Boat Captain Blames Wagner for Natalie Wood's Death

The former captain of the boat from which actress Natalie Wood drowned in 1981 said today he believes actor Robert Wagner, her husband at the time, was responsible for her death off the coast of Santa Catalina Island nearly 30 years ago.

Dennis Davern spoke in an interview on NBC's Today, one day after the L.A. County Sheriff's Department announced it was reopening the investigation into Wood's death, which followed a night of heavy drinking. The renewed investigation is being led by sheriff's homicide Lt. John Corina, who scheduled a news conference at the sheriff's Monterey Park headquarters late this morning to discuss the case.

Wood was with Wagner and actor friend Christopher Walken on a Thanksgiving sailing trip on Nov. 29, 1981, when she perished in what then-Los Angeles County Coroner Thomas Noguchi ruled an accident.

"It was not a homicide. It was not a suicide. It was an accident," the flamboyant medical examiner said at the time, asserting that the 43-year-old actress had a blood-alcohol level of 0.14 percent following "much recreational drinking."

Davern, and his ghost writer, Marti Rulli, wrote a book in 2008 entitled "Goodbye Natalie, Goodbye Splendour." It suggests foul play may have led to Wood's demise and provides lurid details about drug and alcohol use by the actors the night of the accident.

Splendour refers to the name of the boat that Wood, Wagner and Walken were on the night she drowned.

"I made some terrible decisions and mistakes," Davern said in an interview this morning on NBC's Today, adding that he is now urging homicide investigators to look into Wood's death."I did lie on a report several years ago."

He added: "I made mistakes by not telling the honest truth in a police report."

Was Wagner "responsible" for Wood's death? "Yes, I would say so. Yes," Davern replied.

Davern appeared reluctant to flesh out his conclusions about Wagner's role in the incident but pointed to the period following the disappearance of the actress and suggested Wagner discouraged a full-out search.

"We didn't take any steps to see if we could locate her," he said. "I think it was a matter of, "We're not going to look too hard, we're not going to turn on the searchlight, we're not going to notify anybody right now.'"

On the night Wood died, she and Wagner got into a "terrible argument" that was never reported to the original investigators, said Rulli, who also was interviewed on Today.

Walken went to sleep in his cabin after an angry Wagner smashed a wine bottle on a coffee table, Rulli said. Wagner reportedly accused Walken of lusting after his wife.

When Wood went to her stateroom, Wagner followed and an argument began, according to Rulli

"Dennis made an attempt to stop it, and was told to go away by Robert Wagner," Rulli told Today. "Then minutes later, Natalie was missing... Dennis wanted to do everything -- make a phone call, turn on the search light. His instincts told him something was terribly wrong, and Robert Wagner asked him not to."

The Sheriff's Department was recently contacted by several people who said they had new information about Wood's death, prompting the decision to reopen the investigation, said sheriff's Deputy Benjamin Grubb.

Sheriff Lee Baca added in an interview with the Los Angeles Times that his department received a letter from a "third party" who said the ship's captain had "new recollections" about the case.

Alan Nierob, a publicist with the firm Rogers and Cowan, told City News Service that, "although no one in the Wagner family has heard from the L.A. County Sheriff's department about this matter, they fully support the efforts of the L.A. County Sheriff's Department and trust they will evaluate whether any new information relating to the death of Natalie Wood Wagner is valid, and that it comes from a credible source or sources other than those simply trying to profit from the 30-year anniversary of her tragic death."

In an interview with the celebrity news Website TMZ.com, Wood's sister, Lana, said she doesn't accept the story that the actress fell overboard while trying to secure a dinghy, given that she was so scared of water she would not even enter her own swimming pool.

Lana Wood also said she believes Wagner was not honest with investigators who questioned him about her sister's death and said she has been interviewed by sheriff's detectives who wanted to know if the Natalie Wood- Robert Wagner relationship had been "volatile."

—City News Service