Controversy Was Bruce Lee's Death Murder Part 2

About the controversy surrounding the death of famous Chinese Kung Fu movie star Bruce Lee. Was he murdered?

CONTROVERSIES

WERE THEY MURDERED?

BRUCE LEE

His Death: On May 10, 1973, Lee suffered a mysterious collapse while dubbing Enter the Dragon in Hong Kong. During the crisis he experienced great difficulty in breathing, a series of convulsions, and a swelling of the brain. Lee was treated with the drug Mannitol, and within a few hours he began to show signs of recovery, so emergency surgery was deemed not necessary. A week later Lee, feeling fit as ever, was examined in Los Angeles by Dr. David Reisbord, who did a brain scan, a brain flow study, an EEG, and a complete physical. The doctor concluded that Lee had suffered a grand mal seizure of no known origin, but that overall he was in extraordinarily good health. However, friends were worried by the fact that he was rapidly losing weight. Two months later, on July 20, Lee complained of a headache while working on a script at the Hong Kong apartment of his co-star, Betty Ting-pei. The actress gave Lee the painkiller Equagesic, which had been prescribed for her by her doctor. Lee then went off to nap on her bed--and never woke up again. He was found at 9:30 P.M. by Raymond Chow, who had come to pick him up for a dinner engagement. A doctor was called, but efforts to revive Lee were in vain. He was taken to Queen Elizabeth Hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

Official Version: Reasons for suspicion: Lee was not taken to the hospital closest to his co-star's apartment; Raymond Chow announced to the press that Lee had died at his own home; Lee had acted erratically and had publicly attacked director Lo Wei on the eve of his death; traces of cannabis were found in his system; and, at the time, he was regarded as "the fittest man in the world," Since there was no discernible reason for his death, an official coroner's inquest was convened on Sept. 3, 1973. The findings were as follows: that Dr. Chu, who had been called to the scene, determined that Lee was already dead, so the choice of hospital was immaterial; that Chow had refrained from mentioning Betty Ting-pei's apartment in the death announcement as a face-saving gesture to protect Lee's wife, Linda, since Lee had been romantically linked with his co-star; that Lee's attack on director Lo Wei had been simply the climax of their long-simmering hostility; that the amount of cannabis found in Lee's system was too insignificant to have played any part in his death; and that the fittest man in the world probably died because of a hypersensitivity to some component of the painkiller Equagesic--either meprobamate or aspirin or a combination of the two. The official verdict after the inquest: death by "misadventure."

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