LA police to reinvestigate Natalie Wood's death

POLICE have reopened the investigation into the death of the actress Natalie Wood 30 years after she drowned during a yachting weekend with her husband Robert Wagner and their friend Christopher Walken.

The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department said they launched the cold case review after the captain of Wood and Wagner's yacht "made comments worthy of exploring". The LA Times quotes a law enforcement source who claims the Sheriff's Department received a letter from a "third party" which said the captain, Dennis Davern, had "new recollections" about the case.

The death of Wood at the age of 43 remains one of Hollywood's great mysteries.

She and Wagner had been drinking with Walken on a Saturday night during Thanksgiving weekend in November 1981. In his 2008 autobiography, Wagner says a discussion between him and Walken became heated after the latter said that Wood, who had made her name in Rebel Without a Cause and West Side Story, ought to put her career before her family

Wagner broke a bottle of wine on the table, at which point Wood said she was going to bed. Her body, wearing a dressing gown, was recovered from the water the next morning a mile from their boat. The yacht's dinghy was found beached nearby.

A friend told The Sunday Times in 2008 that Wagner believed Wood heard the dinghy banging against the side of the yacht and went to tie it more securely. She slipped and fell into the water, knocking herself unconscious.

The friend said: "There was no conspiracy, nobody walking in on something sexual, nothing absurd like that."

The coroner said bruises on Wood's head were consistent with the theory that she banged her head on the yacht as she fell into the water.

A spokesman said yesterday that Wagner "trusts they will evaluate whether any new information relating to the death of Natalie Wood Wagner is valid, and that it comes from a credible source or sources other than those simply trying to profit from the 30-year anniversary of her tragic death". ·