The context: In 1981, actor Natalie Wood was found dead in the water while on a yacht trip with her husband Robert Wagner and Christopher Walken, who she was working with on the movie Brainstorm. The captain of the boat, Dennis Davern, was also on board. The men allegedly noticed her missing in the late hours of November 28 and began searching for her. Her body was found in a nearby cove the next morning.
Natalie’s death was initially ruled an accidental drowning, but it was later reclassified as “suspicious” and her death certificate was amended to state the cause was “drowning and other undetermined factors,” accounting for the unresolved questions surrounding the incident — including how she ended up in the water, and how she acquired certain bruises on her body.
Dennis Davern said he had witnessed an explosive argument between Robert Wagner and Natalie before her disappearance, which Robert later confirmed in his memoir Pieces of My Heart. In 2018, police named Robert as a “person of interest.”
Christopher Walken has mostly kept silent about Natalie’s death, although he did tell Playboy in 1997 that “she was alone,” when it happened, speculating that she had been “half asleep” and slipped and hit her head while trying to move a dinghy that was bouncing against the side of the boat.Â