Earwitness Tells All: Woman Screamed for Help on Night of Natalie Wood’s Death

Hours before Natalie Wood’s corpse was recovered off California’s Catalina Island, the occupants of the boat moored next to the Hollywood legend’s yacht said they heard a woman desperately crying for help!

In a world exclusive interview with the makers of the critically acclaimed podcast, Fatal Voyage: The Mysterious Death of Natalie Wood, Marilyn Wayne has finally told all about the anguished sobs she heard that fateful night.

“We heard screams from a woman yelling for help,” she told the Fatal Voyage investigative team in Chapter 7 of the 12-part audio documentary, which is now available for download on iTunes.

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“Well, my son had a digital watch, that we had just given him so that’s how we kept the time, minute by minute,” Wayne continued. “And I was up on the deck and heard a woman yelling, ‘Help me, somebody please help me, I’m drowning!’”

“And I would yell down to [my husband] John, who was on the phone to Harbor Patrol, or trying to reach Harbor Patrol, he never did, that what I was hearing. And meanwhile, we would continue to ask my son, ‘What time is it?’ So we had a minute-by-minute history of the time frame and the yelling went on from five after 11 until 11:25 and then it stopped,” Wayne continued. 

That time frame, of course, mirrors the believed duration during which the Oscar winner mysteriously vanished from her and husband Robert Wagner’s yacht, The Splendour, following a tumultuous two days at sea. The couple was hosting Woods’ Brainstorm costar Christopher Walken aboard the boat.

In Chapter 6 of the audio documentary, the yacht’s captain, Dennis Davern, described a harrowing two days of pettiness and rage from Robert as he bristled over Natalie and Christopher’s friendship.

In recent years, Robert has been labeled a person of interest in the case of his then-wife’s death, which homicide detectives now say has yielded considerable evidence suggesting foul play. In a sinister twist, eyewitness Wayne dropped another bombshell to Fatal Voyage.

On the Monday after Natalie’s death, Wayne said she and her husband phoned police seven separate times to report what they had heard on Nov. 28, 1981. The calls were never returned, she insisted. But, “three days later on Wednesday,” she claimed, “I received a note something to the effect of, ‘If you want to stay healthy, keep your mouth shut!’”