Carlos Bastarache: robert-wagner-person-of-interest-natalie-wood-death.jpg

Thursday, 1 February 2018

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On November 29th, 1981, actress Natalie Wood drowned off the coast of Catalina Island, California under mysterious circumstances. Almost 40 years later, investigators with the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department who reopened the case six years ago told CBS News magazine 48 Hours that Robert Wagner, Wood’s then-husband and now-widower, is now a “person of interest” in their investigation. The revelation is part of a new special, “Natalie Wood: Death in Dark Water,” that will air Saturday, February 3rd at 10 p.m. ET/PT, but CBS News broke the Wagner news in a short preview on Thursday.

According to the report, Wagner “has refused to speak with” Los Angeles County Sheriff’s personnel since they reopened the case. They primarily wanted to talk to him since, along with what yacht captain Dennis Davern and actor and friend Christopher Walken told authorities in 1981, Wagner’s account of what happened has shifted with time:

“As we’ve investigated the case over the last six years, I think he’s more of a person of interest now,” Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department Lieutenant John Corina says of Wagner in an interview with “48 Hours” correspondent Erin Moriarty. “I mean, we know now that he was the last person to be with Natalie before she disappeared.”

Walken has since spoken with investigators again. As for Wagner, Corina says he “[hasn’t] seen him tell the details that match all the other witnesses in this case.” What’s more, he added, “I think he’s constantly changed his story a little bit. And his version of events just don’t add up.” In 2012, a year after the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department reopened the case, the Los Angeles Coroner’s Office updated Wood’s death certificate from accidental drowning to “drowning and other undetermined factors.”

(Via CBS News)