In November 2011, thirty years after Natalie Wood drowned off Catalina Island, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department reopened the case. The following year the coroner changed her cause of death from “accidental drowning” to “drowning and other undetermined factors”. Her death is one of a small number of famous cases that have never been officially solved, or that took decades to produce anything close to an answer.
1. William Desmond Taylor (1922)
The Hollywood director was found shot in the back in his bungalow in Los Angeles on February 1, 1922. The suspects included an actress, her mother, his valet and a drug dealer. Studio executives were reported to have searched the house before the police arrived. Nobody was ever charged, and the case helped push Hollywood into its first decency code.
2. Marilyn Monroe (1962)
Marilyn Monroe was found dead at her home in Brentwood on August 5, 1962. The coroner ruled it a probable suicide from a barbiturate overdose. The ruling has never changed, but her links to John and Robert Kennedy, and gaps in the timeline of the night, have kept murder theories alive for more than sixty years. A 1982 review by the Los Angeles district attorney found no evidence of foul play.
3. Bob Crane (1978)
The star of Hogan’s Heroes was beaten to death in his apartment in Scottsdale, Arizona, on June 29, 1978. Police suspected his friend John Henry Carpenter, who had shared Crane’s habit of filming sexual encounters. Carpenter was charged in 1992 and acquitted in 1994. Nobody else has been charged.
4. Natalie Wood (1981)
Natalie Wood went missing from her yacht, the Splendour, on the night of November 28, 1981, with her husband, Robert Wagner, and the actor Christopher Walken on board. Her body was found in the water the next morning. In 2018 the sheriff’s department named Wagner a person of interest. He has always denied any involvement and has not been charged.
5. Tupac Shakur (1996)
Tupac was shot four times in a car at a traffic light in Las Vegas on September 7, 1996, and died six days later. For 27 years nobody was charged. In September 2023, Las Vegas police arrested Duane “Keffe D” Davis, a former gang member who had described the shooting in interviews and a memoir, and charged him with murder. He pleaded not guilty.
6. The Notorious B.I.G. (1997)
Christopher Wallace was shot in his car after a party in Los Angeles on March 9, 1997, six months after Tupac’s death. He was 24. Investigations have pointed at rival gangs and at corrupt police officers, and his family sued the city. Nobody has ever been charged with his murder.
Biggie’s last album, released sixteen days after he was shot, was called Life After Death. The title had been chosen before he died.