Natasha

by Suzanne Finstad

  In this final interview with police, R.J. offered a few more details about the events on the Friday and Saturday before Natalie died, but little more about the timeline immediately prior to and after her disappearance from the boat. R.J. told Rasure he went to Natalie’s bedroom and noticed she was gone, and they all observed that the dinghy was missing. Their first thought, R.J. said, was that Natalie had taken the dinghy to shore.

  According to Rasure, “The only conclusion [R.J.] could come to” was that Natalie had gotten in the dinghy alone to go back to the restaurant.

  Walken’s second and last statement repeated the theory that Natalie had gone ashore in the dinghy to return to the restaurant. He told Rasure he went to his cabin, and when he woke up the next morning, R.J. told him that Natalie might have drowned.

  Davern offered nothing specific in his final statement about Natalie’s disappearance, merely confirming R.J. and Walken’s contentions they thought Natalie took the dinghy to shore.

  On December 11, less than two weeks after Natalie drowned, the Sheriff’s Department pronounced the case closed.

  “As the thing progressed,” Rasure explains, “my mind was getting made up and made up and made up, and I’m thinking this is verifying what I was thinking. I think I was totally satisfied within five days that this was an accidental drowning.”

  According to Marilyn Wayne, no one in the Sheriff’s Department ever returned her phone calls to discuss the screams that she, her son, and John Payne say they heard of a woman’s voice near the Splendour, crying, “Somebody please help me, I’m drowning,” and a man or men’s voices mocking her the night Natalie disappeared.

  Rasure discounted Payne’s and Wayne’s calls. “I’m not sure those people heard anything,” he states, suggesting they were “making it up,” or were remiss for not rescuing the woman in the water. Rasure claims he spoke to Payne and “got on his case pretty heavy… ‘Why didn’t you get in your boat and try to save a woman helpless out there?’ ” Rasure does not remember whether he talked to Wayne, saying, “I don’t believe her, either. She just wanted to keep it on the bandwagon.”

  Rasure’s speculation that the couple might be seeking publicity conflicted with the fact that they went to great lengths to keep Payne’s name, and Wayne’s son, out of the press. Wayne briefly spoke to a few reporters shortly after Natalie drowned, out of what she describes as frustration over her unreturned phone calls to the Sheriff’s Department, noted in police records.

  In the twenty years since Natalie drowned, neither Payne, Wayne, nor Wayne’s son have spoken publicly about the screams of an apparently drowning woman and the taunting response of one or two drunken men they say they heard that night near the Splendour. “Being a mother myself, my decision not to ever say anything to the press was based on would my son want to read about his mother crying for help for twenty minutes and nobody doing anything, including the father? That was a decision I made for the sake of her children, but it’s done, unfortunately, more harm than good.”

  Wayne was so distressed by the Sheriff’s Department’s lack of interest in the information she was offering about Natalie’s drowning, she contacted Dr. Noguchi, who utilized Wayne’s account in evaluations for the autopsy report.

  Roger Smith, the Isthmus Baywatch lifeguard who found the dinghy and helped pull Natalie’s body out of the dark seawater, remained haunted by her expressive Russian eyes, increasingly disturbed that lifeguards had not been called in sooner to search for Natalie, and by the questions in his own mind about the events of that night. Smith even prepared an analysis of Natalie’s survival time in the water, sharing it with Noguchi. “The Sheriff’s Department just sort of wanted the whole investigation to go away. It was so disheartening, so confusing. Nobody wanted to know the real facts… it’s kind of like an O.J. thing: it’s a celebrity, so, ‘Oh well,’ they don’t investigate it. They never asked me one question.”

  Christina Quinn, the original waitress serving the Wagners, Walken, and Davern at Doug’s Harbor Reef that last Saturday night, had a similar feeling when she gave a statement to Rasure and his partner, Roy Hamilton, providing her recollection of what happened at the restaurant shortly before Natalie disappeared. “I didn’t get a sense, from them, that this was a situation or a circumstance that they would want to find out if the evidence pointed to somebody. I think they just took a bunch of statements.”

  Even Rasure admits, “I don’t know how Natalie got in the water.”

  Frank Salerno, who was Rasure’s supervisor in the Sheriff’s Department overseeing the Natalie Wood case, states, “The investigation is completed. As far as the department is concerned, there is no mystery.” How Natalie happened to get into the ocean that night “is getting into theory,” asserts Salerno, “because you never know.”

  In Salerno’s view, “It was just a tragic accident, that’s all. It’s no more, no less. It just involved a very famous person. In most death investigations, you never have all the answers. It’s not like you can go from A to Z and in each slot there’s an answer to that question. Because we weren’t there. They may never figure out exactly what happened.”

  With questions still lingering about how and why Natalie ended up in the dark seawater she found terrifying, the media looked to Dr. Thomas Noguchi, since it was the coroner’s responsibility to certify the cause, manner, and circumstances of death.

  The cause and manner of Natalie’s death were clarified within a day by Noguchi’s deputy examiner, Dr. Joseph Choi, who performed the autopsy under Noguchi’s supervision, determining that she died by drowning and hypothermia. Based on a “substantial amount of ocean water” in her lungs, Choi determined Natalie was still alive when she fell in the ocean. How long she remained alive in the 54-degree water was less clear. Choi felt “she may have struggled. I didn’t think she died right away.” In Choi’s medical opinion, Natalie likely succumbed to hypothermia within “maybe an hour… but I don’t think it was hours.”

  The other details of Natalie’s autopsy included her blood-alcohol level, which Noguchi accurately reported in his press conference as .14, though Choi observed that Natalie had a higher reading when she went overboard. Choi found two drugs in Natalie’s bloodstream: a seasickness pill called Cyclivine, and the painkiller Darvon, which Choi believed caused a “much more drunken state” with the alcohol.

  No sleeping pill was detected, indicating that Natalie had not made her final preparations to go to sleep, since she had taken a sleeping pill as part of her bedtime routine for twenty-eight years.

  Choi observed a “mostly fresh group of bruises,” including the abrasion on Natalie’s left cheek, a scratch on the left knee, and bruises along the right and left foreleg, as well as both feet. Noguchi later described a “recent widespread bruise” on Natalie’s right arm above the wrist and a slight bruise on her left wrist. Both Choi and Noguchi detected “no evidence of foul play” from the autopsy.

  Choi “thought it was likely” that Natalie died around midnight, designating that as her official time of death, saying it was “difficult to pinpoint.” Noguchi’s medical opinion is that Natalie died sometime between 11 P.M. and 1 A.M., based, in part, on the cries for help and the drunken, mocking male voice that Marilyn Wayne, her son and fiancé say they heard in the waters near the Splendour between 11:05 and 11:25 P.M., which the coroner believed came from Natalie and men on a boat near her.

  Normally, Noguchi observes, medical examiners “don’t generally get involved in circumstances, motives, and so forth. We just interpret medical and autopsy findings and express opinions.”

  In the case of Natalie’s drowning, Noguchi asserts, he decided to hold a press conference to offer his preliminary opinion of how she died because of the rumors, media uproar, “and it’s my belief in telling it like it is to the public, straight, when somebody dies under mysterious circumstances.”

  Noguchi’s decision to go public with the circumstances surrounding Natalie’s death, particularly the argument between
Walken and R.J., eventually cost him his position as chief coroner. His attorney, Godfrey Isaacs, states, “That argument was the trigger of the removal of Tom [Noguchi], or Tom leaving the Coroner’s office.” Noguchi was also criticized for revealing that Natalie was legally intoxicated, which he had been chastised for disclosing to the public a few weeks earlier in the death of William Holden, who stumbled while inebriated and struck his head.

  Noguchi comments, “[It is the] duty of medical examiners to look into it straightforward, and reveal to the public what happened. Of course, people are not entitled to know every minor detail, but [they are entitled to know] what happened and why death occurred. We can’t help Natalie Wood anymore, but hope that the public will realize that there are certain things that the preventive aspect can be developed… to make sure that a similar death will not occur.”

  According to Noguchi’s memoirs, “friends of Robert Wagner” sprang into action after his press conference, “circulating word to reporters that there had been no dispute at all on the yacht.” The first public denial came from Rasure’s partner in the sheriff’s office, investigator Roy Hamilton. Hamilton told the media he never informed Noguchi’s assistant coroner, Richard Wilson, there had been an argument. “I don’t know where the coroner got that information,” Hamilton was quoted as saying. “We talked to Wagner and Walken and there was no indication that there was any argument. I think [Noguchi] was juicing it up a little bit.” Then Wilson, on behalf of the Coroner’s office, modified his comments, telling reporters that Noguchi’s allusion to an argument between Walken and Wagner might have been a misleading description of an “animated” conversation.

  Noguchi continued his investigation into Natalie’s drowning, despite the implicit pressure, conferring with his consultant on ocean-related accidents, Paul Miller, who examined the Splendour and the Valiant, and was preparing a report for the coroner as an advisory opinion. “I’m sure pressure existed,” Noguchi states, “but I didn’t notice. I did what I think needed done, and I informed the public.”

  Noguchi was beginning to question his preliminary opinion that Natalie fell overboard attempting to board the dinghy, in light of “rumors” he was hearing about her fear of the water. He announced plans to conduct a “psychological autopsy” to determine why Natalie would have left the Splendour that night. Noguchi had used the technique in evaluating Marilyn Monroe’s overdose, sending a psychologist to conduct confidential interviews “to go back to this message deceased has left with friends or coworkers or casual acquaintances, and sometimes a clue sort of will help in a psychological makeup. It’s a very hidden message.”

  Noguchi was stymied initiating a psychological autopsy on Natalie. “We need to have cooperation. I’m not quite sure whether Robert Wagner’s family was willing to cooperate.” Noguchi prepared to conduct the psychological autopsy anyway. “If I had stayed in the coroner’s office longer I may have done it, but I was removed very quickly, right after that.” The instigator of Noguchi’s demotion from his position as chief coroner, according to Noguchi and his attorney, was R.J.’s friend—Natalie’s knight-errant—Frank Sinatra. A “very upset” Sinatra wrote a letter to the Board of Supervisors complaining about Noguchi’s disclosure of the argument on the boat, intimating that coroners should be seen and not heard.

  On December 5, a coroner’s office spokesman pronounced the Natalie Wood case closed, ruling that it was an accidental drowning. Robert Dambacher, who was the department’s chief of investigations, comments, “She’s found floating the next morning… there’s nothing to cause death other than drowning. There’s nothing to indicate anything other than falling… so it comes back to a dead-end street, a lack of information. All you’ve got is an accident. Unless there’s somebody that saw something or somebody starts to talk about what they did then, it’s going to be accident.”

  On December 27, on the heels of Noguchi’s aborted psychological autopsy, after the sheriff’s and coroner’s offices closed their investigations, R.J. was quoted in the media, through a friend, with what would be his second and last public comment about the night Natalie drowned. His November 30 press release, through Ziffren, stated that R.J. thought she took the dinghy out for a ride.

  The information R.J. released in late December was that he and Walken had a “friendly political debate” at the restaurant, “and continued the discussion” on the Splendour until Natalie went to bed. R.J. offered a new theory of how Natalie fell into the water, suggesting that she was bothered by the sound of the rubber dinghy banging against the side of the boat and went on deck to secure it, slipping into the ocean.

  Over the years, this would become the standard theory offered for Natalie’s drowning and, ironically, would be accepted as plausible by Noguchi when he published his memoirs two years later, utilizing the advisory report he commissioned from Paul Miller, his expert in ocean-related accidents.

  After reading Miller’s findings, Noguchi revised his early opinion that Natalie was trying to board the dinghy. He thought it was possible, as R.J. proposed, that she went on the deck to adjust the line of the dinghy, lost her balance, and fell into the water, holding on to the Valiant. If that were the case, Noguchi theorized, the widespread bruise on Natalie’s lower right arm could have been from “hooking her arm” over the side of the dinghy to stay afloat.

  Based on Miller’s report that there were scratch marks on the side of the dinghy—as lifeguard Smith observed—Noguchi presumed Natalie held on to it and was swept to sea by strong currents and the wind, crying out for help between 11:05 and 11:25 P.M., when the Payne party say they heard her screams and the drunken voice of a male mocking her.

  Noguchi’s conjecture was that Natalie tried to hoist herself over the large, cylindrical sides of the dinghy, possibly by the motor, which he felt could account for the bruises on her lower legs. Noguchi believed that Natalie’s red quilted down jacket—which kept her afloat after she drowned—prevented her from getting into the dinghy because it was heavy from being waterlogged. The vertical scratch he noticed on her left cheek “fit well” with Natalie “hanging on in tight contact with the dinghy frame.” The coroner surmised that Natalie clung to the sides of the dinghy, trying to kick it toward shore, until hypothermia set in.

  By a perverse twist, Noguchi’s 1983 analysis that Natalie held on to the dinghy, kicking it toward shore as it swept out to sea, was based on his consultant Miller’s mistaken belief that Natalie’s body was found with the dinghy; Miller was unaware the Valiant had washed up in a cove 100 yards away from where Natalie was. “That’s a surprise to me,” admits Miller. “I was told that they were found together. If they were found together, I speculated that she had probably been alive for quite a while. But if they were not found together, well then I would be surprised that she could stay alive that long.”

  Miller still thinks that Natalie “was with the dinghy for a while because of the scratches, and I think she was probably hanging on to that bar line and she and the dinghy were floating around out there.” Even this is conjecture, since the dinghy was used in the search, and had been washed up in the cove, banging against the rocks.

  Natalie’s closest friend, Peggy Griffin, is certain that Natalie was kept awake by the dinghy and was trying to retie it when she fell overboard.

  According to Griffin, she and Natalie would become annoyed when they were sunbathing on the sun deck of the Splendour, next to the stern, because the rope tying the dinghy to the stern would get slack. “The dinghy would start bumping against the back because the waves were not regular and it would drive you crazy, and you had to go unhook the little gate that was in front of the swim-step, and step down on it, and untie the dinghy—pull it really tight and tie the knot again. And then it was good maybe for an hour before it would start knocking again.”

  If there was no one else on the boat, Griffin and Natalie reluctantly took turns retying the knot:

  Both of us would be half-asleep in the sun, and you’d hear the thing start
ing, and I’d be thinking, “Oh, I hope she does it,” “Oh, I hope she doesn’t ask me to do it,” because you hated doing it. And then finally one of us would do it.

  But it was a foolish thing to do yourself. It wasn’t easy to do it. It’s strong, to keep your balance and pull a thing back like that and tie it up. You had to be really careful, because seaweed would wash up on that little step.

  Now it’s one thing in the broad daylight, when you know what you’re doing and you’re balanced… it must be a whole other deal when it’s nighttime, you’ve got those mukluks, stupid slippers that are leather on the bottom, and a big parka because it’s freezing. I can see how in a second, you could lose your balance.

  One question casting doubt on the bumping dinghy theory was why Natalie, who was afraid to be alone at night, terrified of dark water, would have gone to the slippery swim-step in her nightgown to retie the dinghy close to eleven o’clock on a cold, drizzly night with choppy waves, when there were three men to do it for her, including a skipper. Bob Jiras, her makeup man and confidant of twenty years, suggests that Natalie would have called out to R.J., “using these words, ‘R.J., would you tie up that fucking dinghy, it’s keeping me awake.’”

  Conceivably, Natalie may have decided to do it herself because she was irritated about R.J.’s argument with Walken, or R.J.’s argument with her, which neighboring boater Warren Archer heard in the background over his ship’s radio sometime around 11:00 P.M., when he radioed the Splendour, and which R.J. mentioned to Paul Wintler at 2:00 that morning. R.J. never mentioned to police the argument he and Natalie had sometime around eleven.

  If she did try to move the dinghy, Griffin concedes, it violated Natalie’s own rules about stepping onto the swim-step, even in the daytime. “She was very strict about safety, and always had to wear tennis shoes. I remember once she made me take my sandals off as too dangerous.” Griffin feels “she broke all her own rules that night. Which people do. How often do you run a red light, when you know you shouldn’t do it? Just for that one second.”