I have to establish the history before I get to the motive. It was stated back in 1973 (the year of his death) by none other than James Coburn (who wanted Bruce to film The Silent Flute for 20th Century Fox) that Lee said to him (when they were in Hong Kong):

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“If Paramount can give Brando two million bucks, the Shaws can do the same for me.”

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It was a vengeful ploy to make a prestigious Kung Fu film with the biggest studio in Southeast Asia on his terms. R.R. Shaw had already sent a correspondent to name his price. Various writers begun preparing scripts, and names of directors began to get tossed about. Chor Yuen (楚原) was said to have the uppermost advantage because of his acquaintanceship with Bruce, who was to be directed by Cheng Kang (程剛) instead of Chang Cheh (張徹). Raymond Chow, a former Shaw Brothers employee who can be found on Google as 鄒文懷, was well aware of the Shaws tampering with Golden Harvest’s biggest cash cow. Working for S.B. at a production cost and a pay-rate that G.H. could not match would’ve meant the end for Ray.

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Not to mention the truly tremendous loss of face, being that it was he who gave Lee his shot to superstardom. A Shaw production would’ve been more lavish than the Hollywood glamour that Enter the Dragon was meant to be. At every level inside the production of Enter the Dragon (龍爭虎鬥), Run Run had people who reported information on the project (i.e. spies working on a spy movie). R.R. believed that the movie may not finish due to the difficulties between the oddly coupled H.K. and U.S. studios. Before getting into the film industry, Ray worked for Taiwan’s equivalent to the C.I.A. – National Security Bureau (meaning he could cover his tracks). This is according to Chang Cheh’s memoir.

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Naysayers will say that the truth would’ve come out by now, but you have to account for the mysterious absences of Richey Edwards and Jimmy Hoffa. Some people know what happened to their bodies, but that doesn’t mean they are going to come out with the truth…even on their deathbeds. Ray initially didn’t want Bruce to do Enter the Dragon, because he didn’t want to lose him to the U.S. studios. However, Enter the Dragon was more than Lee’s chance to be a Hollywood movie star. It was his chance to prove that he could’ve easily played David Carradine’s Kwai Chang Caine i.e. a serene master.

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Ray, eventually sympathizing with Lee’s loss of face, saw that working with Warner Brothers had opened up possibilities more endless than what Shaw had (although The Way of the Dragon would inspire S.B. to collaborate with Italian production companies). If Ray could develop strong ties with W.B. then he would never have to worry about S.B. again. Because of the “now or never” nature of the U.S. deal, the shooting of The Game of Death (死亡遊戲) was postponed so that Enter the Dragon could begin. Following on from this, Ray used Bruce to make a name for himself overseas by giving interviews to the H.K. press. He did this by stating that Bruce was like a stupid child who owed his success to Ray’s fatherly advice.

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Ray proclaimed to be the puppet master to Bruce’s senseless puppet, but this backfired. W.B. were not interested in Ray’s goldenly harvested dreck (G.H. was still something of an upstart than a major global player). Bruce, not exactly the self-deprecating type, felt betrayed by his cohort (albeit they weren’t cohesive). Chaplin Chang recalled that Bruce had a tendency to hurl mother-prefixed slurs at Ray’s face, and this was before Ray tried to prevent Enter the Dragon from happening. Lee intended for his G.H. offshoot company (Concord) to co-produce with S.B. after Enter the Dragon came to an end. He lived long enough to pose for costume test shots in more guises than what is shown in this article’s featured image of a G.H. brick wall.

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Before he could fully defect, Lee died after the post-production of Enter the Dragon came to an end. In a posthumous interview, Ray stated that he didn’t view the footage of The Game of Death for a long time because he was too upset. That’s odd, considering that he sent a camera crew around to film his dead friend’s home for a documentary titled Bruce Lee, the Man and the Legend. They also filmed the grieving Lee family, the funeral services, Bruce’s corpse and Ray escorting Bruce’s widow to the airport. These cinematic grave-robbers returned to film more shots of Bruce’s house as the removal men stripped the place. In a matter of months, this so-called tribute to the late Lee was being shown in H.K. cinemas.

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Despite seemingly losing his golden ticket, Ray laughably harbored hopes of breaking into the U.S. scene. The Game of Death was the key to the Stateside gate whereas Enter the Dragon was the locksmith. Bruce’s script was disregarded with indecent haste and replaced with a dim scenario which would hopefully convince the U.S. market that Ray could produce films just as tawdry as their own. Being the main producer was a step up for him instead of trudging behind Fred Weintraub and Paul Heller. More importantly, he didn’t have Bruce to antagonize him.

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Marshall, a pivotal character, is named after Lee’s attorney whose forename was Adrian. In fact, there are many details based on Lee’s life. The initials of the character – Billy Lo. He has a Mercedes and an impulsive temper. His disguise consists of Ray Bans, Italian fashions and a beard. He even has a Caucasian girlfriend. There’s also the suspicious inclusion of on-set accidents like falling set lights. This mimics the train wreck of a production that Enter the Dragon was. The most glaring omission is marijuana due to the implausibility of a stoned fighter who is not defective.

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What should be a memorial to Bruce becomes an incriminating exposé that warns stars of the dangers incurred from resisting the services of syndicates. Why else would they have gone out of their way to include footage of Bruce’s H.K. funeral? The finished job was so bad that W.B. refused to distribute it in `78, hence why Columbia distributed it in the summer of `​79 – the exact same time when a hack director wanted his own godson to be hacked by machete-wielding Triads for refusing to finish Fearless Hyena II (whose lack of completion made it hackneyed). With Lee alive, the The Game of Death would always come second to what else would’ve been lined up. It would’ve been just another Lee project as opposed to some magnum opus.

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In fact, his epic was going to be a period film about twelve Chinese men who leave China to work as miners in San Francisco (Green Bamboo Warrior). Lee’s grandest plan was to have his own company in America. Lam Ching-Ying (林正英) claimed that Lee wanted to emigrate the best of the H.K. stunt community to America. One man who accepted his invitation was Bolo Yeung (楊斯). Another stuntman was Billy Chan Wui-Ngai (陳會毅). Billy claimed that he was told in Bruce’s office about this plan after they finished filming The Game of Death. Bruce intended to bring 20 stuntmen. Unfortunately, the Triads own most of the stuntmen.

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While Lo Wei (羅維) anticipated the hacking of his Fearless Hyena star, Ray never worried about Jackie Chan (成龙) abandoning G.H. after making The Big Brawl. This was because he was virtually unknown in America, so success would be as limited as his English. Speaking of English, one offer that Bruce considered was to be a voice actor for a Hanna-Barbera TV series (e.g. H-B’s The Amazing Chan and the Chan Clan came out a month before Kung Fu did in 1972). This foreshadows Jackie having his own animated series (i.e. Jackie Chan Adventures).

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Linda has attested to her husband having a foul temper that went well beyond the verbal scale (which he admitted in a 1971 interview). Even in the Linda-authorised Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story, he goes into a blind rage (it’s fitting that there is a B-grade movie titled Blind Fist of Bruce). In the month of his death, Bruce pushed Ray over a couch. Bruce confided to his youngest brother, Robert, about it. Wu Ngan (affectionately known as Ngan Jai) witnessed the push, but he has taken his side of the story to the grave. There is a saying about the last straw that broke the camel’s back, but you have to wonder what bone that Ray broke when Bruce pushed him.

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Linda, seen above, likes to blame Bruce’s death on his weight loss by citing the exhaustive process that he put himself through during the making of Enter the Dragon. However, he lost weight during the making of The Big Boss in Thailand where he didn’t eat well due to the lack of quality food…but he didn’t pass out. In a 1980 interview for the Kick Illustrated magazine, Robert Clouse mentioned that Bruce always tried to keep his weight up during the making of Enter the Dragon by eating protein. Clouse also said that Bruce didn’t pass out like he had on an earlier film, even when filming in the mirror room. He didn’t say it in his interview but Bruce passed out during the making of The Way of the Dragon. According to stuntman Steve Lee Ka-Ting, this happened during a dubbing session where Bruce was resuscitated by electric shocks to his hamstrings.

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I never bought into the story about Ray working with Bruce on the script for The Game of Death on the day that he died. It was already finalized (as was complexly detailed in a 2001 John Little book titled The Warrior’s Journey), so Ray is obscuring the fact because he needed an alibi to avoid prosecution! The Equagesic excuse for Lee’s passing is hogwash. The medication that he took for his headache at Betty Ting’s apartment, Beverley Heights, was similar to the meds which he was taking for his back pain (Cortisone became his Viagra). I have a hard time believing that a single tablet caused Lee’s demise when, a few months prior, he collapsed yet had not taken the drug. Too coincidentally, Ray was there on both occasions.

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Ray has a Machiavellian mind, so he had to explain Bruce’s head injuries by stating that they were the by-product of filming fight scenes. Ray claimed that Bruce collapsed at home while walking in his garden with Linda. When exposed, Ray retracted by stating that he was saving Linda from the swirl of gossip, despite there already being tabloids about Betty before Bruce died. It was Ray who introduced Bruce to the actress known as Ting Pei (a.k.a. 丁珮). Lee was smitten because she resembled a Japanese ex-girlfriend of his named Amy Sanbo.

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Ray played Cupid because Lee’s two picture deal was coming to an end in early 1972. When Betty was making her mark as a teenage dancer in Taiwan, she bonded with a Taiwanese gangster named Chen Chi-Li. He was a member of the Bamboo Union Group – the same Taiwanese Triad that martial arts movie star Jimmy Wang Yu (王羽) aligned himself with. When Betty moved to H.K. to work for Shaw Brothers, it was Ray who signed her. When Jimmy left Shaw Brothers for Golden Harvest in 1970, Run Run Shaw stipulated that he was no longer allowed to make films in H.K.

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Like how Jackie was lampooned by Wong Jing (王晶) in High Risk (鼠膽龍威) as being something of a womanizer, Lee was a philosophical philanderer. The endlessly sterling Stirling Silliphant (R.I.P.) claimed that Lee bragged to him that he had got it on with two women in what would have been a foursome had Silliphant not turned down Lee’s invitation. Jon Benn cites Bruce as being constantly flirtatious on the set of The Way of the Dragon, because there were many pretty women. John Saxon claimed that, during the Enter the Dragon era, Bruce recommended that they go out with some of the Chinese women.

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Bob Wall claimed that Bruce collected issues of Playboy (the irony wouldn’t be lost on Bob that there would be an issue featuring Bruce 40 years down the line). Bob Baker deserves to be distrusted more than Wall, since it’s possible that Baker had an affair with Linda while Bruce was filming his directorial début in Rome. In the last months of his life, Bruce was paranoid about people contaminating his food and drinks (there are Enter the Dragon production pics of himself holding a Thermos flask). Ahna Capri saw a stuntman near his flask, Bruce freaked out, so the kid was fired.

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A circulated allegation is that he removed his armpit sweat glands because of the above Chinese Pussy Galore. With Lee being an overactive health nut, he wouldn’t prohibit his body from removing toxins. He was such a devout reader that he was an uncompromising researcher, so if he can be paranoid about enemies then he can be paranoid about his health. Besides, the autopsy report didn’t reference scar tissue from either the armpit sweat gland removal or the Cortisone shots. Medically, hash was the only suspect. One of the side effects of excessive hash intake is severe paranoia.

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The fact that Bruce didn’t flee H.K. to film Enter the Dragon overseas (such as a Caribbean island) shows that he was too self-assured to be totally paranoid. If hash is laced, the drug-taker can be prone to acts of violence akin to roid rage. The question is whether Bruce was given laced hash so as to trigger a tantrum that would allow for an excuse to end him. Without lacing, hash addicts can still have dilated pupils and loss of consciousness or memory. Consider this – you’re Bruce, you’re slowly being poisoned by someone who has access to what you eat, drink and wear.

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Imagine that you only trust your meek butler. One of the symptoms of consuming Nitrophenolic and Nitrocresolic herbicides (or pesticides) is thirst. Charles Lowe (a.k.a. the second unit camera operator for Enter the Dragon) witnessed Lee drink copious amounts of saké. Anorexia was another symptom. His overtraining is seldom blamed, but he told Dan Inosanto that having a film career didn’t allow much time for training. Mitoshi Uyehara confirmed this in a book titled Bruce Lee: The Incomparable Fighter. It was published in the same year as Robert Clouse’s biography about Bruce – 1988 (the year of the dragon).

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According to Dr. Peter Wu, Lee eating hashish was the only reason for his collapse in May of 1973. Peter demanded that he stop using it. Lee was inhaling cannabis since the late `60s, so he knew his limitations. He was also eating hash brownies, so he knew the outcome of that as well. Very rarely does someone die from a fatal reaction to cannabis intake. An antigen (or foreign substance) was added to what he ingested without his knowledge. Many addicts take drugs that have been laced with an antigen which gives them a sickly reaction. The result can be either a deathbed or a sickbed. Bruce should’ve changed his supplier.

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In The Incomparable Fighter, Bruce was quoted as telling Uyehara that you notice everything more sharply with marijuana. Bruce opened up about being near-sighted to Joe Hyams (as typed in a 1979 book titled Zen in the Martial Arts). Lee also revealed that he wore contact lenses since he couldn’t see an opponent at a far distance. Contrast this with Clouse, who was hard of hearing. Yin-Yang symbolism! If you’re going to kill a formidable opponent, you have to exploit their weakness. According to Linda, Bruce wore glasses at home. Therefore, his home would have been the best place for him to be killed.

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Chuck Norris, in Against All Odds (a memoir which is his sixth book), had alluded to Lee’s steroid experimentation being known among his peers. Richard Ng (吳耀漢) had described Lee in his final month, July, as being strung out. Ng mimed by doing a syringe motion to his arm. You should ruminate for a bit that Lee only fell sick in H.K. and not in the U.S. as would be expected from a man who was always excessive. His first collapse is puzzling. He almost dies and comes to the U.S. for a check-up by the doctor of Paul Heller (the literal middle man in the below photos). The top doctor of neurology at U.C.L.A. finds no cause for Lee almost passing in the previous fortnight.

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Bob Wall laments in the impartial I Am Bruce Lee documentary that M.R.I. scans weren’t commonplace back then. If you go into a coma, almost die, get very sick, have pale skin, slur like you’ve had a stroke, you come back to the States to be checked out by a top doctor, have numerous tests on top of that, and there is nothing found, then that means something is happening to you in the other place where you live. Think about it; if the cause of himself passing out and almost passing away is inherent then, for sure, they would’ve found something wrong at the top clinic.

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The cause of death might as well have been asbestos (Brittany Murphy also met her maker by this at the age of 32). David Tadman (the mind behind I Am Bruce Lee) was lucky enough to have interviewed two policemen who were on the force at that time. They say that there was a cover-up. Furthermore, Mang Hoi (孟海), Sammo Hung (洪金寶), Yuen Wah (元華), Peter Chan Lung (陳龍) and many others will privately tell you that foul play was afoot. Lam Ching-Ying didn’t have to go on the lam because he kept his cards close due to the Triads having as much influence in H.K. as Jews in Hollywood.

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When Bruce was pronounced dead, Linda asked Betty if she could back up the story that he died at home. The next day, Linda had his stuntmen over for a banquet to celebrate his life. This would explain Charles Lowe’s claim that he saw some of his stuntmen at Bruce’s house after he died. One man, Billy Chan Wui-Ngai (陳會毅), recalled that the guys were gossiping about how he was slain. She reprimanded in a hysterical tone – If I do not want to know how he really died, then why should you? 

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Bruce’s oldest brother, Peter, had a sneaking suspicion about Ngan (a childhood pal and butler that had his own family live with Bruce at his final home). Bruce’s assets were in Ngan’s name (Bruce was a tax scammer), so the latter received a large sum of money from Linda’s lawyer to sort this out after Bruce died. He quickly returned to England. In 1976, two insurance companies only paid half because they were unable to obtain a copy of the autopsy report, not because of what it included but because what was missing pointed to something much more, especially when you consider that Dr. Donald Langford (in a 1993 documentary) confessed to removing files from Baptist Hospital.

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Lee had bruises on his face which were consistent with someone who had been attacked. His forehead appears to be branded by an iron which was then used to singe his left eyebrow so that onlookers got the hint from the angle. The left side of his neck was swollen – a target of intense intent. The bottom of his neck looks slashed and pierced (scary discoloration). His H.K. coffin photos show that his neck was covered in a weird way.

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Nancy Kwan (who Lee choreographed for The Wrecking Crew) had a friend in the police force who oversaw the investigation and claimed that there was one shoe missing. This made some believe that Lee was taken to Betty’s apartment with one shoe. The message was wait until the other shoe drops (if the shoe fits). Basically, the police were told that he died in Betty’s bedroom whereas the press were told that he died at Linda’s house. Betty initially distanced herself from it by claiming that she was shopping with her mother during the dragon’s demise.

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I suspect that there was domestic abuse which could only be resolved by gangsters suppressing him, otherwise he could easily oppress a martial artist. Ed Khmara (writer) and Jason Scott Lee wanted Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story to be the Chinese answer to Raging Bull, but the powers that be forbade that. In 1976, Betty married an actor/gangster named Charles Heung (向華強). Another such guy was a friend of Bruce named Michael Chan Wai-Man (陳惠敏), who spoke of how the police and crooks of the `70s were interchangeable. He should know; he used to be a policeman.

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Before Bruce left H.K. at the age of 18, he had unwittingly beaten up the lowlife son of a high-ranking police officer (according to Richard Bustillo). It’s been reported that Michael Chan was the one who told Ray Chow that Bruce was dead. Ray allegedly asked who else met their ends. Michael was a high-ranking member of the 14K Triad, who are the main rival of the Sun Yee On (whose chief deputy {Lo Wei} happened to be threatened by Bruce as noted in a timeline that I will post later).

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Even George Lee (a Jeet Kune Do student) claimed that, in May `73, Bruce admitted that H.K. was getting nasty and he wanted out. Ted Thomas (a dubbing artist who knew Bruce) confirmed that Triads were a thorn in Bruce’s side (as mentioned in the Bruce Lee Conversations book). James DeMile (one of Bruce’s first students) was so convinced that Bruce had been murdered that he mounted an investigation. He came to the conclusion that he was poisoned by people who he antagonized in the H.K. film industry.

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Death by chronic cyanide poisoning is difficult to detect and can be confused for a natural death. I will quote James Coburn’s observation from his final encounter with Bruce (as quoted in The Bruce Lee Story by his widow and Tom Bleecker): “Towards the end of his life, Bruce seemed to be carrying a great weight – something bad set in. He was being hit on all sides by everybody…and he had to have his guard up all the time.”