LOS ANGELES — A Los Angeles County sheriff’s homicide detective said Friday that new information investigators recently received about the 1981 death of actress Natalie Wood was substantial enough to cause them to reopen the case, but he said her husband, Robert Wagner, is not a suspect.
“As a homicide bureau, we are always open to receiving additional information about older cases and current cases,” said Lt. John Corina. “If we receive information that we assess and deem credible or reliable, we are not opposed to reacting to it.”
In answer to a question at a news conference at Sheriff’s Department headquarters in Monterey Park, Corina reiterated that Wood’s husband was not a suspect in her death off the coast of Catalina Island.
“Robert Wagner is not a suspect,” he said.
He said several sources had come forward with new information that warranted “another look at the case.”
“Her death was ruled an accidental drowning, and that’s what it is,” he said. “If our investigation finds something else, then we’ll address that. But information we received made us take another look at the case.”
He later said, “We’ll go wherever the investigation is going to take us,” adding that the two investigators assigned to the reopened case would be talking to Dennis Davern, captain of Wagner’s yacht, Splendour.
Davern said on national TV Friday morning that he lied to investigators 30 years ago about some details of the case.
Davern said both in the TV interview and in a 2009 book he co-wrote that there was a heated argument between Wood and Wagner.
The 30th anniversary of Wood’s death is Nov. 29. Wood, 43, was boating off Catalina Island on Thanksgiving weekend 1981 with Wagner and actor Christopher Walken when she somehow went overboard and died.
Officials at the time ruled her death an accident, but there has since been much speculation about whether there was more to the story.
