The world was shocked when actress Natalie Wood, star of such classics as Miracle on 34th Street and Rebel Without a Cause, died in 1981 of what was declared a drowning accident. Keep reading the article below to learn more about Natalie Wood Death.

What really happened aboard the yacht she shared with husband Robert Wagner and Brainstorm co-star Christopher Walken remains a mystery. What is known is that Wood was drinking alcohol and pills on the night she disappeared from her boat.

For decades, Natalie Wood was a movie star. She had hits and misses, but she was a good actress, and audiences liked her. She portrayed dutiful characters, strong women, and neurotic women. She acted in many of the most popular films of her day, including Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Splendor in the Grass, and From Here to Eternity.

She was also a popular television actress. She starred in The Andy Griffith Show and Hart to Hart, and guest-starred on many other series. She was also known for her role in the 1978 film Meteor and for her sex comedy The Last Married Couple with George Segal.

Throughout her career, Wood was known to keep a close watch on her image and public persona. She was careful to stay away from sex scenes and raunchy roles, and her first marriage to bobby socks idol Robert Wagner ended in divorce. Despite her clean-cut image, she never refuted fan-magazine gossip that her marriage to Wagner collapsed because of an affair with her costar on Splendor in the Grass.

When she died in 1981, the mystery surrounding her drowning lingered for years. The media speculated that she and her husband had fought, or even argued, on the night of her death, and her body was found floating in the water near the island of Catalina. The police and sheriff’s department searched for hours, but they never found anything to indicate what had happened to her.

In 2012, journalist Jim Watson published a report in The Catalina Islander. He questioned the official story that Wood had jumped from a boat on purpose, and said he had discovered new evidence that indicated her death was accidental. He noted that her red down jacket, which had filled with water, weighed 40 pounds or more than her body, and she was wearing a flannel nightgown when she was found in the ocean.

He also noted that her bladder contained 300 ml of urine. This evidence, coupled with the fact that her body was found so far out in the water, suggests that she was dead or unconscious before she fell overboard. Despite these new details, the Police have still not charged anyone for her death. The District Attorney fears a celebrity trial, and Wagner refuses to talk to the Detectives.

Bruises

The new report, which was released after a security hold Monday, notes that a reexamination of the original autopsy evidence and a review of new information has led the coroner’s office to change the actress’s death from accidental drowning to undetermined causes.

Wood was 43 when she died on Nov. 29, 1981, after spending a night on the yacht Splendour with husband Robert Wagner and actor Christopher Walken. She was not wearing a life jacket and did not leave behind a suicide note.

Bruises were found on both of her arms and on her neck, which the medical examiner now says may have occurred before she fell off the boat into the ocean. It’s unclear how the bruises were triggered, though they could have been caused by her struggle to pull herself into a dinghy. The dinghy was later found beached nearby.

For the past 35 years, the prevailing theory has been that Wood drowned after slipping off the yacht and trying to climb back aboard, but the bruising suggests she was injured before she fell into the water.

Despite her fame, Natalie Wood was no stranger to trouble. Her marriage to Wagner, with whom she starred in such hits as West Side Story and Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice, was turbulent and included multiple separations. He also had a relationship with actress Lana Turner, with whom he costarred in a number of films including Brainstorm and The Devil’s Own.

Davern has told numerous TV shows and in his book Goodbye Natalie, Goodbye Splendour that he heard Wood and Wagner fighting on the night of her death and believed the fight was to blame for her disappearance. He said that when Wagner returned around 11:30 p.m. looking “Tousled and sweating profusely as if he had been in a terrible fight, an ordeal of some kind,” that he told him to stick with their original story, which was that Wood slipped into the water accidentally.

The boat captain who helped pull Wood’s body from the ocean said he didn’t see any of the bruises outlined in the new supplemental report, but he suggested the chilly water might have delayed them.

Foul Play

The death of Oscar-nominated actress Natalie Wood in November 1981 is one of Hollywood’s most mysterious unsolved murders. The actress, who starred in West Side Story and Rebel Without A Cause, was found dead at the age of 43 after a night of drinking on a yacht with her husband Robert Wagner and co-star Christopher Walken. Rumours of foul play have swirled ever since her death, and in 2011 LA police reopened the case, although they did not make Wagner an official suspect.

Police say that weeks of interviews and investigation have not uncovered any evidence to suggest that foul play was involved in Wood’s death. However, cold cases are never really closed, and detectives have not ruled out that the actor’s fatal fall from the deck of their yacht could have been anything other than accidental.

Investigators have long been intrigued by the possibility that Wood’s alcohol levels and bruises on her body may have been inflicted after her death. The bruises, along with a superficial abrasion and blood in her eyes, were enough to raise suspicions about the circumstances of the actress’s death. In addition, Wood’s husband Robert Wagner has always denied any involvement in her death.

In the years leading up to her death, Wood was struggling with her mother’s controlling personality, which she described as “a monster”. She was reportedly unable to take care of herself, and she suffered from a debilitating nervous breakdown in 1968 that led to her first divorce.

Wagner and his daughter, Natasha Gregson Wagner, both spoke out in the aftermath of her death, with Wagner telling Vanity Fair that he had been the only person to see Wood’s body. He also admitted that he had changed his account of what happened on the night of the accident, contradicting the original coroner’s report, which ruled her death an accident.

This book, which Sam Perroni published in 2018, examines the reopened investigation into Natalie Wood’s death and explores the role that powerful Hollywood insiders played in keeping the truth from coming out for four decades. It reveals how the LA Sheriff, Peter Pitchess, had a cozy relationship with Frank Sinatra and used his connections to protect Wagner. It also looks at how a highly paid LA private investigator, known as a “fixer,” was hired by the Wagner family to conduct an independent probe into Wood’s death.

Drowning

Actress Natalie Wood was 43 when she drowned off the coast of Catalina Island in November 1981. Her death was ruled an accident, and her husband at the time, actor Robert Wagner (Hart to Hart, Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery), has never been charged with any wrongdoing. But rumors of foul play abound. For years, various people—from Wood’s sister to boat captain Dennis Davern and even the Los Angeles County sheriff’s investigator in charge of the case—have given varying accounts of what happened.

The story begins in the early hours of Nov. 29, 1981, when Wood was on board her family’s yacht The Splendour off the coast of California. She was with her husband, actor and director Robert Wagner, as well as a friend of the couple, actor Christopher Walken.

At the time, police thought she slipped overboard while trying to untie her dinghy from the boat and that she then struggled in the water to get to shore. A number of bruises on her body, including those on her arms and knee, were consistent with that theory. However, investigators failed to analyze scratch marks on the side of the dinghy and did not take nail clippings from her hands to see if they were made by rope.

In 2013, the LA County coroner’s office officially changed Wood’s cause of death from accidental drowning to “drowning and other undetermined factors.” The change was based on new evidence, including fresh bruises, which were found on her body after she died. The bruises were reportedly sustained after she was thrown from the boat and could not have been inflicted before her death.

Wood was one of Hollywood’s most alluring actresses in life and a sexy leading lady in her movies. But her private life was more tumultuous, and she suffered from a variety of ailments including chronic depression and anxiety disorder. She was also prone to outbursts, and at times she turned to drugs and alcohol. Her self-described dutiful upbringing also taught her to keep quiet. She rarely spoke publicly about the abuse she suffered from directors who exploited her, studio executives who looked the other way, and men who abused her.