NEWSNatalie Wood's Tragic Childhood Secret: Actress Raped 'For Hours' By Hollywood Star, Sister Claims
Dec. 25 2018, Updated 1:17 p.m. ET
Natalie Wood was raped by a powerful Hollywood figure during an “interview” that went on “for hours” inside the famed Chateau Marmont Hotel, the tragic actress' sister claims in a shocking new interview.
These never-before-heard details about one of the most infamous moments in Tinseltown history are only now revealed in the second chapter of a blockbuster new podcast series, Fatal Voyage: The Mysterious Death of Natalie Wood.
In a world exclusive, Natalie’s sister Lana breaks her long-held silence on what she recalled occurred on that terrible day when her beloved sibling was only 16 years old.
“We drove her up to the Chateau Marmont and my mother and I sat in the cars for hours, to the point where I went to sleep, and that was the interview where Natalie was raped,” Lana told a team of investigative journalists led by the podcast series’ host, Dylan Howard.
“I was asleep in the backseat and I just remembered it was not a happy ride home. I thought I heard Natalie and my mom talking heatedly in undertones," Lana said.
The 12-part audio documentary, now available on iTunes, charts Natalie's meteoric rise from child star to red carpet royalty, and exposes chilling new evidence proving she was, in fact, murdered!
But long before Natalie mysteriously vanished from her and husband Robert “R.J.” Wagner’s yacht Splendour on the night of November 28, 1981, the tie to her tragic life had already seemingly been cast.
In exclusive interviews with Hollywood insiders, Howard and his team paint a disturbing portrait of Natalie’s early life as a child actress — and the unspeakable sacrifices made to ensure her fame and fortune.
In one incident, Lana recalled how their Hollywood-obsessed mother Maria “ripped apart” a butterfly in order to coax her sister, then only eight years old, to tears to satisfy the demands of her Tomorrow Is Forever director Irving Pichel.
But Maria’s willingness to trade Natalie’s well-being in favor of stardom would only continue in the years to come.
Speaking of an incident that has long dwelled in the murky and rarely-spoken-of depths of Hollywood lore, Dr. Cynthia Lucia told Fatal Voyage: “The rape of Natalie Wood was, from what I’ve understood, quite brutal and quite violent."
The professor of English and Director of Film & Media Studies at Rider University, as well as author of Natalie Wood: Her Life and Her Legacy, then added, "She was fearful and I think she was correct that her career, in that day and age, would have been ruined, had she reported it. It must have been a very, very difficult thing for her.”
Explained Lana in Fatal Voyage: “Many, many years later and there again Natalie only alluded to the fact that something bad had happened and in a way blamed her mom for being too eager for Natalie to get roles."
“I mean, it was something that Natalie went through in trying to come to terms with, you know, such a horrendous thing, particularly being that young," Lana continued. “There again, it’s not something that my mom would pursue because you don’t want to make that big star angry."
She added, “You don’t want the studio knowing that this occurred. She would never have said anything to authorities or anyone.”
