Natalie Wood Case Re-Opened

Despite assertions in Hollywood’s Babylon Women (1994) that the Natalie Wood case will never be re-opened, the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department has announced that it has indeed re-opened the case:

On November 29, 1981, actress Natalie Wood Wagner drowned while boating off the Isthmus of Catalina Island. At the time, the drowning was investigated by the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department and the Los Angeles County Coroner’s Office. The drowning was ruled an accident.

Recently Sheriff’s Homicide Investigators were contacted by persons who stated they had additional information about the Natalie Wood Wagner drowning. Due to the additional information, Sheriff’s Homicide Bureau has decided to take another look at the case.

Anyone with information about this incident is encouraged to contact Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department Homicide Lieutenant Corina at (323) 890-5641. If you prefer to provide information Anonymously, you may call “Crime Stoppers” by dialing (800) 222-TIPS (8477), texting the letters TIPLA plus your tip to CRIMES (274637), or by using the website http;//lacrimestoppers.org

Here’s the part where they said it would never happen:

[Coroner Thomas] Noguchi, who later lost his job because of his outspoken doubts about the cause of Natalie Wood’s death and his desire to develop a “Psychological Profile,” said, a few years following her death, that he would urge that the case be re-opened. It never has been re-opened, nor ever will be, because of pressure “downtown” brought about by the oligarchy.” …

A private investigator …. [Milo] Speriglio probed Natalie’s death extensively … Said Speriglio, “In my porfession opinion, the closet Natalie Wood’s death get to ‘accidental drowning’ is ‘accidental homicide’.”

On why he lost his job, Thomas Noguchi said in his book Coroner at Large, “I believe that my dismissal came about as the result of my decision to tell the facts about the role that alcohol played in the deaths of Natalie Wood and William Holden.”

A lot of people apparently felt that the argument between Natalie’s husband, Robert Wagner, and actor Christopher Walken had more to do with it than alcohol.

Walken is quoted in The Hollywood Book of Scandals (2004) as saying in 1984: “I’m sure that I will never be able to stop the rumors about Natalie’s death. The people who are convinced that there was something more to it than what came out in the investigation will never be satisfied with the truth. Because the truth is, there is nothing more to it. It was an accident.”