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Historys Greatest Mysteries S07E11
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00:04Tonight, the sudden death of an invincible icon.
00:08He was on the verge of becoming the world's biggest superstar
00:11and the person who would change martial arts for the rest of time.
00:15He's the closest thing there is to a real-life superhero,
00:18and then suddenly he's gone.
00:20Is it a freak accident, a medical episode, or something more sinister?
00:25The autopsy shows that his death was due to swelling of the brain
00:29from unknown causes, but nobody is satisfied with that answer.
00:33They've been told something different from his manager.
00:35And, of course, the first thing everyone comes to
00:38is the conclusion that this must be foul play.
00:41Now, we explore the top theories
00:43surrounding the death of this martial arts legend.
00:47Bruce was in a place where he shouldn't have been.
00:50He was at the apartment of his mistress.
00:53Bruce Lee is someone who loves to push boundaries,
00:56but the Chinese mafia is ruthless,
00:58and those two things come into conflict.
01:02As Bruce Lee's star power grows,
01:05so does the target on his back.
01:07What or who really killed Bruce Lee?
01:26July 20th, 1973, 10.30 p.m.
01:31An ambulance speeds through Hong Kong,
01:33on its way to Queen Elizabeth General Hospital.
01:36But this is no ordinary emergency.
01:39Inside the vehicle is one of the biggest stars of the day,
01:43Bruce Lee.
01:45Bruce Lee's already become the biggest martial arts star.
01:49In fact, the biggest movie star in all of Hong Kong.
01:53He's really on the steps of becoming a worldwide phenomenon.
01:59His movie Enter the Dragon is about to be released.
02:02The first to combine martial arts with spy elements.
02:06And expectations are high.
02:09He had to be at the absolute top of his game
02:12for the filming of Enter the Dragon.
02:14He insisted that the fight scenes be as authentic as possible,
02:18which meant that essentially the fighting was real.
02:22And incredibly physically taxing.
02:25His next film, Game of Death, is an even more ambitious film.
02:30Bruce Lee is not only starring and choreographing the fights in this film,
02:34but he's also moving into the director's chair.
02:37He's bringing new techniques to film.
02:41He's doing things that are creative.
02:43He's doing things that haven't been seen before.
02:45He's really charting new territory.
02:48No matter the movie, Bruce Lee is this larger-than-life character.
02:52He seems completely indestructible.
02:55And here he is on this day, lying in an ambulance without a pulse.
03:00Upon arrival, they initiate resuscitation procedures.
03:04They're injecting chemicals into his heart.
03:06They're using defibrillator pads to try to break him back.
03:10But nothing is working.
03:12Bruce's wife, Linda.
03:13She arrives at the hospital to see them doing resuscitation on Bruce.
03:19They're trying desperately to restart his heart.
03:21No matter what they do, he remains flat-lined.
03:27It's just after 11.30 p.m. when the news leaks.
03:31Hong Kong's favorite son, Bruce Lee, is dead at the age of 32.
03:36There is no official announcement, although journalists have a sense that something is up.
03:41So they've started to gather, and they're demanding answers.
03:44So his business partner, Raymond Chow, puts together a brief statement.
03:50He says that Bruce Lee was out walking in his garden with his wife when he suddenly collapsed and was
03:56rushed to the hospital.
03:58But Lee's fans find this story hard to believe.
04:02Around 15,000 of his devastated fans take to the street, and it's utter pandemonium.
04:08Police are forced to restrain the crowd.
04:12Everyone's asking how a man so fit and powerful could die so suddenly.
04:18The hospital states that Bruce Lee died from cerebral edema, which is swelling of the brain, in which the pressure
04:25becomes too great and then physical functions begin to shut down.
04:29When the brain fills up with too much fluid, what will happen is it will first start to expand, and
04:34then it gets stuck against the skull, which is very firm.
04:38If you have this situation where the brain is starting to crush downwards onto the brain stem, that's the part
04:45that controls all of your bodily functions, like your heartbeat, your breathing.
04:49And if it is caught in time, there are things you can do to reverse it.
04:53But if it's not caught in time, it is lethal.
04:57The initial autopsy suggests that his brain swelled past the capacity of his body.
05:03It was actually 13% larger than what a normal brain is supposed to be, which is incredibly dangerous.
05:10Swelling of the brain is known as the cause for Bruce Lee's death.
05:14But the real question is, what caused that swelling of the brain?
05:20With doctors unable to explain what triggered Lee's lethal condition, speculation abounds until the next morning.
05:28Hong Kong's leading newspaper, The Morning Post, runs a front page headline, and the article states that Bruce Lee had
05:35been ill for two months prior to his death.
05:38In that article, Raymond Chow reveals that two months earlier, in May, Bruce Lee suffered a seizure caused by cerebral
05:48edema.
05:49The same thing that would cause his death two months later.
05:52Chow goes on to say that prior to his seizure, Bruce Lee had suffered several hard blows to the head
05:58while filming Enter the Dragon.
06:00These blows could have been far more severe and dangerous than anyone at the time might have known.
06:13During the filming of Enter the Dragon, Bruce Lee is going full throttle.
06:19He is pushing himself to whole new levels.
06:22His training has been ramped up.
06:25He is insisting that every fighting scene has to be absolutely authentic.
06:29He does report having headaches, but he just powers through.
06:34July 20th was not the first time that Bruce had collapsed.
06:38In fact, in remarkably similar conditions, he had collapsed on May 10th.
06:45At that time, he had been finished with the filming of Enter the Dragon, and he began to feel dizzy,
06:53to complain about feeling nauseous.
06:55He goes to the bathroom where he collapses.
07:00Bruce Lee suffers a seizure, is rushed to the hospital, and on that occasion, doctors managed to reduce the swelling.
07:08But one doctor reports that if he had not been brought there immediately, he surely would have died.
07:16Doctors can't specify what caused Lee's brain to swell, but many people believe his years of intense combat are to
07:24blame.
07:25One of the reasons Bruce Lee is so remarkable is because he really pushed himself to the limit.
07:33Psychologically, physiologically, he was so good at demonstrating the outer limits of what the human body was capable of.
07:42It's also well known that he's willing to fight against anyone that's willing to face off against him.
07:47And that includes strikes to the head, which are a crucial part of kung fu.
07:54With repeated cerebral trauma, over time, this can build, and if it doesn't get time to repair itself, because you're
08:01working as hard as he was every day to do over-the-top things, you might end up with permanent
08:07damage.
08:07And it could very easily lead to swelling of the brain or cerebral edema.
08:13Most of the time, Lee would train with protective headgear, which would dampen the blows.
08:18But we know of at least one time in his earlier years, when he was training without any protection at
08:23all.
08:25It's a fight that would define his career, but may have also shortened his life.
08:31In 1964, Bruce Lee is a 23-year-old in Oakland.
08:35He's co-running a kung fu studio there and developing his chops as a teacher, but also figuring out his
08:43style as a martial artist.
08:44And word gets out about him. He has this bravado, a bit of arrogance, he has an ego.
08:50So people start to learn about him, and not everyone is a fan.
08:53He had given a demonstration in San Francisco's Chinatown where he had lost his temper when he was challenged by
09:02other martial artists.
09:03And he had declared that he was the best martial artist and challenged anyone to prove him wrong.
09:10One of the well-known martial artists at the time named Wong Jack Mann decides to take him up on
09:17the challenge.
09:18So he goes to Lee's place in Oakland to have a fight just to see who really is the best
09:26martial artist.
09:27Adding fuel to the fire in addition to Lee's arrogance, Wong is also incensed that Bruce Lee is revealing the
09:34secrets of kung fu to Westerners,
09:37which he considers to be deeply disrespectful of their heritage.
09:43The two men meet up at Bruce Lee's studio, and it's an extremely intense fight from the very beginning.
09:51Neither one clearly gets the advantage, but at one point when it looks like Wong Jack Mann is retreating under
10:00a series of blows from Lee,
10:01he suddenly fires off a series of windmill kicks to Bruce Lee's head.
10:08He ends up taking the full force of this kick.
10:12Even though it ended up being sort of unclear who really won that fight,
10:15there was no question that at least with that sort of vicious spin kick,
10:19Bruce Lee was injured with no protective gear.
10:23This could have been the first of many brain injuries that would ultimately lead to Lee's death nine years later.
10:31But not everyone's convinced.
10:34Skeptics do say that while Lee wasn't wearing protective headgear during this sparring session with Wong,
10:40he constantly did wear protective headgear during his training sessions.
10:44The reason many believe that Bruce Lee didn't have a traumatic brain injury is because he wasn't experiencing forgetfulness.
10:51He didn't have lapses in his memory.
10:53He wasn't acting erratically.
10:55So clearly he was competent and capable and able to deal with these really intense situations.
11:01People are also having a hard time believing the story of Lee just suddenly collapsing during a nighttime stroll in
11:09his garden with his wife,
11:10especially since he was rushed to a hospital that's pretty far from his residence.
11:14The story that Bruce had collapsed while taking a walk falls apart,
11:19and it opened up the floodgates to people wanting to know the truth.
11:27July 22nd, 1973.
11:30It's been two days since Bruce Lee's shocking death,
11:35and a local journalist has grown suspicious of the official story
11:38and begins calling his sources at the hospital to dig up more information.
11:44At that time, every Hong Kong hospital kept an ambulance record of where a patient was picked up from.
11:50And so he tracked down the ambulance log and found out that the address that Bruce Lee's body had been
11:55picked up from
11:56wasn't the same as his home address.
11:59He is shocked to notice that the ambulance was actually dispatched to 67 Beacon Hill Road.
12:0567 Beacon Hill Road was where Betty Ting Pei lived.
12:11Betty Ting Pei is a beautiful young Taiwanese actress who's been making a name for herself in Chinese cinema.
12:18She first meets Bruce Lee in 1972 while he's filming Way of the Dragon.
12:23And while he is married at the time, the two become close and rumors start circulating about an affair between
12:29them.
12:30Those rumors become even louder when news circulates that Betty will be cast as a lead role in Bruce Lee's
12:37upcoming film, Game of Death.
12:40When people find out the truth about where Bruce Lee was when he died, they're pretty mad.
12:45And they're also completely suspicious of the entire situation.
12:50If Raymond Chow has concocted this other story, what else is he leaving out?
12:55Their willingness to lie about the circumstances under which Bruce died only opened up speculation about what they might be
13:03lying about regarding the cause of his death.
13:06The press picks up the story and Betty Ting Pei comes under all kinds of scrutiny.
13:11Now, at first, she says, I wasn't even home that night.
13:15That immediately gets shot down, her neighbors mention having seen her.
13:19Moreover, her neighbors mention that Bruce Lee has been a regular visitor to her place for months now.
13:28Soon, more information is revealed, casting Bruce Lee's final hours in a more troubling light.
13:35After a few days, the findings of the autopsy confirm that the cause of death was this cerebral edema, but
13:42there's a new piece of information.
13:44It says that the cause of that edema could have been some kind of drug intoxication.
13:56The coroner found two foreign substances in Bruce's stomach.
14:00One was hashish, and the other was this pill called Equagesic, which was a kind of common pain reliever, mostly
14:07prescribed to women for menstrual cramps.
14:09It had aspirin and mepherbamate, which was a kind of muscle relaxant.
14:15Authorities need to figure out if these substances, alone or in combination, contributed to Bruce Lee's death.
14:23In an effort to determine the cause of Bruce Lee's death, the Hong Kong courts launched a formal investigation.
14:30The coroner's inquest takes place over several days, where witnesses are called and evidence brought forward.
14:36Betty Ting Pei testified, Linda Lee testified, Raymond Chow testified.
14:42All the experts and all the doctors involved with Bruce Lee's death were brought in to be interviewed by the
14:48various lawyers.
14:49It's a media circus.
14:51Bruce Lee's fans are out in force.
14:54They're pushing up against the barricades.
14:56More than anything else, they want to try to catch a glimpse of Betty Ting Pei.
15:01In her testimony, Betty finally admits that she was there the evening that Bruce died.
15:07They had been there at the apartment with Raymond Chow earlier, discussing plans for Game of Death.
15:13And afterwards, when Raymond left, Bruce was complaining of a headache.
15:17So she gave him an Equagesic, and then he went to lay down and take a nap.
15:21Betty admits that he then ate a couple of hash brownies, and then she came to wake him up to
15:28go for their dinner plan, but he's nonresponsive.
15:33Initially during the inquest, investigators are focused on the hash found in Lee's stomach.
15:38At that time, hash is thought by the Hong Kong government to be a particularly dangerous drug,
15:44and people speculate about whether or not Lee had an allergic reaction to it.
15:48The deadly hash theory, however, is quickly put to rest when medical experts testify that there has never been a
15:55substantiated case of death caused by cannabis.
15:59The focus of the inquest then turns to that painkiller Lee took not long before his death.
16:05Dr. Robert Donald Teer, a British pathologist, looks into this case and says that he believes the death could be
16:13caused by a reaction to something in the Equagesic.
16:19Aspirin can cause anaphylactic shock, which can result in cerebral edema in people who die from it.
16:29And so, Professor Teer decided that the most likely explanation was that Bruce Lee had a hyperallergic reaction,
16:36and that's what caused Bruce Lee's cerebral edema, which caused his death.
16:41Five days after Bruce Lee dies on July 25th, 1973, an open casket funeral is held.
16:49A photo taken inside the funeral parlor raises new concerns.
16:54A news photographer captures an image of Bruce Lee in his casket, and it shows that his face is horribly
17:03bloated.
17:04People are so mistrusting at this point of everything that has been said about Bruce's death,
17:10that when they see this photograph and he looks different than he did in life, it calls into question a
17:18lot of other things.
17:19Why does he look this way? Could there possibly be foul play?
17:26On September 24th, 1973, after seven-tenths days, the jury comes back with their verdict, death by misadventure.
17:36Death by misadventure is a confusing way to say that he essentially died by accident.
17:42Many of Lee's fans just don't accept the death by misadventure verdict.
17:47They refuse to accept that their hero could have died from a painkiller that contains aspirin and Meprobamate.
17:54Attention turns back to Lee's mistress, the last person to see him alive,
17:58and people start to believe that she might know more about his final hours than she initially revealed.
18:07As rumors continue to swirl around Lee's cause of death, the spotlight turns on the woman Bruce Lee was with
18:14on the night he died, Lee's mistress, Betty Ting Pei.
18:20The press is fascinated by the relationship between Bruce Lee and Betty Ting Pei.
18:26When they meet on the set of Way of the Dragon in 1972, they quickly become romantically linked.
18:32He certainly wasn't trying to be discreet about their relationship.
18:37People observed them out in public together, and that led a lot of people to believe that he was having
18:43an extramarital affair.
18:46Bruce Lee's connection with Betty Ting Pei is definitely scandalous because he's married to Linda Lee, and he has two
18:53small children.
18:54Of course, that puts Linda in a very uncomfortable position.
18:59In December 1972, Bruce Lee supposedly tries to cut off ties with Betty.
19:05She's so distraught that she swallows a handful of sleeping pills and is rushed to Queen Elizabeth Hospital.
19:12Betty recovers, but from that point on, her relationship with Bruce becomes increasingly strained.
19:18She is upset that he won't leave his wife.
19:21She is reportedly consumed by jealousy.
19:24And maybe she thinks if she can't have him, nobody else can either.
19:36So there are some theories that start to circulate that perhaps someone has purposely killed him.
19:43And of course, the obvious person becomes Betty Ting Pei.
19:48She's the other woman.
19:49She's taking him away from his family and his wife.
19:51So they start to run with this theory that perhaps she was the jealous lover and that potentially she might
19:58have poisoned him.
20:00And they say there's reason to believe she tried it before.
20:05There are rumors that Betty has been laying the groundwork for this for months.
20:11There's no actual proof of this.
20:12There's no sign of anything toxic in Bruce's bloodstream.
20:16But people still believe that she may have used some substance that wouldn't have shown up on a toxicology report
20:22because she comes from a family of doctors.
20:24The other strange thing is the timeline of all of this.
20:28When she realizes that he's unconscious, he's unresponsive, why doesn't she call emergency services?
20:34Instead, she calls Raymond Chow.
20:39By calling the manager instead of immediately calling an ambulance, she's losing precious time.
20:45He needs immediate medical attention.
20:49Even though she repeatedly denies any wrongdoing, the news media continues to publish story after story implicating her.
20:57The public response to this is highly negative.
21:01Students in Malaysia are marching around with signs saying, Betty killed Bruce.
21:07In August 1973, Hong Kong police receive a bomb threat.
21:12They go to investigate, but they don't find a bomb.
21:15They find a suspicious package.
21:17Inside, it's a note saying, Betty knows the cause of Bruce's death.
21:22There's no evidence of foul play, but that doesn't prevent the greater public from continuing to find different stories that
21:31they want to believe in, in terms of Bruce Lee's demise.
21:34And so this hastens the speculation that someone is involved in some kind of conspiracy to kill Bruce Lee.
21:40The most obvious person would have been Betty Ting Pei.
21:46There's also speculation that Betty might not have acted alone.
21:51Going back to those chaotic hours following Bruce Lee's death, one has to wonder why his business partner and confidant
21:58Raymond Chow put out a statement about where he died that was so easily disproven.
22:05Part of the story that Raymond leaves out when he creates that false narrative is the fact that he was
22:10also there when Bruce was at Betty's apartment.
22:15After Bruce Lee first stops breathing, Betty summons Raymond Chow to her apartment.
22:20When he gets there, Raymond Chow inexplicably tells Betty not to call an ambulance.
22:25He tells her to call instead her personal physician.
22:29Raymond had seen Bruce suffer a similar episode just two months prior.
22:32So he knew he would have to get medical treatment right away in order to reverse the condition.
22:37So it's very strange that he would wait so long to get urgent care for him.
22:43It's not until 1030 at night that the ambulance arrives to take him away.
22:47By that time, it's already too late.
22:51For many, the question remains, was the delay a willful decision?
22:56Around the time of his death, Bruce Lee's relationship with business partner Raymond Chow reportedly started to fracture.
23:03When they formed their production company, Concord Productions in 1972, they initially had a 50-50 split between the two
23:11of them.
23:12But by summer of 1973, Bruce Lee is working on an independent film and he is reportedly threatening to walk
23:19away from Chow altogether.
23:22Given the level of money that Bruce Lee is generating at the box office, with Bruce Lee out of the
23:29picture, Raymond Chow has a lot to gain.
23:33If you add together Raymond Chow's financial interests and Bruce Lee's work and the fact that they might be disagreeing
23:39on the future of how they collaborate,
23:41this starts to look really fishy. Like, was this intentional?
23:45Betty and Raymond Chow are both cleared, but people still believe in a murder conspiracy, this time with just a
23:53different set of suspects.
23:56A month after Bruce Lee's death, his final film, Enter the Dragon, premieres in Los Angeles to rave reviews.
24:05Lee plays a spy set on taking down the narcotics kingpin who killed his sister.
24:10The story may be fictional, but fans are left wondering if, like his character, Lee became entangled with powerful gang
24:18members and has paid with his life.
24:20Attention turns to a dark encounter from his early days.
24:25Although Bruce was born in San Francisco, Hong Kong really is the place where Bruce grows up.
24:32He enters the movie industry because his father is a Cantonese opera performer.
24:38So by the time he's 18 years old, Bruce has appeared in films, not as a star, but certainly as
24:46a known actor.
24:48As Bruce is getting older in Hong Kong, he's actually getting into a lot of trouble.
24:52And sometimes he's mixing with the wrong people.
24:56Bruce Lee was a little street fighter and he ran across a kid named William Chung who was better than
25:01him.
25:01So he asked William Chung, how are you this good?
25:05And William Chung said, I studied under the master Ip Man.
25:09Ip Man is a master of a particular style of kung fu called Wing Chun.
25:14Wing Chun emphasizes close quarters fighting involving a blitz of lightning fast kicks and fast punches, ideal for street fighting.
25:25Ip Man was impressed by how intense Bruce's obsession with the martial arts was.
25:29And so he would say to Bruce, don't believe me, try it out yourself.
25:33If you don't think I'm telling you the truth, go out in the streets and test what I've taught you.
25:37So Lee organizes a group of his friends into a gang that calls itself the Junction Street 8 Tigers.
25:47On one of these outings, Bruce Lee picks a fight with the wrong guy.
25:53He roughs up this teenager pretty badly and it turns out that the guy's parents have connections to the Chinese
25:58mob, the Triad.
26:00The Triad came from all over mainland China when the communist revolution of the late 1940s takes place.
26:08And a lot of them end up in Hong Kong where they're taking over just about every avenue that organized
26:15crime might control.
26:17The Triads are very astute. They know how to adapt with the market.
26:21And in Hong Kong, one of the major industries is the film industry.
26:24So they want to have a piece of the action, too.
26:26They're putting up the money for films and controlling production.
26:30And they, of course, target actors that they think have crossed them.
26:34Which is Lee's first of several reported run-ins with the Chinese mafia.
26:40Like most mobsters, the Triad makes its money from extortion and kickbacks.
26:44And as Bruce Lee's star power grows, so does the target on his back.
26:58Bruce's life was actually in danger because he had harmed the son of a Triad member.
27:04His father becomes really worried about his safety, that the mob would try and retaliate.
27:10So he sends Bruce to go live with relatives in Seattle.
27:13But many people believe that the threat from the Triad doesn't actually go away.
27:18When Bruce is living in Seattle, the Triad is operating in America, but they're kind of operating underground.
27:25So when he decides he's going to open a martial arts school in Seattle,
27:28the Triads pay him a visit demanding money to allow him to open a school in their turf.
27:34He was not off anybody's radar.
27:37But Bruce wasn't the type to do as he was told.
27:41In 1964, Lee has dropped out of college and has married his longtime sweetheart, Linda.
27:47And a year later, their son Brandon is born.
27:49A couple of years after that, his career really takes off when he gets cast in the role of Cato,
27:55the sidekick in the ABC series, The Green Hornet.
28:00In 1971, Bruce Lee returns to Hong Kong and once again, reportedly crosses paths with the Triad.
28:08He's just released the film The Big Boss, which makes him a huge star back in Hong Kong.
28:14He gets a visit from a stranger who's offering him 200,000 Hong Kong dollars.
28:20And when he asks what it's for, he says, just a gift.
28:24Now, this is right out of the Triad playbook of giving money to curry favor and hold some leverage over
28:30you.
28:31Lee angrily rebuffs it, but he knows what this means.
28:35The Triad likes to control people by giving them cash,
28:40and it's dangerous to turn down an offer of cash from the Triad.
28:45So from that point on, Lee starts wearing a knife, carrying a gun with him,
28:51thinking that he can come under attack at any time.
28:55Just days before his death, Lee gets into an altercation with a Triad-linked director.
29:01Lo Wei had been the director of Bruce Lee's first two movies that had become such a huge success.
29:07And they ended up fighting over who got to take credit for the success.
29:11One day, Bruce Lee heard that Lo Wei was in the screening room, and he went down to give Lo
29:16Wei a piece of his mind.
29:17He gets in his face, they start a shouting match, and soon afterward, Lee pulls a knife on him and
29:24aims it right at his chest.
29:25And Lee has to be dragged out of the room to keep this from turning violent.
29:31But the Chinese director is rumored to have connections that Lee may not be taking into account.
29:37When Lee threatens Lo like that, this is a direct affront to the Triad, who are assumed to be connected
29:44to him.
29:44Maybe the Triads wanted Bruce Lee dead, and his altercation with Lo Wei in the screening room was kind of
29:53the last straw.
29:54Hong Kong police understand the danger of the Triad, so they look into this aspect of Lee's death.
30:01But they have no active leads, there are no outward signs of a physical attack, so the potential connection to
30:08the Triad goes cold.
30:13In the weeks after Bruce Lee's death, rumors abound, but there's still no clear new lead that challenges the idea
30:20that he died accidentally.
30:22Then, in 1974, one year after Lee's death, a new theory emerges, with a plot straight out of a kung
30:31fu film.
30:32There's a journalist who's investigating Bruce Lee's death, and he starts developing this theory that Bruce Lee could have been
30:39assassinated by a cabal of kung fu masters using a technique known as Dim Mach.
30:47Dim Mach is this idea that you can hit somebody on their acupuncture lines or pushing a kind of chi
30:53power, and after you touch them, you can control when they die.
30:58So it's a delayed death touch.
31:01It's rumored that some martial arts masters have this ability to strike at just the right pressure point to bring
31:09about death, if not immediately, days, weeks, or even months later.
31:14The second.
31:16The second.
31:19The second.
31:21The third.
31:22The fourth.
31:22Bruce certainly was at odds with many of the martial arts practitioners of Hong Kong.
31:28Some people think it's because he had taught what was supposed to be a Chinese secret art to Westerners.
31:35Bruce Lee is this arrogant, burgeoning international film star,
31:40and he really doesn't jive with this old-school mentality.
31:44Bruce had created his own form of martial arts.
31:47He called it Jeet Kune Do, or the way of the intercepting fist,
31:51and it incorporated elements from a lot of different martial arts styles,
31:55combining his street fighting with fencing and boxing.
31:58What he was after was trying to become a more efficient fighter
32:02and finding moves that were practical versus theoretical
32:07that didn't actually have any power in them.
32:10So the journalist theorizes that in order to stop him
32:14from continuing to change these ancient traditions,
32:16the group of kung fu masters sends out an assassin
32:20to kill Bruce Lee with the death touch.
32:24Denmark, like everything in kung fu, is linked back to the Shaolin Temple,
32:28the location of where kung fu originated.
32:32And there are various theories that link to the Shaolin monks,
32:36the idea that they could use special acupuncture and acupressure points
32:40to affect the human body.
32:43They say that Bruce might have died from a touch on his pressure point
32:47that blocked his energy and led to his death days or weeks later.
32:53While this is speculative, certain types of punches and kicks
32:56are known to be lethal.
32:58A blow to the chest delivered just right
33:03at a certain point in the cardiac process
33:06can cause an immediate cardiac arrest.
33:08But it's exceptionally rare for a blow to cause a delayed death.
33:14While this theory is intriguing to many,
33:17there's no real evidence that supports it,
33:20and it's pretty much relegated to martial arts mythology.
33:25The death of Bruce Lee remains shrouded in mystery
33:28for the next 45 years.
33:31Then, in 2018, a new theory emerges.
33:36Matthew Pauley writes a biography of Bruce Lee,
33:38and he posits a new theory around his death
33:41because he looks very closely at the two instances of cerebral edema.
33:47Paulie postulates that he could have died
33:49from an inability to regulate his own body temperature.
33:52He examines the May 10th collapse
33:54when Lee was rushed to the hospital with a cerebral edema
33:57and was able to be revived.
34:00On May 10th, he was redubbing lines in a room
34:04that was super hot because they turned off the air conditioning
34:07to make sure that it didn't interfere with the sound.
34:10During that process, he started to feel dizzy and faint,
34:13and he ended up collapsing and going into seizures.
34:16They rushed him to the hospital,
34:17and the doctors diagnosed him with cerebral edema,
34:21and they gave him mannitol to cause the swelling to go down.
34:24The doctors do note that Bruce was covered in sweat,
34:28and he had a high fever.
34:30And according to Pauley,
34:31those are classic symptoms of heat stroke,
34:33and perhaps this went undiagnosed.
34:42If it is heat stroke,
34:45why is it happening to Bruce Lee,
34:47one of the fittest men alive?
34:50He had complained many times
34:52about how sweaty his armpits were.
34:54This affected his work because on screen,
34:56they kept having to switch his shirts out.
34:59Six months prior to his initial collapse,
35:01he had cosmetic surgery,
35:03removing the sweat glands from underneath his armpits.
35:06At that time, people were offering that.
35:09It has since been discontinued
35:10because it's considered extremely dangerous
35:12because it affects your ability to process heat.
35:15And so having those removed
35:17would have made him more susceptible to heat stroke.
35:20On July 20th, 1973,
35:22that's the hottest day of the month in Hong Kong.
35:25He is in Betty Ting Pei's apartment,
35:28running over lines.
35:29What happens there is eerily similar
35:32to what happened back in May.
35:34He starts complaining about headaches and feeling faint.
35:37He falls into Betty's bed,
35:39and he never wakes up.
35:41He collapses in a situation
35:43in which he's in a sauna-like room,
35:45and then 10 weeks after that,
35:47he dies on a very hot day.
35:49To me, that suggests that he potentially died
35:52from heat stroke.
35:53But sweat is produced all over the body,
35:57and the attending doctors back in May
35:59reported that he has sweat pouring out of him all over.
36:03So you'd think that would regulate body temperature.
36:07Despite those minor flaws in the logic,
36:10it still does provide a plausible theory
36:12as to the cause of Bruce Lee's death.
36:17Fifty years after Bruce Lee's death,
36:20researchers are still looking for clues
36:22to explain what killed him.
36:24In 2022, a group of Spanish kidney specialists
36:29come out with a novel theory
36:32for what happened to Bruce Lee.
36:34Their theory was that he was suffering
36:36from retaining an excess of fluid,
36:39which can lead to swelling of the brain.
36:43It's a little ironic because Bruce Lee's famous quote
36:45was, be water, my friend,
36:47kind of speaking to the fluidity of the body
36:50during martial arts.
36:51But it turns out that it might have been
36:52too much water that could have killed him.
37:03The scientists also go back
37:04and look at the autopsy results,
37:06and one of the things that strikes them
37:08is the fact that his brain
37:10had swollen to the point
37:12where it was 3.5 pounds,
37:14which is a half pound heavier
37:16than the average human brain.
37:18And what caused the swelling was water.
37:21The kidneys actually are filters for the body
37:24and also regulate water.
37:26If you get enough of a buildup of toxins,
37:29the kidneys can actually not function properly.
37:33On May 10th,
37:34when he collapsed for the first time
37:36and was examined by the doctor,
37:38there were some unexplained high levels of waste in his kidneys.
37:42And so that also signals that he had kidney disease.
37:46The levels were so high
37:48that the doctors actually thought it was a typo.
37:52At the time,
37:54doctors were more worried about Lee's brain than his kidneys.
37:58The researchers from Spain believe
38:00that may have been a grave mistake.
38:02If the kidneys aren't working,
38:04then they can't get rid of excess water in the body.
38:07And if there's a buildup of water,
38:09that creates a somewhat catastrophic situation.
38:13The water dilutes the sodium in the human body,
38:16and it creates a situation called hyponatremia.
38:21And if it is not immediately addressed,
38:24it leads to death.
38:27But why is Bruce consuming so much water on July 20th,
38:32the day of his death?
38:33Earlier in the day,
38:35even before he goes to Betty's apartment,
38:38he has consumed some hashish brownies.
38:41In fact, he writes to a friend that day
38:44that he's stoned as hell.
38:46It would make sense
38:48if Lee's water intake were high that day.
38:51We already know that he was eating a hash brownie.
38:54So that would cause some thirst
38:55and he would be drinking more water.
38:57He was also running lines for his upcoming film.
39:00So the physical exertion and the exercise
39:02would have caused him to drink more water as well.
39:06He's a martial artist.
39:07He's getting body blows all the time.
39:10So it's also possible
39:11that he might have actually sustained
39:13some physical trauma to some areas of the kidneys,
39:16such that maybe they're not working at top capacity.
39:18One of the things of note
39:20is that he had very low sodium,
39:22which is something that happens
39:25when you've had too much water.
39:27During this period,
39:29he certainly had been on a very extreme diet
39:33of only eating or drinking apple and carrot juice.
39:38So he may not have been taking in the nutrients
39:41that he needed to maintain healthy levels of sodium.
39:44When you're overhydrated,
39:47you allow a shift of fluids,
39:49such that you can get a fluid buildup
39:51in a place that normally wouldn't have one like the brain.
39:54But water is also what makes up 60% or more of our bodies.
39:58It's the giver of life.
40:00Ironically, in his situation,
40:02taking in too much water
40:03can result in something fatal.
40:07No matter how Bruce Lee died,
40:09his mystique and the mystery of his final hours lives on.
40:15It makes a lot of sense
40:15that there would be so many theories
40:17surrounding the death of Bruce Lee,
40:19ranging from the mundane to the mythological.
40:23Bruce Lee's death really ties into who he was as a megastar
40:27because he was able to kind of elevate
40:29the kung fu hero to international status.
40:32And in dying,
40:33he became the athlete who dies young.
40:36He died in his perfect form,
40:38in perfect shape,
40:39so that we could project our own hopes
40:41and dreams and mysteries onto him.
40:44With a figure like Bruce,
40:46who was larger than life,
40:48it makes so much sense
40:50that people would want a dramatic answer
40:54as to how his life could have ended.
41:00Some believe that regardless of how Bruce Lee died,
41:03he was destined to live a short life.
41:05In a tragic twist of fate
41:07that some define as a curse,
41:10males in Bruce's family have died young.
41:13Bruce's older brother died as a toddler.
41:16And Bruce's son, Brandon Lee,
41:18was shot by accident on a movie set in 1993.
41:23Tragedies that have helped the legend of Bruce Lee live on.
41:26I'm Lawrence Fishburne.
41:28Thank you for watching
41:30History's Greatest Mysteries.
41:32We'll see you next time,
41:35This was Jr.
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