that when Natalie left the restaurant she appeared to be stumbling. In one moment, Wood was said to have thrown a glass down onto the floor, though Walken later explained the incident saying it was his fault because he threw his glass on the floor after making a toast and Wood had just followed suit. According to the testimony given by Davern, Walken and Wood seemed very flirty throughout dinner. They boarded the dinghy to return to their yacht for the night at about 10 p.m. As they were boarding, a witness from the Harbor Patrol Office said they heard Wood scream about something, which he assumed was just because she was drunk. Witnesses sleeping aboard on a nearby boat, John Payne and his girlfriend, Marilyn Wayne, reported hearing shouts at around midnight. However, there was a party going on somewhere nearby, so they figured it was from that and did not respond. Payne claimed to hear a woman yelling “Someone please, help me!” coming from the near stern of The Splendour and potentially from someone in a dinghy. He also believed to hear a man who sounded very drunk respond “Okay, honey, we’ll get you” but with a mocking tone; this is why Payne believed the cries were associated with the party. Reports say there was a nonviolent argument on the yacht just before Wood disappeared. Wagner has said that he and Walken did have a political debate that he began at dinner, that they continued while aboard the yacht. He describes the event saying “There was no fight, no anger. Just a lot of words thrown around like you hear in most political discussions. Natalie sat there not saying much of anything and looked bored. She left us after about a half hour, and we sat there talking for almost another hour. Then I went to kiss her goodnight and found her missing.” At 1:30 a.m. that night, Wagner and Captain Davern made a distress call to the coast guard saying that Natalie Wood had disappeared from the couple’s yacht, and about six hours later, taking us back to the start, the body of Wood was found floating about a mile from the yacht. The Prince Valiant, the inflatable dinghy, which she has presumably left the boat on, was found washed up on the rocks. The ignition was off, the gear shift was set to neutral, and the oars were locked, which implies she may have never started the vessel. The coroner reported that she had drunk seven or eight glasses of wine before the incident. Her blood alcohol level was at least .14 and the police ultimately ruled her death as accidental. She also has superficial bruises on her arms and lower legs as well as a cut on her cheek. Though at the time, these were all attributed to what might have naturally occurred as she fell on the water.  

                                                                                                 Article by Azzurra Furnari