About 40 years after Natalie Wood kicked the bucket under puzzling conditions, Los Angeles County Sheriff's examiners say her widower Robert Wagner is a man of enthusiasm for the case.
"As we've examined the case in the course of the most recent six years, I believe he's all the more a man of intrigue now," Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department Lieutenant John Corina said in an up and coming meeting with CBS' 48 Hours. "That is to say, we know now that he was the last individual to be with Natalie before she vanished."
Wagner's lawyer didn't promptly react to PEOPLE's ask for input.
The Hollywood starlet was hitched to Wagner from 1972 until her passing.
Wood kicked the bucket on Nov. 29, 1981, off of Catalina Island in California. The occurrence happened while the 43-year-old performing artist was cruising with her significant other on their yacht, Splendor. Christopher Walken, Wood's then-costar in the film Brainstorm, and the pontoon's skipper, Dennis Davern, were likewise on board.
At the time, her passing was named an unplanned suffocating, yet the case was revived in 2011.
Wagner has declined to talk with specialists since they started to investigate the conditions encompassing Wood's passing once more.
"I haven't seen him tell the subtle elements that match the various observers for this situation," Corina said of Wagner. "I believe he's always showed signs of change his story a tad. Also, his variant of occasions simply don't make any sense."
Analysts who talked with 48 Hours noticed that there were various wounds on Wood's body that had all the earmarks of being new, as per her post-mortem report.
"She resembled a casualty of a strike," said Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department Detective Ralph Hernandez.
Whenever inquired as to whether Wood's demise was a murder as opposed to a terrible mishap, Corina stated, "I believe it's sufficiently suspicious to influence us to imagine that something happened."
In Wagner's 2008 diary, Pieces of My Heart, he composed that following a night of drinking, he got into a contention with Walken over Wood's profession.
At a certain point, the now 87-year-old on-screen character stated, "I got a wine bottle, hammered it on the table and broke it into pieces."
Concerning what made her tumble off the pontoon, Wagner composed it was "all guess. No one knows. There are just two potential outcomes: it is possible that she was attempting to make tracks in an opposite direction from the contention, or she was endeavoring to tie the dinghy. Be that as it may, most importantly no one knows precisely what happened."
In 2016, Wagner addressed PEOPLE about his family's disaster and his nearby bond with his stepdaughter and Wood's girl, Natasha Gregson Wagner.
"We were all so broke by the misfortune, and we were holding tight to each other," Wagner said. "My bond with Natasha is, exceptionally extraordinary. We've clung to each other during that time and she means everything to me."
The 48 Hours report incorporates the most recent data from interviews with the analysts and Wood's sister Lana, and in addition authentic meetings with Wagner, Davern and others. The show's endeavors to get remark from Wagner and Walken were unsuccessful.
