Almost 40 Years After Natalie Wood’s Mysterious Death, Her Daughter Shed New Light On The Case
Natasha Gregson Wagner has long been haunted by the death of her mother, Natalie Wood. For almost four decades, the distraught daughter of the Hollywood legend has refused to talk about the drowning incident that killed her mother, or the accusations her stepfather Robert Wagner faced as a result. However, in 2020, Gregson Wagner decided to tackle the rumors head-on.
Wood’s death has been the subject of morbid fascination for some years. The Hollywood actress lost her life at the age of 43 when she drowned while on a yachting trip off California’s Catalina Island in November 1981. Shortly after the tragedy, her death was described as “accidental” but that ruling has since been changed.
In 2012 Los Angeles County’s Chief Coroner, Lakshmanan Sathyavagiswaran, officially changed Wood’s cause of death. It had previously been put down to accidental drowning and hypothermia. However, Sathyavagiswaran amended Wood’s death certificate to state she’d passed as a result of “drowning and other undetermined factors.”
Among these “undetermined factors” alluded to on Wood’s death certificate was the fact that it wasn’t clear how the actress has come to be in the water that night. There were traces of alcohol and medication in her bloodstream that could have played a part in her demise, but it’s not certain exactly what led to Wood’s death.
The uncertain circumstances surrounding Wood’s untimely death have given rise to some speculation over the years. And as part of this, suspicion has fallen on her husband Wagner, who was on the yacht at the time of her death. It has been alleged that Wagner and Wood had an argument the night that she died, and even that her demise could have been a result of a lover’s jealousy.