Yahoo Lifestyle Natalie Wood’s Coroner Believes She ‘Might Have’ Survived Drowning If It Wasn’t For This
The coroner who performed Natalie Wood’s autopsy after her death in 1981 suggested it was possible that she could have survived her drowning if a small change had been made to her wardrobe that night.
The contemplations of the man known as the “coroner to the stars” are featured in a new book expected out this spring. RadarOnline shared some of the findings explored in author Anne Soon Choi’s forthcoming biography L.A. Coroner: Thomas Noguchi and Death in Hollywood in an article that was published on Jan. 23.
The Rebel Without a Cause actress was on her family’s boat near Catalina Island in California with actors Robert Wagner and Christopher Walken when she fell overboard. Her body was found the next morning.
Wood was wearing a flannel nightgown with socks and a red jacket at the time her body was recovered. It was the drenched jacket that caught the attention of Thomas Noguchi, the former chief medical examiner-coroner for Los Angeles County who performed Wood’s autopsy. Her death was initially ruled an accident, but her death certificate was amended in 2012 to classify her death as “undetermined.”
"When he scrutinized the parka more carefully, he realized it weighed between thirty to forty pounds in its saturated state,” an excerpt from Choi’s book said, according to RadarOnline. "Her sodden parka had caused her to drown. He was filled with sadness. The weight of her jacket had pulled her back down when she attempted to climb into the dinghy.”
Choi also wrote that Noguchi thought if the Splendor in the Grass actress had “just taken off the jacket, she might have survived.”
The circumstances surrounding Wood’s death have been shrouded in mystery for the last four decades. Wagner, who was married to Wood at the time of her death, wrote in a 2008 autobiography that “Nobody knows” what happened to his wife that night, according to CBS News.
"There are only two possibilities; either she was trying to get away from the argument, or she was trying to tie the dinghy,” he said, referring to an argument he said he’d had with Walken earlier that evening. “But the bottom line is that nobody knows exactly what happened.”
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