An author has begged Los Angeles’ District Attorney to reopen the investigation into the death of actress Natalie Wood before her husband dies.
Writer Marti Rulli said bombshell new accounts given to her by eyewitnesses point the finger at the West Side Story star’s spouse, Robert Wagner, 94.
Wood and Wagner were a nearly unparalleled Hollywood power couple when the ‘Splendor in the Grass’ actress shockingly drowned to death after falling from a yacht off Catalina Island during Thanksgiving weekend 1981.
Rulli claims that witnesses told him that Wood was screaming for her life whilst hurling accusations at her notoriously hot-headed husband in the hours before her death.
‘The case will remain open as long as Robert Wagner is alive because he is the suspect’, said Rulli told RadarOnline.com.
‘I still hold hope the Los Angeles DA will see fit to let the strong previous evidence, and the new evidence I have gathered, bring justice for Natalie’s murder.
Rulli plans to disclose the new evidence in a forthcoming book, Natalie Wood and the Devil She Knew.
She explained that the witnesses, who include a teenager who was among the last to see Wood alive, came forward after the investigation into her death was reopened in 2011.
In 2012, Wood’s cause of death was changed from ‘accidental drowning’ to ‘drowning and other undetermined factors’ – decades after cops cut Wagner loose as a suspect.
‘The reason the witnesses didn’t speak out earlier is because, at the time, the case was declared an accident so fast they just ignored what they saw or heard’, Rulli explained.
She added she believes the new accounts could warrant a fresh grand jury investigation of Wood’s death in the dark waters near their yacht ‘Splendour’ off Catalina.
She described one of the witnesses as a California man who was just 17 at the time of Wood’s drowning death, which, after 43 years, remains mired in mystery.
The teen, Rulli said, had been a worker on a fishing boat moored near the yacht owned by her husband, Wagner, where the ‘Rebel Without a Cause’ star was last seen alive.
Contacting Rulli last year, he recalled hearing Wood’s screams – as well as an argument shortly before her death at about 11 p.m. on Nov. 28, 1981.
The account Rulli said, coincided with ones given to police by the boat’s captain, Dennis Davern – one of only four aboard the ‘Splendour’ that night.
He was joined by Wood, Wagner, and a then 38-year-old Christopher Walken – each part an alleged love triangle said to have sent Wagner into a rage.
The man’s claim supports testimony by Davern, who told police the Thanksgiving weekend cruise turned violent when Wagner accused Wood, 43, of having an affair with her ‘Brainstorm’ co-star Walken.
Davern has claimed an irate Wagner, then 51, allegedly smashed a bottle of wine on a table and began brawling with Wood just before she vanished.
At one point Davern claims he heard Wagner scream: ‘Get off my f***ing boat!’
Rulli said she also was contacted by an elderly woman who said she worked with Wood as an up-and-coming actress in the 1960s, but today is close to death.
Her account also indicated alleged abuse from Wagner, who she claimed put his hands on Wood in their dressing room
‘She said she saw Wagner come into their dressing room [before the incident],’ Rulli said of the woman’s claims, calling them ‘additional evidence of [the] abuse.’
Wagner has repeatedly denied and denounced the claims. He maintains Wood went off in a dinghy of her own accord.
Rulli has so far kept quiet on the names of both witnesses in hopes that the accounts will soon spur a grand jury investigation that will see Wagner – who was recently cleared again after being declared a person of interest in 2018 – indicted.