In 1981 Natalie Wood was on a yacht with her husband Robert Wagner and Christopher Walken. They had all been drinking heavily. The evening ended in tragedy when Nalie Wood fell off the boat and drowned.
This has long been one of Hollywood’s most mysterious deaths. Why was she arguing with Walken? And why was he on the boat in the first place?
Now new evidence has emerged that she had bruising on her arms. An addendum on her death certificate lists unexplained bruising on her arms and face as the reason officials changed the cause of death from drowning to “drowning and undertermined factors.”
“The location of the bruises, the multiplicity of the bruises, lack of head trauma, or facial bruising support bruising having occurred prior to entry in the water,” the amended report states. “Since there are unanswered questions and limited additional evidence available for evaluation, it is opined by this Medical Examiner that the manner of death should be left as undetermined,” Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Lakshmanan Sathyavagiswaran wrote in the report completed in June.
Wagner wrote in his diary argued that night. Did Wood leave the boat to get away from the argument? Wagner wrote that after the argument he went to bed. He woke to find that the dinghy that was attached to the boat and his wife were missing.
Perhaps she was attempting to tie the dinghy back to the boat and slipped into the water? Nobody knows exactly what happened.