Apparently there were other forces who were concerned about Bruce's future, for it was around this time that a sizeable amount of life insurance began to be taken out in Bruce's name. Although there is no record of Bruce having applied for life insurance before February 1973, it was learned after his death that his life had recently been insured under three separate policies.
The first policy was through the Screen Actors Guild, of which Bruce was a member. In 1973 the policy paid a single death benefit of $5,000. No one has ever raised any question about this coverage, nor should they have.
The second policy, taken out through American International Assurance Company (AIA), which is a private limited company based in Singapore, was for US$200,000 (US$2,600,000 in 2003) and covered a period of five years from 2/1/73 to 1/31/78. The beneficiary was listed as "Linda Emery Lee if living, otherwise Brandon Bruce Lee and Shannon Emery Lee, children of the deceased, in the share of one-half each." In addition to there being some question whether Bruce was ever aware of the AIA policy, it is important to note that in April 1973 Bruce had listed on his federal income tax his total earnings at a mere $17,000.
That the AIA policy had been applied for less than six months before Bruce's death was curious enough. That a third policy (requested by Linda on April 30, 1973) through Lloyds of London for a staggering US$1,350,000 (US$17,500,000 in 2003) was issued ninety days later was patently alarming. This brought the total life insurance to over a million and a half U.S. dollars. To put this in perspective, today this would be equivalent to nearly $20,000,000 of life insurance on a man with very little equity in his house and a total cash worth just over $200,000.
The date upon which all three life insurance policies were in place was May 5, 1973.
On May 10, just five days after the issuance of the Lloyds of London insurance policy, Bruce was dubbing on a sound stage at Golden Harvest Studios when he suddenly felt nauseated. He quickly excused himself and walked to a nearby vacant restroom where he then felt extremely weak.
According to Linda Lee, Bruce later told her that to the best of his knowledge he did not lose consciousness, for he recalled pretending that he was groping around on the floor for his glasses, this in response to hearing someone enter the restroom. Nevertheless, several individuals in the dubbing room later said that Bruce had been gone for well over twenty minutes, which seemed like a considerable time to be away at a nearby restroom. Anyway, upon returning to the dubbing room, Bruce suddenly lost consciousness and collapsed to the floor where he then vomited and his body began convulsing.
Immediately several men ran to Raymond Chow, who was working in his office nearby, and informed him of Bruce's frightening condition. Rather than summon an ambulance, Chow called Dr. Charles Langford at Baptist Hospital and told him that Bruce had collapsed, may be choking on his own vomit, and had gone into convulsions. Dr. Langford instructed Chow to transport Bruce to Baptist at once.
Upon his arrival at Baptist Hospital, Bruce was attended to by Dr. Langford, an American, who later testified: "Lee was brought in by several men from the studio. He was suffering from high fever and was unconscious and unresponsive in the emergency room. First there were breathing noises, then they stopped. There was a series of convulsions. Three other doctors were summoned, including a neurosurgeon, Dr. Peter Woo. Lee was going through muscle contraction and relaxation. The entire body was involved in this motion, but the upper limbs gave us the most difficulty because he was very strong and was difficult to control. After the failure of Lee to respond for a period, and after waiting for the neurosurgeon to examine him, we gave him Mannitol to reduce the swelling of the brain which we had detected. It took us one and a half hours to make to make Lee conscious. After Lee was revived, his eyes were moving to the right and left in a circular motion and his speech was slurred."
When asked if Bruce's condition could have been caused from overwork and exhaustion, Langford testified that it could not. In later testimony, the neurosurgeon, Dr. Woo, stated that a blood test suggested a possible malfunction of the kidneys, and further testified that Bruce had told him that he had taken marijuana that same day, which Dr. Woo presumed to mean that Bruce had chewed the leaf. Prior to Bruce's discharge from Baptist Hospital, Dr. Langford prescribed Valium for Bruce's anxiety. Bruce was then transferred to St. Theresa's Hospital for additional testing, at which time he was coherent.
Two weeks later Bruce traveled to the United States, and on May 25, 1973 was examined by noted Beverly Hills physician Dr. Harold L. Karpman. Since his initial collapse on May 10, Bruce had undergone a complete work-up at St. Theresa Hospital in Hong Kong and had brought the test results with him.
Apart from telling Dr. Karpman that he absolutely hated Chinese food, Bruce's major complaints were that he: (1) had been under a great deal of tension for the past several years, (2) suffered from insomnia, (3) complained of a poor appetite, and (4) had lost twenty pounds over a two-year period.
In Bruce's particular case, it is important to realize that a loss of twenty pounds of body weight over a two-year period is highly significant. Besides his overuse of diuretics, which significantly reduced his body's percentage of water, Bruce had an extremely low percentage of body fat. The result was that under these conditions a loss of over 14 percent of his body's muscular mass was noticeable in Bruce and made him appear emaciated.
Dr. Karpman ordered a complete work-up and neurological examination of Bruce, including a brain scan and brain flow study and electroencephalogram, and noted that Bruce's body was not in a state of dehydration. There was no evidence of a brain tumor, and his heart function and vessels were normal. As astonishing as it sounds, although Dr. Karpman was "embarrassed" by Bruce's weight (125 lb.), he found him to be in superb physical health. Karpman's frustration is noted by his sworn deposition on July 24, 1974, a year after Lee's death:
Q: And when was the first time you treated Mr. Lee?
A: I didn't treat him; I examined him.
Q: Did you come up with a working diagnosis?
A: Diagnosis of what?
And later, upon being reminded of Lee's use of marijuana:
Q: If you had known of [Lee's cannabis use] or if he had told you that, would it have affected your opinion as to what might have been his problem?
A: Well, you see, I really didn't understand what his problem was at that point -
Unable to arrive at a working diagnosis, Karpman referred Bruce to a neurologist, Dr. David Reisbord. Working in collaboration with a team of colleagues at UCLA Medical Center, Reisbord came up with the final impression that Bruce had a convulsive disorder, grand mal, idiopathic. In lay terms this simply said that Bruce was prone to generalized body convulsions whose cause was unknown. After prescribing the drug Dilantin, which is a commonly used medication for the management of epilepsy, Dr. Reisbord gave Bruce a clean bill of health.
Finally, during his deposition, Dr. Karpman said he was puzzled over a strange laboratory that had been run in Hong Kong when Bruce was admitted to Baptist Hospital. The test was an elevated kidney test for blood urea nitrogen (BUN), which had concerned Dr. Woo at Baptist Hospital on May 10, but was normal on May 25 when Karpman examined Bruce in Los Angeles. Ultimately Karpman felt that the extraordinarily high test result was probably an error, that what the Hong Kong laboratory technician meant to type was 9.2 instead of 92 (normal values range from 10 to 20 mg per 100 ml of blood).
During his deposition, however, Karpman stated there was a possibility of a kidney problem causing Bruce's convulsions. Further, considering the events of the ensuing six weeks, it seems highly unlikely that this strange test result was a typographical error, as Karpman had initially theorized.
Who exactly had ordered all this life insurance? In reading the application form, it appeared that Bruce was unaware of the existence of the AIA policy when he was asked to fill out the application to Lloyds of London. After a thorough investigation, Marshall noted that it appeared that Raymond Chow might have been the one who ordered the AIA policy. Did this mean that Chow was responsible for the double indemnity? And whose idea was the $1.5-million? On the initial proposal form both the date and amount of insurance were missing. Why was this? And had anyone at Lloyds mentioned the nonpayment clause for death resulting from the insured own criminal act? It had been ruled that Bruce had died from taking Equagesic, which was a prescription drug to which he did not have a prescription. Could this have been viewed as a criminal act? Lloyds hadn't mentioned it. Perhaps they hadn't even seen it.
Most peculiar of all, there was no record anywhere showing who exactly had paid for the first premium of HK$15,444 (US$3,285) on the Lloyds policy. Clearly Bruce hadn't paid it. Upon delving further into the matter, Marshall discovered that no one had paid it!
19 Jul 2018, 6:06 pm
