Wood's death: Husband's account doesn't 'add up'

The drowning of the 43-year-old actress on a Thanksgiving weekend off the coast of California in 1981 remains an open case for US authorities.

Re-opened in 2011, 30 years after investigators initially ruled her death accidental, it is now turning another page as her then-husband actor Robert Wagner is being sought for interrogation.

In a press conference on Monday, Lieutenant John Corina of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department’s homicide bureau said details given by Wagner the night she died “really don’t add up to what we’ve found”.

Wagner, 87, has declined to speak to the police since the case re-opened, and is not obligated by law to do so.

Circumstances surrounding Wood’s death have been labelled “suspicious” by the Sheriff’s Department, after new witnesses came forward last week.

At first, it was thought Wood had slipped and fallen into the water while sailing with her husband Wagner and actor Christopher Walken, who she co-starred in the movie Brainstorm.

But bruises in her body and statements seen as contradicting from Wagner and other witnesses have led investigators to take another look, and they now believe they are “closer than ever” to the truth.

This comes as a new CBS documentary titled 48 Hours offered a “behind the headlines” look at Wood’s death.

In the documentary, Wagner is described as jealous over the relationship between Wood and Walken.

According to a testimony by the boat captain Dennis Davern, Wagner smashed a wine bottle and asked Walken if he wanted to “f*** my wife”, screaming for him to get off “my f****** boat”.

Wagner has admitted to having argued with Walken, but said Wood had gone to bed early, and it was during that time period that she slipped and fell off the boat.

According to a testimony by Lieutenant Corina on the documentary, Wood was “afraid” that Wagner might kill her.

Wood’s sister Lana has also testified Wood had feared for her life before the incident – while also noting the star’s public fear of water and her inability to swim.

“I had a mean director one time who threw me in the ocean,” Wood said in an interview.

“I was terrified, petrified, because we were in the open ocean.”

Wagner’s lawyer, Blair Berk, said in 2013 that the actor had nothing to do with Wood’s death, the Los Angeles Times reported.

“After 30 years, neither Mr Wagner nor his daughters have any new information to add to this latest investigation,” the lawyer was quoted as saying in the newspaper.

Ms Berk also reportedly said the case was being exploited by publicity seekers.

Before becoming the subject of a Hollywood mystery, Natalie Wood was considered one of the most beautiful and talented women in the world.

In her younger years, she starred in some of the biggest hits of the 1960, from John Ford’s The Searchers to Elia Kazan’s Splendour In The Grass – the film which the boat, Splendour, was named after. She was also one of the stars of West Side Story.

She met Wagner on her 18th birthday, in a studio-arranged date with a man eight years her senior.

Wagner was at the time one of the industry’s main leading men, and later became one of the biggest stars on TV with shows such as Hart To Hart and Switch.

The pair married in 1957 and divorced five years later. Wood then remarried British producer Richard Gregson and gave birth to her daughter Natasha in 1970.

Two years later, Wood divorced Gregson and remarried Wagner.

In 1981, months before her death, she starred in a sci-fi film called Brainstorm alongside Walken, who was five years younger than her and 13 years younger than Wagner.

Walken has only once spoken publicly about her death, in an interview with Playboy magazine in 1997.

“Anybody there saw the logistics — of the boat, the night, where we were, that it was raining — and would know exactly what happened,” he said.

“What happened that night only she knows, because she was alone.”

Although Walken has not been named by investigators, Wood’s death has been classified as suspicious and Wagner has been named a person of interest.