In the interest of public transparency and on behalf of countless Natalie Wood fans, pursuant to CA Govt. Code 27490 & 27491.6 (2020), Dr. Jonathan Lucas, LA County Medical Examiner/Coroner, should convene a public coroner’s inquest so an inquest jury may determine whether film star Natalie Wood’s death in 1981 was by “the hands of another person other than by accident.” CA Govt. Code 27504 (2020).

The request is base it upon evidence uncovered and identified by me during a six-year investigation of Natalie Wood’s death—evidence that was either intentionally ignored and suppressed in 1981 or was undetected by investigators in late 2011 and early 2012.

Natalie Wood’s death was quickly ruled an accident by the LACSD and Thomas T. Noguchi, MD, the chief coroner at the time. Then in 2012, as a part of a reopening of the investigation by the LACSD, Dr. Lakshmanan Sathyavagiswaran changed the “cause and manner” of death to “drowning and other undetermined factors.”

Leaving the circumstances and manner of death undetermined left more questions than it answered and rekindled the mystery of an already controversial death investigation. Furthermore, Dr. Sathyavagiswaran was not privy to numerous pieces of new, critical evidence discovered by me which could be presented to an inquest jury. Doing that would finally allow an independent body to officially determine if Natalie Wood's death was a homicide.