Eight years ago, the naked and bloated body of a young Canadian woman was discovered in a water tank on the rooftop of a downtown Los Angeles hotel, three weeks after she had been reported missing.
The daughter of immigrants from Hong Kong, and a student of the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, 21-year-old Elisa Lam was traveling alone on a trip down America’s west coast when she decided to stop in L.A. and stay at the once opulent Cecil Hotel.
Shortly after Lam arrived, she abruptly vanished. She was last seen at the hotel on Jan. 31, 2013, and her disappearance launched authorities into a weeks-long search.
Then, on Feb. 19, 2013, the tourist’s body was recovered from a water tank on the rooftop of the historic hotel.
A coroner later ultimately ruled her death an accidental drowning. Lam had been previously diagnosed with bipolar disorder, and that the medication she was taking at the time could’ve been a factor, the officials ruled at the time.
But the case did not end there.
Before Lam’s body was found she had been missing for weeks, L.A. police released video from a hotel elevator that showed her acting strangely in the hours before her disappearance. She can be seen stepping into the elevator and pressing multiple buttons, then peeking outside. Later, she steps out of the elevator and waves her arms, but no one else is ever shown in the video.
While the case is officially closed, it continues to intrigue folks. Lam’s death also added to the Cecil Hotel’s eerie history.
The 600-room building, built in the 1920s, was once a popular destination for the rich and famous in the 1930s and 1940s. But it later became known for crime and murder and was even a temporary home for serial killers Richard Ramirez and Jack Unterweger.
As the decades dragged on, an increasing number of crimes took place there, including numerous murders. It was ultimately dubbed the “death” hotel.
Lam’s mysterious death, and the other tragedies surrounding one of L.A.’s oldest hotels, are the focus of an episode of the new Netflix documentary series ‘Crime Scene: The Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel,’ directed by Joe Berlinger of ‘Conversations with a Killer: the Ted Bundy Tapes.’
The four-part series will be released Feb. 10, 2021.