The last hours of Natalie Wood

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According to one theory, Wood intended to go off in the dinghy, to be alone and breathe the brisk Pacific night. Whiting spent the night after the accident aboard the Splendour and struck upon an alternative theory: maybe Wood, kept awake by the sound of Valiant banging against the hull in the breeze, slipped overboard while trying to move the dinghy to the yacht's leeward side.

Wood's death was touched by sad irony. She and Wagner were married on a boat off Catalina. But for Wood, the good life at sea must have held some menace. "I'm frightened to death of the water," she said in a recent interview. "I can swim a little bit, but I'm afraid of water that is dark."

Early Sunday morning, with the numbed purposefulness of the bereaved, Wagner took a helicopter back to the mainland, rushing ahead of the news to tell his three daughters, the eldest age 17, of their mother's death. Three days later, as a balalaika dirge played, the family and 60 friends buried her. ·