Natalie Wood’s sister Lana wants Robert Wagner to tell ‘the truth’ about what happened the night of the actresses’ shocking death.
The Hollywood icon, who would’ve turned 80 next week, tragically drowned on November 21, 1981, at 43-years-old. The actress was sailing with her husband Wagner, and fellow actor Christopher Walken, as well as the ships captain, Dennis Davern.
Wagner has repeatedly maintained he doesn’t know what happened to his wife, and believes she fell off the boat.
37 years later, Lana wants Wagner to ‘tell the truth for once and for all’ as she shares her own theory of what led to her death on the new podcast Fatal Voyage: The Mysterious Death of Natalie Wood.
Lana tells host Dylan Howard, ‘I believe that there was a horrible fight onboard the Splendour.’
‘I think the evidence is also not just what Dennis Davern, the captain, has said, but the broken wine bottle and the threat that was first denied by Robert Wagner and then later in another book that he wrote he admitted to it. I think that things got out of hand,’ she continued.
‘I know Natalie can verbally push, and Natalie was a very by-the-rules person. She did not put up with a great deal that she felt was harmful to her.’
Lana adds, ‘I think it escalated to a point where she was either struck or pushed. I don’t believe that it was planned. I don’t believe in any of those bizarre stories, but I do know she would not have ended up somewhere where she would completely never, ever go in a million years or certainly not go out not dressed.
‘There’s just too much that doesn’t add up to who Natalie is.
Wagner and Natalie wed in 1957 and divorced in 1962. The two reconciled and remarried in 1972. They were together until her death in 1981.
The couple welcomed a daughter, Courtney Wagner, in 1974. Natalie also had an older daughter Natasha Gregson Wagner from her marriage to British producer Richard Gregson from 1969 to 1971.
Earlier this year, Wagner was named a person of interest in the case after it was reopened in 2011.
Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department Lieutenant John Corina said in an interview with CBS’ 48 Hours, ‘As we’ve investigated the case over the last six years, I think he’s more of a person of interest now.
‘I mean, we now know that he was the last person to be with Natalie before she disappeared.’
Wagner has refused to speak with investigators since they began to look into the circumstances surrounding Wood’s death again.
Corina said of Wagner, ‘I haven’t seen him tell the details that match all the other witnesses in this case,’ adding, ‘I think he’s constantly changed his story a little bit. And his version of events just don’t add up.’
In Wagner’s 2008 memoir, Pieces of My Heart, he wrote that after a night of drinking, he got into an argument with Walken over Wood’s career.
The now 87-year-old actor wrote, ‘I picked up a wine bottle, slammed it on the table and broke it into pieces.’
When reflecting on how Wood fell off the boat, Wagner wrote it was ‘all conjecture’ and that ‘nobody knows.’
He wrote: ‘There are only two possibilities: either she was trying to get away from the argument, or she was trying to tie the dinghy. But the bottom line is that nobody knows exactly what happened.’
Related: Natalie Wood shock audio tapes ‘blow case open’
Related: Robert Wagner confesses: ‘How Natalie Wood really died’
Gripping podcast How I Survived this week features incredibly strong mum Michelle Dowsett who was scalped in a horror farming accident – while pregnant. Subscribe via iTunes: https://apple.co/2LkCKg0 or Omny: https://bit.ly/2MRTAQp
