Bruce Lee’s former companion gives rare account of his final night

Betty Ting Pei, the actress at the center of Bruce Lee’s sudden death in 1973, gave a rare and emotional interview for Part 3 of TVB’s documentary series “Ctrl+F The Truth” reexamining Lee’s passing, which aired on Wednesday. Ting, now 78, described in detail the night the martial arts icon died at age 33 in her Kowloon Tong apartment and broke decades of silence about her role in one of cinema’s most debated tragedies.

Ting shared that Lee arrived at her home at 5 p.m. after a long day of rehearsals and meetings. She noted that Lee complained of a headache at 7 p.m. and took a painkiller she provided. He lay down to rest but never woke for dinner with producer Raymond Chow. Chow called to check on their whereabouts and Ting tried to wake Lee with no success. Chow arrived around 9:45 p.m. and also could not rouse him. Ting’s doctor called for an ambulance around 10 p.m. Lee was pronounced dead at Queen Elizabeth Hospital. “They said I poisoned him. But it was just a headache pill. Why am I the one blamed?” Ting said.

Ting explained that Chow had instructed her to wait for his arrival before calling emergency services. She admitted she panicked and was unsure what to do. Chow thought the situation might resemble an earlier episode in May 1973 when Lee briefly fell into a coma but recovered. “I was 26 years old at the time and the man adored by millions died in my bed. I became the enemy of the public,” Ting said.

Ting said she met Lee in 1970 through Raymond Chow and that Lee pursued her despite being married to Linda Lee. “The whole world loved him. It would have been strange if I didn’t,” Ting said. Lee was drawn to her honesty and straightforwardness. Ting became inseparable from Lee and accompanied him to meetings and picked out his clothes. On set staff called her “Little Dragon Girl” for her constant presence at Lee’s side. Ting recalled taking Lee for haircuts during the filming of “The Way of the Dragon” in 1972.

After Lee’s death, rumors spread that Ting had given him poison or an aphrodisiac. She denied the accusations and said she had never even heard of those drugs. Ting initially denied the ambulance’s origin and her romantic involvement with Lee following Chow’s and Lee’s family’s wishes. “I felt I had no right to speak out,” she said.

A coroner later concluded Lee likely died from cerebral edema possibly due to an allergic reaction to a common painkiller. Ting stressed the medicine was one Lee and her own family had taken before. “Frankly, even if the medicine caused it, what could I have done? I didn’t create the drug.”

Ting said the trauma of that night still lingers and she checks on her daughter at night to make sure she is breathing. She expressed a spiritual view of Lee’s fate: “Beloved artists often have short lives like Teresa Teng Leslie Cheung Anita Mui. People who are hated like me live on. That’s not my will, not yours, it’s heaven’s will.”

Recent medical reports have cast doubt on the original cause of Lee’s death suggesting possible genetic factors or epilepsy since Lee’s father and brother also died while resting. Experts on the TVB program questioned if Equagesic was the true cause and noted Lee’s earlier fainting spells and seizures. “His symptoms before were almost identical. We cannot rule out a chronic problem” Dr. Lee Hei said.

The program left open the possibility that Lee’s death remains an unresolved medical mystery.