Natalie Wood
Tom Wargacki / Getty
Late actress Natalie Wood and her husband Robert Wagner at the London premiere of The Godfather
The mystery surrounding Wood’s death from drowning near Catalina Island has not dissipated even after 30 years. Wood was on an anchored yacht the night of November 29, 1981 with her husband Robert Wagner and a skipper when she took a fatal fall off of the boat. The official theory is that Wood either tried to leave the yacht or to secure a dinghy when she accidentally slipped and fell overboard. A woman on a nearby yacht said she heard calls for help at around midnight that were answered by someone else who said, “Take it easy. We’ll be over to get you.” ”It was laid back,” the witness recalled. “There was no urgency or immediacy in their shouts.”
The reportedly cavalier attitude toward her situation has often been attributed to the large amount of alcohol Wood and her husband drank that evening. While it has never been proven that the woman calling for help was, indeed, Natalie Wood, no other person has ever been identified or come forward as having called out for help on that night. An investigation by the Los Angeles County coroner included a report that Wood’s fingernail scratches had been found on the side of the rubber dinghy indicating she was trying to get in.
Next: Bob Crane
Bob Crane
ABC Photo Archives
Hogan's Heroes star Bob Crane, who was murdered in 1978 in a still-unresolved case
Crane was the star of the popular 1960′s sitcom Hogan’s Heroes and had a short-lived eponymous series in 1975.
He faced waning success following the cancellation of Heroes in 1971, and unfortunately remains known mostly because of his gruesome, unresolved 1978 murder.
Crane, a photography enthusiast and reputed sex addict, had been friends with John Carpenter, a videographer at Sony, for several years. In later years, Carpenter photographed some of Crane’s sexual escapades with various women.
In 1978, the year that Crane was starring in and directing a play in Scottsdale, he allegedly called Carpenter to tell him that their friendship was over. The following day, Crane was discovered bludgeoned to death with a weapon that was never found (but was believed to be a camera tripod) in a Scottsdale apartment building.
DNA testing did not exist at the time, so the blood later found in Carpenter’s impounded car could not be identified. Other suspicious factors included the multiple phone calls Carpenter had made to the apartment and his seeming lack of surprise to find that the police were there that evening.
Due to insufficient evidence, Maricopa County Attorney Charles F. Hyder declined to file charges. The case was reopened in 1990 and Carpenter went on trial in 1994, where he was not found guilty. He maintained his innocence until his death on September 4, 1998, and the murder remains officially unsolved. However, authorities continue to believe that he was the killer, and no other serious suspect has ever been mentioned in the case.
Next: Tupac Shakur/Notorious B.I.G.
