The strange death of Elisa Lam in the LA Cecil Hotel

Elisa Lam disappeared January 31 2013, Cecil Hotel, Los Angeles, California. Body found February 19, 2013.

Revised January 2024

Elisa Lam was a 21-year-old Canadian college student who was last seen alive in the Cecil Hotel in Los Angeles on January 31, 2013. Elisa was found dead in a water tank on the hotel’s roof on January 31, 2013, in mysterious circumstances. The police investigation and subsequent coroner’s report quickly dismissed the death as an “accidental drowning” misadventure despite a weird elevator video which they released.

Online detectives worldwide remain skeptical about the official version of events and have tried to piece together what may have happened. A chilling hotel surveillance video and many strange facts about the death have meant that many questions remain. Internet sleuths have posted thousands of articles and chat posts concerning theories as to what may have happened to Elisa in January 2013, but the truth remains uncertain.

The release of a Netflix documentary about Elisa Lam that premiered on February 10, 2021, further reignited interest in the strange death. The four-part series directed by Joe Berlinger was called “Crime Scene: The Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel”.

Elisa’s death was not the only strange event at the infamous Cecil Hotel.

Was the hotel evil and haunted by spirits? Was a serial killer involved? Was Elisa’s death just a case of misadventure caused by her bipolar condition and the prescription drugs she was taking, as the coroner believed?

The story of Elisa Lam and the elevator video is among the most chilling in recent years.

Netflix Documentary Trailer

From housing serial killers to untimely deaths, the Cecil Hotel in Downtown Los Angeles is known to many as LA's deadliest hotel. The latest chapter in the Cecil's dark history involves the mysterious disappearance of college student Elisa Lam. Check in to the Cecil Hotel on February 10, only on Netflix.

Who was Elisa Lam?

Elisa, Yinna, sarah lam — Sarah, Elisa and Yinna Lam

22-year-old Elisa Lam (Chinese: 藍可兒; Lam Ho-yi) was born on April 30, 1991, to David and Yinna Lam, both of Chinese origin.

She was studying at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, where she was a student in the College of Arts.

She had one sister, Sarah, to whom she was reportedly close, and both still resided with their parents in Vancouver.

They were a bit wary when Elisa told her parents she wanted to take a trip down to the American West Coast and experience that part of the world alone. In the end, David and Yinna relented but insisted that she call them daily.

Elisa’s arrival in LA and the stay at the Cecil Hotel

Cecil+Hotel+LA+Elisa+Lam — Cecil Hotel, Skid Row, Los Angeles

On January 26, 2013, Elisa Lam arrived on an Amtrak train in Los Angeles (LA). She had traveled from San Diego and was on her way to Santa Cruz.

She checked in at the Cecil Hotel, on 640 S Main St, Los Angeles, CA 90014, in the notorious Skid Row area of LA on January 28. The area was considered relatively unsafe and was well known for its large homeless population and high crime rates. The hotel had 14-floors with 700 guest rooms.

She was due to check out on December 31, and Elisa’s parents, David and Yinna Lam, became worried when her usual regular phone call to them didn’t happen.

History of the Cecil Hotel

The Cecil Hotel opened in 1927. It was designed by Loy Lester Smith and built by hotelier William Banks Hanner. In February 2017, the Los Angeles City Council voted to make the Cecil a Historic-Cultural Monument because it represents an early 20th-century American hotel and the historic significance of its architect's work.

The hotel was infamous for many disturbing events. In 1947, the murder of actress Elizabeth Short, also known as the “Black Dahlia,” was reportedly seen drinking at the hotel bar in the days before her murder. In 1985, Richard Ramirez, the serial killer called “Night Stalker,” lived on the hotel's top floor. In 1991, Austrian serial killer Jack Unterweger, also known as the “Vienna Strangler”, stayed at the hotel.

In 2011, new management created a new hotel on the site called “Stay on Main”, referencing its location on Los Angeles South Main Street. Particular floors were only for Stay on Main residents, whilst permanent tenants and residents at the Cecil used other floors. A separate lobby area was created for the two parts of the building.

In 2014 and 2016, the hotel underwent more changes before closing in 2017. That same year, Los Angeles landmarked the building. In 2019, developers announced it was undergoing renovations, and on December 13, 2021, the hotel was reinaugurated as an affordable housing complex.

The search and the Elisa Lam Elevator video

After the Lam family didn’t hear from Elisa as planned, they contacted the Los Angeles Police Department on February 1 to report her missing. They also quickly got on a plane to travel to LA to help the authorities locate her.

The Hotel manager, Amy Price, said Elisa was initially booked in a shared room with others on the 5th floor. However, complaints of “odd behavior” from her roommates forced the hotel to move Elisa to a private room after two days. The nature of this behavior has not been elaborated. The hotel confirmed that staff or other guests had seen Elisa on January 31, but not after that.

At a nearby shop oddly called “The Last Bookstore”, the owner, Katie Orphan, remembered Elisa buying books and music.

The police searched the Cecil Hotel and Elisa’s room and had sniffer dogs deployed, including the rooftop, but they were unsuccessful in detecting her scent.

On February 6, a week after Elisa was last seen, the LAPD decided more help was needed. Flyers with her image were posted in the neighborhood and online.

On February 15, they released a bizarre 4-minute surveillance video taken from a camera located in one of the Cecil Hotel’s elevators on February 1, 2013.

The video showed Elisa acting very strangely, and it ignited speculation as to what happened to her and why she was behaving like this before she disappeared.

At the start, Elisa is seen in a red zippered hooded sweatshirt over a gray T-shirt, with black shorts and sandals. She enters the elevator from the left and goes to the control panel, hitting a few buttons and then steps back to the corner. After a few seconds during which the door fails to close, she steps up to it, leans forward so her head is through the door, looks in both directions, and then quickly steps back in, backing up to the wall and then into the corner near the control panel. The door remains open and then she walks to it again and stands in the doorway, leaning on the side. Suddenly she steps out into the hall, then to her side, back in, looking to the side, then back out. She then steps sideways again, and for a few seconds she is mostly invisible behind the wall she has her back to just outside.

Her right arm can be seen going up to her head, and then she turns to re-enter the elevator, putting both hands on the side of the door. She then goes to the control panel, presses the buttons again, some repeatedly, and then returns to the wall she had come into the elevator from, putting both hands over her ears again briefly as she walks back to the section of wall she had been standing against before.

She turns to her right and begins rubbing her forearms together, then waves her hands out to her sides with palms flat and fingers outstretched, while bowing forward slightly and rocking gently. This can all be seen through the door, which remains open. After she backs to the wall again and walks away to the left, and the door finally closes.

Several theories tried to explain her actions. One was that Elisa was trying to get the elevator car to move in order to escape from someone who was following her, that she had taken recreational drugs, that she was playing a game of some kind or that she was suffering a bipolar episode.

In one of the frames, there appears to be a shoe in the corridor outside the elevator, which is not Elisa’s, but the visual is so fuzzy it is difficult to know for sure.

Other viewers believed that the video had been tampered with - the timestamp had been obscured and elements seem to have been slowed down. Almost a minute of the footage appears to have been removed. But this may have because someone else entered the elevator who was not relevant or something else took place which the police didn’t want to share with the public.

Discovery of the body

cecil-hotel-roof-elisa-lam — Cecil Hotel roof top

Cecil Hotel roof top water storage tanks

Water tanks Elisa Lam Cecil Hotel — Cecil Hotel water storage tanks where Elisa Lam was located

On February 19, 2013, two weeks after the video was made public, a maintenance worker at the hotel, Santiago Lopez, found a dead body floating in one of the four 1,000-gallon (3,785 L) tanks providing water to guest rooms, a kitchen, and a coffee shop.

He had headed to the hotel roof to check the water tanks after complaints from hotel quests that there was low water pressure and that the tap water had a strange taste and smell. The cause of this foul-smelling and tasting water was now very clear!

Police and fire service personnel quickly attended the scene and entered the water tank. It was drained completely and then cut open from the side to remove the corpse. It was naked, coated with a "sand-like particulate" and with clothing similar to what Elisa was wearing in the elevator video. Her watch and room key were also found in the water tank.

The body was greenish in color, moderately decomposed, and bloated. There was no evidence of physical trauma, sexual assault, or suicide. The remains were confirmed to be Elisa by one of the parents, together with the clothing and other items.

Elisa Lam Autopsy

The autopsy did not show any evidence of foul play. Still, the coroner’s office noted that they were unable to do a complete examination because they could not examine her body thoroughly because of the effects of decomposition.

There was blood in Elisa’s anal area, and her rectum was also prolapsed. Whether this was decomposition or a result of sexual activity was not able to be determined.

The toxicology report as part of the autopsy confirmed that Elisa had consumed several prescription drugs, likely to be medication for her bipolar disorder - Wellbutrin, Lamictal, Seroquel and Effexor. According to her family, who supposedly kept her history of mental illness a secret, Lam had no history of suicidal thoughts or attempts. There was also no alcohol or illegal substances in her body.

It appeared that Elisa had taken at least one antidepressant the day she died, taken a second antidepressant and mood stabilizer recently, but not that day, and she had not taken her anti-psychotic medication recently for her bipolar condition. Therefore, it seems her medicine compliance was hit-and-miss at best.

Could this have caused her strange behavior in the elevator? Did it cause her roommates to complain to the hotel when she was initially booked into one of the shared rooms, given her reported anti-social actions?

Aftermath - legal action

In September 2013, David and Yinna Lam filed a wrongful death suit against the Cecil Hotel. The Lams’ attorney stated that the hotel had a duty to “inspect and seek out hazards in the hotel that presented an unreasonable risk of danger to [Lam] and other hotel guests.”

The hotel defended the suit, filing a motion to dismiss it. The hotel’s lawyer argued that the hotel had no reason to think that someone would be able to get into one of their water tanks.

Based on court statements from the hotel’s maintenance staff, the hotel argued they were not liable for misadventure. Santiago Lopez, who found Elisa’s body, said that he took the elevator to the 15th floor of the hotel before walking up the staircase to the roof. Then, he turned off the alarm, which would trigger if the door to the roof was opened and climbed up on the platform using a fixed ladder where the hotel’s four water tanks were located. Then, he had to climb another ladder to get to the top of the main tank, where the body was found when he opened the hatch on the top.

Lopez said, “I noticed the hatch to the main water tank was open and looked inside and saw an Asian woman lying face-up in the water approximately twelve inches from the top of the tank”.

The hotel’s Chief Engineer, Pedro Tovar, said it would have been difficult for anyone to access the rooftop without triggering the alarm. Only hotel employees would be able to deactivate the alarm properly. If it were triggered, the sound of the alarm would reach the front desk and the entire top two floors of the hotel. However, some have stated that the alarm may have been turned off on the day that Elisa accessed the roof.

Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Howard Halm ruled that the death of Elisa Lam was “unforeseeable” because it had happened in an area that guests were not allowed to access, and the lawsuit was subsequently dismissed.

Other strange facts about the Elisa Lam story

The 2002 horror film Dark Water and its remake in 2005 has a striking similarity to the Lam story. “In the final stages of a messy divorce, Yoshimi struggles to build a new life for herself and her daughter. Unfortunately, the challenges of single parenting and an ongoing custody battle are further complicated when they move into an apartment plagued by mysterious water leaks and haunted by the apparition of a little girl.”

Unanswered questions and puzzling facts about the Elisa Lam case

How did Elisa get on the roof of the Cecil Hotel and into the tank? The doors and stairs that access the hotel's roof were apparently locked by staff, with an alarm. However, the hotel's fire escape could have allowed her to bypass this, and a video on YouTube showed that the hotel's roof was easily accessible via the fire escape and that two of the lids of the water tanks were open.

All four roof tanks are 4-by-8-foot (1.2 by 2.4 m) cylinders on concrete blocks with no fixed access, and hotel workers had to use a ladder to look at their lids, which were heavy and difficult to lift. Sniffer dogs on the roof did not detect Elisa.

Was the lid of the tank in place or not? There was some confusion about the lid on the water tank, as police initially said at the time of Elisa’s discovery that it was closed. However, maintenance worker Santiago Lopez said at the September 2013 lawsuit hearing that the lid was open.

What happened to her phone? Elisa’s phone was not found either with her body or in her hotel room. Where is it?

Was Elisa sick with tuberculosis? Some believe that Lam may have been ill with TB since there was an outbreak around the time of her death that affected thousands of people in the area near the Cecil Hotel. The test to identify tuberculosis is called LAM-ELISA. But her autopsy showed no evidence of tuberculosis in her lungs.

What caused the blood in Elisa’s anal area and her rectum to be prolapsed? Was it decomposition or something more sinister?

Updates

The Cecil Hotel manager at the time of Elisa’s death, Amy Price, wrote a new memoir published in October 2023, "Behind the Door: The Dark Truths and Untold Stories of the Cecil Hotel”.

The description reads, “When Amy Price took a temporary design job at an Art Deco hotel in Los Angeles to help a friend, she had no idea the path it would lead her down. Before long, she would become manager of the Cecil Hotel, seeking to make it more welcoming and correct its notoriety, not helped by sitting at the foot of Skid Row or the fact that since its opening in 1927, there had been any number of deaths by suicide, and residents such as serial killers Richard Ramirez and Jack Unterweger.

She cared about guests and residents alike, though she faced challenges on many fronts, with over eighty people dying during her decade of service. Among them was Elisa Lam, whose tragic death became the subject of a Netflix documentary series that captivated millions and led to its own controversies and unwarranted personal attacks on Amy.

For the first time, Amy delves into her experiences at the Cecil Hotel. Equal parts memoir, true-crime, and cultural history, Behind the Door is essential to understanding one of America’s most enigmatic hotels.”

In the book, Price stressed there was no mystery. "I couldn’t have been more involved with the case from the beginning," Price explained. "I can say 100 percent in confidence that there is no conspiracy to Elisa Lam’s death. I know exactly in my mind what happened because I was there every step of the way. I worked with the police. … I wish there was a little bit more focus on mental illness than the conspiracy theories."

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