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"West Side Story" Icon Natalie Wood's Death Investigated

By Tom Liddy | November 19, 2011 10:08am
Lana Wood, right, pictured here with her sister, late actress Natalie Wood when Lana played Natalie as a young girl in the film 'Searches.'
Lana Wood, right, pictured here with her sister, late actress Natalie Wood when Lana played Natalie as a young girl in the film 'Searches.'
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Lana Wood/Delivered by Newsmakers

MANHATTAN — Investigators have reopened the investigation into the death of "West Side Story" star Natalie Wood, who drowned in the waters off California 30 years ago, authorities said.

The Los Angeles County Sheriff's office said it was contacted by people who said that they had additional information about the drowning off Catalina Island on Nov. 29, 1981.

The death of the of the actress was ruled an accident at the time and is still being viewed as such, according to the Associated Press.

Aboard the yacht Splendour that night was Wood, her husband and actor Robert Wagner and actor Christopher Walken. Wagner is not considered a suspect, the report said.

Wood's sister, Lana, said Friday that she does not believe her sister's death was an accident.

“I don’t think she fell, I don’t know if she was pushed, I don’t know whether there was an altercation and it happened accidentally but she shouldn’t have died and that does stay with me and hurt,” she told Piers Morgan on CNN.

The boat's skipper, Dennis Davern, has long maintained that Woods and Wagner argued before her death, but did not mention a fight at the time of the death, according to the report.