Natalie Wood’s Death Certificate Changed By Coroner

Despite authorities again ruling that her death was an accidental one, the  death certificate of actress Natalie Wood has officially been altered to reflect the questions and suspicions that still linger more than 30 years later.

Today is reporting that Wood’s death certificate was amended earlier this month, changing Wood’s cause of death from an accidental drowning to “drowning and other undetermined factors.”

Chief of Detectives William McSweeney said the decision to update the death certificate was  made by the coroner’s office.  The change takes place nine months after sheriff’s homicide investigators renewed their interest in the case:

“We don’t close these cases…These cases have active periods and more passive periods. We’re moving toward the end of an active period.”

Natalie Wood died on Thanksgiving weekend, 1981 when she drowned in the waters off Catalina Island.  Conflicting reports from that night still leave questions as to whether the drowning was an accident, or possibly involved Wood’s husband, Robert Wagner, their guest, Christopher Walken, or the boat’s captain, Dennis Davern.