The True Story of Elisa Lam And The Cecil Hotel

For years the Cecil Hotel has been the hotel of nightmares, from ghost stories to bad residents, it's not a premier hotel that guests are dying to stay at. However, no story is more daunting than that of Elisa Lam who sent shock waves through the media. Elisa's disappearance was so shocking that there was even a Netflix documentary made from the story. If you have been living under a rock and still don't know the story or just want more details about it, then read through this gallery and find out more about the Cecil Hotel and its many secrets and conspiracies. 

In January 2013, a curious event happened at the Cecil Hotel. Elisa Lam, a Canadian college student checked into the downtown Los Angeles hotel and was supposed to be there for three nights. 

Allegations of a conspiracy emerged on the internet regarding the case but before we jump to conclusions, it is crucial to examine the background of the Cecil Hotel itself. The Hotel is quite famous, and in 2013, the Cecil Hotel rightly got a lot of attention from the media after Elisa Lam was found dead there. 

The Los Angeles hotel has been famous in pop culture for a while now, and it was the inspiration for the fifth season of American Horror Story, the 1991 movie Barton Flink, and a host of other TV shows and movies. 

Even though it has lately become famous for wrongdoings and crime, the Cecil Hotel is an old, longstanding hotel that opened its doors all the way back in 1927. The construction of the hotel kicked off in 1924, and the establishment was officially opened as a low-budget hotel after three years.

Unfortunately, the Great Depression hit the US two years after the hotel was opened. Looking back at the history of the Cecil Hotel, one can't argue that the Great Depression contributed to the tragedies recorded at the Cecil Hotel.

In November 1931, about two years into the Great Depression, the first known death at the Cecil Hotel was recorded. This was the case of Percy Ormond Cook, a 57-year-old that shot himself in the head because he couldn’t reconcile with his family. 

The Cecil was a lush establishment when it first opened its doors but it quickly descended into a place for people who had run out of luck.

As a famous destination for sex workers, drug dealers, drug activities, and people into all sorts of illegal affairs, a significant number of violent crimes were reported at the Cecil Hotel. 

Richard Ramirez, also known as the Night Stalker, was a serial killer and deranged individual that terrorized Los Angeles for the better part of a year in the 1980s. He lived on the 14th floor of the Cecil Hotel in that period until he was eventually cornered by residents who’d seen his face in the newspapers in 1985.

It would eventually be revealed that the Night Stalker would return to the Cecil Hotel after his killing sprees. He’d rip off his bloodied clothes just outside the hotel, and would then proceed to his room in his bloodied underwear with blood on his face and fingers. 

A couple of years after the Night Stalker’s reign of terror had come to an end, another serial killer checked into the Cecil Hotel. Jack Unterweger checked in there in 1991 after he’d evaded conviction for murder in Austria in 1976.

Some say the reason the Austrian serial killer lodged in the Cecil Hotel is because he wished to emulate the Night Stalker’s methods by using the hotel as the base of his killing sprees. However, regardless of his motive for staying there, the fact remains that both serial killers lived in the hotel while committing multiple murders.

Long before Elisa Lam turned up dead at the Cecil Hotel, the place wasn’t exactly anyone’s favorite hotel to recommend to travelers because it had experienced a significant amount of violence over the years. As a result of all the unusual occurrences at the hotel, and the number of crimes that had been committed on the premises over the years, it became known as Hotel Death. 

The Cecil Hotel was known to have insanity within its walls thanks to an unusual guest list that featured murderers, prostitutes, and drug dealers. The hotel has had countless safety issues since it was opened in the 1920s as thousands of 911 calls were made from it over the years.

In 2011, a section of the Cecil Hotel became known as Stay on Main, with distinct reception areas during business hours. However, facilities remained shared, and the establishment’s official website was unchanged as thececilhotel.com. 

In 2017, a couple of years after the case of Elisa Lam’s death at the Cecil Hotel, the Los Angeles City Council voted to make the establishment a Historic-Cultural Monument in recognition of the place’s culture.

At the time of the tragedy, Elisa Lam was only 21 years old, and she was a college student at the University of British Columbia. We learned from a statement released by the Los Angeles Police Department that the Chinese-Canadian student got into Los Angeles via the Amtrak train from San Diego.

In January 2013, Elisa Lam arrived at the Cecil Hotel and stayed in the hostel-styled section with a couple of roommates. The hotel would however soon get a bunch of complaints that would then compel her to move into a room where she was all by herself.

About five days after she first checked into the Cecil Hotel, she was declared missing. Thanks to the call from Lam’s parents, the LAPD were alerted of the situation, and they quickly swung into action by visiting the hotel and doing a functional check of its surroundings with a couple of sniffer dogs.

During Lam’s short-lived stay at the Cecil Hotel, her known activity was limited. Some of the things we do know are that she changed her room once, visited a bookstore, and then returned to the Cecil Hotel before eventually disappearing for good.

For the most part, Lam was usually seen by herself in and around the hotel premises. However, at least one person saw her before she died, and that is Katie Orphan, the owner of the unusually named The Last Bookstore who remembered seeing Lam when she walked into her store to purchase some music and books for her folks back home in Vancouver. 

In the aftermath of her death, investigators found that Elisa Lam had attended the live taping of a show in Burbank just a couple of days before she disappeared. According to reports, she behaved strangely at that show as well, and she even reportedly sent the show’s host an unusual letter. 

Several weeks after Elisa Lam was declared missing, the police searched the hotel premises but there were no leads, and she remained missing. The police couldn’t search every room in the hotel because they needed probable cause to do so.

At one point in the viral CCTV video released by the police, Elisa appeared to be hiding from an unknown person. At another point in the video, she jumped into the corridor and appeared to be talking to someone, moving her hands like she was holding an intense conversation.

There’s little doubt in the minds of those that have seen the Elisa Lam elevator video that it is somewhat inexplicable and very strange. The nature of the video actually brought a lot of attention to the case across the world as its inexplicable nature made thousands of people curious about what was really happening.

In attempting to explain the video’s events, several postulations were made on the internet. Some internet users suggested she was trying to run away from someone but she couldn’t because the doors were held open by them.

Among the many possessions found in Lam’s hotel room were her prescription medications which all appeared untouched. According to her sister, she had a history of not taking her medications after she’d been diagnosed with an extreme form of Bipolar Disorder.

According to Dr. Judy Ho, a clinical/forensic psychologist interviewed for the Netflix series, Elisa Ham had Bipolar I, which makes individuals occasionally go into a psychotic state in which they’d experience disorganized thoughts, and their logic would fail to make any sense whatsoever.

A couple of weeks after Lam went missing at the hotel, a bunch of other hotel guests found that their water pressure had gotten low, and the water tasted bad as well. Guests complained that black water came out of their taps, and it had begun to taste funny too so a hotel caretaker was summoned to check the water tanks that lay on the rooftops. 

Once the autopsy was performed on Lam’s body, it was found that she was naked, but no indication of sexual assault was found on her body. The autopsy identified her cause of death as drowning but did little to douse the tension and all the questions that had emerged in the case.

Because the discovery of her body, and the eventual autopsy did little to answer all the questions people had, more speculations emerged in the wake of her autopsy. It was however revealed that she was suffering from depression, and she’d also been diagnosed as a bipolar patient.

Looking at the Elisa Lam case, lots of internet rumors and circumstantial evidence contributed to the belief held by many that Lam had been murdered by an unknown person. 

Because Lam might have suffered a psychotic episode after she stopped taking her medication, she must have found an open tank and climbed into it by herself in a confused state. That was the story some were telling at least.  

Several months after their daughter’s body was found in a hotel tank, Elisha Lam’s parents, David and Yinna Lam, filed a wrongful death suit against the management of the Cecil Hotel. Their attorney alleged that the hotel ought to have inspected and ensured standards at the hotel, especially those that posed an unreasonable risk of danger to their daughter and other guests.

As the events at the court progressed, it became apparent that the hotel’s argument wasn’t far-fetched because the man who found her body, Santiago Lopez, described the considerable effort he had to make to find her body.

According to Pedro Tovar, the Chief Engineer of the Cecil Hotel, accessing the rooftop of the hotel, where the tanks can be found is difficult for non-employees because climbing the roof triggers the alarms.

Right in the middle of the Elisa Lam investigation at the Cecil Hotel, LAPD helicopters shined their lights on the hotel roof without finding anything. They were slated to continue their inquiry the next day but then former LAPD officer Christopher Dorner embarked on a 9-day killing spree

It was eventually concluded that the tank's heavy lid was open before Lam managed to get in, as it would have been impossible for her to access them if the heavy lid was locked. 

With Lam’s history of mental illness, tendency to not use her medication as directed, and mental breakdowns in which she’d appear to talk to an unknown person, we can conclude that she believed someone was after her that night.

While so many questions remain unanswered about the case of Elisa Lam’s death, one thing that remains crystal clear is the fact that the root cause of it all is her mental illness. The case emphasizes the danger of mental illness, which is really all we can blame for her tragic death.

Dark Water is a 2005 American horror movie that stars Jennifer Connelly. It was adapted from a 2002 Japanese movie of the same name, and in the two movies, a young mother found discolored water coming out of the faucets after moving into a new apartment. 

As suspicion mounted in the wake of the discovery of Elisa Lam’s body, a metal musician was suddenly tossed in the middle of the case. Pablo Vergara, also known as Morbid, got the attention of internet sleuths, who looked into his music videos and made some intriguing discoveries.

When all was said and done, the suspicion and resentment that had grown towards Morbid waned off because it was found that he wasn’t even in the US during the timeline of the events that led to Elisa Lam’s death, and the eventual discovery of her body in the water tank.

In what was really nothing more than a coincidence, the city of Los Angeles recorded a tuberculosis outbreak that particularly affected the Skid Row homeless community close to the Cecil Hotel. A test for tuberculosis was rolled out, and it was essentially Elisa Lam’s name written backward. 

Lots of crazy theories surrounded the Elisa Lam case, but few were as remarkable and ludicrous as the tuberculosis one. The proponents of this theory thought Lam was meant to help the government control the population of homeless people

Dark Water wasn't the only form of media connected to Lam, the plot of the 2018 horror film Followed features Elisa Lam's case, and it shows the famous elevator footage, but rather than following the story to the letter, the body was found in the hotel basement in this case.

One piece of information that really adds to the speculation of this case is the fact that critical pieces of information, like Lam's rape kit and fingernail kit results, were never posted. This leads people to believe they weren't processed correctly. 

One particular piece of evidence that has yet to be explained is how Elisa's phone was never found. It wasn't on her person when she was found, and although the entire hotel was searched, her phone never came up. 

In the end, the death of Elisa Lam at the Cecil Hotel was officially ruled as an accidental drowning. The Los Angeles County Department of Medical Examiner-Coroner concluded that Lam suffered from bipolar disorder and that her death was likely the result of an accidental drowning, potentially as a result of a manic episode.