Marilyn Wayne heard
Retired stockbroker Marilyn Wayne said in a statement that she received a note warning her: 'If you value your life, keep quiet about what you know.’
Wayne was on a nearby boat with a boyfriend called John on the night of November 28, 1981, when Wood drowned.
She said in a sworn statement submitted to the LA Sheriff’s department: ‘I had a “client box” designed for clients to drop off their messages through a slot in the front.
‘Three days after Natalie died, I found a scribbled message on a torn piece of paper in my box that read, “If you value your life, keep quiet about what you know.”’
‘I immediately suspected it was related to Wood's death because that's all anyone had been talking about. I was disturbed and even told an attorney about the threat.’
Retired stockbroker Marilyn Wayne has told The Mail on Sunday she tried to report the star’s ‘last desperate cries for help’ but was ignored.
She added in her statement: ‘My cabin window was open. A woman’s voice, crying for help, awakened John and awakened me, “Help me, someone please help me, I’m drowning”, we heard repeatedly.’
Wayne said John turned on their yacht’s beam light but they couldn’t see anything. Wayne claims she called the harbour patrol officer ‘but no one answered’ and the local sheriff’s office, who told her a helicopter would be sent. But it did not come.
She also claims to have heard a man’s slurred voice from the direction of the Splendour saying: ‘Oh, hold on, we’re coming to get you.’
‘Not long after that the cries for help subsided,’ she recalled.
It was only when Wayne gave an account of her story to a U.S. TV crew for a programme scheduled to air next week, that she was asked to give a statement to police.
Meanwhile, when Robert Wagner was questioned by a rescue boat captain in 1981 about why he didn’t call for help to find his missing wife, he allegedly said: ‘We thought she was off on another boat screwing around because that’s the kind of woman she is.’
Roger Smith is said to have told homicide detectives Wagner’s words during an investigation into the reopened case of Natalie Wood’s death.
The former Supervising Rescue Boat Captain on Catalina Island, California, presented the Los Angeles County Sheriff Department with his sworn statement about what happened the night she died on the yacht Splendour almost 30 years ago, according to Radaronline.com.
The site claim they have obtained the declaration, in which Smith says he spoke to the Hart-to-Hart actor, now 81, minutes after Wood’s dead body was discovered in the sea.
Smith allegedly admitted in the declaration that he and Deputy Knoll questioned Wood’s husband before detectives arrived, which has influenced the case being reopened.
Read more: dailymail
