Seriously Mysterious - Missing Persons, Unsolved Murders & Historical True Crime · John Lordan - Respectful True Crime Content Creator, Advocate and Host

Reopening the Natalie Wood Case

·21 min·1 clip

Dennis Davern says the fight stopped, Robert Wagner said “Natalie’s gone,” and the dinghy was missing.

Natalia Zakarenko was born in San Francisco on July 20, 1938, and later became known to the world as Natalie Wood. A year later, her father changed the family's last name to Gurdon. Her parents, Maria and Nicholas, pushed her toward film early, giving her the stage name Natasha Gurdon when she was still a toddler. Her first appearances were uncredited, and it was not until her role in Miracle on 34th Street that the child star, then known as Natalie Wood, was nationally recognized. Her younger sister, Svetlana, born in 1946, would also become an actress. From there, the focus shifts to the final night aboard the yacht Splendor. Natalie and Christopher Walken went ashore while Robert Wagner and Dennis Davern stayed with the boat for a time. When they later joined Natalie and Christopher at Doug's Harbor Reef Restaurant, Wagner became angry at seeing them laughing together at a bar. The episode traces the tension as the group returned to the Splendor. According to Davern, Natalie changed into a nightgown and socks after they got back. Walken brought out a bottle of wine, and Wagner smashed it after accusing him of trying to seduce his wife. Walken went to his cabin. Wagner followed Natalie into theirs. The argument kept going inside. Items were thrown and broken. Davern says he left the living quarters and went up to the bridge because he felt out of place. Even there, he could still hear the fighting. He later went back to knock on the main cabin door. He says Wagner opened it angrily and told him to go away. Davern then returned to the bridge. The fight still seemed to be going on below. He watched the couple emerge from the lower deck still arguing fiercely. Then the noise stopped. Davern says the silence was sudden and complete. When he found Wagner again, Wagner was crying and said, Natalie's gone. Wagner described seeing Natalie get onto the dinghy and head off into the night. Instead of searching immediately with a light or calling the Coast Guard, Wagner and Davern drank liquor for a while. Newspapers later reported that the Coast Guard was called at 3:30 a.m., though some sources put the call at 1:30 a.m. Wagner also contacted harbor director Doug Bombard, who joined the search in his own boat. Bombard reportedly saw something red floating in the water. The episode uses these details to reopen the central problem of the case: what exactly happened on the boat, and what happened after the argument stopped. It treats the record as contested and keeps the contradictions visible. Natalie Wood is presented first as a child star, then as a woman at the center of a night whose sequence still matters. The investigation depends on chronology, and the episode keeps returning to chronology whenever the account starts to blur. The result is quieter than sensational. It asks the listener to sit with the fact that the story has multiple versions, some firmer than others. That makes the unanswered questions feel more concrete, not less.

As heard by us

A sober, chronology-first revisit to a famous case, anchored in sequence, names, and disputed reporting.

This episode tracks the Natalie Wood case from her rise as a child star to the night she vanished from the Splendor, then back through the bar conversation, the argument aboard, and the disputed timeline that followed.

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Follow Natalie Wood's story from her early film years to the night she disappeared aboard the Splendor.

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