It's been the stuff of tabloid speculation for year's now, but finally, over 36 years later, Natalie Wood's "drowning accident" is finally being investigated as a suspicious death. Equally exciting for those who have been following this story over the years is the fact that former husband to the co-star of Rebel Without A Cause and West Side Story, Robert Wagner, is being named as a "person of interest" in the case.
Rock stars shouldn't fly in airplanes and Hollywood types shouldn't ride on boats (see <a href="<a href="http://unusualhistoricals.blogspot.com/2009/09/scandal-william-randolph-hearst-marion.html">the case of William Randolph Hearst's floating hearse</a>). Natalie Wood had been on a boat trip with husband Wagner and a very young Christopher Walken when she drowned. The death was initially ruled "accidental drowning" but in 2012, the ruling was revised to "drowning and other undetermined factors."
Saturday night's episode of 48 Hours on CBS will deal with the re-opened investigation. According to snippets of the as of yet unaired show, a detective notes that Wagner is "more of a person of interest now," than ever before and pointed out how Wagner's story had changed multiple times over the years and that "his version of events just don't add up." Another detective interviewed by the CBS news program notes that Wood "looked like a victim of an assault." Wagner is, not surprisingly, tight lipped at this time.
The tragedy has been of much discussion amongst the sort of folks who like to keep a copy of Kenneth Anger's Hollywood Babylon near the bedside. <a href="http://www.nourishingobscurity.com/2015/01/hollywood-babylon/">One researcher</a> invokes CIA mind control, David Lynch, the creepiness at Laurel Canyon (gone into in great detail in author Dave McGowan's <a href="https://dangerousminds.net/comments/classic_rock_conspiracy_theory_weird_scenes_inside_the_canyon">Weird Scenes Inside The Canyon</a>), <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/apr/07/prince-andrew-jeffrey-epstein-florida">repeat child sex predator Prince Andrew</a> and even Walt Disney in his inquiry:
<blockquote>What Lynch was skirting around was the Hollywood system of induction and thus “dreamtime freakfest” is a most apt description, always bearing in mind that descriptor Hollywood Babylon, in all its ancient implications. it is about the drawing in and corruption of innocence, it’s the factory for doing that.
No accident that Walt Disney was involved, that a CIA facility was on Lookout Mountain, that Natalie Wood lived nearby. One interesting snippet was about other films in Natalie’s time, particularly near the end of her life and those relevant to her time from much later.</blockquote>
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Hollywood's dark secrets have always run deep and the insatiable appetites of the wildly powerful denizens have managed, for the most part, to remain hidden in the shadows. Here's hoping that Wagner finally being named is just the tip of the iceberg as far as dredging up some of the horrors of the past, regardless how far removed from the present day.
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