The harrowing case of late actress Natalie Wood‘s mysterious death over 30 years ago surfaced again earlier this week after a new report released Monday, Jan. 14, called the actual cause of death into question once more.
The only problem is, the one man that authorities are hoping to talk to — Wood’s husband, actor Robert Wagner — is still refusing to open up.
According to Los Angeles County sheriff’s Lt. John Corina, Wagner, now 82, is the only person who was on the boat the night of Wood’s 1981 death that is refusing to speak with authorities about the revived investigation.
“We reached out through his attorney and got rebuffed. We went to his home and he refused to talk us, and we sent him a letter, so I say it is fair to say he has declined to be interviewed, repeatedly,” Corina said Thursday, Jan. 17, according to the Los Angeles Times.
Wagner sat down for three interviews with detectives about the case when it first happened more than three decades ago.
In the new report, released by the Los Angeles County Coroner’s office, it is stated that “there were recent bruises to the back of the left thigh. A few day old bruises were on the back of the right thigh and knee but there were fresh bruises and scratches to the right posterior leg.”
The significance of these newly discovered bruises, the coroner’s office noted, was that “the location of the bruises, the multiplicity of the bruises, lack of head trauma, or facial bruising support bruising having occurred prior to the entry into the water.”
Wood, who was 43 at the time of her death, was previously believed to have died by accident the night she, Wagner, and actor Christopher Walken celebrated the completion of Wood and Walken’s film Brainstorm with a trip out to Catalina Island.
The actress’ lifeless body was found floating about a mile from the yacht the next morning, on Nov. 29, 1981.
In a 2008 memoir, Wagner recalled that he and Walken had argued the night of Wood’s death, but he didn’t discover that his wife and the dinghy attached to the yacht were missing until much later that evening.
“Nobody knows,” he wrote. “There are only two possibilities; either she was trying to get away from the argument, or she was trying to tie the dinghy. But the bottom line is that nobody knows exactly what happened.”
The case was reopened in November 2011 and investigators have since interviewed more than 100 people.
On Thursday evening, Wagner’s attorney, Blair Berk, released a statement that defended her client’s decision to refuse further interviews.
“After 30 years, neither Mr. Wagner nor his daughters [Natasha Gregson and Courtney Brooke] have any new information to add to this latest investigation, which was unfortunately prompted by those seeking to exploit and sensationalize the 30th anniversary of the death of his wife and their mother,” Berk said in the statement.
