Robert Wagner Honors Natalie Wood on Anniversary as Her Mysterious Death Still Haunts Hollywood

Robert Wagner celebrated what would have been his wedding anniversary with Natalie Wood, but his tribute came more than four decades after her mysterious death.

“Memories Happy Anniversary Nat! More Than Love,” Wagner, 96, wrote alongside a photo of himself and Wood leaning in for a kiss shared via Instagram on Thursday, July 16.

He and the Rebel Without a Cause star famously married twice. They first tied the knot in December 1957 before divorcing five years later. The couple reunited and remarried 10 years later, staying together until her death in 1981.

Wood died at the age of 43 after disappearing from the yacht, Splendour, off California’s Catalina Island. Wagner, Christopher Walken and the yacht’s captain, Dennis Davern, were also on board.

Her body was found floating in the water the morning after and her death was initially ruled an accident. But in 2011, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department reopened the investigation after Davern and other came forward with new information.

The following year, ABC News reported that the coroner amended Wood’s death certificate and changed the cause of death from “accidental drowning” to “drowning and other undetermined factors.” Wagner was named as a person of interest in 2018, and the investigation remains ongoing.

Wood’s death has fueled decades of speculation about what happened aboard the yacht that night that often has Wagner and Walken, now 83, at the center.

The National Enquirer previously obtained a police report in December 2025, and it included interviews with the owner of the restaurant the group visited hours before Wood went missing.

“He thought at the time there were some possible problems between Robert Wagner and his wife,” the report read. “He was of the impression that Robert Wagner was a little bit irritated with his wife.”

It also featured an interview with Paul Wintler, a man who worked at the local campgrounds and heard the former Hart to Hart star make the call stating his wife was missing. According to the report, Wintler’s “first impression” as that Wagner “appeared to be drunk and not real shook up but nervous.”

“He thought Mr. Wagner had possibly made a statement that he and his wife had had a fight and thought she had gone back to the bar,” the report continued.

However, the report also stated that when Wagner and the Deer Hunter star were brought back to the mainland via helicopter, the widower “was in an emotional state.”

Wagner has continually denied any wrongdoing in Wood’s death, and in 2022, he was cleared by investigators.