Natalie Wood’s Death Is ‘All Anyone Will Remember’ About Robert Wagner ‘If He Doesn’t Clear the Air’

More than four decades after Natalie Wood’s death, her former husband, screen legend Robert Wagner, has disappeared from public life. The 95-year-old actor is holed up at his Colorado home, drowning in guilt and battling a devastating health crisis, sources tell Globe.

As the star fights for his life, the burning question remains: Will Wagner finally come clean on his deathbed and confess to what really happened the night Natalie vanished at sea?

“It’s a tragedy, given he was quite the star in his day, but Natalie’s death is likely all anyone will ever remember Wagner for if he doesn’t clear the air,” says one Hollywood insider. “He will almost certainly make a deathbed confession.”

The Killer by Night star has lived most of the second half of his life under a veil of suspicion since the beloved West Side Story starlet drowned at the age of 43 on Nov. 28, 1981.

Sources say Wagner (who denies all allegations of any wrongdoing) has escaped Hollywood to avoid the heightened mystery over Natalie’s death, giving no definitive answers about what really happened that fatal Thanksgiving weekend.

Natalie and Wagner — known as R.J. to friends — had spent the weekend on their yacht, Splendour, with her Brainstorm costar Christopher Walken.

Sometime in the late hours of Nov. 28 and the early minutes of Nov. 29, Natalie vanished, per People.

By morning, the Hollywood beauty was found floating face down, with bruises on her body, near Blue Cavern Point on Catalina Island, which is off the coast of California. The yacht’s dinghy, Prince Valiant, was discovered nearby.

An investigation ensued, and the coroner concluded Natalie, who had an elevated blood-alcohol level that night, slipped into the water and drowned while attempting to board or tie off the dinghy.

Officials said foul play was not suspected, and the case was ruled an accidental drowning.

But decades later, in a bombshell twist, the official cause of death was changed, Globe can reveal.

In November 2011, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department (LASD) reopened the investigation into Natalie’s death, citing new information.

The boat’s captain, Dennis Davern, admitted he initially gave a “sanitized” version of events and now alleges a heated argument between Natalie and Wagner took place before she vanished, and that Wagner instructed him not to turn on the search lights when she went missing.

The following year, in 2012, the Los Angeles County coroner amended Natalie’s death certificate. The cause of death was changed from “accidental drowning” to “drowning and other undetermined factors,” and the manner of death was revised to “undetermined,” according to Page Six.

And as recently as last January, an explosive report cited a new witness who’d come forward after more than four decades to say he heard Natalie crying out, “Help me! Help me,” before vanishing from the boat.

This witness, who was a 17-year-old deckhand on a nearby boat the night Natalie drowned, says he also heard Natalie and Wagner loudly arguing earlier in the night.

That account jibes with the prior testimony of Davern, who said Wagner on the night Natalie died accused her of cheating on him with Walken.

According to Davern, a raging Wagner broke a bottle of wine on a table and began fighting with Natalie just before she disappeared.

Davern claimed he heard Wagner scream, “Get off my f**king boat.”

Investigators say Wagner has refused to talk to them about the case since it was reopened, and the LASD has labeled him a “person of interest,” because he was the last person to see Wood alive and his story has changed over the years, per CBS News. Wagner previously fully cooperated, according to his lawyer.

Lana Wood, Natalie’s sister, later penned an open letter begging the Los Angeles District Attorney’s Office to press charges against her former brother-in-law.

In 2016, Lana and Wagner had a chilling confrontation that was caught on video. A body language expert, as well as a noted voice stress expert, analyzed the video in which Lana, now 79, demanded he finally tell police what really happened the night Natalie died.

Both experts said the actor was concealing information when he barked at her, “I have stopped and said [to you] what happened.”

All these years later, family and fans yearn for justice for Natalie.

Sources say Wagner sees few people at his $20 million Aspen hideaway apart from his wife of 35 years, actress Jill St. John, whom some have alleged he cheated with before Natalie’s death.

The leggy former Bond girl, 85, insists she didn’t start dating Wagner until three months after the tragedy, but Davern claims she was at the actor’s mansion the same day they returned from the doomed 1981 boat trip.

Marti Rulli, author of Natalie Wood and the Devil She Knew, claims there is enough evidence to indict Wagner and has urged authorities to act despite his advanced age and the passage of time. “I still hold hope,” Rulli tells Globe.

Even if Wagner never reveals what really happened the night of Natalie’s murder, Rulli has faith that the dying star will face the ultimate reckoning “in the afterlife — where he will have to answer for his actions on Earth.”