Original subtitles

[actors scuffling and screaming]

- [Larence] Tonight,

the sudden death of an invincible icon.

- [Matthew] He was on the verge of becoming

the world's biggest superstar

and the person who would change martial arts

for the rest of time.

- [John] He's the closest thing there is

to a real life superhero

and then suddenly he's gone.

- Is it a freak accident,

a medical episode,

or something more sinister?

- [Kavitha] The autopsy shows that his death was due to

swelling of the brain from unknown causes,

but nobody is satisfied with that answer.

- [Rebecca] They've been told something different

from his manager

and of course, the first thing everyone comes to

is a conclusion that this must be foul play.

- [Laurence] Now, we explore the top theories

surrounding the death of this martial arts legend.

- [Daryl] Bruce was in a place where he shouldn't have been.

He was at the apartment of his mistress.

- [Zachary] Bruce Lee is someone who loves to push boundaries,

but the Chinese mafia is ruthless

and those two things come into conflict.

- [John] As Bruce Lee's star power grows,

so does the target on his back.

- What or who really killed Bruce Lee?

[tense dramatic music]

- [Laurence] July 20th, 1973, 10:30 PM.

An ambulance speeds through Hong Kong

on its way to Queen Elizabeth General Hospital,

but this is no ordinary emergency.

Inside the vehicle is one of the biggest stars of the day.

Bruce Lee.

- Bruce Lee has already become

the biggest martial arts star.

In fact, the biggest movie star in all of Hong Kong.

He's really on the steps of becoming a worldwide phenomenon.

- [Laurence] His movie "Enter the Dragon"

is about to be released,

the first to combine martial arts with spy elements

and expectations are high.

- [John] He had to be at the absolute top of his game

for the filming of "Enter the Dragon."

He insisted that the fight scenes

be as authentic as possible,

which meant that essentially the fighting was real

and incredibly physically taxing.

- [Katie] His next film "Game of Death"

is an even more ambitious film.

Bruce Lee is not only starring

and choreographing the fights in this film,

but he's also moving into the director's chair.

- [Daryl] He's bringing new techniques to film.

He's doing things that are creative.

He's doing things that haven't been seen before.

He's really charting new territory.

[Bruce screams]

- [Kavitha] No matter the movie,

Bruce Lee is this larger than life character.

He seems completely indestructible

and here he is on this day lying in an ambulance

without a pulse.

- [Rebecca] Upon arrival, they initiate resuscitation

procedures, they're injecting chemicals into his heart.

They're using defibrillator pads to try to bring him back,

but nothing's working.

- [Daryl] Bruce's wife Linda, she arrives at the hospital

to see them doing resuscitation on Bruce.

They're trying desperately to restart his heart.

No matter what they do, he remains flatlined.

[monitor beeping]

- [Laurence] It's just after 11:30 PM when the news leaks.

Hong Kong's favorite son, Bruce Lee,

is dead at the age of 32.

- [John] There is no official announcement,

although journalists have a sense that something is up,

so they started to gather and they're demanding answers.

So, his business partner, Raymond Chow,

puts together a brief statement.

He says that Bruce Lee was out

walking in his garden with his wife

when he suddenly collapsed and was rushed to the hospital.

- [Laurence] But Lee's fans find this story hard to believe.

- [Kavitha] Around 15,000 of his devastated fans

take to the street and its utter pandemonium.

Police are forced to restrain the crowd.

- [Laurence] Everyone's asking how a man

so fit and powerful could die so suddenly.

- [Daryl] The hospital states that Bruce Lee died

from cerebral edema, which is swelling of the brain

in which the pressure becomes too great

and then physical functions begin to shut down.

- [Rebecca] When the brain fills up with too much fluid,

what will happen is it will first start to expand

and then it gets stuck against the skull,

which is very firm.

If you have this situation where the brain

is starting to crush downwards onto the brainstem,

that's the part that controls all of your bodily functions

like your heartbeat, your breathing,

and if it is caught in time,

there are things you can do to reverse it.

But if it's not caught in time, it is lethal.

- [Katie] The initial autopsy suggests

that his brain swelled past the capacity of his body.

It was actually 13% larger than

what a normal brain is supposed to be,

which is incredibly dangerous.

- [Daryl] Swelling of the brain is known as the cause

for Bruce Lee's death.

But the real question is

what caused that swelling of the brain?

- [Laurence] With doctors unable to explain

what triggered Lee's lethal condition?

Speculation abounds until the next morning.

- [Kavitha] Hong Kong's leading newspaper.

The morning post runs a front page headline

and the article states that Bruce Lee had been ill

for two months prior to his death.

- [John] In that article, Raymond Chow reveals

that two months earlier, in May,

Bruce Lee suffered a seizure

caused by cerebral edema the same thing

that would cause his death two months later.

- [Kavitha] Chow goes on to say that prior to his seizure,

Bruce Lee had suffered several hard blows to the head

while filming "Enter the Dragon."

These blows could have been far more severe and dangerous

than anyone at the time might have known.

[tense dramatic music]

- [John] During the filming of "Enter the Dragon,"

Bruce Lee is going full throttle.

He is pushing himself to whole new levels.

His training has been ramped up.

He is insisting that every fighting scene

has to be absolutely authentic.

He does report having headaches, but he just powers through.

- [Daryl] July 20th was not the first time that Bruce had

collapsed. In fact, in remarkably similar conditions,

he had collapsed on May 10th.

At that time he had been finished with the filming

of "Enter the Dragon"

and he began to feel dizzy

to complain about feeling nauseous.

He goes to the bathroom where he collapses.

- [John] Bruce Lee suffers a seizure,

he's rushed to the hospital

and on that occasion, doctors managed

to reduce the swelling,

but one doctor reports

that if he had not been brought there immediately,

he surely would have died.

- [Laurence] Doctors can't specify

what caused Lee's brain to swell,

but many people believe

his years of intense combat are to blame.

- [Rebecca] One of the reasons Bruce Lee is so remarkable

is because he really pushed himself to the limit.

Psychologically, physiologically

he was so good at demonstrating the outer limits

of what the human body was capable of.

- [Kavitha] It's also well-known that he's willing to fight

against anyone that's willing to face off against him

and that includes strikes to the head,

which are a crucial part of kung fu.

- [Rebecca] With repeated cerebral trauma,

over time this can build

and if it doesn't get time to repair itself

because you're working as hard as he was every day

to do over the top things,

he might end up with permanent damage

and it could very easily lead

to swelling of the brain or cerebral edema.

- [Kavitha] Most of the time Lee would train with protective

headgear which would dampen the blows,

but we know of at least one time in his earlier years

when he was training without any protection at all.

- [Laurence] It's a fight that would define his career

but may have also shortened his life.

- [Katie] In 1964, Bruce Lee's a 23-year-old in Oakland.

He's co-running a kung fu studio there

and developing his chops as a teacher,

but also figuring out his style as a martial artist

and word gets out about him.

He has this bravado, a bit of arrogance.

He has an ego so people start to learn about him

and not everyone is a fan.

- [Daryl] He had given a demonstration in San Francisco's

Chinatown where he had lost his temper

when he was challenged by other martial artists

and he had declared that he was the best martial artist

and challenged anyone to prove him wrong.

- [Rebecca] One of the well-known martial artists at

the time named Wong Jack-man decides to take him up on the

challenge. So he goes to Lee's place in Oakland to have a fight

just to see who really is the best martial artist.

- [Kavitha] Adding fuel to the fire, in addition to Lee's

arrogance, Wong is also incensed

that Bruce Lee is revealing

the secrets of kung fu to Westerners,

which he considers to be deeply disrespectful

of their heritage.

- [John] The two men meet up at Bruce Lee's studio

and it's an extremely intense fight from the very beginning.

Neither one clearly gets the advantage,

but at one point when it looks like Wong Jack-man

is retreating under a series of blows from Lee,

he suddenly fires off a series of windmill kicks

to Bruce Lee's head.

- [Rebecca] He ends up taking the full force of this kick

even though it ended up being sort of unclear

who really won that fight.

There was no question that at least

with that sort of vicious spin kick,

Bruce Lee was injured with no protective gear.

- [Laurence] This could have been the first

of many brain injuries

that would ultimately lead to Lee's death nine years later.

But not everyone's convinced.

- [Kavitha] Skeptics do say that

while Lee wasn't wearing protective headgear

during this sparring session with Wong,

he constantly did wear protective head gear

during his training sessions.

- [Katie] The reason many believed that Bruce Lee

didn't have a traumatic brain injury

is because he wasn't experiencing forgetfulness.

He didn't have lapses in his memory.

He wasn't acting erratically.

So clearly he was competent and capable

and able to deal with these really intense situations.

- [Kavitha] People are also having a hard time believing the

story of Lee just suddenly collapsing

during a nighttime stroll in his garden with his wife,

especially since he was rushed to a hospital

that's pretty far from his residence.

- [Daryl] The story that Bruce had collapsed while taking a

walk falls apart and it opened up the floodgates

to people wanting to know the truth.

- July 22nd, 1973.

It's been two days since Bruce Lee's shocking death

and a local journalist has grown suspicious

of the official story

and begins calling his sources at the hospital

to dig up more information.

- [Matthew] At that time, every Hong Kong hospital

kept an ambulance record

of where a patient was picked up from.

And so, he tracked down the ambulance log

and found out that the address that Bruce Lee's body

had been picked up from wasn't the same as his home address.

- [John] He is shocked to notice

that the ambulance was actually dispatched

to 67 Beacon Hill Road.

67 Beacon Hill Road was where Betty Ting Pei lived.

- Betty Ting Pei is a beautiful, young Taiwanese actress

who's been making a name for herself in Chinese cinema.

She first meets Bruce Lee in 1972

while he's filming "Way of the Dragon."

And while he is married at the time,

the two become close and rumors start circulating

about an affair between them.

Those rumors become even louder when news circulates

that Betty will be cast as a lead role

in Bruce Lee's upcoming film "Game of Death."

- [Katie] When people find out the truth

about where Bruce Lee was when he died,

they're pretty mad

and they're also completely suspicious

of the entire situation.

If Raymond Chow has concocted this other story,

what else is he leaving out?

- [Daryl] Their willingness to lie about the circumstances

under which Bruce died only opened up speculation

about what they might be lying about

regarding the cause of his death.

- [John] The press picks up the story

and Betty Ting Pei comes under all kinds of scrutiny.

Now, at first she says, "I wasn't even home that night."

That immediately gets shot down.

Her neighbor's mention having seen her.

Moreover, her neighbors mention

that Bruce Lee has been a regular visitor

to her place for months now.

- [Laurence] Soon more information is revealed

casting Bruce Lee's final hours in a more troubling light.

- [Kavitha] After a few days the findings of the autopsy confirm

that the cause of death was this cerebral edema,

but there's a new piece of information.

It says that the cause of that edema

could have been some kind of drug intoxication.

[tense dramatic music]

- [Matthew] The coroner found two foreign substances

in Bruce's stomach.

One was hashish

and the other was this pill called Equagesic,

which was a kind of common pain reliever,

mostly prescribed to women for menstrual cramps.

It had aspirin and meprobamate,

which was a kind of muscle relaxant.

- [Laurence] Authorities need to figure out

if these substances, alone or in combination,

contributed to Bruce Lee's death.

- [Kavitha] In an effort to determine the cause of

Bruce Lee's death,

the Hong Kong courts launch a formal investigation.

- [John] The coroner's inquest takes place over several days

where witnesses are called and evidence brought forward.

- [Matthew] Betty Ting Pei testified, Linda Lee testified,

Raymond Chow testified.

All the experts and all the doctors involved

with Bruce Lee's death were brought in

to be interviewed by the various lawyers.

- [John] It's a media circus.

Bruce Lee's fans are out in force.

They're pushing up against the barricades.

More than anything else

they wanna try to catch a glimpse of Betty Ting Pei.

- [Katie] In her testimony, Betty finally admits

that she was there the evening that Bruce died.

They had been there at the apartment

with Raymond Chow earlier

discussing plans for "Game of Death"

and afterwards when Raymond left,

Bruce was complaining of a headache,

so she gave him Equagesic

and then he went to lay down and take a nap.

- [John] Betty admits that he then ate a couple of hash

brownies and then she came to wake him up

to go for their dinner plan, but he's non-responsive.

- [Kavitha] Initially, during the inquest,

investigators are focused on the hash

found in Lee's stomach.

At that time, hash is thought by the Hong Kong government

to be a particularly dangerous drug

and people speculate about whether or not

Lee had an allergic reaction to it.

The deadly hash theory, however, is quickly put to rest

when medical experts testify

that there has never been a substantiated case

of death caused by cannabis.

- [Laurence] The focus of the inquest then turns

to that painkiller Lee took not long before his death.

- [John] Dr. Robert Donald Teare, a British pathologist,

looks into this case

and says that he believes that death could be caused

by a reaction to something in the Equagesic,

either to the aspirin or to the meprobamate

or to some combination of the two.

- [Matthew] Aspirin can cause anaphylactic shock,

which can result in cerebral edema

in people who die from it.

And so, Professor Teare decided

that the most likely explanation

was that Bruce Lee had a hyperallergic reaction

and that's what caused Bruce Lee's cerebral edema,

which caused his death.

- [Laurence] Five days after Bruce Lee dies,

on July 25th, 1973, an open casket funeral is held.

A photo taken inside the funeral parlor raises new concerns.

- [John] A news photographer captures an image

of Bruce Lee in his casket

and it shows that his face is horribly bloated.

- [Katie] People are so mistrusting at this point of

everything that has been said about Bruce's death

that when they see this photograph

and he looks different than he did in life,

it calls into question a lot of other things.

Why does he look this way?

Could there possibly be foul play?

- [Laurence] On September 24th, 1973,

after seven tense days,

the jury comes back with their verdict.

Death by misadventure.

- [Katie] Death by misadventure is a confusing way to say

that he essentially died by accident.

- [Kavitha] Many of Lee's fans just don't accept

the death by misadventure verdict.

They refuse to accept that their hero

could have died from a painkiller

that contains aspirin and meprobamate.

Attention turns back to Lee's mistress,

the last person to see him alive

and people start to believe

that she might know more about his final hours

than she initially revealed.

- [Laurence] As rumors continue to swirl

around Lee's cause of death,

the spotlight turns on the woman Bruce Lee was with

on the night he died,

Lee's mistress, Betty Ting Pei.

- [John] The press is fascinated by the relationship

between Bruce Lee and Betty Ting Pei.

When they meet on the set of "Way of the Dragon" in 1972,

they quickly become romantically linked.

- [Zachary] He certainly wasn't trying to be discreet

about their relationship.

People observed them out in public together

and that led a lot of people to believe

that he was having an extramarital affair.

- [Katie] Bruce Lee's connection with Betty Ting Pei

is definitely scandalous

because he's married to Linda Lee

and he has two small children.

Of course that puts Linda in a very uncomfortable position.

- [Kavitha] In December 1972, Bruce Lee supposedly tries

to cut off ties with Betty.

She's so distraught that she swallows

a handful of sleeping pills

and is rushed to Queen Elizabeth Hospital.

- [John] Betty recovers

but from that point on, her relationship with Bruce

becomes increasingly strained.

She is upset that he won't leave his wife.

She is reportedly consumed by jealousy

and maybe she thinks if she can't have him,

nobody else can either.

[tense dramatic music]

- [Katie] So there are some theories that start to circulate

that perhaps someone has purposely killed him.

And of course the obvious person becomes Betty Ting Pei.

She's the other woman.

She's taking him away from his family and his wife.

So they start to run with this theory

that perhaps she was the jealous lover

and that potentially she might have poisoned him.

- [Laurence] And they say there's reason to believe

she tried it before.

- [John] There are rumors that Betty has been laying the

groundwork for this for months.

- [Kavitha] There's no actual proof of this.

There's no sign of anything toxic in Bruce's bloodstream,

but people still believe

that she may have used some substance

that wouldn't have shown up on a toxicology report

because she comes from a family of doctors.

- [Zachary] The other strange thing is the timeline of all

this. When she realizes that he's unconscious, he's

unresponsive. Why doesn't she call emergency services?

Instead, she calls Raymond Chow.

- [John] By calling the manager

instead of immediately calling an ambulance,

she's losing precious time.

He needs immediate medical attention.

- [Kavitha] Even though she repeatedly denies any

wrongdoing, the news media continues to publish

story after story implicating her.

- [John] The public response to this is highly negative.

Students in Malaysia are marching around with signs

saying "Betty killed Bruce."

In August 1973, Hong Kong police receive a bomb threat.

They go to investigate but they don't find a bomb,

they find a suspicious package.

Inside is a note saying,

"Betty knows the cause of Bruce's death."

- [Zachary] There's no evidence of foul play,

but that doesn't prevent the greater public from continuing

to find different stories that they want to believe in

in terms of Bruce Lee's demise.

And so, this hastens the speculation

that someone is involved in some kind of conspiracy

to kill Bruce Lee.

The most obvious person would have been Betty Ting Pei.

- [Laurence] There's also speculation

that Betty might not have acted alone.

- [Kavitha] Going back to those chaotic hours

following Bruce Lee's death,

one has to wonder why his business partner

and confidant Raymond Chow put out a statement

about where he died that was so easily disproven.

- [Katie] Part of the story that Raymond leaves out

when he creates that false narrative

is the fact that he was also there

when Bruce was at Betty's apartment.

- [Kavitha] After Bruce Lee first stops breathing,

Betty summons Raymond Chow to her apartment.

When he gets there, Raymond Chow inexplicably tells Betty

not to call an ambulance.

He tells her to call instead her personal physician.

- [Katie] Raymond had seen Bruce suffer a similar episode

just two months prior,

so he knew he would have to get medical treatment right away

in order to reverse the condition.

So it's very strange that he would wait so long

to get urgent care for him.

- [John] It's not until 10:30 at night

that the ambulance arrives to take him away.

By that time it's already too late.

- [Laurence] For many the question remains,

was the delay a willful decision?

- [Kavitha] Around the time of his death,

Bruce Lee's relationship with business partner Raymond Chow

reportedly started to fracture

when they formed their production company,

Concord Productions in 1972,

they initially had a 50/50 split between the two of them.

But by summer of 1973,

Bruce Lee is working on an independent film

and he is reportedly threatening

to walk away from Chow altogether.

- [Zachary] Given the level of money that Bruce Lee

is generating at the box office,

with Bruce Lee out of the picture,

Raymond Chow has a lot to gain.

- [Katie] If you add together Raymond Chow's financial

interests and Bruce Lee's work

and the fact that they might be disagreeing

on the future of how they collaborate,

this starts to look really fishy.

Like was this intentional?

- [Kavitha] Betty and Raymond Chow are both cleared,

- [Kavitha] Betty and Raymond Chow are both cleared,

but people still believe in a murder conspiracy

this time with just a different set of suspects.

- A month after Bruce Lee's death,

his final film "Enter the Dragon"

premieres in Los Angeles to rave reviews.

Lee plays a spy set on taking down the narcotics kingpin

who killed his sister.

The story may be fictional,

but fans are left wondering if, like his character,

but fans are left wondering if, like his character,

Lee became entangled with powerful gang members

and has paid with his life.

Attention turns to a dark encounter from his early days.

- [Daryl] Although Bruce was born in San Francisco,

Hong Kong really is the place where Bruce grows up.

He enters the movie industry

because his father is a Cantonese opera performer.

So by the time he's 18 years old,

Bruce has appeared in films not as a star,

but certainly as a known actor.

- [Katie] As Bruce is getting older in Hong Kong,

he's actually getting into a lot of trouble

and sometimes he's mixing with the wrong people.

- [Matthew] Bruce Lee was a little street fighter

and he ran across a kid named William Chung

who was better than him.

So, he asked William Cheung, how are you this good?

And William Cheung said, "I study under the master Ip Man."

- [John] Ip Man is a master of a particular style of kung fu

called Wing Chun.

Wing Chun emphasizes close quarters fighting

involving a blitz of lightning fast kicks and fast punches,

ideal for street fighting.

- [Matthew] Ip Man was impressed by how intense

Bruce's obsession with the martial arts was.

And so, he would say to Bruce, "Don't believe me.

Try it out yourself.

If you don't think I'm telling you the truth,

go out in the streets and test what I've taught you."

- [John] So Lee organized a group of his friends into a gang

that calls itself the Junction Street Eight Tigers.

- [Laurence] On one of these outings,

Bruce Lee picks a fight with the wrong guy.

- [Kavitha] He roughs up this teenager pretty badly

and it turns out that the guy's parents

have connections to the Chinese mob, the Triad.

- [John] The Triad came from all over Mainland China

when the Communist Revolution of the late 1940s takes place

and a lot of them end up in Hong Kong

where they're taking over just about

every avenue that organized crime might control.

- [Katie] The Triad are very astute.

They know how to adapt with the market

and in Hong Kong, one of the major industries

is the film industry.

So they wanna have a piece of the action too.

- [Kavitha] They're putting up the money for films

and controlling production

and they, of course, target actors

that they think have crossed them,

which is Lee's first of several reported run-ins

with the Chinese mafia.

- [John] Like most mobsters, the Triad makes its money

from extortion and kickbacks,

and as Bruce Lee's star power grows,

so does the target on his back.

[tense dramatic music]

- [Daryl] Bruce's life was actually in danger

because he had harmed the son of a Triad member.

- [Kavitha] His father becomes really worried about his safety

that the mob would try and retaliate.

So he sends Bruce to go live with relatives in Seattle,

but many people believe

that the threat from the Triad doesn't actually go away.

When Bruce is living in Seattle,

the Triad is operating in America,

but they're kinda operating underground.

So when he decides he's gonna open

a martial arts school in Seattle,

the Triads pay him a visit demanding money

to allow him to open a school in their turf.

- [Daryl] He was not off anybody's radar,

but Bruce wasn't the type to do as he was told.

- [John] In 1964, Lee has dropped out of college

and has married his longtime sweetheart, Linda,

and a year later their son Brandon is born.

A couple years after that,

his career really takes off when he gets cast

in the role of Kato,

the sidekick in the ABC series, "The Green Hornet."

- [Laurence] In 1971, Bruce Lee returns to Hong Kong

and once again reportedly crosses paths with the Triad.

- [Kavitha] He's just released the film, "The Big Boss,"

which makes him a huge star back in Hong Kong.

He gets a visit from a stranger

who's offering him 200,000 Hong Kong dollars.

And when he asks what it's for, he says, "Just a gift."

Now this is right out of the Triad playbook

of giving money to curry favor

and hold some leverage over you.

- [John] Lee angrily rebuffs him, but he knows what this

means. The Triad likes to control people by giving them

cash and it's dangerous to turn down

an offer of cash from the Triad.

So from that point on, Lee starts wearing a knife,

carrying a gun with him

thinking that he can come under attack at any time.

- [Laurence] Just days before his death,

Lee gets into an altercation

with a Triad-linked director.

- [Matthew] Lo Wei had been the director of Bruce Lee's

first two movies that had become such a huge success

and they ended up fighting over who

got to take credit for the success.

One day Bruce Lee heard that Lo Wei

was in the screening room

and he went down to give Lo Wei a piece of his mind.

- [John] He gets in his face, they start a shouting match,

and soon afterward, Lee pulls a knife on him

and aims it right at his chest

and Lee has to be dragged out of the room

to keep this from turning violent.

- [Laurence] But the Chinese director is rumored

to have connections that Lee may not be taking into account.

- [John] When Lee threatens Lo like that,

this is a direct affront to the Triad

who are assumed to be connected to him.

- [Katie] Maybe the Triads wanted Bruce Lee dead

and his altercation with Lo Wei in the screening room

was kind of the last straw.

- [John] Hong Kong police understand the danger of the

Triad, so they look into this aspect of Lee's death,

but they have no active leads.

There are no outward signs of a physical attack,

so, the potential connection to the Triad goes cold.

- [Laurence] In the weeks after Bruce Lee's death,

rumors abound, but there's still no clear new lead

that challenges the idea that he died accidentally.

Then in 1974, one year after Lee's death,

a new theory emerges

with a plot straight out of a kung fu film.

- [Kavitha] There's a journalist who's investigating Bruce Lee's

death and he starts developing this theory

that Bruce Lee could have been assassinated

by a cabal of kung fu masters

using a technique known as Dim Mak.

- [Matthew] Dim Mak is this idea that you can hit somebody

on their acupuncture lines

or pushing a kind of chi power,

and after you touch them, you can control when they die.

So it's a delayed death touch.

- [John] It's rumored that some martial arts masters

have this ability to strike at just the right pressure point

to bring about death if not immediately,

days, weeks, or even months later.

[tense dramatic music]

- [Daryl] Bruce certainly was at odds

with many of the martial arts practitioners of Hong Kong.

Some people think it's because he had taught

what was supposed to be a Chinese secret

art to Westerners.

- [Kavitha] Bruce Lee is this arrogant, burgeoning

international film star and he really doesn't jive

with this old school mentality.

- [Katie] Bruce had created his own form of martial arts.

He called it Jeet Kune Do

or the way of the intercepting fist,

and it incorporated elements

from a lot of different martial arts styles,

combining his street fighting with fencing and boxing.

What he was after was trying to become

a more efficient fighter

and finding moves that were practical versus theoretical

that didn't actually have any power in them.

- [Kavitha] So the journalist theorizes

that in order to stop him from continuing

to change these ancient traditions,

the group of kung fu masters sends out an assassin

to kill Bruce Lee with the death touch.

- [Matthew] Dim Mak, like everything in kung fu,

is linked back to the Shaolin temple,

the location of where kung fu originated,

and there are various theories

that link to the Shaolin monks,

the idea that they could use special acupuncture

or acupressure points to affect the human body.

- [Kavitha] They say that Bruce might have died

from a touch on his pressure point

that blocked his energy

and led to his death days or weeks later.

- [Laurence] While this is speculative,

certain types of punches and kicks are known to be lethal.

- [John] A blow to the chest delivered just right

at a certain point in the cardiac process

can cause an immediate cardiac arrest.

But it's exceptionally rare

for a blow to cause a delayed death.

While this theory is intriguing to many,

there's no real evidence that supports it

and it's pretty much relegated to martial arts mythology.

- [Laurence] The death of Bruce Lee remains

shrouded in mystery for the next 45 years.

Then in 2018, a new theory emerges.

- [Katie] Matthew Polly writes a biography of Bruce Lee

and he posits a new theory around his death

because he looks very closely at the two instances

of cerebral edema.

- [Kavitha] Polly postulates that he could have died from an

inability to regulate his own body temperature.

He examines the May 10th collapse

when Lee was rushed to the hospital with a cerebral edema

and was able to be revived.

- [Matthew] On May 10th, he was re dubbing lines in a room

that was super hot

because they turned off the air conditioning

to make sure that it didn't interfere with the sound.

During that process, he started to feel dizzy and faint

and he ended up collapsing and going into seizures.

They rushed him to the hospital

and the doctors diagnosed him with cerebral edema

and they gave him mannitol to cause the swelling to go down.

- [Katie] The doctors do note that Bruce was covered in sweat

and he had a high fever.

And according to Polly, those are classic symptoms

of heat stroke and perhaps this went undiagnosed.

[tense dramatic music]

- [Laurence] If it is heatstroke,

why is it happening to Bruce Lee,

one of the fittest men alive?

- [Matthew] He had complained many times

about how sweaty his armpits were.

This affected his work

because on screen they kept having to switch his shirts out.

Six months prior to his initial collapse,

he had cosmetic surgery removing the sweat glands

from underneath his armpits.

At that time, people were offering that.

It has since been discontinued

because it's considered extremely dangerous

because it affects your ability to process heat.

And so, having those removed would've made him

more susceptible to heat stroke.

- [John] On July 20th, 1973,

that's the hottest day of the month in Hong Kong.

He is in Betty Ting Pei's apartment running over lines.

What happens there is eerily similar

to what happened back in May.

He starts complaining about headaches and feeling faint.

He falls into Betty's bed and he never wakes up.

- [Matthew] He collapses in a situation

in which he's in a sauna-like room,

and then 10 weeks after that he dies on a very hot day.

To me, that suggests that he potentially died

from heat stroke.

- [John] But sweat is produced all over the body

and the attending doctors back in May

reported that he has sweat pouring out of him all over.

So, you'd think that would regulate body temperature.

- [Kavitha] Despite those minor flaws and the logic,

it still does provide a plausible theory

as to the cause of Bruce Lee's death.

- [Laurence] 50 years after Bruce Lee's death,

researchers are still looking for clues

to explain what killed him.

- [Daryl] In 2022, a group of Spanish kidney specialists

come out with a novel theory

for what happened to Bruce Lee.

Their theory was that he was suffering from retaining

an excess of fluid which can lead to swelling of the brain.

- [Kavitha] It's a little ironic because Bruce Lee's famous quote

was, "Be water, my friend,"

kinda speaking to the fluidity

of the body during martial arts.

But it turns out that it might have been too much water

that could have killed him.

[tense dramatic music]

- [Katie] The scientists also go back

and look at the autopsy results

and one of the things that strikes them

is the fact that his brain had swollen to the point

where it was 3.5 pounds,

which is a half pound heavier than the average human brain.

And what caused the swelling was water.

- [Rebecca] The kidneys actually are filters for the body

and also regulate water.

If you get enough of a buildup of toxins,

the kidneys can actually not function properly.

- [Katie] On May 10th when he collapsed for the first time

and was examined by the doctor,

there were some unexplained high levels

of waste in his kidneys,

and so, that also signals that he had kidney disease.

- [Kavitha] The levels were so high

that the doctors actually thought it was a typo.

- [Laurence] At the time, doctors were more worried

about Lee's brain than his kidneys.

The researchers from Spain believe

that may have been a grave mistake.

- [Kavitha] If the kidneys aren't working

then they can't get rid of excess water in the body.

And if there's a buildup of water

that creates a somewhat catastrophic situation.

- [John] The water dilutes the sodium in the human body

and it creates a situation called hyponatremia.

And if it is not immediately addressed, it leads to death.

- [Laurence] But why is Bruce consuming so much water on July

20th, the day of his death?

- [John] Earlier in the day,

even before he goes to Betty's apartment,

he has consumed some hashish brownies.

In fact, he writes to a friend that day

that he's stoned as hell.

- [Kavitha] It would make sense if Lee's water intake

were high that day.

We already know that he was eating a hash brownie,

so that would cause some thirst

and he would be drinking more water.

He was also running lines for his upcoming film,

so the physical exertion and the exercise

would've caused him to drink more water as well.

- [Rebecca] He's a martial artist.

He's getting body blows all the time.

So it's also possible that he might have actually sustained

some physical trauma to some areas of the kidneys

such that maybe they're not working at top capacity.

One of the things of note is that he had very low sodium,

which is something that happens

when you've had too much water.

- [Daryl] During this period,

he certainly had been on a very extreme diet

of only eating or drinking apple and carrot juice.

So, he may not have been taking in the nutrients

that he needed to maintain healthy levels of sodium.

- [Rebecca] When you're over hydrated, you allow a shift of

fluids such that you can get a fluid buildup

in a place that normally wouldn't have

one like the brain. But water is also what makes up 60% or more

of our bodies. It's the giver of life.

Ironically, in his situation,

taking in too much water can result in something fatal.

- [Laurence] No matter how Bruce Lee died,

his mystique and the mystery of his final hours lives on.

- [Kavitha] It makes a lot of sense that there would be

so many theories surrounding the death of Bruce Lee,

ranging from the mundane to the mythological.

- [Matthew] Bruce Lee's death really ties

into who he was as a megastar

because he was able to kinda elevate

the kung fu hero to international status.

And in dying, he became the athlete who dies young.

He died in his perfect form, in perfect shape,

so that we could project our own hopes and dreams

and mysteries onto him.

- [Daryl] With a figure like Bruce who was larger than life,

it makes so much sense that people would want

a dramatic answer as to how

his life could have ended.

- Some believe that regardless of how Bruce Lee died,

he was destined to live a short life

in a tragic twist of fate that some define as a curse.

Males in Bruce's family have died young.

Bruce's older brother died as a toddler

and Bruce's son Brandon Lee was shot by accident

on a movie set in 1993.

Tragedies that have helped the legend of Bruce Lee live on.

I'm Laurence Fishburne.

Thank you for watching "History's Greatest Mysteries."

[dark music]