This is a photo of Dennis's brother, Paul Davern, at Splendour's helm. Paul learned how to operate the yacht, too, and spent a few years in California, off and on, while Dennis served as the Splendour Captain. Paul was also very close with the Wagner family and spent ample time at their home, being invited to their parties and welcomed any time as was Dennis. Paul was much closer with Robert Wagner than with Natalie, although Paul adored Natalie and said she was so much fun to be around. Paul was instrumental in helping me with early information I gathered for GNGS. Paul passed away when he was 40, and is missed to this day. Paul suspected foulplay in Natalie's death from day one. Paul knew there was no way to "fall" from the back of the yacht. Dennis opened up to him first, fully trusting his brother. I always trusted Paul's information, too.
Marti,
ReplyDeleteHopefully Paul caught up with Natalie in the afterlife. I believe in an afterlife. Do you ever feel driven by Natalie?
Sad to have also died so young. It's interesting that Paul was immediately suspicious. I wonder if it was more than just the boat's layout. Maybe Wagner let the mask slip once and Paul glimpsed the other side of Wagner, especially when he was drinking.
ReplyDeletePaul loved knowing the Wagner family. He thought they were great. I spoke with Paul immediately after Natalie died, when he was unable to get in touch with Dennis, who was being "protected" at RJ's house. Paul was distraught to say the least, and rambled off lots of things. He said to me, "I know something terrible happened on the boat. No matter what Den ever tells, I will never believe Natalie wandered off and drowned."
ReplyDelete(as was reported)
As for being driven by Natalie, yes, I am quite driven by her. Dennis and her sister Lana are the ones who dreamt about her often, and still do to this day. I dreamed about Natalie briefly, twice. Maybe the difference is that I didn't know her and never spent time with her, but I am definitely driven by her.
I especially envision her ordeal in the ocean. It's extremely hard to think about, but when I picture her in the dark of night, drifting away from the moored boats by currents, I feel her fear, her terror. I think about her last thoughts, her mother-panic taking over, realizing her daughters will be raised without her, knowing that the person who will raise them is the person not coming to her rescue... or did she die thinking he was coming for her, but could not find her? I doubt that, because she knew how she got into the water, and she knew about the bruises she sustained.
Natalie's death is beyond a terrible, tragic ordeal. She died a physically and mentally torturous death, given her fear of dark water, and the way she finally succumbed to the ocean. Yes, it's all a driving force. The man who didn't attempt, WHO CHOSE NOT TO HELP HER, inherited all of her money, and started dating two months later, and raised Natalie's daughters to hate their aunt. What a husband!
...and he lied to the police.
ReplyDeleteNatalie's daughters are a great curiosity for me. I feel enormous compassion for them but their present behavior is a mystery to me. Surely, Natasha has good memories of her aunt and cousin when her mother was alive. No matter what Wagner has said to them, they are now old enough to sift fact from fiction and go looking for their own answers. I don't think I could rest until I knew the truth about my mother. They could even meet Lana on the sly and judge for themselves. I know one poster believes Wagner controls the girls through their trust funds but they are adults and Natalie must have left them money that they have now inherited in their own right. Something just seems screwy to me. It would be interesting if an "insider" talked sometime and told us just how aware or insulated Natalie's daughters really are.
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing, Marti. I too, found it interesting that Paul had his suspicions about Natalie's death not being an accident. So sad that he also died tragically young.
ReplyDeleteMarti, why was Paul closer to RJ than Natalie?
ReplyDeleteHi Marti, that is something to see in Natalie's own writing and her words, Lana has the un-finish biography that Natalie started sometime early in her life, right? That would be something to read with a ending of THE TRUTH AND JUSTICE, wouldn't it. I would be right up there with so many to get my hands on that book and audible. Thanks always for sharing these extra that weren't in the book but you know of.
ReplyDeleteThanks all. Pam
Pam, I'll move your comment to the above post.
ReplyDeleteTo answer why Paul was closer with RJ: he spent more time with him than he did with Natalie. RJ used to use the boat for fishing trips, guys only, and Paul was part of many of those trips and got to know RJ well. I have a nice photo of RJ and Paul I'll hunt down and post.
Are there any pics of Natalie that we have not seen?
ReplyDeleteI've wondered many times about Natalie's daughters too... They are easily old enough to form mature opinions about things and not be controlled by their 80-year-old (step-)father, IMO. Natasha has said that (obviously) her mother's death was one of the biggest things to shape her life. You'd think that she spent a lot of time saying, "Why? What happened that night?"
ReplyDeletefrom KB
We don't know what lies he has told them. From reading his book, I can only imagine what has been fed to them as he seems to play the violin very well.
ReplyDeleteAlso, he told a few stories in his book that Natalie's daughters had to know were fabrications. He said that he began seeing Jill 6 months after Natalie died. That's a lie and Natalie's kids know that's a lie.
He and Jill began appearing together publicly in February 1982. After the book came out Jill told a reporter that Valentine's Day will always be special to them because that was when they went on their first date. He lied! Why? I guess he did not want the readers who did not know better to know that he begin seeing Jill 11 weeks after Natalie died. Again, he's all about how it looks or why else would he lie? Natalie's daughters had to know that he was lying. He's a pathetic liar who does it with so much charm that it's accepted. Pathetic!.
Marti -
ReplyDeleteI have three questions for you.
1. Would you happen to know how Wagner turned the children against Lana? I would think that with the loss of their mother they would want to grow closer to their mother's sister, their aunt.
Especially now, they are grown women and have minds of their own.
2. What about the childrens relationship with Natalie's mother? Did Wagner try to keep them away from her, too?
3. Has Richard Gregson, Natalie's second husband and Natasha's biological father, offered any opinions about the circumstances surrounding Natalie's death?
From what I last remembered reading, he had gone off to live in Wales and write. I believe he was last seen walking Natasha down the isle at her wedding. Wagner was on the other side, as well. That just sickens me. Natalie should have been there.
Anon 12:58,
ReplyDeleteI remember when Wagner began dating Jill. It was very early on, as you say.
He's been living a lie for years, what difference would one more lie make. He's a devious man without a conscience.~~~~
How cruel it was of him to turn Natalie's children against Natalie's family.~~~~
ReplyDeleteI've talked plenty with Lana about the way she has been treated since Natalie's death, but I think the most obvious answers to the questions asked here are found in Lambert's biography and Wagner's autobiography, as BOTH include numerous blatant slurs and attacks against Lana. Why? To divert attention from the truth of Natalie's death.
ReplyDeleteThe most ridiculous claim in Lambert's book is that Natalie was not the daughter of the man she called her father. He claimed that Natalie was the result of an affair her mother had with another Russian man.
ReplyDeleteLambert was supposed to have been a good friend of Natalie's?
What good friend would write such a thing? A claim that was never substantiated.
If it was something that Natalie dealt with while she was alive, I could understand. But Natalie never questioned her paternity. What could be the reason he would want to make such a claim?
He dedicates quite a few pages to this subject. It really is absurd.
As Marti has pointed out, Lambert brought up absurd topics to draw attention away from Natalie's death. He seemed to go out of his way to portray Natalie in a negative light while shining Wagner's armor. That book reeked of agenda.
ReplyDeleteNatalie's daughters and Wagner took time out of their busy schedules to meet with this woman who professed to be Natalie's sister but they won't give Natalie's true sister the time of day nor did they attend Natalie's mothers funeral.
All it would have taken was a DNA test to substantiate her claims. How odd that she wanted to be Natalie Wood's sister but she had no interest in being Lana Wood's sister.
The woman claiming to be Natalie's half-sister wouldn't be Lana's sister too because it was a father supposedly shared, not a mother.
ReplyDeletebut Natasha Lofft and Gavin Lambert claimed that Lofft's father, the sea captain, was the father of both Natalie and Lana. That would make her just as much Lana's half-sister as she was Natalie's half-sister if they truly shared a father as was stated in Lambert's book.
ReplyDeleteI don't recall that part from Lambert's book. I thought the sea captain was only (supposedly) Natalie's father according to Lambert. I'll have to check it. I don't know where my Lambert book is.
ReplyDeleteHe went into boring detail that Nick was not Lana's father, that George the sea captain was and that he was Natalie's father, also.
ReplyDeleteI wouldn't stress myself trying to the piece of garbage.
I won't. It's all a lie. Natalie and Lana have the same father.
ReplyDeleteOf course it's a lie. It could have easily been proven it if was true. It was a total bore as Lambert droned on and on about it. In reality, it had nothing to do with Natalie, it had no effect on her life. It would have been more suitable in a book about Natalie's mother.
ReplyDelete