Fatal Voyage

A hard-nosed investigation into Hollywood’s most enduring mystery

For thirty-five years, it has been a riddle which has gripped the world. Part love story, part tragedy, it has all the elements of a Hollywood blockbuster: a beautiful actress, a handsome leading man, a brooding sidekick … and a moment of sickening terror with the most horrific consequences.

When Natalie Wood—one-time America’s sweetheart and star of West Side Story, Rebel Without a Cause, and Miracle on 34th Street—was found washed up in her nightdress in the cold waters off Catalina Island, California, on Thanksgiving weekend 1981, it initially looked like a freak accident.

She had been holidaying with husband Robert Wagner and film co-star Christopher Walken on board Wagner’s yacht The Splendour when somehow, in the dead of night, she lost her footing and fell into the water.

The coroner’s initial verdict: accidental drowning.

The coroner was wrong.

For the first time, the real story of Natalie’s final moments can be told—and it’s every bit as monstrous as anything Hollywood scriptwriters could dream up. Forbidden affairs, twisted lies, sex, betrayal, murder, pay-offs, and a cover-up that continues to this day.

Internationally renowned journalist Dylan Howard has spent six years investigating Natalie’s fateful final hours—and the immediate aftermath. After sifting through hundreds of pages of testimony, coroners reports, police statements, and private journals, as well as amassing dozens of exclusive new interviews and witnesses, he is ready to reveal the shocking truth about the death of Hollywood’s golden girl—and finally demand justice for Natalie Wood.