Elisa Lam and the Cecil Hotel Tragedy

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Hello delicious friends and welcome to Who Did What Now, the history podcast that's not your history class, with me your host Katie Charlewood, history harlot and reader of books. Speaking of books, I am in my hotel room. I have just performed at the Redline Book Festival in Dublin in Tala and I was at the Civic Theatre and I was having a think and it's roughly like a whole year since my first live show and my friend was at my first live show actually and was at this one and he was telling me like the difference between then and now like like everything from like the structure or the confidence like the difference is it's like a much better like live show which i'm so proud of and so thankful for because it means i actually do learn as i go on yay but yeah i was at the redline book festival uh even though my book isn't out till like 20 26 but they were like we wanted to preempt it and bring you in um which is like so exciting and lovely and shows a strange amount of faith in me from people who don't know me but i had such a good time and it's like each show i do just feels like so much better than the previous like i feel like i'm really getting into the stride of it and so like I'm really excited about the US till next year like once I get things locked in if venues would get back to me ah I wish I had a two-hour manager because honestly trying to organise this is so hard especially with everything else I'm doing there's just so much going on but yes I'm organising that and then I'm in Dublin next week and again like I'm all over the shop and I'm performing here there and everywhere but you may be looking at this episode and thinking this is not her usual content because this seems fairly recent in comparison yeah yeah i decided to do a wee break of the norm i'm still talking about horrible history it's still a horrible thing that happened it's just a little bit more recent the recent past but it's there and i'm consistently asked about it like i mentioned it once because i was talking about Misinterpretations of ghosties and ghoulies and spooky mysteries. I can't love a mystery as much as an ex-person, but I'm far too neurodivergent for that, and so I have to ruin everyone's fun. And also I don't feel like making fun. about the tragic death of a woman and I just don't, I don't find that a good thing, you know. And I like to clarify things and right some wrongs because that's just who I am as a person. And so I'm going to be debunking a few things. I'm going to be telling the facts as they are. And I know what you're thinking. You're thinking Katie. Quit your jibble-jabba and fact me. In fact you I will, but first we've got to get our source on. Our sources are The Strange Death of Elisa Lam by David Mickelson, L.E. Hotel where body was found in water tank has long done Mark History by Mark Memmott. The Suicide, The Hotel Cecil and the Mean Streets of L.A.'s Notorious Skid Row by Hadley Mears. The Dark Past of the Cecil Hotel by Joshua O'Campbell. Elisa Lam, What Really Happened in the Cecil Hotel by Michael Bax. Crime Scene, The Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel documentary on Netflix. And of course we have... the elevator video, reddit and so on and so forth. Are you sitting comfortably? Good, then let's begin. Our story starts and, well, ends at the infamous Cecil Hotel, a building and establishment which has garnered an unsavoury reputation over the years, linking it to tragedy, trauma, travesty and Mysterious goings on. It is linked to dark and depraved tales of terror, as if the building itself is cursed. When in fact it's just location and economy. That's what created the dark history of the Cecil Hotel, which was briefly rebranded as the Stay on Main. Because they're trying to like... like PR change it but it it stopped doing what it was supposed to do it like wasn't able to keep running and obviously the terrible publicity which you know should actually have gotten it like more because like people do dark history tours all the time people are obsessed with the macabre you know so it should have done really well it was not doing really well and it it just had to close Now, the Cecil opened in 1924. Like, the whole purpose of it initially was, like, it was downtown. It was supposed to cater to businessmen. You know, men doing business in the city. Businessmen doing business. You know, it was that sort of whole scenario. Unfortunately... When the crash happened and the Great Depression hit, wasn't really a lot of businessmen to be holing up there in the Cecil. And so it changed its business plan. It thought instead of doing this, it was going to bring in these really low rates because people wouldn't just stay in a hotel for a night or two. It would bring in these really low weekly rates like rent. So that meant people who were on lower incomes, they could reside in the hotels instead of an actual apartment or house or whatever. And so as the depression really got worse and crime rates increased, downtown, well, that area of downtown anyway, becomes skid row. Downtown, where the guys are drips. Downtown, where they kick your schlips. Downtown, where relationships are no go. Down on Skid Row. Listen, I do not have the vocal quality to do that song, but I could not help myself. But yeah, Skid Row, it's where the people who are really suffering, the poor, the impoverished, the homeless, like that's where they're staying. They've got nowhere else to go. And with this Cecil being so situated, it becomes the go-to place for a lot of these people. And so the hotel on Skid Row, which caters to people on low incomes, becomes a place where people on low incomes are going to be. People who are living in this environment, people who are living in an area filled with crime, drugs, etc. This is where people are going to stay. And when you've got people in these high danger lifestyles, I say lifestyle, right? As if it's not just their life, as if this is not just how their life is turned out. Like, which could be a result very easily of just external factors. And so here they are, having to be here of all places. And so when you've got people in these high risk lives, staying in this one area, shockingly enough incidents are going to be a wee bit higher so they talk about like all of these deaths and stuff that happen in the Cecil Hotel and a lot of them are like deaths suicides overdoses and of course it gets worse because allegedly Richard stayed there when he was like hiding out from his murder spree you know the original night stalker so he stayed there so everyone's like oh he stayed there it's creepy and then of course you have the serial killer jack unterwinger unterwinger yeah he's like in the cecil garroting sex workers with their own lingerie And of course people like to like layer on the mystery and the darkness and the conspiracies and so there's like a rumor as well that that's where the Black Dahlia Elizabeth Short stayed they're like she was there too because again it was a cheap place to stay and she was notorious for like being broke and of course people like to add like to add an embellish on top of that as well You've got all these suicides that happen there where people who are already not doing well in their lives are in this place and they decide that this is the time that they are going to die by suicide. And you know I'm just going to give you a rundown of the deaths of the Cecil Hotel. So 22nd of January 1927 Percy Orman Cook dies by suicide. He's separated from his wife and he's just struggling. He deliberates for a week before finally ending his life. On the 19th of November 1931, W.K. Norton, under the name James Willies, he ends his life after a week in the Cecil after consuming poison capsules. In September 1932, Benjamin Dodich ended his life with a gunshot to the head. He was discovered by a maid, so we don't know the exact date of his death. On the 26th of July 1934, Sergeant Lewis D. Borden slit his own throat with a razor. He was unwell and the illness was too much for him, and so he decided to end his life on his own terms. In March 1937, Grace E. Magro falls or leaps. We're not sure whether this was... planned or an accident, but she falls from a ninth-story window and falls on telephone wires which wrap around her body and end her life. On the 9th of January 1938, Roy Thompson leaps from the roof and lands atop a skylight on the next building. In May 1939, Erwin C. Neblett swallows poison in his room. In January 1940, Dorothy Sager who sends herself into the hotel under the name Evelyn Brent, consumes poison. She writes to her family to let her know that she's planning on doing this. As a result she is discovered but she passes away in hospital on the 12th of January. So technically she didn't die in the Cecil but she died from the Cecil. In September 1944, this is a tough one so if you have a thing about babies or children, skip forward about 45 seconds. 19 year old Dorothy Jean Purcell, she's staying in a room with her boyfriend in the Cecil Hotel and she starts getting pains. Severe. pains she goes into the bathroom and gives birth alone and in a state of panic she throws her newborn baby umbilical cord still attached out of the window and so she gets charged with the murder of an infant but she gets assessed by three separate psychiatrists and they're like no she wasn't in her right mind when she did this she was mentally confused which she's 19 you Like her boyfriend's in the next room. She's just given birth. Like she's not with it. Like imagine the fear. Imagine how terrified you have to be to do something like that. Like how scared must you be for that to be your choice, to be the active decision that you make? Okay. In November 1947, Robert Smith jumps from a seventh floor window in the Cecil. On the 22nd of October 1954, Helen Gurney also leaps from a seventh floor window, except she lands on top of the Cecil's marquee. But she had also registered into the Cecil under a false name, Margaret Brown. On the 11th of February 1962, Julia Frances Moore leaps from the eighth floor room. and lands on a second story interior light well. On the 12th of October in 1962, Pauline Otten had has an argument with her estranged husband and throws herself out of a window. The 27-year-old woman hits a pedestrian before she hits the ground. She lands on 65-year-old George Giannini, who died instantly. Originally, the police thought this was like a double suicide, but George Giannini had his hands in his pockets as he was walking. And they were like, he would not have been able to do that. if they were both leaping out the window. On the 4th of June 1964, Pidgey Goldie Osgood was found raped, stabbed and beaten in her room. She was called Pidgeon Goldie because she used to go out and feed the buds out in the square. Her murder is unsolved. On the 20th of December 1975, a woman registered under the name of Alison Lowell jumps from the 12th floor window onto the second floor bath. On the 1st of September 1992, an African-American man who has still yet to be named, who was fallen or pushed from the hotel's 15th floor, landing in the alley behind the Cecil. June 13th, 2015, a 28-year-old man who has not been identified, passed away from falling from one of the Cecil's windows. And you may be thinking, well Katie, there's a mysterious death you haven't mentioned. Correct. The 19th of February 2013, the tragic and accidental death of Elisa Lott. If you want to keep believing in paranormal and dark and twisted conspiracies about her, you can just choose not to listen. But if you want to know the facts, then listen up delicious friends, because I've got a story for you. Also, in addition, furthermore, before I get into anything else about this... There is this whole idea of the Cecil Hotel being haunted and you actually see this repeated in media quite a lot. It's the inspiration for a lot of things. You see it sort of, it's the perfect place because lots of people coming and going, you know, a lot of deaths, you expect that sort of situation. But there's not really any like ghost sightings, like it's not like an old manor in England where they're like, oh the old lady, no, none of that. Which is weird because you would expect somewhere to have like such a high death rate for there to be like an inkling of a ghost somewhere, a ghost sighting. And it's weird as well because it's portrayed such a way in media. Like you see it in a lot of like books and TV shows. I'm going to talk about two ones that are right off the top of my head. One of which is there's an episode of Angel, which is I think when he goes to LA and he moves into this hotel and the hotel is haunted, like that's based on the Cecil. And then... you have American Horror Story Hotel. Like that's, that is, that's the Cecil, you know? And I think they actually filmed in there. But yeah, that's that. But the true horror of the Cecil Hotel does not lie in its mythology. It lies in its reality. And I'm going to say it, capitalism and cops not doing their job. And a company so desperate with protecting itself that it didn't let the facts out and created a conspiracy. But let us get back to the 19th of February 2013. The Cecil Hotel, it had been running as partially a hotel, partially a hostel. So it had some rooms which were like dorm rooms and some rooms were private rooms. They had permanent residents. They had like a whole lot going on. It was a relatively affordable place to stay if you were visiting L.A. And if you're OK with being on schedule, then you were fine there. So people could rent private rooms, you could have your own space or you could, you know, bunk with strangers. Hostel style. And then you've got entire floors which are specifically for the permanent residents. And this again is a cheap, cheap hotel. Like it's run down, a lot of stuff ain't working, it's... calling it a dump would probably be an improvement. And so the staff in the hotel are quite used to... receiving complaints from the guests consecutively one after another in a row but on this date there is a specific complaint not like oh there's ants in my room or the window's got a crack in it or the lock doesn't work no no no these aren't just like little tiny odd complaints this is the same complaint the same issue that resident upon resident upon guest is having There's something wrong with the water. So some are complaining that the water in the bathroom taps is coming out. black so it like starts off running like discoloured and then goes to normal. Others the water pressure is like really really low like it's not coming out properly and some some oh yeah uh I hope you got a strong stomach guys. Some people are saying that the water from the rooms is tasting weird like it's off like kind of sweet. And because the Cecil is getting just complaint after complaint about the water, they send the maintenance man Santiago Lopez up to the roof. And so he climbs to the roof of the hotel to have we look at the water tanks. Because see the Cecil has four water tanks on the roof. So like it's got one large one and three smaller ones. The large one is the main supply to the building and these water tanks are like Four foot wide, they're eight foot tall and they're up on these concrete blocks. So in order to actually get into the water tank or to get looking at it, you have to climb a ladder. And so he gets his ladder and he climbs up the main one because he's like, I'll start with the main one because that's probably the cause of the issue. And when he gets to the top of the tank, the hatch is open. It should not be open, but it was. Because that's actually a health and safety concern. Water tank hatches are not supposed to be open. It's not a thing. But it's open. And inside the tank. is the naked body of a woman and it was apparent that this body had been in the water for some time. I don't know if you've ever seen a waterlogged body. I have for reasons we're not going to get into it but that is not something you want to see. So typically when a body is found in water if it's been there for some time whether it's at sea or in a lake or whatever They do not allow you to have an open casket. Well, it's not advised. Like, you see it with Emmett Till, specifically because his mother wanted to show the world the barbarity of what had happened to her child. And even so, his body has not the worst waterlogging I've ever seen. It's bad. Also worsened by the fact that he was brutally beaten. But there are bodies when they're in water, it changes. It fills the cells is the best way I can describe it. So like in a plant, you give it water, its cells become strong, right? It builds the walls and makes it a structure. In a body, when the cells are filled with water, it makes them splishy and soft, right? That is the technical term, splishy and soft. But yes. the epidermis which is the outer layer of skin it blisters because again it sort of fills so it blisters and turns like a greenish black colour so like all over the body except for the feet and hands which become swollen and wrinkled and also bleached right so it's like when you've been in the bath for too long and you get pruney fingers like that but so much worse and the thing is as well If you've been submerged for a long time, when your body is, you know, submerged in water, when you die, your body fills with gas because it's decomposing, yeah? And so your intestines especially, you know, your chest cavity, they fill with gas and air and they make the body buoyant, which is why after like so many days, weeks, when a body is out at sea, when it's close to shore, things like that. when it's in a lake even, bodies float to the surface. It's why the mafia would do the concrete block thing, right? It's why you would weigh a body down with bricks because the gas makes it float to the top and so because the gas is in sort of the intestines and the gut and the chest cavity and all that area that's decomposing, that's sort of the balloon part of the body and that's why when bodies float to the surface they do so like upside down. So you see bodies kind of starfish, but their face is facing down into the water. Now, because of the way the tank is, for whatever reason, the body doesn't flip. Like it doesn't go face down. The body is face up. So when Santiago Lopez is looking into this tank. He is seeing a bloated, dead face of a woman looking back at him. And it's pretty clear that the cause of all the water issues currently happening in the Cecil Hotel is because of the decomposing body in the water tank. So emergency services are called to remove the corpse and they get there. And it's not as simple as just like hoisting the body out, because if they try and take the body out because it's decomposing and has been for some time, there's a possibility of sort of the joints of the bodies where things get weaker. It's why so many feet. are floating in the river. Was it over in like San Francisco? There's all these feet because that's the joint where things get weaker. So that's why so many sneakers and stuff, because they are buoyant at the bottom. That's why the feet are floating. And so they're worried if they take the body out like this, that parts of it are just going to fall off. And so they have to very carefully remove the body from the tank. Now, it's not just a body that's in the tank. The clothes of the woman are also in the tank with her. Now... These clothes that are floating alongside her in the tank, they are covered in a substance which may or may not be sand. Like it's literally described as a sand-like particulate. So they're like, maybe it's a substance that might be? Like. That's it. So obviously they eventually get the body out and they have to perform an autopsy. So when there is an unusual or possibly violent death, any unusual death has to be investigated. And so they have to perform an autopsy on, you know, a young woman's body that is floating in a water tank atop a hotel on Skid Row. That kind of fits those parameters. Now you could be forgiven for assuming that... a toxicology report wouldn't be possible for a body that had been submerged in water for three weeks. But you would be wrong because what they do is they'll not test in the bloodstream, they're actually testing the internal organs. So things like your liver, for example, which is what helps purify your body, like your kidneys, the liver really, really lasts and holds on to that information longer than, say, the blood would. So when they perform the autopsy and they do a toxicology report, it reveals that there are no recreational drugs in her system and there are no traces of barbiturates, opiates, amphetamines, cocaine, marijuana or MDMA. Zilch, zip, nada, nothing, right? And her blood alcohol level was only 0.2%, which is... Really, really typical for a body in this state of decomposition, which also shows that not only was there no recreational drugs in her system, but it meant that she didn't consume any alcohol, any booze on the day that she died. So no alcohol or recreational drugs in her system at the time of passing. And the body was also tested for signs of sexual assault and there were no signs of it. Now... Ah, yeah, here's the thing. And I'm only telling you this because people argue about it all the time, right? The woman in the water tank, she has a prolapsed anus. Now, some people will just be bumping their gums about how this is evidence of SA. However, I would argue that this is a just very typical. State of decomposition, especially for a body that has been submerged in water for three bloody weeks. Anyway, the woman in the tank has no other signs of physical trauma. There's no evidence to suggest that she was harmed or attacked in any physical manner. There are no injuries on the body. There are no defensive wounds. There is nothing to suggest even that she tried to get out of the tank. you know no chipped nails nothing like that and so the LA county coroner determines that the death of this young woman the cause of death was accidental drowning everything added up to that according to their investigation now it does take them I think four months to release that information to release the autopsy report and when they do release it it has like amendments and corrections because Yeah, they do tests, they do checks, and they've probably rechecked it a few times because of how high profile this case became, you see. So when it is released with its corrections and alterations, there's this massive theory of a huge cover up, right? When it's just people make mistakes. Consider it a little bit like when somebody goes to the doctor, right? When you go to the doctor. A lot of the time they'll test you for things in order to rule something out and you could have the symptoms that would lead you to think something is happening but it could be something else entirely. Like anyone who's ever used WebMD to try and determine what is wrong with them. Like I went on to WebMD, put in my symptoms and it was like you're having a heart attack which was fun. Um turned out I wasn't having a heart attack um I was pregnant and that was causing the same stressors in my body. So, you know, this is one of those things where, you know, a lot of the time when you go and you're being tested for something that you're not sure of, a lot of it is them just ruling things out. Like when you start getting headaches, the first thing they'll do is get you to get your eyes tested to make sure that it's not an ocular migraine that's caused by that. Like it's all these kind of things where... They think it might be something and they're testing things and they're double checking and they're fixing their mistakes. Yeah. So again, because of the release of how long it took them to do it. Yeah. Yeah. People, people, um, started putting on their tinfoil hats. Instead of maybe just considering that it was just a classification error, like, if the LA County Coroner was involved in some massive conspiracy and a multi-level cover-up, do you not think they would have done a better job at, you know, doing the autopsy report? Like, do you think they would have, like, scored stuff out and scribbled new bits in, or would they just not have made, like, a new autopsy? Like, a fresh one? and just got rid of the old one completely so there wasn't any evidence of it? Like, would that not be the smart thing to do? Are we not considering that maybe the people who do this for a living would be smarter in covering it up? No? And not to, like, put too sharp of a point on it there, but, like, this is not the only, like, suspicious slash unusual death that the LA County Coroner has to deal with. Like, it's LA County. there's going to be a fair few weird deaths, okay? There's going to be a fair few deaths to investigate. And I'm fairly certain, you know, that there's a considerable backlog in, you know, this type of profession. And yeah, you have to remember as well that at this time, this case wasn't such a big deal. It became a huge deal when the internet grabbed it and rolled with it. But at the time, this was just one body in a sea of bodies. you know that being said due to her body markings like they were able to identify her fairly quickly which is wild because like i think if if i had to be identified like without i don't know go to head or something yeah wow it would be like how would you do it well i've got the cancer scar the surgery scar i've got two of them on the side of my neck i've got two tattoos you I've got a scar on my left hand. Yeah, I've got a scar on my left hand from when I tried to pick up a broken piggy bank. Oh, I've got a mark on my stomach still from when I had to get a drip in my stomach. I've got that. And yeah, probably some freckles and moles that some very intimate people could tell you about. But yeah, I feel like my body would be fairly recognisable. But yes. Because of the very specific body markings, birthmarks, etc, the coroner's office was able to identify the body fairly sharpish. And the person who was found floating in the water tank of the Cecil Hotel was none other than Elisa Lam, a 21-year-old Canadian woman who had been reported missing three weeks previously. Elisa Lam had checked into the Cecil Hotel on the 29th of January 2013 and she was supposed to be staying there for three nights. This was part of her little trip around the west coast of the US. So she was on this little solo trip, she was going on public transport, so like buses, trains etc. And so she was stopping off at a bunch of cities along the way. So she arrived in the hotel, she checked into one of the dorms. So she's in a room with I think three other people and like it's sort of I want to say like a hostel situation so you kind of book a shared room and whoever you're lumped in there with you're lumped in there with and sometimes you get like very nice roommates and sometimes you get roommates who are not quite who you want to be sharing a room with. So Elisa she ends up being moved she gets upgraded to a single room, she gets moved to a room on her own after one night because her roommates complained to the Cecil Hotel management about her odd behaviour. And like that's a direct quote, their quote is odd behaviour. Now this is a hostel slash hotel on Skid Row. Like people are sharing dorms in Skid Row. Like you're not expecting much from that scenario. And here's the thing, I've shared hostels with some weird individuals, but like, how odd, quote, does someone's behaviour have to be in order for you to like, want to get them moved out of your room? Like, what are you doing? Like, that's a level of something if all of the other roommates are complaining. So the remaining two nights, she has her own room, okay? Now she... calls her family every single day of this trip like without fail she calls back home in Canada but on the what's supposed to be the last day of her stay, the day she's supposed to check out, the 31st of January, Elisa does not call home and straight away her parents David and Yuna, they file a missing persons report with the LAPD like right away. So when they do discover the body floating in the tank they already had Elisa on their system. It wasn't going to make it difficult for the LAPD to identify her. And the thing is as well, When she was reported missing because her last known address, her last known location was the Cecil Hotel, that was the first place the LAPD looked. Now, this is a bit of a sticky wicket because legally, there were only so many parts of the hotel they were able to investigate because it's a whole, like, legal situation. So because there are permanent residents and it's not just a hotel, like, if it's just a hotel... then the temporary rooms can all be searched. Fairly sharpish, right? But when you've got someone in a permanent address, I think an individual warrant is required for each of those sort of apartments, kind of. So like it's a whole, it's a whole legal rigmarole. So effectively, they're searching as much of the Cecil Hotel as they physically could. Like they even brought their dogs in. So the police dogs, they couldn't... pick up her scent like they weren't able to find it around the hotel which isn't hard because like that's that's an area where there's going to be a lot of a lot of smells going on there's going to be a lot of sensory overload for those dogs I think and also legally there were certain parts they couldn't go into so it wasn't exactly the most thorough of searches and clearly they didn't get up onto the roof because well they had no reason to assume the roof you And so without any like actual leads, the police get CCTV footage of Elisa Lam at the Cecil Hotel and it's on the 1st of February. It's recorded on the 1st of February, which was no, the 1st of February is the day she's supposed to check out the hotel. But yeah, she hadn't phoned her parents on the 31st and she was supposed to check out on the 1st. That's right, there we go, back on track. So yes. Hey y'all, spooky season is here, and if you're looking for a show to whet your appetite for a little haunted history, then I'd like to invite you to check out Southern Gothic, a chart-topping history podcast that explores some of the most infamous legends, folklore, ghost stories, and hauntings of the American South. We've covered all sorts of stuff from the Bell Witch of Tennessee to the disappearance of the Confederate submarine, the H.L. Hunley, not to mention our deep dives into the local lore of some of America's oldest and most haunted cities like New Orleans, Charleston, and St. Augustine. So if you're ready for a little good old-fashioned Halloween storytelling with a commitment to quality historical research, then be sure to check out Southern Gothic today. It's available now on all your favorite podcast apps. The elevator footage. Now this elevator footage. the lift if you will it it is what has caused such a commotion here because it's so weird and it's grainy old footage and the issue is right the reason the footage is grainy is because like many businesses the Cecil Hotel refused to upgrade its fucking camera equipment like here's the thing we've all seen like the doorbell cameras and stuff which has like like hd quality like imagery in 2013 there is absolutely no reason for cctv footage to be this grainy like it's literally just because they're so cheap they didn't want to upgrade it and you see this with a lot of businesses whenever you see like really shit cctv it's literally because it's a shit camera when it's not that expensive to have a higher quality camera like like my iphone has better like camera like it's fine my old iphone i have my iphone 11 right that has a better camera on it than most of these cctvs like that that should not be the case like it's not that expensive not for a business not for a fucking hotel Like not when, you know, safety and security should be a main priority, you know what I mean? But yes, this is something that sent the internet sloths up in a tizzy. It was all over Reddit, 4chan. It's something that I watched I remember back in the day because it was very unnerving and it's very it's creepy because we know what happens to her and that's what I think is the unnerving part of it but like if you watch this footage and you're told oh this is just a girl she's going to meet her family later in the day this is her in the lift right it's significantly less creepy so i'm gonna have to uh like describe this in this footage when i first watched it scaled like the crap out of me my hebe's well gibied let me tell you like absolutely 100% and so she's in the lift the elevator if you will and she's acting really fucking weird right she is she's kind of making weird movements she's pressing a lot of buttons And at one point she's like hiding and then popping out and like looking into the corridor, which we cannot really see into, by the way. We can only see the inside, really, of the elevator. And so she's kind of like pushing all the buttons and she's poking her head out and poking back in. And the thing is, to me, right, when I watch that, it looks like she's playing. Like it's as if you're doing peekaboo with someone. like like if there was a kid in the hallway and she was doing a little peekaboo and come back and like that makes sense to me like I know that people say that she looks like terrified and scared um but I don't I don't think she's scared I it just looks like she's kind of messing about right to me now I think you take from it what you put in it Like if you expect that it's going to be scary, you'll watch it and be terrified, you know? So yeah, when the LAPD release it, because they release the footage, because they don't have any leads, they're thinking maybe somebody sees what's going on. Because lest we forget, at this point in time, Elisa is simply a missing person. And so they want to find her. Like that is the whole purpose of releasing this tape. And if they're watching it and they think, eh, something's gone wrong here, they might be thinking, oh, what if somebody's chasing her? What if she's hiding from somebody? And so what if they do that? And so the LAPD, they release this CCTV footage like five days before her body is discovered. So the 13th of February, right? And they release it hoping that someone's going to recognise her or they're going to know where she's been and they're going to be able to find... this missing woman but no one comes forward no one notifies nothing happens however it does happen to go absolutely viral and remember this is a grainy ass bloody video it's it's crappy it's poor quality and because of the way it's recorded because like the numbers on the bottom people argue that like people are like suspicious about it and that they think that bits of it have been cut out and stuff and it's it's not it's just you a really really shitty quality like that's all it is so yeah she's in the elevator i should probably explain this better and she gets like really close to like the bit with all the buttons and she presses them like very particularly like she's very careful with it and she's very slow and deliberate like she's making very deliberate movements and she's not panicking she's not flurried she's just pressing all of these buttons like she's not whacking it or being flimsy she's just hitting all these buttons and then the lift doors elevator those doors don't close because normally you hit a button you press close door and they close now again i would like to reiterate that this is a very shitty hotel which doesn't even have quality cameras what makes you think it's gonna have a quality elevator? so she's pressed all these buttons the doors haven't closed and so she's kind of pacing she sort of walks around inside like steps to the front sort of kind of towards the door looks out looks down the corridor and then she's suddenly like boom so just back right as if she's hiding as if she's hiding and Alec steps out, looks through, looks down. comes back in and then she kind of goes into the corner of it and then moves to the side and like stuff and she's like pressing herself up against the wall like of the elevator and she's just kind of as if she's hiding right as if somebody goes past and they might not see her because she's right against the wall and then she does this wee little step this little side step which is a very a very like dancer movement it's like a little papa and that is a weird that's a very deliberate movement it's not again a panic movement it's a very deliberate you know and this whole movement this whole like thing that she's doing to me it looks like she's doing hide and seek right that's what it feels like to me like she's kind of messing about i find it very playful as opposed to like Scary. And then Elisa Lam actually goes out of the elevator, right? And like, you can't see what else is out there because of the way the camera is. You couldn't see if there was another person in the corridor, if there was another person in the corridor, because it looks like she's talking to someone, like she's, she's moving her arm. She's, it's as if she is talking to someone. But again, we don't have that information because it's a really... crappy camera and so it seems like she's chatting away to someone i'm like once she's like stepped out of the lift like the doors like open and close a few times which again i think it's just a shitty lift i think it's just a crappy crappy lift in a crappy building so this cctv footage from the 1st of february 2013 this is the last footage we have of elisa lam being alive now the last time she was physically seen by somebody was the day before the 31st of January. She had gone down to this bookshop owned by Kate Orfin. She had gone into the bookshop to buy like souvenirs for her family and some books and there wasn't anything suspicious about her behaviour. She wasn't acting odd or there was nothing that worried Kate Orfin. Elisa was chatty, she was bubbly. Her main area of concern was how difficult it was going to be to carry all these souvenirs back to her family because she wasn't just worried about what she'd already picked up. She was thinking about, you know, the next thing she picks up on her trip, next city she goes to, like how is she going to make sure she gets all of these things back to her family. I remember that was something they brought up in like therapy way back when. And it was future plans. Like having a future plan is something that keeps you like tethered to this earth. You know, it stops you from exiting the mortal coil. And Elisa was happy. She was planning her next steps of her trip. She was thinking about the souvenirs. Because remember, she is due to check out of the hotel the very next day. So she's thinking about what she's gonna do. But mental health, it's not a one-size-fits-all. And it's all too easy for the coin to flip. It's kind of how nervousness and excitement are two sides of the same coin. And mental illness isn't logical, it's not rational. And Elisa, she had a history of mental illness. She had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder. And the thing about bipolar is is it used to be called manic depression right and the reason being is you had these two polar opposites so you would have this very like low um this massive lull this deep depressive state and then on the flip side you would have this absolutely manic excited sort of drive where you could do something really wild you know you had these two very different um like states of being you And that's where the idea of manic depressive came in. And because of that polarisation between these two states of being is where we have the new term, really, of bipolar. So like two polar opposites, yeah? And Elisa, she had been dealing with treatment for this for a long time. And she was actually on, I think, four different medications. Maybe five. I think it was five. Then the vaccine, which is an antidepressant. Dextrine, which is a dextroamphetamine sulfate. which is used to treat ADHD, depression, narcolepsy, obesity and also to help reduce certain symptoms of schizophrenia. Lamotrigine which is a mood stabilizer and also used to treat acute depression. Quetiapine which is an atypical antipsychotic used for the treatment of bipolar, depression and schizophrenia. And Welbutrin. which is just another atypical antidepressant. So typically for like major depressive disorders. So basically she's on a collection of SSRIs and mood stabilisers specifically to manage bipolar disorder. And the whole purpose of these medications is to keep Elisa Lam on an even cue. Nothing more than that. Because like she wasn't known for having suicidal ideations, like that wasn't. like a part of her her known depressive states when she was in those depressive states which you know are part of heart and bipolar disorder and i see elisa is often listed as a student of the university of british columbia but she hadn't been registered for any classes in 2013 because like just before christmas in 2012 she had just stopped going to school because of just these severe depressive episodes you know it was very difficult for her and as such she just she just couldn't go it just wasn't something she was able to do and she was always very honest and open about her depressions like she posted about it on her tumblr like she was always very open and I think that's something that's very interesting with people who are online is sometimes you are so open like with this audience who don't see you then you are with the people who are closest to you in your life like you're so open to all of this and yet so private in another way but yeah she's very very honest talking about her bipolar disorder on her her little tumblr blog novelle niveau like she had one before that and then she just kind of got rid of it to do this and so it's it's you know her talking about her life being so honest and then also these like ruth wilson gifs and then you've got like fashion posts and stuff like that and um yeah i don't also want to blame the fact that she has bipolar disorder that she has a mental illness and as such like there's this blame on her or her family or anybody and also just because you have a mental illness because you live with a condition it doesn't automatically mean that you're gonna like run away from home or do something crazy like that's not a thing and you're not automatically more likely to do something terrible to yourself because you have a mental illness there are many people out there who do not have uh sort of conditions or disorders or mental illnesses who do terrible things to themselves all the time just because you know human nature makes people do shit sometimes you know so it's far too easy to just go well she has a mental illness so like let's not investigate like fucking no like rule out every other possibility absolutely but you have to rule out Every possibility. You have to consider what is true and what realistically happened. And yes, so she was prescribed all these medications. But when they did the toxicology report, there was none of that in her system either. Well, I say none. There was like traces of, I think, the mood stabilizer, but she had completely stopped taking. the antidepressants like there was a little bit of of one but none of the rest and so there definitely wasn't enough um as far as they could tell from the medicine that was left in her room it seemed as though she was trying to wean herself off and this is an issue with mental illness this is an issue with anybody who has to go through these these ebbs and flows is that you think for a while oh i'm doing really well If I'm doing really well, maybe I don't need my medicine. Maybe I don't need it. And then you don't take it. And then it flips something in your brain. And next thing you know, you're very unwell. And so when her parents see the way she's acting on this CCTV, this is not a way she's ever acted. So there's always the possibility that there has been some kind of break. And instead of her talking to a real person, and not a ghost either, by the way, that she's having some kind of... auditory or visual hallucination. And by the way that's an interesting thing is like you're more likely to have auditory hallucinations, like you're more likely to hear something that isn't there than you are to see something that isn't there. And remember she was acting in such an odd way that all of her roommates in her little dorm wanted her gone. So something, something isn't right here. And Alyssa, she posts everything on her blog, right? She posts these deep thoughts. She talks about the breakup she had with her boyfriend. She talks about how depression has been affecting her. And if she was planning to do something, if she was planning to end her life, like you can schedule Tumblr posts for like up to a year, like up to a year in advance. So if she was planning to do something, she probably would have blogged about it on her Tumblr and she would have sent like a digital suicide note. Like if this was a plan, if this was predetermined, if this was something she was looking to do, because you can do that, you can schedule it. And she had posts scheduled. So she had things reblogged like 13 months after her death. And this is why people were like. 30 months? Yeah, yeah, yeah, because when it was scheduled. And so people think that like, oh, it's spooky. She's talking to us beyond the grave. No, she just knows how to use a scheduler. And there was certain stuff she wanted to reblog. And it's all like, it's Valentine's Day. Here's a thing, you know, like there's, there's a reason for that. And yeah, if she was going to do anything, she would have blogged about it. there would have been something but another thing that makes people suspicious is like her phone is missing but again this is skid row if she lost her phone somewhere somebody picked it up right somebody picked up that phone because they're gonna sell it they're gonna use it they're gonna do something with it but yeah people complain that the reason her phone is missing is because it's a conspiracy yada yada no you lose a phone Skid Row, someone's nicking it. Now the big question that people ask when it comes to Elisa Lam and the Cecil Hotel is how the hell did she get up on the roof? Because it should not be accessible and staff are the only people that can get through the alarmed door. At least that's what the manager of the time, Amy Price, said. Over and over again she made it very clear that there was no access up to that roof and even Like, the guy who was running the hotel's alarm system, the engineer who was dealing with that, he's like, oh, the alarms are great, and they're in full working order. They're all tippity-top, aye-aye, Captain. Except, here's the thing. The roof was accessible by fire escape, which is one option, but also, loads of people, loads of people have come forward and said that they've been able to get to the roof. Like, there was even... and there was some dude I remember was staying in the hotel he filmed himself going up to the roof and getting onto it like going through the door now he was saying that he'd gone there by accident and he'd gone through the first time and so he filmed it you know and then staff members started coming forward saying that the door wasn't alarmed and the reason that they knew that is because they used to go up there for their smoke breaks and so it was like really easy to go on the roof you and because it'd been broken and it hadn't been fixed that yeah they were able to go do that. And here you have this woman who should not have made it up to the roof but as we know from all the videos that we've seen on YouTube and from all the testimony from ex-staff yeah fairly simple for her to get up on that roof. And then you have the next question how the hell did she get in the tank? Note First things first, something we have to cover again. I've said it before and I'll say it again. The hatch on the water tank was open. Again, it's reported that it was closed. Now, Santiago, the man who discovered Elisa's body, he didn't speak English. And the police officers did not think, you know, they did not think to maybe get a proper translator in. They didn't do their due diligence. They didn't do their jobs, right? And so when they interview him, right? They didn't know the hatch was open, but it was. And yeah, again, if you're trying to hide a body, right, people say like, it must be a member of staff because of how she got up on the roof, or ABC. And it's like, yeah, that's why they put it in a water tank that, you know, anybody would figure that bodies decompose, like, and stuff's going to go wrong with that water. But also, if you're hiding a body, and you don't want people to see it, wouldn't you close the lid of the tank like wouldn't you close the hatch it feels like step one you know but yes that's why people think it's foul play that's why they think that she was attacked because it's assumed even though it's it's not it's assumed that the lid of the tank was closed and it's Santiago Lopez who in his deposition states that When he finds her body, the hatch was open and Santiago Lopez, he needed a ladder to get into that tank because it's high up. It's high up and anybody who wanted to get in that tank, they would need the ladder. But in order to see into the tank, you would have to be like at the top of that ladder, right? So if you're on the roof and you're a staff member and you see a ladder there, like the ladder moved, you moved from tank to tank. or you moved it around the building when you needed it. So he had to go get the ladder, but it's been three weeks that her body's been in there. So over the course of that three weeks, chances are somebody needed a ladder because there's a bunch of going wrong in that hotel. Something's gonna need some maintenance, you know? And like there's a bunch of reasons why someone would move or want a ladder. And so let's go back to Elisa for a second. I know that I mentioned her medication earlier. But when they do the toxicology report, it shows that the only drug in her system is venoflaxine. Like she took that on the day she died. But her antidepressants, her mood stabilizers, the rest of them, there's very little trace of them in her body, right? So she stopped taking them like a little while before she died. And so, yeah, it's like I said earlier, it's that whole thing of weaning yourself off. And yeah, the antipsychotic actually wasn't in her system at all. So she hadn't stopped taking that. So it is quite possible that Elisa had stopped taking her antipsychotics and as a result experienced a manic episode, which would explain her behaviour, you know, in the elevator and why she was chatting to someone who wasn't there. And also why she... was moved from her room. Occasionally people who have bipolar disorder sometimes have auditory or visual hallucinations which is why sometimes people who have bipolar are misdiagnosed with schizophrenia and I know that like the very like peculiar movements that Elisa has I've seen people suggest that it's like psychomotor agitation but that's kind of more sharp, it's kind of flail-y, it's more um kind of aggressive but she's making very deliberate movements so I don't think that's the case. But yeah here's here's what I feel is what really happened to Elisa Lam. Elisa stops taking her antipsychotics and then her mood stabilizers followed by her antidepressants until there's just one left, only one that she's taking. And then she suffers a severe manic episode. And as a result of this manic episode, Elisa finds her way onto the roof. And then she climbs into the water tank. And water tanks are smooth on the inside. There's no internal ladders. There's no way to get out. It's not intended for that. It's not intended for dipping. And so there's no way in there. And unless... The water level rises. You're not getting out of there. Because if the water level was higher or the tank was full, she'd have an option. And the thing is, people talk about how she's naked in the tank and how it's suspicious. But I don't know if you've ever been trapped in water. One of the first things you do is try and peel your layers off. You try and remove the weight because your clothes are waterlogged. It's pulling you down. Whether she went in intentionally and thought that this was a good idea for a swim in whatever state she was in, and she's removing her clothes so that she can float, or whether she's removing her clothes so that she can try and swim and survive, we'll never know. But the idea that someone managed to get her up and into the tank is difficult in itself. I mean, first of all, you've got the ladder issue. Like, how? Do you carry someone up that ladder and then get them into the tank and do all that without leaving a trace of evidence anywhere? Like you would have DNA somewhere, like across the surface of the tank. It would be on the top of it, surely, because your body would rub against it. You would have trace DNA. There would be something. And considering she died in the tank, to assume that there wouldn't be anything under her, because imagine she's a dead weight, right? If she's a dead weight and you're putting her in the tank because she's unconscious, even though there is nothing in her system that she could have been drugged with, she would have had to be made unconscious without doing anything physical to her. There would be some kind of defensive wound if she was alive. She would have something or she would have skin even under her fingernails. But there's no prints, there's no DNA, there's nothing there apart from what she left. She got in that tank on her own and no one had been up on the roof to disrupt any fingerprints. No one had been there, nobody had looked in those tanks because somebody would have reported that. And the passing of Elisa Lam is just a tragic accident. A horrible accident that could have been prevented, possibly, if the hotel had done its due diligence. But this is a story of a woman trapped in a water tank, unable to escape. Not paranormal ghosties, not sinister serial killers, but a woman suffering a tragic death at 21 years old. 21! And the reason we chase this conspiracy is because people don't like messy. People want an explanation, they want a reasoning, they want someone to blame. They want someone to blame and that's why these conspiracy theories exist. They want a villain, someone they can pin it all on. And when you add this to the fact that this is peak internet obsession, you know, the way that the video was released and the way people clung on to it, and because of how odd her behaviour is in it, people latched on to it. And it unfurled on the internet and this led to an even greater obsession. Even now there are message boards full of stuff about Elisa Lam. So many conspiracies and instead of just letting it go like her family have asked when they have accepted the tragic demise of their daughter. Like in September of that year, the year she passed. Her parents attempted to sue the Cecil Hotel for negligence that led to the wrongful death of Elisa but you know ends up being dismissed because the hotel says like there's no possible way anyone could have prevented or known that Elisa was going to like get into the tank and no one has ever been able to like tangibly prove how Elisa got up on that roof and so The hotel can't be held liable until someone can. Even though we've got evidence of people going up onto the roof. Like through the door and through fire escapes. The door wasn't alarmed. The police didn't do their due diligence. And the hotel lied to save its ass. And that's it. That's it. And it's a tragic situation. A young woman died. because she was on her medication and then she wasn't. And a few things lined up in such a way that led her to climb inside a water tank where she died. And instead of owning up to how it happened, by acting like they're blameless, the Cecil Hotel have created this mystery. You know, they've created conspiracies and they have cheapened her death by allowing the twisted tales and the ghosties and all that nonsense. And so ends the tragic story of Elisa Lam. And oh god, I'm not going to say if you'll like this story because you don't like it it's terrible it's horrible it's tragic um but yeah if you'd like to rate and review five stars that would be amazing um i just think it's important to tell the truth about women and i know this is so much more recent than we typically do but it's just one of those things that i've had to correct so many times on the internet that i i think she deserved her own episode finally um don't forget you can follow me on socials and for recommendation time um for reading i'm going to recommend the women who ran fifth avenue for watching just watch agatha all along i think we all deserve some like coven love at this point and for listening let me see you know what i've been listening to recently and this is so strange welcome to hell so um it's an snl skit with Saoirse Ronan and like Kate McKinnon in that and uh yeah it's it's worth listening to and with that I'm gonna bid you good night adios au revoir, au revoir my friends, bye

Or... that a dog in upstate New York was once placed on trial for murder. Well, to hear these and hundreds of additional fascinating true stories from the flip side history, be sure to check out the Useless Information Podcast. That's the Useless Information Podcast, podcasting worldwide since 2008 and available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you're listening right now.

Be sure to check it out. Hello delicious friends and welcome to Who Did What Now, the history podcast that's not your history class, with me your host Katie Charlewood, history harlot and reader of books. Speaking of books, I am in my hotel room.

I have just performed at the Redline Book Festival in Dublin in Tala and I was at the Civic Theatre and I was having a think and it's roughly like a whole year since my first live show and my friend was at my first live show actually and was at this one and he was telling me like the difference between then and now like like everything from like the structure or the confidence like the difference is it's like a much better like live show which i'm so proud of and so thankful for because it means i actually do learn as i go on yay but yeah i was at the redline book festival uh even though my book isn't out till like 20 26 but they were like we wanted to preempt it and bring you in um which is like so exciting and lovely and shows a strange amount of faith in me from people who don't know me but i had such a good time and it's like each show i do just feels like so much better than the previous like i feel like i'm really getting into the stride of it and so like I'm really excited about the US till next year like once I get things locked in if venues would get back to me ah I wish I had a two-hour manager because honestly trying to organise this is so hard especially with everything else I'm doing there's just so much going on but yes I'm organising that and then I'm in Dublin next week and again like I'm all over the shop and I'm performing here there and everywhere but you may be looking at this episode and thinking this is not her usual content because this seems fairly recent in comparison yeah yeah i decided to do a wee break of the norm i'm still talking about horrible history it's still a horrible thing that happened it's just a little bit more recent the recent past but it's there and i'm consistently asked about it like i mentioned it once because i was talking about Misinterpretations of ghosties and ghoulies and spooky mysteries. I can't love a mystery as much as an ex-person, but I'm far too neurodivergent for that, and so I have to ruin everyone's fun. And also I don't feel like making fun.

about the tragic death of a woman and I just don't, I don't find that a good thing, you know. And I like to clarify things and right some wrongs because that's just who I am as a person. And so I'm going to be debunking a few things.

I'm going to be telling the facts as they are. And I know what you're thinking. You're thinking Katie.

Quit your jibble-jabba and fact me. In fact you I will, but first we've got to get our source on. Our sources are The Strange Death of Elisa Lam by David Mickelson, L.E. Hotel where body was found in water tank has long done Mark History by Mark Memmott.

The Suicide, The Hotel Cecil and the Mean Streets of L.A.'s Notorious Skid Row by Hadley Mears. The Dark Past of the Cecil Hotel by Joshua O'Campbell. Elisa Lam, What Really Happened in the Cecil Hotel by Michael Bax. Crime Scene, The Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel documentary on Netflix.

And of course we have... the elevator video, reddit and so on and so forth. Are you sitting comfortably? Good, then let's begin. Our story starts and, well, ends at the infamous Cecil Hotel, a building and establishment which has garnered an unsavoury reputation over the years, linking it to tragedy, trauma, travesty and Mysterious goings on.

It is linked to dark and depraved tales of terror, as if the building itself is cursed. When in fact it's just location and economy. That's what created the dark history of the Cecil Hotel, which was briefly rebranded as the Stay on Main. Because they're trying to like...

like PR change it but it it stopped doing what it was supposed to do it like wasn't able to keep running and obviously the terrible publicity which you know should actually have gotten it like more because like people do dark history tours all the time people are obsessed with the macabre you know so it should have done really well it was not doing really well and it it just had to close Now, the Cecil opened in 1924. Like, the whole purpose of it initially was, like, it was downtown. It was supposed to cater to businessmen. You know, men doing business in the city. Businessmen doing business.

You know, it was that sort of whole scenario. Unfortunately... When the crash happened and the Great Depression hit, wasn't really a lot of businessmen to be holing up there in the Cecil. And so it changed its business plan. It thought instead of doing this, it was going to bring in these really low rates because people wouldn't just stay in a hotel for a night or two.

It would bring in these really low weekly rates like rent. So that meant people who were on lower incomes, they could reside in the hotels instead of an actual apartment or house or whatever. And so as the depression really got worse and crime rates increased, downtown, well, that area of downtown anyway, becomes skid row. Downtown, where the guys are drips. Downtown, where they kick your schlips.

Downtown, where relationships are no go. Down on Skid Row. Listen, I do not have the vocal quality to do that song, but I could not help myself. But yeah, Skid Row, it's where the people who are really suffering, the poor, the impoverished, the homeless, like that's where they're staying. They've got nowhere else to go.

And with this Cecil being so situated, it becomes the go-to place for a lot of these people. And so the hotel on Skid Row, which caters to people on low incomes, becomes a place where people on low incomes are going to be. People who are living in this environment, people who are living in an area filled with crime, drugs, etc.

This is where people are going to stay. And when you've got people in these high danger lifestyles, I say lifestyle, right? As if it's not just their life, as if this is not just how their life is turned out. Like, which could be a result very easily of just external factors. And so here they are, having to be here of all places.

And so when you've got people in these high risk lives, staying in this one area, shockingly enough incidents are going to be a wee bit higher so they talk about like all of these deaths and stuff that happen in the Cecil Hotel and a lot of them are like deaths suicides overdoses and of course it gets worse because allegedly Richard stayed there when he was like hiding out from his murder spree you know the original night stalker so he stayed there so everyone's like oh he stayed there it's creepy and then of course you have the serial killer jack unterwinger unterwinger yeah he's like in the cecil garroting sex workers with their own lingerie And of course people like to like layer on the mystery and the darkness and the conspiracies and so there's like a rumor as well that that's where the Black Dahlia Elizabeth Short stayed they're like she was there too because again it was a cheap place to stay and she was notorious for like being broke and of course people like to add like to add an embellish on top of that as well You've got all these suicides that happen there where people who are already not doing well in their lives are in this place and they decide that this is the time that they are going to die by suicide. And you know I'm just going to give you a rundown of the deaths of the Cecil Hotel. So 22nd of January 1927 Percy Orman Cook dies by suicide. He's separated from his wife and he's just struggling.

He deliberates for a week before finally ending his life. On the 19th of November 1931, W.K. Norton, under the name James Willies, he ends his life after a week in the Cecil after consuming poison capsules. In September 1932, Benjamin Dodich ended his life with a gunshot to the head.

He was discovered by a maid, so we don't know the exact date of his death. On the 26th of July 1934, Sergeant Lewis D. Borden slit his own throat with a razor. He was unwell and the illness was too much for him, and so he decided to end his life on his own terms.

In March 1937, Grace E. Magro falls or leaps. We're not sure whether this was... planned or an accident, but she falls from a ninth-story window and falls on telephone wires which wrap around her body and end her life. On the 9th of January 1938, Roy Thompson leaps from the roof and lands atop a skylight on the next building.

In May 1939, Erwin C. Neblett swallows poison in his room. In January 1940, Dorothy Sager who sends herself into the hotel under the name Evelyn Brent, consumes poison. She writes to her family to let her know that she's planning on doing this.

As a result she is discovered but she passes away in hospital on the 12th of January. So technically she didn't die in the Cecil but she died from the Cecil. In September 1944, this is a tough one so if you have a thing about babies or children, skip forward about 45 seconds. 19 year old Dorothy Jean Purcell, she's staying in a room with her boyfriend in the Cecil Hotel and she starts getting pains.

Severe. pains she goes into the bathroom and gives birth alone and in a state of panic she throws her newborn baby umbilical cord still attached out of the window and so she gets charged with the murder of an infant but she gets assessed by three separate psychiatrists and they're like no she wasn't in her right mind when she did this she was mentally confused which she's 19 you Like her boyfriend's in the next room. She's just given birth.

Like she's not with it. Like imagine the fear. Imagine how terrified you have to be to do something like that. Like how scared must you be for that to be your choice, to be the active decision that you make? Okay.

In November 1947, Robert Smith jumps from a seventh floor window in the Cecil. On the 22nd of October 1954, Helen Gurney also leaps from a seventh floor window, except she lands on top of the Cecil's marquee. But she had also registered into the Cecil under a false name, Margaret Brown. On the 11th of February 1962, Julia Frances Moore leaps from the eighth floor room. and lands on a second story interior light well.

On the 12th of October in 1962, Pauline Otten had has an argument with her estranged husband and throws herself out of a window. The 27-year-old woman hits a pedestrian before she hits the ground. She lands on 65-year-old George Giannini, who died instantly.

Originally, the police thought this was like a double suicide, but George Giannini had his hands in his pockets as he was walking. And they were like, he would not have been able to do that. if they were both leaping out the window. On the 4th of June 1964, Pidgey Goldie Osgood was found raped, stabbed and beaten in her room. She was called Pidgeon Goldie because she used to go out and feed the buds out in the square.

Her murder is unsolved. On the 20th of December 1975, a woman registered under the name of Alison Lowell jumps from the 12th floor window onto the second floor bath. On the 1st of September 1992, an African-American man who has still yet to be named, who was fallen or pushed from the hotel's 15th floor, landing in the alley behind the Cecil. June 13th, 2015, a 28-year-old man who has not been identified, passed away from falling from one of the Cecil's windows. And you may be thinking, well Katie, there's a mysterious death you haven't mentioned.

Correct. The 19th of February 2013, the tragic and accidental death of Elisa Lott. If you want to keep believing in paranormal and dark and twisted conspiracies about her, you can just choose not to listen. But if you want to know the facts, then listen up delicious friends, because I've got a story for you.

Also, in addition, furthermore, before I get into anything else about this... There is this whole idea of the Cecil Hotel being haunted and you actually see this repeated in media quite a lot. It's the inspiration for a lot of things. You see it sort of, it's the perfect place because lots of people coming and going, you know, a lot of deaths, you expect that sort of situation.

But there's not really any like ghost sightings, like it's not like an old manor in England where they're like, oh the old lady, no, none of that. Which is weird because you would expect somewhere to have like such a high death rate for there to be like an inkling of a ghost somewhere, a ghost sighting. And it's weird as well because it's portrayed such a way in media.

Like you see it in a lot of like books and TV shows. I'm going to talk about two ones that are right off the top of my head. One of which is there's an episode of Angel, which is I think when he goes to LA and he moves into this hotel and the hotel is haunted, like that's based on the Cecil.

And then... you have American Horror Story Hotel. Like that's, that is, that's the Cecil, you know? And I think they actually filmed in there.

But yeah, that's that. But the true horror of the Cecil Hotel does not lie in its mythology. It lies in its reality.

And I'm going to say it, capitalism and cops not doing their job. And a company so desperate with protecting itself that it didn't let the facts out and created a conspiracy. But let us get back to the 19th of February 2013. The Cecil Hotel, it had been running as partially a hotel, partially a hostel.

So it had some rooms which were like dorm rooms and some rooms were private rooms. They had permanent residents. They had like a whole lot going on.

It was a relatively affordable place to stay if you were visiting L.A. And if you're OK with being on schedule, then you were fine there. So people could rent private rooms, you could have your own space or you could, you know, bunk with strangers.

Hostel style. And then you've got entire floors which are specifically for the permanent residents. And this again is a cheap, cheap hotel. Like it's run down, a lot of stuff ain't working, it's...

calling it a dump would probably be an improvement. And so the staff in the hotel are quite used to... receiving complaints from the guests consecutively one after another in a row but on this date there is a specific complaint not like oh there's ants in my room or the window's got a crack in it or the lock doesn't work no no no these aren't just like little tiny odd complaints this is the same complaint the same issue that resident upon resident upon guest is having There's something wrong with the water. So some are complaining that the water in the bathroom taps is coming out.

black so it like starts off running like discoloured and then goes to normal. Others the water pressure is like really really low like it's not coming out properly and some some oh yeah uh I hope you got a strong stomach guys. Some people are saying that the water from the rooms is tasting weird like it's off like kind of sweet.

And because the Cecil is getting just complaint after complaint about the water, they send the maintenance man Santiago Lopez up to the roof. And so he climbs to the roof of the hotel to have we look at the water tanks. Because see the Cecil has four water tanks on the roof.

So like it's got one large one and three smaller ones. The large one is the main supply to the building and these water tanks are like Four foot wide, they're eight foot tall and they're up on these concrete blocks. So in order to actually get into the water tank or to get looking at it, you have to climb a ladder. And so he gets his ladder and he climbs up the main one because he's like, I'll start with the main one because that's probably the cause of the issue.

And when he gets to the top of the tank, the hatch is open. It should not be open, but it was. Because that's actually a health and safety concern. Water tank hatches are not supposed to be open.

It's not a thing. But it's open. And inside the tank. is the naked body of a woman and it was apparent that this body had been in the water for some time.

I don't know if you've ever seen a waterlogged body. I have for reasons we're not going to get into it but that is not something you want to see. So typically when a body is found in water if it's been there for some time whether it's at sea or in a lake or whatever They do not allow you to have an open casket.

Well, it's not advised. Like, you see it with Emmett Till, specifically because his mother wanted to show the world the barbarity of what had happened to her child. And even so, his body has not the worst waterlogging I've ever seen.

It's bad. Also worsened by the fact that he was brutally beaten. But there are bodies when they're in water, it changes.

It fills the cells is the best way I can describe it. So like in a plant, you give it water, its cells become strong, right? It builds the walls and makes it a structure. In a body, when the cells are filled with water, it makes them splishy and soft, right? That is the technical term, splishy and soft.

But yes. the epidermis which is the outer layer of skin it blisters because again it sort of fills so it blisters and turns like a greenish black colour so like all over the body except for the feet and hands which become swollen and wrinkled and also bleached right so it's like when you've been in the bath for too long and you get pruney fingers like that but so much worse and the thing is as well If you've been submerged for a long time, when your body is, you know, submerged in water, when you die, your body fills with gas because it's decomposing, yeah? And so your intestines especially, you know, your chest cavity, they fill with gas and air and they make the body buoyant, which is why after like so many days, weeks, when a body is out at sea, when it's close to shore, things like that.

when it's in a lake even, bodies float to the surface. It's why the mafia would do the concrete block thing, right? It's why you would weigh a body down with bricks because the gas makes it float to the top and so because the gas is in sort of the intestines and the gut and the chest cavity and all that area that's decomposing, that's sort of the balloon part of the body and that's why when bodies float to the surface they do so like upside down. So you see bodies kind of starfish, but their face is facing down into the water.

Now, because of the way the tank is, for whatever reason, the body doesn't flip. Like it doesn't go face down. The body is face up.

So when Santiago Lopez is looking into this tank. He is seeing a bloated, dead face of a woman looking back at him. And it's pretty clear that the cause of all the water issues currently happening in the Cecil Hotel is because of the decomposing body in the water tank.

So emergency services are called to remove the corpse and they get there. And it's not as simple as just like hoisting the body out, because if they try and take the body out because it's decomposing and has been for some time, there's a possibility of sort of the joints of the bodies where things get weaker. It's why so many feet.

are floating in the river. Was it over in like San Francisco? There's all these feet because that's the joint where things get weaker. So that's why so many sneakers and stuff, because they are buoyant at the bottom. That's why the feet are floating.

And so they're worried if they take the body out like this, that parts of it are just going to fall off. And so they have to very carefully remove the body from the tank. Now, it's not just a body that's in the tank. The clothes of the woman are also in the tank with her. Now...

These clothes that are floating alongside her in the tank, they are covered in a substance which may or may not be sand. Like it's literally described as a sand-like particulate. So they're like, maybe it's a substance that might be? Like.

That's it. So obviously they eventually get the body out and they have to perform an autopsy. So when there is an unusual or possibly violent death, any unusual death has to be investigated. And so they have to perform an autopsy on, you know, a young woman's body that is floating in a water tank atop a hotel on Skid Row. That kind of fits those parameters.

Now you could be forgiven for assuming that... a toxicology report wouldn't be possible for a body that had been submerged in water for three weeks. But you would be wrong because what they do is they'll not test in the bloodstream, they're actually testing the internal organs. So things like your liver, for example, which is what helps purify your body, like your kidneys, the liver really, really lasts and holds on to that information longer than, say, the blood would.

So when they perform the autopsy and they do a toxicology report, it reveals that there are no recreational drugs in her system and there are no traces of barbiturates, opiates, amphetamines, cocaine, marijuana or MDMA. Zilch, zip, nada, nothing, right? And her blood alcohol level was only 0.2%, which is... Really, really typical for a body in this state of decomposition, which also shows that not only was there no recreational drugs in her system, but it meant that she didn't consume any alcohol, any booze on the day that she died. So no alcohol or recreational drugs in her system at the time of passing.

And the body was also tested for signs of sexual assault and there were no signs of it. Now... Ah, yeah, here's the thing.

And I'm only telling you this because people argue about it all the time, right? The woman in the water tank, she has a prolapsed anus. Now, some people will just be bumping their gums about how this is evidence of SA. However, I would argue that this is a just very typical. State of decomposition, especially for a body that has been submerged in water for three bloody weeks.

Anyway, the woman in the tank has no other signs of physical trauma. There's no evidence to suggest that she was harmed or attacked in any physical manner. There are no injuries on the body.

There are no defensive wounds. There is nothing to suggest even that she tried to get out of the tank. you know no chipped nails nothing like that and so the LA county coroner determines that the death of this young woman the cause of death was accidental drowning everything added up to that according to their investigation now it does take them I think four months to release that information to release the autopsy report and when they do release it it has like amendments and corrections because Yeah, they do tests, they do checks, and they've probably rechecked it a few times because of how high profile this case became, you see.

So when it is released with its corrections and alterations, there's this massive theory of a huge cover up, right? When it's just people make mistakes. Consider it a little bit like when somebody goes to the doctor, right?

When you go to the doctor. A lot of the time they'll test you for things in order to rule something out and you could have the symptoms that would lead you to think something is happening but it could be something else entirely. Like anyone who's ever used WebMD to try and determine what is wrong with them.

Like I went on to WebMD, put in my symptoms and it was like you're having a heart attack which was fun. Um turned out I wasn't having a heart attack um I was pregnant and that was causing the same stressors in my body. So, you know, this is one of those things where, you know, a lot of the time when you go and you're being tested for something that you're not sure of, a lot of it is them just ruling things out.

Like when you start getting headaches, the first thing they'll do is get you to get your eyes tested to make sure that it's not an ocular migraine that's caused by that. Like it's all these kind of things where... They think it might be something and they're testing things and they're double checking and they're fixing their mistakes. Yeah.

So again, because of the release of how long it took them to do it. Yeah. Yeah.

People, people, um, started putting on their tinfoil hats. Instead of maybe just considering that it was just a classification error, like, if the LA County Coroner was involved in some massive conspiracy and a multi-level cover-up, do you not think they would have done a better job at, you know, doing the autopsy report? Like, do you think they would have, like, scored stuff out and scribbled new bits in, or would they just not have made, like, a new autopsy? Like, a fresh one? and just got rid of the old one completely so there wasn't any evidence of it?

Like, would that not be the smart thing to do? Are we not considering that maybe the people who do this for a living would be smarter in covering it up? No?

And not to, like, put too sharp of a point on it there, but, like, this is not the only, like, suspicious slash unusual death that the LA County Coroner has to deal with. Like, it's LA County. there's going to be a fair few weird deaths, okay? There's going to be a fair few deaths to investigate. And I'm fairly certain, you know, that there's a considerable backlog in, you know, this type of profession.

And yeah, you have to remember as well that at this time, this case wasn't such a big deal. It became a huge deal when the internet grabbed it and rolled with it. But at the time, this was just one body in a sea of bodies.

you know that being said due to her body markings like they were able to identify her fairly quickly which is wild because like i think if if i had to be identified like without i don't know go to head or something yeah wow it would be like how would you do it well i've got the cancer scar the surgery scar i've got two of them on the side of my neck i've got two tattoos you I've got a scar on my left hand. Yeah, I've got a scar on my left hand from when I tried to pick up a broken piggy bank. Oh, I've got a mark on my stomach still from when I had to get a drip in my stomach.

I've got that. And yeah, probably some freckles and moles that some very intimate people could tell you about. But yeah, I feel like my body would be fairly recognisable.

But yes. Because of the very specific body markings, birthmarks, etc, the coroner's office was able to identify the body fairly sharpish. And the person who was found floating in the water tank of the Cecil Hotel was none other than Elisa Lam, a 21-year-old Canadian woman who had been reported missing three weeks previously. Elisa Lam had checked into the Cecil Hotel on the 29th of January 2013 and she was supposed to be staying there for three nights.

This was part of her little trip around the west coast of the US. So she was on this little solo trip, she was going on public transport, so like buses, trains etc. And so she was stopping off at a bunch of cities along the way. So she arrived in the hotel, she checked into one of the dorms. So she's in a room with I think three other people and like it's sort of I want to say like a hostel situation so you kind of book a shared room and whoever you're lumped in there with you're lumped in there with and sometimes you get like very nice roommates and sometimes you get roommates who are not quite who you want to be sharing a room with.

So Elisa she ends up being moved she gets upgraded to a single room, she gets moved to a room on her own after one night because her roommates complained to the Cecil Hotel management about her odd behaviour. And like that's a direct quote, their quote is odd behaviour. Now this is a hostel slash hotel on Skid Row.

Like people are sharing dorms in Skid Row. Like you're not expecting much from that scenario. And here's the thing, I've shared hostels with some weird individuals, but like, how odd, quote, does someone's behaviour have to be in order for you to like, want to get them moved out of your room? Like, what are you doing?

Like, that's a level of something if all of the other roommates are complaining. So the remaining two nights, she has her own room, okay? Now she...

calls her family every single day of this trip like without fail she calls back home in Canada but on the what's supposed to be the last day of her stay, the day she's supposed to check out, the 31st of January, Elisa does not call home and straight away her parents David and Yuna, they file a missing persons report with the LAPD like right away. So when they do discover the body floating in the tank they already had Elisa on their system. It wasn't going to make it difficult for the LAPD to identify her. And the thing is as well, When she was reported missing because her last known address, her last known location was the Cecil Hotel, that was the first place the LAPD looked. Now, this is a bit of a sticky wicket because legally, there were only so many parts of the hotel they were able to investigate because it's a whole, like, legal situation.

So because there are permanent residents and it's not just a hotel, like, if it's just a hotel... then the temporary rooms can all be searched. Fairly sharpish, right? But when you've got someone in a permanent address, I think an individual warrant is required for each of those sort of apartments, kind of. So like it's a whole, it's a whole legal rigmarole.

So effectively, they're searching as much of the Cecil Hotel as they physically could. Like they even brought their dogs in. So the police dogs, they couldn't...

pick up her scent like they weren't able to find it around the hotel which isn't hard because like that's that's an area where there's going to be a lot of a lot of smells going on there's going to be a lot of sensory overload for those dogs I think and also legally there were certain parts they couldn't go into so it wasn't exactly the most thorough of searches and clearly they didn't get up onto the roof because well they had no reason to assume the roof you And so without any like actual leads, the police get CCTV footage of Elisa Lam at the Cecil Hotel and it's on the 1st of February. It's recorded on the 1st of February, which was no, the 1st of February is the day she's supposed to check out the hotel. But yeah, she hadn't phoned her parents on the 31st and she was supposed to check out on the 1st.

That's right, there we go, back on track. So yes. Hey y'all, spooky season is here, and if you're looking for a show to whet your appetite for a little haunted history, then I'd like to invite you to check out Southern Gothic, a chart-topping history podcast that explores some of the most infamous legends, folklore, ghost stories, and hauntings of the American South. We've covered all sorts of stuff from the Bell Witch of Tennessee to the disappearance of the Confederate submarine, the H.L.

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The elevator footage. Now this elevator footage. the lift if you will it it is what has caused such a commotion here because it's so weird and it's grainy old footage and the issue is right the reason the footage is grainy is because like many businesses the Cecil Hotel refused to upgrade its fucking camera equipment like here's the thing we've all seen like the doorbell cameras and stuff which has like like hd quality like imagery in 2013 there is absolutely no reason for cctv footage to be this grainy like it's literally just because they're so cheap they didn't want to upgrade it and you see this with a lot of businesses whenever you see like really shit cctv it's literally because it's a shit camera when it's not that expensive to have a higher quality camera like like my iphone has better like camera like it's fine my old iphone i have my iphone 11 right that has a better camera on it than most of these cctvs like that that should not be the case like it's not that expensive not for a business not for a fucking hotel Like not when, you know, safety and security should be a main priority, you know what I mean?

But yes, this is something that sent the internet sloths up in a tizzy. It was all over Reddit, 4chan. It's something that I watched I remember back in the day because it was very unnerving and it's very it's creepy because we know what happens to her and that's what I think is the unnerving part of it but like if you watch this footage and you're told oh this is just a girl she's going to meet her family later in the day this is her in the lift right it's significantly less creepy so i'm gonna have to uh like describe this in this footage when i first watched it scaled like the crap out of me my hebe's well gibied let me tell you like absolutely 100% and so she's in the lift the elevator if you will and she's acting really fucking weird right she is she's kind of making weird movements she's pressing a lot of buttons And at one point she's like hiding and then popping out and like looking into the corridor, which we cannot really see into, by the way.

We can only see the inside, really, of the elevator. And so she's kind of like pushing all the buttons and she's poking her head out and poking back in. And the thing is, to me, right, when I watch that, it looks like she's playing.

Like it's as if you're doing peekaboo with someone. like like if there was a kid in the hallway and she was doing a little peekaboo and come back and like that makes sense to me like I know that people say that she looks like terrified and scared um but I don't I don't think she's scared I it just looks like she's kind of messing about right to me now I think you take from it what you put in it Like if you expect that it's going to be scary, you'll watch it and be terrified, you know? So yeah, when the LAPD release it, because they release the footage, because they don't have any leads, they're thinking maybe somebody sees what's going on. Because lest we forget, at this point in time, Elisa is simply a missing person. And so they want to find her.

Like that is the whole purpose of releasing this tape. And if they're watching it and they think, eh, something's gone wrong here, they might be thinking, oh, what if somebody's chasing her? What if she's hiding from somebody?

And so what if they do that? And so the LAPD, they release this CCTV footage like five days before her body is discovered. So the 13th of February, right?

And they release it hoping that someone's going to recognise her or they're going to know where she's been and they're going to be able to find... this missing woman but no one comes forward no one notifies nothing happens however it does happen to go absolutely viral and remember this is a grainy ass bloody video it's it's crappy it's poor quality and because of the way it's recorded because like the numbers on the bottom people argue that like people are like suspicious about it and that they think that bits of it have been cut out and stuff and it's it's not it's just you a really really shitty quality like that's all it is so yeah she's in the elevator i should probably explain this better and she gets like really close to like the bit with all the buttons and she presses them like very particularly like she's very careful with it and she's very slow and deliberate like she's making very deliberate movements and she's not panicking she's not flurried she's just pressing all of these buttons like she's not whacking it or being flimsy she's just hitting all these buttons and then the lift doors elevator those doors don't close because normally you hit a button you press close door and they close now again i would like to reiterate that this is a very shitty hotel which doesn't even have quality cameras what makes you think it's gonna have a quality elevator? so she's pressed all these buttons the doors haven't closed and so she's kind of pacing she sort of walks around inside like steps to the front sort of kind of towards the door looks out looks down the corridor and then she's suddenly like boom so just back right as if she's hiding as if she's hiding and Alec steps out, looks through, looks down.

comes back in and then she kind of goes into the corner of it and then moves to the side and like stuff and she's like pressing herself up against the wall like of the elevator and she's just kind of as if she's hiding right as if somebody goes past and they might not see her because she's right against the wall and then she does this wee little step this little side step which is a very a very like dancer movement it's like a little papa and that is a weird that's a very deliberate movement it's not again a panic movement it's a very deliberate you know and this whole movement this whole like thing that she's doing to me it looks like she's doing hide and seek right that's what it feels like to me like she's kind of messing about i find it very playful as opposed to like Scary. And then Elisa Lam actually goes out of the elevator, right? And like, you can't see what else is out there because of the way the camera is.

You couldn't see if there was another person in the corridor, if there was another person in the corridor, because it looks like she's talking to someone, like she's, she's moving her arm. She's, it's as if she is talking to someone. But again, we don't have that information because it's a really... crappy camera and so it seems like she's chatting away to someone i'm like once she's like stepped out of the lift like the doors like open and close a few times which again i think it's just a shitty lift i think it's just a crappy crappy lift in a crappy building so this cctv footage from the 1st of february 2013 this is the last footage we have of elisa lam being alive now the last time she was physically seen by somebody was the day before the 31st of January. She had gone down to this bookshop owned by Kate Orfin.

She had gone into the bookshop to buy like souvenirs for her family and some books and there wasn't anything suspicious about her behaviour. She wasn't acting odd or there was nothing that worried Kate Orfin. Elisa was chatty, she was bubbly.

Her main area of concern was how difficult it was going to be to carry all these souvenirs back to her family because she wasn't just worried about what she'd already picked up. She was thinking about, you know, the next thing she picks up on her trip, next city she goes to, like how is she going to make sure she gets all of these things back to her family. I remember that was something they brought up in like therapy way back when. And it was future plans. Like having a future plan is something that keeps you like tethered to this earth.

You know, it stops you from exiting the mortal coil. And Elisa was happy. She was planning her next steps of her trip.

She was thinking about the souvenirs. Because remember, she is due to check out of the hotel the very next day. So she's thinking about what she's gonna do. But mental health, it's not a one-size-fits-all. And it's all too easy for the coin to flip.

It's kind of how nervousness and excitement are two sides of the same coin. And mental illness isn't logical, it's not rational. And Elisa, she had a history of mental illness. She had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder. And the thing about bipolar is is it used to be called manic depression right and the reason being is you had these two polar opposites so you would have this very like low um this massive lull this deep depressive state and then on the flip side you would have this absolutely manic excited sort of drive where you could do something really wild you know you had these two very different um like states of being you And that's where the idea of manic depressive came in.

And because of that polarisation between these two states of being is where we have the new term, really, of bipolar. So like two polar opposites, yeah? And Elisa, she had been dealing with treatment for this for a long time. And she was actually on, I think, four different medications. Maybe five.

I think it was five. Then the vaccine, which is an antidepressant. Dextrine, which is a dextroamphetamine sulfate. which is used to treat ADHD, depression, narcolepsy, obesity and also to help reduce certain symptoms of schizophrenia. Lamotrigine which is a mood stabilizer and also used to treat acute depression.

Quetiapine which is an atypical antipsychotic used for the treatment of bipolar, depression and schizophrenia. And Welbutrin. which is just another atypical antidepressant. So typically for like major depressive disorders.

So basically she's on a collection of SSRIs and mood stabilisers specifically to manage bipolar disorder. And the whole purpose of these medications is to keep Elisa Lam on an even cue. Nothing more than that.

Because like she wasn't known for having suicidal ideations, like that wasn't. like a part of her her known depressive states when she was in those depressive states which you know are part of heart and bipolar disorder and i see elisa is often listed as a student of the university of british columbia but she hadn't been registered for any classes in 2013 because like just before christmas in 2012 she had just stopped going to school because of just these severe depressive episodes you know it was very difficult for her and as such she just she just couldn't go it just wasn't something she was able to do and she was always very honest and open about her depressions like she posted about it on her tumblr like she was always very open and I think that's something that's very interesting with people who are online is sometimes you are so open like with this audience who don't see you then you are with the people who are closest to you in your life like you're so open to all of this and yet so private in another way but yeah she's very very honest talking about her bipolar disorder on her her little tumblr blog novelle niveau like she had one before that and then she just kind of got rid of it to do this and so it's it's you know her talking about her life being so honest and then also these like ruth wilson gifs and then you've got like fashion posts and stuff like that and um yeah i don't also want to blame the fact that she has bipolar disorder that she has a mental illness and as such like there's this blame on her or her family or anybody and also just because you have a mental illness because you live with a condition it doesn't automatically mean that you're gonna like run away from home or do something crazy like that's not a thing and you're not automatically more likely to do something terrible to yourself because you have a mental illness there are many people out there who do not have uh sort of conditions or disorders or mental illnesses who do terrible things to themselves all the time just because you know human nature makes people do shit sometimes you know so it's far too easy to just go well she has a mental illness so like let's not investigate like fucking no like rule out every other possibility absolutely but you have to rule out Every possibility. You have to consider what is true and what realistically happened.

And yes, so she was prescribed all these medications. But when they did the toxicology report, there was none of that in her system either. Well, I say none.

There was like traces of, I think, the mood stabilizer, but she had completely stopped taking. the antidepressants like there was a little bit of of one but none of the rest and so there definitely wasn't enough um as far as they could tell from the medicine that was left in her room it seemed as though she was trying to wean herself off and this is an issue with mental illness this is an issue with anybody who has to go through these these ebbs and flows is that you think for a while oh i'm doing really well If I'm doing really well, maybe I don't need my medicine. Maybe I don't need it.

And then you don't take it. And then it flips something in your brain. And next thing you know, you're very unwell.

And so when her parents see the way she's acting on this CCTV, this is not a way she's ever acted. So there's always the possibility that there has been some kind of break. And instead of her talking to a real person, and not a ghost either, by the way, that she's having some kind of...

auditory or visual hallucination. And by the way that's an interesting thing is like you're more likely to have auditory hallucinations, like you're more likely to hear something that isn't there than you are to see something that isn't there. And remember she was acting in such an odd way that all of her roommates in her little dorm wanted her gone.

So something, something isn't right here. And Alyssa, she posts everything on her blog, right? She posts these deep thoughts. She talks about the breakup she had with her boyfriend. She talks about how depression has been affecting her.

And if she was planning to do something, if she was planning to end her life, like you can schedule Tumblr posts for like up to a year, like up to a year in advance. So if she was planning to do something, she probably would have blogged about it on her Tumblr and she would have sent like a digital suicide note. Like if this was a plan, if this was predetermined, if this was something she was looking to do, because you can do that, you can schedule it. And she had posts scheduled.

So she had things reblogged like 13 months after her death. And this is why people were like. 30 months?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, because when it was scheduled. And so people think that like, oh, it's spooky. She's talking to us beyond the grave. No, she just knows how to use a scheduler.

And there was certain stuff she wanted to reblog. And it's all like, it's Valentine's Day. Here's a thing, you know, like there's, there's a reason for that. And yeah, if she was going to do anything, she would have blogged about it. there would have been something but another thing that makes people suspicious is like her phone is missing but again this is skid row if she lost her phone somewhere somebody picked it up right somebody picked up that phone because they're gonna sell it they're gonna use it they're gonna do something with it but yeah people complain that the reason her phone is missing is because it's a conspiracy yada yada no you lose a phone Skid Row, someone's nicking it.

Now the big question that people ask when it comes to Elisa Lam and the Cecil Hotel is how the hell did she get up on the roof? Because it should not be accessible and staff are the only people that can get through the alarmed door. At least that's what the manager of the time, Amy Price, said.

Over and over again she made it very clear that there was no access up to that roof and even Like, the guy who was running the hotel's alarm system, the engineer who was dealing with that, he's like, oh, the alarms are great, and they're in full working order. They're all tippity-top, aye-aye, Captain. Except, here's the thing. The roof was accessible by fire escape, which is one option, but also, loads of people, loads of people have come forward and said that they've been able to get to the roof.

Like, there was even... and there was some dude I remember was staying in the hotel he filmed himself going up to the roof and getting onto it like going through the door now he was saying that he'd gone there by accident and he'd gone through the first time and so he filmed it you know and then staff members started coming forward saying that the door wasn't alarmed and the reason that they knew that is because they used to go up there for their smoke breaks and so it was like really easy to go on the roof you and because it'd been broken and it hadn't been fixed that yeah they were able to go do that. And here you have this woman who should not have made it up to the roof but as we know from all the videos that we've seen on YouTube and from all the testimony from ex-staff yeah fairly simple for her to get up on that roof.

And then you have the next question how the hell did she get in the tank? Note First things first, something we have to cover again. I've said it before and I'll say it again. The hatch on the water tank was open. Again, it's reported that it was closed.

Now, Santiago, the man who discovered Elisa's body, he didn't speak English. And the police officers did not think, you know, they did not think to maybe get a proper translator in. They didn't do their due diligence. They didn't do their jobs, right? And so when they interview him, right?

They didn't know the hatch was open, but it was. And yeah, again, if you're trying to hide a body, right, people say like, it must be a member of staff because of how she got up on the roof, or ABC. And it's like, yeah, that's why they put it in a water tank that, you know, anybody would figure that bodies decompose, like, and stuff's going to go wrong with that water.

But also, if you're hiding a body, and you don't want people to see it, wouldn't you close the lid of the tank like wouldn't you close the hatch it feels like step one you know but yes that's why people think it's foul play that's why they think that she was attacked because it's assumed even though it's it's not it's assumed that the lid of the tank was closed and it's Santiago Lopez who in his deposition states that When he finds her body, the hatch was open and Santiago Lopez, he needed a ladder to get into that tank because it's high up. It's high up and anybody who wanted to get in that tank, they would need the ladder. But in order to see into the tank, you would have to be like at the top of that ladder, right?

So if you're on the roof and you're a staff member and you see a ladder there, like the ladder moved, you moved from tank to tank. or you moved it around the building when you needed it. So he had to go get the ladder, but it's been three weeks that her body's been in there. So over the course of that three weeks, chances are somebody needed a ladder because there's a bunch of going wrong in that hotel.

Something's gonna need some maintenance, you know? And like there's a bunch of reasons why someone would move or want a ladder. And so let's go back to Elisa for a second.

I know that I mentioned her medication earlier. But when they do the toxicology report, it shows that the only drug in her system is venoflaxine. Like she took that on the day she died. But her antidepressants, her mood stabilizers, the rest of them, there's very little trace of them in her body, right? So she stopped taking them like a little while before she died.

And so, yeah, it's like I said earlier, it's that whole thing of weaning yourself off. And yeah, the antipsychotic actually wasn't in her system at all. So she hadn't stopped taking that. So it is quite possible that Elisa had stopped taking her antipsychotics and as a result experienced a manic episode, which would explain her behaviour, you know, in the elevator and why she was chatting to someone who wasn't there.

And also why she... was moved from her room. Occasionally people who have bipolar disorder sometimes have auditory or visual hallucinations which is why sometimes people who have bipolar are misdiagnosed with schizophrenia and I know that like the very like peculiar movements that Elisa has I've seen people suggest that it's like psychomotor agitation but that's kind of more sharp, it's kind of flail-y, it's more um kind of aggressive but she's making very deliberate movements so I don't think that's the case.

But yeah here's here's what I feel is what really happened to Elisa Lam. Elisa stops taking her antipsychotics and then her mood stabilizers followed by her antidepressants until there's just one left, only one that she's taking. And then she suffers a severe manic episode. And as a result of this manic episode, Elisa finds her way onto the roof.

And then she climbs into the water tank. And water tanks are smooth on the inside. There's no internal ladders.

There's no way to get out. It's not intended for that. It's not intended for dipping.

And so there's no way in there. And unless... The water level rises. You're not getting out of there.

Because if the water level was higher or the tank was full, she'd have an option. And the thing is, people talk about how she's naked in the tank and how it's suspicious. But I don't know if you've ever been trapped in water.

One of the first things you do is try and peel your layers off. You try and remove the weight because your clothes are waterlogged. It's pulling you down. Whether she went in intentionally and thought that this was a good idea for a swim in whatever state she was in, and she's removing her clothes so that she can float, or whether she's removing her clothes so that she can try and swim and survive, we'll never know. But the idea that someone managed to get her up and into the tank is difficult in itself.

I mean, first of all, you've got the ladder issue. Like, how? Do you carry someone up that ladder and then get them into the tank and do all that without leaving a trace of evidence anywhere? Like you would have DNA somewhere, like across the surface of the tank. It would be on the top of it, surely, because your body would rub against it.

You would have trace DNA. There would be something. And considering she died in the tank, to assume that there wouldn't be anything under her, because imagine she's a dead weight, right? If she's a dead weight and you're putting her in the tank because she's unconscious, even though there is nothing in her system that she could have been drugged with, she would have had to be made unconscious without doing anything physical to her. There would be some kind of defensive wound if she was alive.

She would have something or she would have skin even under her fingernails. But there's no prints, there's no DNA, there's nothing there apart from what she left. She got in that tank on her own and no one had been up on the roof to disrupt any fingerprints. No one had been there, nobody had looked in those tanks because somebody would have reported that. And the passing of Elisa Lam is just a tragic accident.

A horrible accident that could have been prevented, possibly, if the hotel had done its due diligence. But this is a story of a woman trapped in a water tank, unable to escape. Not paranormal ghosties, not sinister serial killers, but a woman suffering a tragic death at 21 years old.

21! And the reason we chase this conspiracy is because people don't like messy. People want an explanation, they want a reasoning, they want someone to blame. They want someone to blame and that's why these conspiracy theories exist.

They want a villain, someone they can pin it all on. And when you add this to the fact that this is peak internet obsession, you know, the way that the video was released and the way people clung on to it, and because of how odd her behaviour is in it, people latched on to it. And it unfurled on the internet and this led to an even greater obsession.

Even now there are message boards full of stuff about Elisa Lam. So many conspiracies and instead of just letting it go like her family have asked when they have accepted the tragic demise of their daughter. Like in September of that year, the year she passed.

Her parents attempted to sue the Cecil Hotel for negligence that led to the wrongful death of Elisa but you know ends up being dismissed because the hotel says like there's no possible way anyone could have prevented or known that Elisa was going to like get into the tank and no one has ever been able to like tangibly prove how Elisa got up on that roof and so The hotel can't be held liable until someone can. Even though we've got evidence of people going up onto the roof. Like through the door and through fire escapes.

The door wasn't alarmed. The police didn't do their due diligence. And the hotel lied to save its ass.

And that's it. That's it. And it's a tragic situation. A young woman died. because she was on her medication and then she wasn't.

And a few things lined up in such a way that led her to climb inside a water tank where she died. And instead of owning up to how it happened, by acting like they're blameless, the Cecil Hotel have created this mystery. You know, they've created conspiracies and they have cheapened her death by allowing the twisted tales and the ghosties and all that nonsense.

And so ends the tragic story of Elisa Lam. And oh god, I'm not going to say if you'll like this story because you don't like it it's terrible it's horrible it's tragic um but yeah if you'd like to rate and review five stars that would be amazing um i just think it's important to tell the truth about women and i know this is so much more recent than we typically do but it's just one of those things that i've had to correct so many times on the internet that i i think she deserved her own episode finally um don't forget you can follow me on socials and for recommendation time um for reading i'm going to recommend the women who ran fifth avenue for watching just watch agatha all along i think we all deserve some like coven love at this point and for listening let me see you know what i've been listening to recently and this is so strange welcome to hell so um it's an snl skit with Saoirse Ronan and like Kate McKinnon in that and uh yeah it's it's worth listening to and with that I'm gonna bid you good night adios au revoir, au revoir my friends, bye

Transcript for:Elisa Lam and the Cecil Hotel Tragedy

Transcript for:
Elisa Lam and the Cecil Hotel Tragedy