Cecil Hotel

Elisa Lam and The Cecil Hotel

Oral presentation by: Raquel Pinto 12ºG Nº26

Index

5. Video

1. Cecil Hotel (History)

2. Reputation

6. Discover of the body

3. Elisa Lam

7. Other issues

4. Background and disappearance

Cecil Hotel

• Centre of Los Angeles, California, in Main Street, opened on December 20, 1924;
• 5 years after de opening, Los Angeles sank into the Great Depression and, the decades beyond saw the hotel decline, as Skid Row became increasingly populated;
• In 2007, a portion of the hotel was refurbished after new owners took over from there;
• In 2011, part of the Cecil Hotel was rebranded as "Stay on Main", with separate reception areas during the day, but with shared facilities;
• In February 2017, the Los Angeles City Council voted to deem the Cecil a Historic-Cultural Monument.

Reputation

• 1st suicide: evening of June 22, 1927, Percy Cook, 52, shoot himself in the head;
• 2nd suicide: 1931, W. K. Norton died in his room after taking poison capsules;
• Started to get referred as “The Suicidal” and at least, 13 suicides occurred;
• Notorious rendezvous spot for adulterous couples, drug activity and a common ground for sex workers;

• In 2015, Hadley Meares claimed that in 1947, Elizabeth Short, (Black Dahlia), was seen drinking at the Cecil's bar days before her notorious and unsolved murder;
• In 1964, a retired telemarketer named "Pigeon Goldie" Osgood, who had been a well-known long-term resident at the hotel, was found dead in her room;
• 1980s, the hotel may have been the residence of serial killer Richard Ramirez, nicknamed the "Night Stalker";
• Another serial killer, Austrian Jack Unterweger, stayed at the Cecil in 1991, possibly because he sought to copy Ramirez's crimes.

Elisa Lam

• Elisa Lam was born on April 30th 1991 in Vancouver, Canada;
• She studied at University of British Columbia in Vancouver;
• Elisa had depression and bipolar disorder 1;
• These mood swings can affect sleep, energy, activity, judgment, behaviour and the ability to think clearly;
• She was medicated with Wellbutrin, Lamictal, Seroquel and Effexor;
• Elisa talked about her feelings on her blog “Nouvelle-Nouveau” on Tumblr;

Background and disappearance

• The LAPD searched the hotel to the extent that they legally could;
• They searched her room and had dogs go through the building and rooftop, but the canines didn´t detect her scent;
• February 6 the LAPD decided they need more help, so they posted flyers with Elisa face on it.

• One day, Elisa decided to go for a trip to California and travelled alone on Amtrak and intercity bus;
• January 26 arrived to Los Angeles and 2 days later she checked into the Cecil Hotel;
• February 1, the day of the check out, she didn´t so they started to get worried and called the LAPD;

Disappearence

• Conspiracy theories about the video:

• 1º- Lam was trying to get the elevator car to move in order to escape from someone who was pursuing her;

• 2º- she might be under the influence of ecstasy or some other party drug, but none was detected in her body;

• 3º- she was having a psychotic episode;

• 4º- video had been tampered with before being made public.

• February 15, the LAPD released a video of Elisa on the Cecil´s elevator;

Body dicover

• During the search for Elisa, the guests at the hotel started to complain about the water;
• Morning of February 19, Santiago Lopez, a hotel maintenance worker, found her body;
• February 21, the Los Angeles coroner's office issued a finding of accidental drowning, with bipolar disorder as a significant factor;
• Lam's body had been found naked; clothing similar to what she was wearing in the elevator video was floating in the water, coated with a "sand-like particulate";
• Was moderately decomposed and bloated;
• Investigators and experts have however noted that the concentration of her prescription drugs in her system indicated that she was under-medicating or had stopped taking her medications recently;

Other issues

September 2013, Lam's parents filed a wrongful death suit. The hotel argued it could not have reasonably foreseen that Lam might have entered the water tanks and since it remained unknown how Lam got to the water tank, no liability could be assigned for failing to prevent it. In 2015, the suit was dismissed.

The investigation had determined how Lam died, but did not initially offer an explanation as to how she got into the tank in the first place;

How she got on the roof, others asked if she could have gotten into the tank by herself. All four tanks were 4-by-8-foot (1.2 by 2.4 m) cylinders propped up on concrete blocks;

The hotel employee who found the body said that the lid was open at the time, removing the issue of how she could have closed the lid from inside;

The autopsy report and its conclusions were also questioned based on the incomplete information; does not say what the results of the rape kit and fingernail kit were or even if they were processed.;