Natalie Wood was the It-Girl of 1960s Hollywood, starring in classics like West Side Story, Gypsy, and Sex and the Single Girl. But she put her acting career on hiatus in the 1970s and had a child with Robert Wagner, whom she had previously married and divorced. While on a yachting excursion with Wagner off Santa Catalina Island on November 29, 1981, Wood’s body was mysteriously found floating about a mile away from the yacht, and the autopsy revealed that she had bruises and abrasions on her body, as well as a cocktail of pain medications and alcohol in her system.
Her death was ruled to be accidental drowning and hypothermia, but the true story seems to be more complicated than that: To this day, no one is quite sure how she got in the water in the first place, although then-Los Angeles County coroner Thomas Noguchi suggested that she may have slipped and fell given the alcohol in her system. Wagner claimed that there was no foul play on his part, although he admitted later that the two had a big argument right before Wood disappeared. Additionally, Wood’s sister asserted that Wood was terrified of water and under no circumstances would’ve gone in on her own accord.
