Natasha (59 page)

Craig, who went off-duty at 10:30, recalled for police a call from Whiting at 10:00 saying the four were “very drunk,” with Whiting advising him to be sure they got aboard the
Splendour
safely. Craig watched them at the dock as they all stepped into the Wagners’ dinghy, when he heard Natalie scream. “He thought she may have been drunk and was unhappy with something that happened at the restaurant.” A shoreboat driver named William Peterson, who was near the dock, heard Natalie yell and saw her stumble as she tried to get into the dinghy, with Davern assisting her.

Davern would later say in a British documentary, “We got back to the boat and Natalie’s in a giggling state by now, talking with Christopher and being pretty chummy. And it was beginning to upset R.J. to the point where he had to explode.”

Walken’s and R.J.’s statements to the police indicate all four went to the main salon as soon as they returned to the
Splendour
, where, Davern would say in later media interviews, Natalie lit candles, he and R.J. drank scotch, and they opened another bottle of wine.

What occurred next would set in motion the tragic denoument of the lost weekend.

Walken would be the first and only one of the three men to disclose to the police, in the immediate aftermath of Natalie’s drowning, that
there was an altercation in the main salon. In his first interview with authorities, Walken volunteered that he and R.J. got into a “small beef” soon after they got to the salon that night, and that Natalie seemed “disturbed” afterward.

When police asked Davern, at the time of his original statement, if there was an argument, he told authorities he’d “rather not say.”

R.J. mentioned nothing about an argument in his first statement.

Walken elaborated on the “beef” between himself and R.J. during his second interview with police. Duane Rasure, the lead investigator, recorded Walken’s expanded account as: “They had all been drinking, and they had one of those conversations going where you kind of put your cards on the table. R.J. was making statements and complaining that [Natalie] was away from home too much, that she was away from the kids, and it was hurting their home life. Walken stated he also got involved in this discussion, supporting [Natalie’s] view: that she was an actress, she was an important person; this was her life. He suddenly realized he was violating his own view about getting involved in an argument between man and wife.”

The investigator’s record of Walken’s account continued, “[Walken] stepped outside for some air, and when he returned everybody was apologizing, particularly he and Robert Wagner, and everything seemed fine. He further recalled that about this time, when Natalie left the salon and went down to her bedroom, he thought she was tired of listening to them.” Rasure’s partner, Roy Hamilton, wrote in his notes: “Walken said he thought Natalie went to bed, and that she thought he and R.J. were a bunch of assholes.”

When Davern was interviewed a second time by police, in the presence of attorneys hired by R.J., he alluded to the argument: “[Davern] recalled that R.J. and Natalie got into a discussion about her being gone, and how R.J. missed her. During this discussion between them, Chris Walken entered into it and supported Natalie’s view. Davern felt R.J. was being upset over this, and he recalled Chris getting up and going outside for a while. At about this time, Natalie went to the master stateroom to go to bed.”

In R.J.’s second interview with police, he did not acknowledge the argument until prodded, then saying merely, “There was a discussion about [Natalie] being away from home and the kids so much.” Sheriff’s investigators noted R.J.’s full explanation as, “Natalie went down to
bed. And at this point in time, [Wagner] recalled Chris Walken stepping outside on the deck for a while. When Chris returned inside the salon, they continued talking.”

In the years that followed, Davern eventually would say publicly, in a series of different but consistent interviews, that R.J.’s argument with Walken was more heated than Davern told the police. “He took a wine bottle, smashed it on the salon table, and said to Chris, ‘What do you want to do? Fuck my wife?’ ” Davern said in the British documentary. “Well, at that point, Chris knew it was time to leave the room, because if he didn’t, it could’ve turned into a big fight. Natalie was so
devastated
the way R.J. acted that she just got up and went right to her stateroom.” In
Vanity Fair
, Davern would recall that Natalie responded, “R.J., I’m not standing for this a minute longer,” and left the salon for the master stateroom, slamming the door.

Deputy R. W. Kroll of the Avalon Sheriff’s Department, the first officer to step inside the
Splendour
after R.J. reported Natalie as missing, wrote in his official notes, at 6:30 A.M. Sunday [November 29], “I observed pieces of a broken wine bottle laying on the deck carpeting of the main salon. I also observed partially eaten food, empty wine bottles, and clothing scattered about the cabin.” R.J. would tell Rasure, the chief investigator, the broken wine bottle was “probably from the rough seas.”

Within forty-five minutes to an hour of Natalie’s retreat to her stateroom after R.J.’s explosive argument with Walken, Natalie was missing from the
Splendour
.

By piecing together the collective police statements of R.J., Walken, and Davern, the approximate time R.J. first became aware Natalie was off the boat was sometime between 10:45 and midnight. This is based, first, on the fact that everyone got back to the
Splendour
from Doug’s Harbor Reef between 10:00 and 10:30, as the harbormaster’s records reflect. Second, in accordance with unanimous accounts that “the beef” between Walken and R.J. happened quickly, which all three men on the boat assert provoked Natalie to go straight to bed, she would have been in her stateroom by 10:30 to 10:45.

R.J.’s first statement to police was that “Natalie went to bed, he went to her bedroom, and shortly thereafter they noticed that she and the dinghy were missing.” In his second statement, R.J. said that after
his “discussion” with Walken, Natalie went to her bedroom and Walken stood outside on the deck for “a while.” He and Walken then talked for “fifteen minutes,” and then he went to Natalie’s bedroom to check on her and she and the dinghy were gone. By either account, R.J. indicated to police that Natalie was missing either within moments, or no longer than a half-hour to forty-five minutes, after she retired.

Walken’s first statement was that he was on the deck for “a few minutes” after his “beef” with R.J., when Natalie went to bed. He “next remembered the captain making a remark that the dinghy was gone; at about the same time, they noticed that Natalie was gone.” Walken thought it might be around midnight. In Walken’s second statement, he repeated that Natalie went to bed as soon as R.J. got upset, “[and] the next thing [Walken] recalled was that within a short time the captain made mention that the dinghy was missing. At about the same time, Robert Wagner checked the bedroom and observed that Natalie was missing.” Walken’s timeline placed Natalie missing from the boat within “a short time” after she went to bed, to no later than midnight.

Davern told police in his first interview that Natalie went to bed, “and it was after this he noticed the Zodiac [dinghy] was gone.” Davern’s follow-up statement related that Natalie went to bed, and “after some time passed, R.J. went to see where Natalie was. When they noticed she was gone, at about the same time they noticed the Zodiac was gone.” Davern’s statements imply it was not long after Natalie went to her stateroom that he or R.J. noticed she was gone.

Since Natalie was in her bedroom by roughly 10:45, and Walken, Davern, and R.J. all indicated to police it was within a window of a few moments to forty-five minutes or so after she went to bed that they realized she was missing, Natalie must have gone off the boat between 10:45 and 11:30
P.M
.—no later than midnight, per Walken.

According to Sheriff’s records, Warren Archer, the diner from the
Vantage
who shared a bottle of champagne with the Wagners that night, told investigators he radioed R.J. on the
Splendour
when he got back to his boat from dinner (sometime around eleven) to invite the Wagner party to the
Vantage
for drinks. Archer told investigators R.J. said no, and he heard noise in the background giving him the impression that R.J. and Natalie “were arguing or fighting.” Archer told a shoreboat operator later that night that he had noticed the Wagners’
dinghy tied to the rear of the
Splendour
, which was moored thirty yards from Archer’s boat.

Shortly after eleven
P.M
., John Payne, the owner of a boat called the
Capricorn
, moored approximately eighty feet from the
Splendour
, thought he heard a woman crying for help. He awakened his fiancée, Marilyn Wayne, a commodities broker whose eight-year-old son, Anthony, was on the boat with them. Wayne, who slept with the windows open, even in freezing weather, distinctly heard a woman’s voice coming from the ocean. “The cry was, ‘Somebody please help me, I’m drowning,’ over and over again.”

Wayne yelled to her son to ask the time, since the boat was pitch black and he had a lighted digital watch. They both remember it as exactly 11:05
P.M
. Wayne, her son, Anthony, and Payne all heard what they described as a drunken man or men’s voices respond to the woman’s screams for help, saying mockingly, “Oh, don’t worry, we’ll help you,” and “Hold your hat, we’re coming to get you.” Wayne found it puzzling. “When you hear somebody saying, ‘We’re coming over to get you,’ you say, ‘Okay, I guess maybe the person who’s yelling for help is with that party.’ But she kept yelling for help.”

While Wayne’s fiancé was downstairs on the
Capricorn
calling the harbormaster, Wayne was on deck “yelling out, ‘Where are you? I’ll come and help you, keep talking…’ ” When no one responded to their call to the harbormaster’s office at Two Harbors, Payne and Wayne grew increasingly nervous. “He’d keep yelling up to me, ‘Is she still yelling for help?’ and I’d say, ‘Yes, hurry up, call somebody else.’”

Payne called Avalon, the other side of the island, where he was told they were sending a helicopter right over. While Payne and Wayne waited on deck for the helicopter, Wayne recalls, “we turned on the top light on the top of the mast to try to scan the area, trying to find whoever it was that was in the water. It was windy and very, very cold and the water was so choppy. But I had a bead on where the cries for help were coming from. Clearly, it was somewhere around our nine o’clock position, we being in the middle, and it was coming from the
Splendour
.”

Wayne’s son, Anthony, remembers his mother calling out to him every few minutes, asking for the time: “It was really, really rough out, and this woman was screaming, it was just dismal.”

When the helicopter failed to arrive in fifteen minutes, “my first reaction was to jump in and swim around,” states Wayne. “And John’s reasoning was, ‘A, you’ll last about ten minutes before hypothermia. B, you’re swimming around in a pitch-black isthmus and you don’t know where the sound is echoing from. C, you’re a single parent, and D, if you find the person, purely by accident, they’re gonna grab hold of you and the two of you will go down.’ ” Neither Wayne nor Payne could see anyone in the water, nor did they see a dinghy.

The couple considered getting in their motorized dinghy to search, but “we had unfortunately deflated the dinghy before going to bed, because we were leaving at 5:30 the next morning to go sail back to Newport, and it would have taken a good half hour with a foot pump to inflate the dinghy.”

Payne and Wayne kept the light illuminated on top of their boat, “that we kept turning around, just scanning the water, that would have been a bead for the helicopter to hone in on. But they never came. And the harbor patrol never picked up the phone.”

At 11:25
P.M
., the woman’s cries, “Somebody please help me, I’m drowning,” stopped. “I didn’t really sleep the rest of the night,” recalls Wayne. “And John was downstairs, still on the phone.”

The telephone call slips from the Sheriff’s Department reveal that both John Payne and Marilyn Wayne contacted investigators when they learned that Natalie Wood drowned sometime that Saturday night or early Sunday, certain it was Natalie they heard screaming for help. Wayne understood why no one else on neighboring boats heard the cries. “The only reason we heard her is because we had a silent generator and I sleep with all the windows open.”

Wayne’s son, Anthony, would remember, “My mom was just quite upset about it.” Payne would be haunted by unanswered questions. “One of the major questions I have is how is it that the people on her boat—Robert, Christopher—how come they didn’t hear her screaming? They were closer to her than anybody else.”

R.J.’s first call to report that Natalie was missing was not until 1:30
A.M
. Sunday, when he used the hailing and frequency channel 16 on the ship’s radio, saying, in a slurred voice, “This is the
Splendour
, we need help. Somebody’s missing from the boat.”

Don Whiting, the host/manager at Doug’s Harbor Reef who had seated the intoxicated Wagner party and called the dock operator to be sure they got back to the
Splendour
, happened to be awake on his sailboat at 1:30, listening to the VHF marine radio. He recognized Robert Wagner’s voice, “sounding drunk,” he later told police. Whiting responded to the radio call from R.J., which he described as “strange.”

A heavily intoxicated R.J. told Whiting via the ship’s radio that Natalie was not on the
Splendour
, and he thought she was at the bar at Doug’s. R.J. asked Whiting if he would check the bar for Natalie, and see if the dinghy was at the Two Harbors dock.

Why R.J. waited until 1:30 A.M. to ask for help to find Natalie, or to report her as missing from the boat, is one of the lingering questions from that fraught, alcohol-fueled night, since all three men noticed she was overboard or missing between 10:45 and midnight, according to their police statements.