Episode 135: I went down the Natalie Wood rabbit hole

What actually happened on Thanksgiving weekend of 1981? Did Natalie Wood die in a freak drowning accident? Or is there more to the story? What do we know now that we didn't know 45 years ago? 

Links:

https://a.co/d/02FoOaSg

https://open.spotify.com/show/5UMKujJsAJrzlGCQtufJKH

This list came up on IMDB right after I told the story of RJ and the celebrity doppelganger stable! https://www.imdb.com/gallery/rg1875155712/mediaviewer/rm2715070465/?ref_=nm_c_ft_g_celebdopp_cta

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Kissinger

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jill_St._John

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Wagner#Death_of_Natalie_Wood

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lookout_Mountain_Air_Force_Station#Productions

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Transcript

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Transcription by Otter.ai.  Please forgive any typos!

Sara Causey discusses her investigation into Natalie Wood's death, highlighting the rumors and speculations that surrounded her life and death. Wood, born Natalie Zacharenko, was a renowned actress known for films like "Miracle on 34th Street" and "West Side Story." She married Robert Wagner twice, divorced in 1962, and remarried in 1972. In 1981, Wood died under mysterious circumstances while on a yacht with Wagner, Christopher Walken, and the ship's captain, Dennis Davern. Lana Wood's memoir and the podcast "The Mysterious Death of Natalie Wood" suggest foul play, pointing to Wagner's jealousy and control over the investigation. The case remains unsolved, with Wagner named a person of interest.

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

Natalie Wood, Robert Wagner, accidental drowning, Hollywood rumors, Lana Wood, Christopher Walken, Catalina Island, yacht Splendor, suspicious death, investigation, personal memoir, celebrity doppelgangers, star power, law enforcement, unsolved case.

Welcome to con-sara-cy theories. Are you ready to ask questions you shouldn't and find information you're not supposed to know? Well, you're in the right place. Here is your host, Sara Causey.

Hello, hello, and thanks for tuning in. In tonight's episode, I will be talking about how I went down the Natalie Wood rabbit hole. Similar to my recent investigation into Dan and Betty Broderick and Linda, and what the hell actually happened with them. Who was telling the truth? Maybe who wasn't. What what do we know? Sometimes when an event happens, when we're a little kid, or maybe a teenager, or perhaps even a young adult, if we didn't really pay that much attention to it, or all of our information was filtered through the lens of media circus and insane spectacle, we don't really know, and then you go back later and you start looking at the facts and the evidence, and you have all the additional years of hindsight and life experience. Things hit differently. Natalie Wood died when I was a little kid, and I honestly do not remember any of the immediate media coverage around it. However, I do most definitely remember throughout the 80s and 90s, the rumor mill was crazy, and it always seemed to amount to sex rumors. Were the three of them a thruple? What were they up to? Who was involved with who? Who's zooming who? That was really the main thrust-no pun intended-of the rumor mill was trying to figure out what was going on sexually. That's where everybody's brain went. And then, secondarily to that, the rumor mill became drugs and/or alcohol. Well, it's Hollywood. Guess what? People really shrug their shoulders and say, whenever a famous person dies, especially if there's even the vaguest hint of a drug overdose. It's like, well, it's Hollywood. You know what they do out there? It's just partying all the time, sex, drugs, and rock and roll. And when we make that assumption, it actually, in my opinion, helps people to get away with criminal activity because everybody goes, well, it's Hollywood, almost like as if to say, it's completely fine to murder somebody as long as you've done it in Hollywood. That doesn't even make any sense. So I want to talk tonight about how I went down the rabbit hole, and do we have any information? What have we learned now that we didn't know 40 plus years ago? Stay tuned.

Sara's award-winning biography, Decoding the Unicorn: A New Look at Dag Hammarskjold, and her latest release, Simply Dag: The Public Man in a Private and Dangerous Office are available on Amazon. The Simply Dag audiobook can be found along with other cool merch on her storefront at SaraCausey.Shop. And now back to the show.

Before we delve into what actually happened on the night of November 29, 1981, who was involved? What might the motives have been? I think it's important to remember Natalie Wood's life as a biographer. One of the things that drives me crazy is when people fixate on the worst day or night of someone's entire life, and they become reduced down to a murder victim. It's almost like whatever they did before doesn't count. The only thing supposedly interesting about them is that they were murdered. I absolutely hate that. So it's important to take a minute here, at the very least, to remember that Natalie Wood was a human being on the planet. Natalie Wood was a pseudonym. She was born Natalie Zacharinko, July 20, 1938, in San Francisco, California, and you may remember her from movies like Miracle on 34th Street, which is one of my favorites, Rebel Without a Cause, The Searchers, West Side Story, Gypsy, Splendor in the Grass, Love with the Proper Stranger, Sex and the Single Girl, The Great Race, Bob and Carol, Ted and Alice. She was nominated for an Oscar three times in 1956 for Best Supporting Actress for Rebel Without a Cause, 1962 for Best Actress in a Leading Role for Splendor in the Grass, and then in 1964 Best Actress in a Leading Role for Love with the Proper Stranger. I thought she was fabulous in Miracle on 34th Street every Thanksgiving. That's one of those movies that I crank up because it's just like I love the nostalgia of it, and it's like you're getting transported to another world, where Maureen O'Hara plays this single mom executive, and then also Natalie Wood is the precocious girl. But she's also been made fairly cynical by her mother. Like I'm not allowed to play. I'm not allowed to believe in. Fairy tales. If it's not something that I can see and hear and taste and touch for myself, then it isn't real. And then Kris Kringle has to come around and show her like there's so much more to life than that. You can play. You can pretend. You don't have to be basically a parentified adult in a little kid's body. She also played Jean Tierney's daughter in *The Ghost and mrs. Muir* which is without a doubt a film that is very close to my heart for obvious reasons. In 1957, she married Robert Wagner, who was, you know, kind of a hot stuff back in the day actor, and before you had the Richard Burton, Liz Taylor, on again, off again situation. That's basically what happened with Natalie Wood and Robert Wagner. So they got married in 1957, divorced in 1962, and then remarried again in 1972. In the 70s, Natalie takes a break from acting to focus on being a mom, she has two daughters: one with Robert Wagner, and then another one with her second husband, who was Richard Gregson. She was married to Richard Gregson from 1969 to 1972. In the early 1980s, she starts working on her comeback film. This is supposed to be the entree back into acting. Like I've had my sabbatical. My daughters are old enough now that I feel comfortable going back to the demands of Hollywood, and that film was Brainstorm. It was not actually released until 1983, and her co-star was Christopher Walken. And it's important to remember because I think nowadays we tend to think about Christopher Walken and we imagine the Continental and more cowbell, and he is a fantastic comedic actor. But he has not always focused solely on comedy. Earlier, I reviewed The Dead Zone, which I think is a very good film and worth your time. But we have to remember that in the early '80s, Christopher Walken is coming off of an Oscar win. He won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for the 1978 film *The Deer Hunter* So he's hot stuff. He's a big deal actor at this point in time, and he's been Oscar's on Thanksgiving weekend of 1981. Natalie Wood, Robert Wagner, Christopher Walken, and then the ship's captain or first mate, however we want to think of him, Dennis Devern, go out to Catalina Island. The weather we're told was not super fantastic that weekend, but they go out on this yacht, the Splendor, to have Thanksgiving weekend.

Over the course of said weekend, so we're told, Natalie somehow goes overboard and drowns in the Pacific Ocean. She was only 43 years old at the time. I started off by reading Lana Woods' 2021 book, Little sister, my investigation into the mysterious death of Natalie Wood. Is it strictly a true crime investigative book? No, it isn't. And I think some people have read it and felt disappointed because it is part personal memoir. It's like Hollywood expose, true crime, personal memoir, autobiography, all thrown into the same pot. It's interesting, but if you want strictly to get into the details of what happened Thanksgiving weekend, 1981, it may not be a book that really resonates for you. For my money, there are times when Lana seems to be a bit melodramatic-not about the death, mind you, but just about her own life-and it is extremely obvious that she and Robert Wagner did not get along. They don't get along now, and they didn't get along back in the day. And there's nothing nefarious about that on its face, because look at how many people, frankly, don't get along with their in-laws. That's a tale as old as time. Probably for as long in history as people have been married, there have been people who've been like, "I really cannot stand my in-laws. I don't know how this person that I fell in love with came from that family because I do not fucking get it. So some of the key things that we learn from Lana's book, we learn a lot about childhood control and trauma. Lana talks about how she and Natalie had this early life by a momager. That's what we would call somebody like Maria in modern parlance-a momager, a true stage mom, somebody who really wants money and is ambitious by proxy. Like if I can't make it, if it's too late for me to live out my dream, then I'm going to make sure that my kids live it out, and I'm going to make sure that my kids are bringing in some income. There is a pretty explosive revelation in that part. Of the book, and it's completely separate from whatever happened with Natalie Wood's death. Lana makes the allegation that when Natalie is only 15 years old, she gets essayed by the actor Kirk Douglas at the Chateau Marmont. This allegation had been floated out before that at some point, when Natalie Wood was a teenager, let's say between the ages of 15 and 17, she gets carried off to the Chateau Marmont by her mother, by her mother, to go into a hotel room or bungalow or whatever with a dude, an older dude. Lana says that their mother forced Natalie to keep quiet about it because she felt like all you do is make trouble for wealthy and powerful men. Part of what women have to do in Hollywood is just suck it up. So whatever he did to you, just forget about it. More or less, like go home, take a shower, and forget that it happened. Lana says that later in life, when they were both adults talking about it, that Natalie never used the R word and she never said S A. She just said this person hurt me, and Lana knew what she meant without her having to explicitly come right out and say it. Lana said that she was like in the back seat of the car as a little kid, not really understanding what was going on, but just like waiting and waiting and waiting. So the mom is up front in the driver's seat, and Lana's in the back seat waiting and waiting and waiting, and then finally Natalie comes out, and she's obviously disheveled and upset. So, if that happened, regardless of who the actor even was, if something like that happened, it's horrible. And there's certainly more awareness. I'm certainly not going to sit here and claim that any of that crap has stopped, but there's more awareness of it now because of the Tefri-Techstein list, because of knowing what happened with Weinstein and the Diddy freak off parties, the Me Too movement, and Time's Up. Will we have any kind of lasting changes from any of that? Probably not, because you're still going to have sex perverts and PDF files in high places, that welcome to the world in which we live.

Unfortunately, it's not excusing it by any means. It's saying you need to keep your head on a swivel. If I had a young child or grandchild or whatever that was like, "Hey, I want to go off and to Hollywood and be famous, I'd be like, "Oh hell no, over my dead body, basically. Lana also gets into Natalie's tumultuous marriage with Robert Wagner, and apparently Robert wanted everybody to call him RJ. So they have this volatile relationship, and as I said, it's very clear in reading the book that Lana and RJ did not get along. But Lana talks about how Natalie and R.J. first marriage ended, saying that Natalie had caught R.J. in a let's say compromising position with his butler, and that has been alleged by more sources than just Lana that Natalie caught him having a gay or bisexual affair, freaked out about it, moved out, and said the marriage is over. And Lana also makes it very clear that she was outraged that Natalie wants to go back like 10 years later and remarry R.J. She claims that there was a conversation about better the devil you know than the devil you don't. That Natalie felt like dating and being married to somebody else. It was just very stressful, and she felt like, well, I don't want to be alone, but I also don't want to date all of these other guys. I've had these other relationships with other men, and they didn't pan out to be anything spectacular either, if I get married to RJ again, at least I know what I'm getting. Better the devil you know than the devil you don't. And Lana's like, how about no devils? Which that would have been my reaction too. Like, no, fuck this. I don't want to be single shit. You're so much better off being by yourself than being with somebody that you don't feel 100% about. She also kind of revisits that Thanksgiving weekend of 1981, and I guess maybe the the crux of the book once we set aside like the tumultuous romance and Lana detailing her own personal problems, and that this this woman has been through a lot of loss. She lost her own daughter. She lost her mother. She lost her sister. She's had a lot of loss in her life. There's no doubt about that. But really, presumably, the core of the book is about the fatal trip aboard the yacht Splendor off Catalina Island with Wagner. Christopher Walken, Lana challenges the original ruling of accidental drowning, and she talks about the night had been marred by heavy drinking and heated arguments between Wagner Walken and Natalie, and even just the nightgown to me is one of those things. Like this woman is found in a flannel nightgown with no undergarments and socks. One of the things that Lana talks about in the book is that they were taught from a very young age. You know, they have this momager who's image conscious and everything's about making it big and having money and having star power. You just didn't go out without looking a certain way. You had to always be presentable, and that's another argument against the idea that Natalie was going to go boat hopping. Natalie thought that she was going to hang out with other people on other yachts in Catalina Island. It's like in a nightgown and wool socks with no undergarments on. That doesn't suggest to me anybody who was planning to go boat hopping and and clubbing around with other people, Lana outlines what she considers to be severe mishandling by original law enforcement. She highlights the inconsistencies in RJ's timeline, as well as things like missing witness reports, including nearby boaters who heard screams for help? Input that got ignored from paramedics on the scene, and then the eventual testimony of the boat captain Dennis Deverne, who claimed that R.J. failed to search for Natalie after she went missing. There's like a timeline there allegedly where R.J. doesn't even want to turn the fucking lights on, and Dennis is kind of like, if someone has gone overboard, wouldn't that be one of the first fucking things that you do is turn the lights on so we can start trying to figure out are they just right here up against the boat or where have they gone? That's sketchy. Lana covers how the pushback eventually leads the L.A.

County Sheriff's Department to reopen the case in 2011, and then finally to reclassify Natalie's cause of death as "quote suspicious" in 2018. So the memoir really captures the personal fallout that happens following Natalie's death. Lana talks about being frozen out by R.J. and separated from her nieces, even while she's dealing with her own stuff. You know, she talks about, according to her, allegedly she was blackballed in the industry and told like you're never going to get another acting job. For a while, she had been involved in production, and she said that she really liked that, but it gets to the point of like you're not going to work in this town again, period. Data, okay? Why? Well, because of R.J. And her thing was like, why does he hate me so much to blackball me like this? And then why does he still have all of this power? Something feels rotten in the state of Denmark. So she has to to go work as like a shop girl and working at a telecom company. It's kind of like the Hollywood dream in reverse, you know. Instead of somebody doing those things and then hitting it big, it's like somebody hits it big and then has to go right back down the ladder again. So while Lana does not argue that the drowning was premeditated and everything was planned in advance. She does look askance at R.J. like he has to have been responsible for the altercation, whatever it was-the argument, throwing a bottle, getting into a big row on the boat. She points the finger firmly at R.J. and says, like whatever led to Natalie being in that water, and then her subsequently being left to drown, it has to be at his feet. From there, I went next to the podcast, "The Mysterious Death of Natalie Wood. It is quite a lengthy podcast, but very interesting. One of the stories that they tell on this podcast that is most definitely creepy. So when Natalie is about seven years old, she gets a part in the film Tomorrow Is Forever, which also stars Orson Welles and Claudette Colbert. And there is a scene where she's supposed to cry on cue, but she's struggling to do it. So allegedly, her mother catches a butterfly and then tears it to pieces in front of her, so that she'll get upset and start crying. It's basically like I'm going to take an innocent animal and abuse it in front of you, and then I'm going to make sure that they roll camera while you're crying and disturbed by it. If that is true, obviously it is some next level heinous momager shit. Something interesting that we learn in both Lana's book and then also in this podcast is that Natalie had written some pages towards a memoir of her own, and Lana. Later gets access to this because it's like a psychiatrist or medical doctor of some kind had had these notes, and then after he dies, it's a matter of well, who should take custody of these papers? Natalie is deceased, but then also so is this doctor, and that's how Lana got these pages. And one of the things that Natalie talks about in these memoir pages is like how she began to see her self worth as being dictated by whether or not she was getting acting parts. There's a time also when Natalie is a child where she breaks her wrist and it never gets set properly. She gets into the habit of just wearing a bracelet to try to cover up the slightly distended bone, but she's told like, don't make any waves, don't cry, don't miss your assignments over a broken bone. Which again, that would be bad enough for an adult, but when you're talking about a child who's put into a situation that they cannot fully give consent to, breaking a bone and then being told keep your fucking mouth shut because it might cost you this job. Again, we're in very heinous momager territory. As far as Natalie and R.J. and how they initially connected, this is another interesting story. So R.J. is about eight years older than Natalie, and supposedly when Natalie is only 10 years old, she sees Robert Wagner in a movie studio, turns to her mother, and says, "I'm going to marry that man.

And then, as Natalie gets older, Momajer decides to set them up, like, "Well, he's this handsome, well thought of actor. And it is important to remember that he's been in the, but by the time that the 50s roll around, he's been in the movie Prince Valiant in 1954 and A Kiss Before Dying in 1956. So supposedly Momijer sets them up on a date, like calls R.J. publicist, like, hey, I'm Natalie Wood's mom, and she's got a crush on RJ. Like, let's set the two of them up on a date. They start dating, and Lana says that her parents tell her like somebody special is coming over. You don't need to be little sister, kid sister, pest. Leave them alone. And the person coming over was RJ. So we have this kind of 1950s Hollywood it couple, like a 1950s version of Brad and Angelina, and there are people on the podcast who make the argument that as Robert Wagner is being able to get more roles, some of that happens because of his proximity to Natalie. It's like Natalie is the quote unquote real star, and then he's the husband that's kind of writing her coattails. But even though the magazines are making them look like they have this fairy tale marriage, they really don't. And it is alleged. Again, I'm just going to use. I wasn't there. I wasn't in the bed with them, so I don't know. I'm just going to use words like supposedly and allegedly, because I don't know, it gets reported in this podcast allegedly that Natalie finds R.J. on the couch in sexual congress with the butler. That she goes to bed and then she wakes up in the middle of the night and he's not there and she wonders where he is. So she goes walking through the house to try to find him, and then that's when she discovers the two of them on the couch together, freaks out, and runs home to her parents. There had been some on-screen chemistry between Natalie Wood and her co-star from Splendor and the Grass, Warren Beatty, and they start dating. We're told that the timeline is about 1962. After Natalie Wood divorces RJ, she and Warren Beatty become this high-profile couple. They go out together at the Cannes Film Festival in May of 62, and they're like the toast of the town. RJ says in his memoirs that at one point he gets so jealous of Warren Beatty, that he actually follows Warren Beatty home with a boomstick in the car. He doesn't actually go through with anything, but he was just very angry and very jealous. We hear this backstory that R.J. fell in love with fame from an early age. He loved the silver screen and just had this thought of, "I want to be part of it all. I've seen these films from old Hollywood, and now I want to be in the thick of it all. I love to be the center of attention. One of the interesting stories, like setting aside the murder mystery for a second, one of the interesting stories that comes out of this podcast for me is that Robert Wagner talks about the sensation of being disposable. This idea of no matter how attractive you are, you can always be replaced. And there's a story told about how the studios would have doppelgangers if you hit it big and became a movie star. They would go out and recruit men or women who looked exactly like you to keep you in line. And to say if you betray us, or you smart off to us, or you cause too many problems for us, we will replace you. Look at your look at your doppelgangers. Look at the stable of people we have who are ready to fill your shoes if you fuck this up. I personally believe that to be true, and I think nowadays it's probably something even more sophisticated than that, I would like at some point to cover the movie Get Out, because for one thing, the whole premise of like body takeover gives me the creeps. But even going out of the realm of like dystopian sci-fi and that's just a movie and all of that, I'm like, I wonder what kind of capabilities the technology has at this point.

You know there are rumors going around, for example, that Selena Gomez suddenly looks and talks a lot like Geena Davis. Jim Carrey doesn't even look like Jim Carrey anymore, and people will say, "Well, maybe he just had bad plastic surgery. I don't know. I don't claim to have an answer to that question, but we go all the way back to the 50s, and RJ talking about how they would have a stable of doppelgangers, so that if you got out of line, you could easily be replaced with somebody exactly like you. Just a moment to say, hmm, I also find it very interesting that you know I'm recording this on the night of the 25th before it goes out on the night of the 26th. We got the information today that Dolly Parton had died. I don't really understand why Dolly Parton over the past few years was just fucking everywhere. It's like she went from being a country star slash sometimes movie star to just being everywhere. She had brands all over the place, and I'm like, I I don't kind of get this fascination, but whatever. But I I found it very interesting that just a day ago, the news broke that she was talking about having a hologram do her performances, and then the next day we get word that she's dead. But whenever I heard that hologram story, I was like, no, there's something fucked up with this. Either she's already dead, and they just haven't made the announcement yet, or she's getting ready to die. I think there's a third possibility there too, because if you imagine this notion of transferring consciousness to be true, it's almost like what has actually happened here. I know, I get it. That's just a conspiracy theory, or that's just science fiction. But remember, in the Marvel comics, there was that whole idea of Doctor Zola putting his consciousness into a computer, into a robot, and then now you know Lord Elon is talking about putting chips into your brain, and there there really is serious talk at this point about how people can upload their consciousness into a computer and just go on and on ad infinitum. So before we laugh that off, I just think there's something to it. So Natalie gets divorced the first time from Robert Wagner in 1962, and then in 1969, she gets married to Richard Gregson, who was a talent agent, a film producer, and a screenwriter. I tried to do a bit of research on him, and I didn't find that many credits. Like when you go to IMDb, there's only like three things listed, so I don't claim to know what the backstory is with this guy? They were only married for about three years, and then this kind of is our entry into well, it's better the devil you know, because she tells Lana like, well, I've dated now I've been married another time, and I never really wanted to be the kind of woman who went through marriage partners like Kleenex. I really want the old-fashioned, down-home kind of life of you get married to one person and that's it. You're supposed to be together till death do us part. And so, if I go back with RJ, I know what I'm getting. I kind of could go in this time with my eyes open. And Lana is like, I don't really think I would do that. Now, as an aside, whenever I went to IMDb to try to find out Richard Gregson's credits, like did he write a hit movie? Was he involved in the development of something? On the side panel, and I will drop a link to this so you can see what I'm talking about on the side panel. It says seeing double celebrity doppelgangers. So here I've just told the story about RJ saying that they keep a stable of people who look exactly like you, so that if you ever get out of line, you can be told you're highly replaceable. And then here's a list. There's like 164 pictures here of celebrity doppelgangers, you cannot make this shit up. It's absolutely wild. Coming back to the Mysterious Death podcast, we get further information, really just to reinforce the idea that RJ was the jealous type and that he wanted to be the center of Natalie's universe, but.

And also the idea that he was jealous of her stardom, that she was arguably the more successful between the two. She had made some really smart investments, and so she had quite a little pot of money. But then on top of that, she had the star power. It was kind of like R.J. was this perfectly serviceable actor, but he never really became a superstar, and then here's Natalie getting ready for her comeback film. She's no longer wanting to be a housefrau and a full-time mom. She wants to get back into acting, and she's doing it in this movie with an it guy in Hollywood at the time. Somebody who has just recently been Oscar's, and we're told that R.J. really can't stand the idea of that. And one of the things in Lana's book that she really emphasizes is she gets away from all the sex rumors, the idea that they were a thruple, or that Natalie and Chris were having sex, or Natalie and Dennis were having sex, or that R.J. and Chris were having sex, or that all three of them, except except for Dennis. Dennis was the odd man out because all the other three were having this thruple. Like she really puts all of that in a garbage can, and says, "No, I don't think that R.J. was jealous because anything sexual was going on. I think R.J. was jealous because he felt like Chris would have a bigger impact on Natalie's career, and that he might start giving her career advice or giving her ideas about what to do in Hollywood, and he resented the hell out of that. Lana says that the night before they're supposed to go off on this yacht cruise, she tells her, "I don't have a good feeling about this, but Natalie's like, no, we've made our plans and everything will be fine. And when we look at the mise en scene, it it is a pretty strange situation because we're told this story. Lana certainly tells it both in this podcast and then also in her book. We're told this story that the mother, the momager, sees this fortune teller early on, and the the fortune teller says you will have a child who's famous, but this child could be killed by dark water. So there's this weird dark water prophecy, and then here's Natalie going out. The weather is crummy. It's Thanksgiving weekend. Like, why the hell do you want to go sail off to Catalina on a weekend like this, and Natalie, of course, had been told from childhood about this fortune teller's prophecy. So she never really learned to swim. She was not a big fan of the water. She definitely wanted to stay out of dark water. And so here's Lana thinking, like, why in the hell is she going off to do this? We're also told supposedly that Dennis Devern was kind of in the pocket of RJ, more or less like because you're my employee and I'm I'm gonna kind of treat you like a buddy, you owe me. Now Dennis does also to some degree buddy up with Natalie, but there's almost like this pecking order, so to speak, of you're my buddy, and I'm the one who ultimately calls the shots. So we're told that they sail off, sail off to whereabouts unknown there in Catalina Island under this not so great weather. Really a weird time to be going off doing this. We're also told that Natalie had been speaking to Lana privately about I just don't know about all of this. I don't know about being with RJ, and maybe it's time to move on again. And really trying to come back into her own, get her career where she wanted it so that perhaps, maybe she could be in a place to leave RJ, and it wouldn't matter so much. So everything about this has an absolute shitload of foreboding. They do some drinking, they go out to a restaurant, and at some point there's an argument, and Natalie tells Dennis like I just want to go back to the mainland and go to a hotel. And his story is that they got separate rooms. They did not sleep together in the same room. There wasn't any kind of sexual contact of any kind.

She just kind of wanted to get a break from it all, and so the two of them go off to a hotel. I mean, at that point, like to me, there there are so many things where I'm like, this weekend in its entirety doesn't make a lot of sense to me, and it would just seem like get the fuck out, you know. If you've already decided that you're probably going to leave your husband, you know why why do you invite your co-star along, and then why did he go? You know, it's like if you're there and the vibes between a couple are bad, and you can tell that it's about to go sour. That is the last fucking place that you want to be. Dennis tells the story that okay, he and Natalie go off to Avalon to spend the night at a hotel after the first day at sea is tumultuous and people are not getting along. They come. To take this break, but then they come back, and he paints a picture of Natalie and Chris laughing and just having a good time. He said that he did not feel that there was any kind of sexual vibes going on at all. There wasn't any kind of flirting. It was just two people remembering a scene that they had to film, and it was muddy and everything was gross on set, and they were just laughing about it. And he claims that he looks over at RJ, and RJ is just like throwing daggers with his eyes. Like Dennis is not seeing anything sexual or flirtatious about them just talking about a day when they had to film in the mud. But supposedly RJ is looking at him like this is totally inappropriate. The decision is made to go away from Avalon and to go more towards the Isthmus. So Avalon is more populated and more like a tourist attraction, whereas the Isthmus is more remote and there's only like one restaurant. But the idea is like, let's go hit happy hour in this less populated area. So a water taxi comes, and it takes Natalie and Chris to this bar to go have happy hour. But R.J. and Dennis stay behind. Dennis says it's because R.J. had been doing some fishing. A little bit later, R.J. and Dennis go on, and they catch up with Natalie and Christopher, and they're laughing. And so they move from the bar, and everybody's going to sit down and have dinner while they continue to drink wine. So here we go. We're getting more and more alcohol involved in this evening, which to me it's like if R.J. was jealous, then why did he allow the two of them to go off by themselves, unless there was something else going on on that boat? I categorically cannot say that there was. I would just say if I were a police detective or if I were just writing a murder mystery, that would be something that I would ask fucking immediately. If you thought that the two of them were getting a little too cozy, woesy, and laughy with each other, why would you let them go off by themselves to happy hour? Like what? What were you doing on that boat while they went off drinking? Inquiring minds want to know. So they get back to the boat because, supposedly, according to Dennis, after they are having their dinner and there's plenty of wine going around the table, RJ goes back into a jealous mood. So according to Dennis, the night before, R.J. had acted like a jealous turd and showed his ass, and that's why he and Natalie left. Well, now everybody has been out to this dinner, and supposedly R.J. is getting drunk and showing his ass again, and so it's like everybody go back to the fucking boat. We're gonna get out of this restaurant. Everybody go back to the fucking boat. So they do, and Dennis says that he decides to put on a kettle because he knew that Natalie liked to have tea, especially before bed. So he's just trying to like anticipate the guests' needs. Supposedly around 11 p.m. Natalie retires to her room to go to bed. Now we don't know exactly what was going on before that because the way that Dennis presents it is, I put on a kettle for some tea.

I also had some candles and a bottle of wine in case the party was going to continue. I'm just trying to anticipate what they wanted. But somewhere around 11, Natalie goes to bed. But it's not until approximately 130 in the morning that RJ reaches out for any kind of help vis-a-vis Natalie is missing. Rather than calling police or the Coast Guard, RJ supposedly calls a restaurant manager, and it's the restaurant manager who decides to at least try to get a hold of somebody who might be able to do something because Natalie is not. We have to remember an experienced swimmer or an experienced boater, so it's like, what the hell has happened that this woman has gone overboard in the first place? And then also, once she's overboard, who the hell is going to get to her to try to save her life because she's going to need assistance? When a search finally is mounted, Natalie is found, and they have an interview in this podcast with one of the lifeguards who located her. It was obvious that she was deceased. She was wearing a nightgown that went all the way down to her ankles and some socks with no undergarments underneath. They knew immediately that she was dead, but it was like as part of procedure, someone has to come and identify her. They knew who she was, but it's just part of following protocol. They placed a blanket over her out of respect and called for R.J. But R.J. doesn't show up to ID the body. He sends Dennis to Vern. Lana tells the story of being up all night, just having insomnia, not being able to really rest. When she finally does get to sleep, the phone starts ringing with people saying that Natalie is dead, and she's like, "No, this is probably just tabloid stuff. And when she finally does find out that no, actually, it's not just a tabloid report or some. Disgusting rumor! It actually has happened. Of course, it's emotionally devastating. We're told that R.J. immediately lawyers up. That it's like he gets told, "Well, we'll send a helicopter. You know, since since you guys are important actors, we'll just send a helicopter to come get the two of you and take you out of the situation, you can go home and grieve privately. So we're told that RJ lawyers up, and he concocts a story that maybe Natalie heard the dinghy bumping against the boat, and it was annoying, and she was having difficulty getting to sleep because of the bumping noise. So she went down on her own instead of asking one of the men to do it or asking Dennis to do it, who's both male and an employee, which is what one would do, I would think, she goes down on her own to tie it better so that it will quit making the noise. She slips, falls in the water, and it's just this tragic oopsa daisy accident. Thomas Noguchi, we may remember his name from RFK's autopsy. He says that it's an accidental drowning. She must have tried to move the dinghy around. It didn't go her way. She goes overboard and just dies of an accidental drowning. Furthermore, we're told that Natalie's blood alcohol limit, or her blood alcohol was above the legal limit, and so hey, you know if you have people that have been drinking, somebody makes a bad decision with alcohol in their system. Uh oh, something bad can happen. On december 3, Natalie Wood's funeral is held. Lana says that after the funeral, she goes back to the house. She's trying to have a private conversation with R.J. and she's asking him, like, "What happened? Please tell me what happened. How could something like this have happened? And he just says something to her along the lines of, "It was an accident. You got to believe me. And then someone pulls her by the arm and moves her away from R.J. completely, like like she's being handled with her own brother-in-law, a woman named Marilyn says in this podcast that her boat was moored next to the Splendor, and around 11 o'clock her husband wakes her up and says, "I I think I hear somebody calling for help. I think somebody's in trouble. She says that she goes up on deck, and yes, she hears a woman screaming things like "Help me! Help me! I'm drowning!

And she tells her husband, who decides to call Harbor Patrol, he tries to get through but can't. But they are trying to get a hold of authorities to say there's a a woman screaming for help. So they're trying and trying and trying to get somebody to answer them. And the woman says that from 1105 until 11:25, they hear a woman screaming and asking for help, but then at about 11:25, the screaming stops. So they try and try and try to get through to Harbor Patrol, and they don't. But on Monday, they call the police. They call the police multiple times to try to tell them what they heard, and to give a minute-by-minute account as precisely as possible of the time that this woman was screaming, but they don't get any response there either. However, they do ultimately get one hell of a response. On Wednesday, she receives a note that says, "If you want to stay healthy, keep your mouth shut. There's a man they interview on this podcast who's apparently his only credential is being some kind of Hollywood insider, which I don't even really know what that means. But he says something very telling because one of the things that he says when he's interviewed is, "Whenever I heard the news, I thought how tragic, how sad. And then I also, being from the Bible Belt, kind of being raised old-fashioned. I wondered what is a nice young lady doing on a boat with three old men. That's not a safe place for her. And even though the person telling this is male himself, I'm like, exactly. As a woman, I would have the same feeling, just this sense of I'm overpowered in the event that this situation turned and it became like Jodie Foster and the accused, like I would not be safe here. So we don't really know. Now we can always say like, well, R.J. was her husband. You know, if you were going somewhere with your own husband, wouldn't you automatically feel safe because he's there with you? But then they've been having problems. According to Lana, they had been having problems, and Natalie wasn't happy. Then you have Chris, who is the friend slash co-star, and we we don't completely know precisely how he fits into this dynamic. We're told that there's jealousy involved, but again, we don't know the full story of that. And then there's Dennis, the captain slash hired help. Would it be a situation that I myself would feel comfortable in? No, no, no, no, no. Would I tell a daughter, a sister to go off with three dudes? A speech about Hollywood? You know, three Hollywood? No, fuck no, absolutely not. It's not her fault. What happened to me and? Radically clear. There's no victim blaming here. I'm pointing out what the man said, this Hollywood insider, and I I would wonder about the safety level as well of a woman being alone with three men. It's just one of those moments of like, you have to protect yourself always. Of course, we're told about star power and the celebrity starstruck factor, like if you've got famous people involved, they can kind of have a bigger sway over law enforcement than if it's just John and Jane Doe down the street. So, could that kind of star power have played a role in the investigation being so open and shut, like oh, it was an accidental drowning. End of case. Now the author Kathleen McKenna comes up with something really interesting. Now they call it outrageous and far fetched on the podcast, probably to save face. But hey, we're totally fine with outrageous and so called far-fetched around here, around these here parts. But she talks about how R.J. and Reagan were studio players at the same time. And as she points out, if your old buddy could become a governor of California and then become president of the U.S. why would you not call in a favor? Why would you not just simply say, "I need this to go away" And she's very clear in saying that her accusation is not, oh, Ronald Reagan thought that R.J. had killed Natalie and was helping him get away with something. That most likely he probably just thought, I'm trying to help out a friend. I'm sure he wasn't involved.

I'm sure it was an accidental drowning, and we just don't need people poking around making the grieving process worse. Now, if you think that that's interesting, but wait, there's more because Marty Ruly starts talking about Jill St. John, and wait for it, Henry fucking Kissinger. Supposedly, R.J. says himself starts talking about in his memoirs that there was concern about Dennis, and that whenever Dennis starts running his mouth to the press, Jill St. John gets upset about it and says, "I can make a phone call to Henry and try to make some of this go away. Think about that for a second. Henry Kissinger was the U.S. National Security Advisor from 1969 to 1975, and he was also the U.S. Secretary of State from 73 to 77. He has been involved with a number of controversial U.S. policies, ranging from the bombing of Cambodia, the 1971 Bolivian and 1973 Chilean coups d'état support for Argentina's military junta in its dirty war, Indonesia in its invasion of East Timor, and Pakistan in the Bangladesh Liberation War and Bangladesh Genocide. I personally have always wondered what was really going on between him and Anatoly Dobrynin, I mean, I can't make any accusations, but I just really wonder because the two of them had a very close relationship, met each other's parents. I mean, it it to me like maybe it was just a good old fashioned bromance, but was just one of those things where I would just kind of wonder like, was it really a back channel between the U.S. and the Soviets, or was it a back channel? I don't know things that make you say hmm. But Jill St. John and Henry Kissinger dated in the early 1970, s. Jill St John has been married four times, and let's take a little look at who these men were. She married Neil Dubin when she was only 16 years old, and the two of them eloped to Yuma, Arizona. Dubin was the heir to a linen fortune. Then she gets married to Lance Reventlow. Reventlow was the son of Barbara Hutton, the famous heiress to the Woolworth fortune. She married the singer Jack Jones, and then later marries R.J. In between the various marriages, we have quite a body count here. We're told of David Bailey, Sammy Kahn, Michael Caine, Oleg Cassini, Sean Connery, Robert Evans, Glenn Ford, David Frost, Henry Kissinger, Peter Lawford, George Lazenby, Trini Lopez, Joe Namath, Jack Mickelson, Robert Vaughn, Frank Sinatra, Tom Selleck, Roman Polanski, Adam West, etc. etc. etc. It even says on her fucking Wikipedia page that she gained a reputation for sugar dating in 1966 when garment manufacturer Henry Rosenfeld sued the actress to retrieve $25,800 that he loaned her the previous year. So look, is it completely preposterous that she might have called a former Secretary of State and said this guy is making trouble for me and my. Husband, what are you going to do to help us out? I don't think it's preposterous at all, and I think now we're getting into deep politics, the shadowy web of power, the people who are absolutely powerful enough that they can cover up anything they want to. Something else we learn in the podcast is that Noguchi did not scrape underneath Natalie's fingernails to try to figure out if there had been any kind of a struggle, or you know, could she have DNA or some other type of material underneath her nails that would tell us what happened? Was there a struggle? Was she fighting with someone? Was she trying to claw onto a boat or some other type of structure to save her own life? What happened? We're told that Noguchi had kind of gotten his hand slapped because, like, after Bill Holden died, he too quickly got on TV and said, "Oh, well, this happened to Bill Holden because he was drunk, and there was an outcry after that, and it made him look naughty. Like, no, no, no, you shouldn't have done that. You shouldn't have said that. Which that had only just happened because Bill Holden died on november 12 of 1981. Now the interesting thing is, you will hear an interview with Cyril Wecht. So we've heard that name, and we've heard his comments throughout studying the JFK case.

But he really does come to Noguchi's defense in this podcast to say, like, I don't think that he intentionally faked anything or botched anything on purpose. Now, just when you think this story can't get any weirder, oh, it can always get weirder. We're told that Dennis is effectively kidnapped and then placed on virtual house arrest by R.J. That after Natalie's death, R.J. kind of pulls him to the side and says, "Look, I know that you can't afford a lawyer, but I'll take care of that. I'll make sure that I get lawyered up and you get lawyered up, and your job is to just stay on the same page with me. We get our story straight and we don't deviate. Maybe she went because she heard the dinghy slapping the side of the boat, and it was annoying while she was trying to sleep, so she was trying to tie it tighter, and oops, a daisy, she went over. Or it's almost like John Lovitz, you know? Would you believe? It's almost like, oh, you don't believe that? Well, maybe she was going to take the dinghy out to go boat hopping. Maybe she wanted to go out and socialize and keep drinking, and you know, she did that from time to time. Even though I don't think a single soul has said that Natalie ever got an adeen went boat hopping by herself, the idea is we're going to get on the same page and create a united front, and I'll make sure that I'm paying for your lawyer, and you're going to come and stay with me. Like Marty really says in the podcast, it's like he can't afford to have Dennis out there popping his mouth off unsupervised, he's got to stay somewhere where R.J. can keep a close watch on him. Dennis claims that he was kept in the mansion in a locked room, and so, like at night, if he wanted to leave his bedroom for any reason, a magnetic lock would keep him from leaving. And even though it was a gilded cage, it was still a gilded cage. It was like Robert Wagner would go off and go to work or do whatever he wanted to do, but Dennis had to stay on house arrest in the mansion. He says his girlfriend at the time shows up and gets into an argument with a bodyguard who was stationed outside his door to make sure that he didn't leave. Finally, apparently, Dennis pitched enough of a fit that they let him go for an outing to the girlfriend's apartment. He says that he's only had about 30 minutes of you know time, shall we say, with the girlfriend. When a bodyguard comes in and says it's time to go now, they protest, and so allegedly the bodyguard grabs him by the scruff of the neck like you would an animal, and dog walks his ass out of the apartment, throws him into the car, and takes him back by force to the mansion. He claims that R.J. helped him out with a few bit parts here and there, but it really wasn't anything spectacular. And after he was turned loose enough to go and take care of the yacht again. People would sometimes drop by and say things like, "You better be careful what you say. You better not say too much. You better keep an eye out. And he would always be like, "Is this some kind of passive aggressive threat against my life, or is it just people talking? Dennis claims that finally, whenever it was time for them to part ways, I guess whenever R.J. supposedly thought that any trouble had subsided and Dennis was going to be a good boy, he writes him a check for $6,000 and says, "Here's some money to help you get started. You can get your own apartment and get yourself established, and that was it. That's the last time that they see each other. Lana describes being cast aside. She tries to go to RJ's birthday, like the next birthday that came up after the death, and basically being treated at arm's length till she finally just leaves, and then she gets estranged from her nieces as well. There is also an uncomfortable. Recording all these years later, Lana trying to confront RJ, and it's just it's it's uncomfortable by proxy to listen to it.

One of the things that really stuck out to me was that Lana makes the comment of, "Come on, I've known you since I was a kid, and then he corrects her. It sounds very domineering to me because he's like, "No, I've known you since you were a kid. It's basically like I'm in control here. I'm the person that's important. You don't tell me what you know. Here's what I know. The end of the podcast, episode 13, the Red Jacket. They do get into the theory of could it have been premeditated? Was there a push to get away from Avalon because it was too populated? Was there maybe a plan in place to take her out to a more remote, less populated area so that it would be easy to do something bad to her. Obviously, I don't know, and I don't want to say that anybody was behind that because I don't know. So what actually happened here? I find it interesting that when you go to Robert Wagner's Wikipedia page under the tab "Death of Natalie Wood. The very last paragraph reads: On February 1st, 2018, the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department named Wagner a person of interest in the investigation into Wood's death. Wagner has denied any involvement in Wood's death. On May 27, 2022, Lieutenant Hugo Reynaga announced that all leads in the case had been exhausted and that the case remained open and unsolved. Does it sound like an oopsa daisy shit happens accident? Not to me, especially when you start thinking about this woman is scared of the water. She said in her private notes and like the private memoir notes that were discovered later. One of the things that she said was that some of the happiest times she had ever had with RJ was when they went out on the yacht, the Splendor, and it was just the two of them. It was kind of like they went into their own private world, and he was really pleasant to be around. So, is it possible that she was hoping to recreate some of that piece that weekend. Did she want to have one last good time before they split up? I don't know, but we have to think about it this way. It's like okay, so the case gets some new attention. You know, we're told that in 2018, the LA County Sheriff's Department names Wagner as a person of interest. In 2012, the coroner amends the death certificate to change from accidental drowning as the cause of death to drowning and other undetermined factors. We're told that the amended document includes a statement saying how wood ended up in the water has not been clearly established. But then here's the fucking footnote: by 2022, a lieutenant says all leads in the case have been exhausted. It remains open, but it's unsolved. So in other words, go back to sleep, everybody. It's a cold case all over again. We've exhausted all the leads, and so that's that. Which tells me that here we are. If if this is a huge, massive if if somebody on the boat had some kind of involvement, then that person must still be powerful enough and well connected enough That an investigation like that can just basically go belly up with no further probing. Like, okay, we're gonna we're gonna get the public back on this. We're gonna we're gonna try to figure out what happened and galvanize interest, and then all of a sudden, well, we've exhausted all the leads. Sorry, it's important not to forget about Lookout Mountain and how many films that they made as part of the military-industrial-military intelligence complex. In terms of actors who starred in Air Force films that were shot at Lookout Mountain, you have people like Bob Hope, Jimmy Stewart, James Garner, Gregory Peck, Kim Novak, Glenn Ford, Lee Marvin. You had Jill St. John being accused of sugar dating. We have Robert Wagner and Ronald Reagan being players at the same time, and knowing each other, getting to be friends with one another, you have Jill St. John dating Henry Kissinger, and and it even being admitted, like whenever Marty Ruly and Dennis Dever started talking, there was some discussion of maybe Jill should just call Henry Kissinger to put the kibosh on this. It's like, is it really that difficult?

To believe that maybe somebody involved in this case, or maybe somebody who just simply doesn't want to be bothered with questions being asked and answered, is it really that far-fetched to believe that maybe that person knows the right people and has the right connections? At some point, I will do an episode about confessions of a dangerous mind and this idea of was Chuck Barris really working for the Charlie India Alpha? Stranger things than that have happened, and I would have to agree with at least the idea of somebody in a high place would have to have been involved in saying we're just going to smother this case. We're just going to really stick to the idea that this was an oopsa daisy accidental drowning, and we're not going to go any further. Period. So much so that even all these years later, we're still not allowed to get to the truth. Just some food for thought. Stay a little bit crazy, and I will see you in the next episode.

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