Legal eagle Nancy Grace has blasted the former Los Angeles coroner who she claimed botched the autopsy on Natalie Wood‘s body and all but cleared her husband Robert Wagner from suspicion!

In an exclusive interview with the acclaimed new podcast Fatal Voyage: The Mysterious Death of Natalie Wood, the former prosecutor and TV host claims said Dr. Thomas T. Noguchi made “elementary” mistakes in ruling Natalie’s death an accidental drowning just days after the Oscar winner’s tragic death. 

“What I find to be a clear problem is that… Noguchi did not scrape for tissue under Natalie Wood’s fingernails while conducting her post-mortem,” Grace explained to Fatal Voyage. “I mean, it’s elementary that you scrape the nails. And I’ve seen it done! That is so major. So it’s overwhelmingly a problem with Noguchi’s autopsy.”

Conducting that test, Grace told Fatal Voyage, may have revealed evidence Natalie had struggled with an attacker before falling into a watery grave. Natalie died under mysterious circumstances during a pleasure cruise to California’s Catalina Island with Robert and their friend Christopher Walken in November 1981.

natalie wood yacht

Just three days after her death, Noguchi declared Natalie had died of a “tragic accident while slightly intoxicated.” But the case was reopened in 2011, and the Oscar winner’s cause of death changed to “drowning and other undetermined factors.” Cops have also since named Robert a “person of interest” in the tragic star’s death. 

Fatal Voyage is a 12-part audio documentary that sheds new light on the case. The podcast — now available for download on iTunes —is the culmination of years of dogged investigative reporting.