Elisa Lam was born on April 30, 1991, in Vancouver (British Columbia, Canada). Her parents were immigrants from Hong Kong. The woman studied at the University of British Columbia. At the beginning of 2013, Elisa went on a trip around the United States. The destination of the expedition was California. Lam traveled alone on trains and intercity buses. First, she went to San Diego. This is evidenced by photos taken by a woman in the local zoo and published on social media. On January 26, the student arrived in Los Angeles. Two days later, she checked into the (in) famous Cecil Hotel near Skid Row in the city center. Initially, the 21-year-old was allocated a shared room on the fifth floor. Her roommates, however, complained about the Canadian's strange behavior. Elisa Lam was therefore transferred to her own room after two days.
The Cecil was built as a business hotel in the 1920s. Subsequently, its owners faced severe financial difficulties during the Great Depression of the 1930s. The problems also arose later. One of the main reasons was the poor reputation of the hotel. Several known crimes were committed directly in the hotel or their perpetrators were associated with it. In 1964, Goldie Osgood was raped and murdered in her room in Cecil. This crime has never been solved. Serial killers Jack Unterweger and Richard Ramirez also lived at the Cecil Hotel. There were also suicides of hotel guests. One of the jumps out of the window ended fatally not only for the suicide but also for the pedestrian who was passing the entrance to the building. After recent renovations, attempts were made to save the hotel's image and attract guests, but its gloomy reputation was not to be forgotten.
Coming back to the heroine of our story - Elisa was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and depression. To treat these conditions, she was prescribed four medications - Wellbutrin, Lamictal, Seroquel and Effexor. According to the family who kept their daughter's history of mental illness a secret, Lam had had no previous thoughts or attempts to commit suicide. One report, however, stated that she had been missing for a short time earlier.
In mid-2010, Lam started a blog called "Ether Fields" on the Blogspot platform. For the next two years, she published photos of models in stylish clothes and reports from her life, especially the fight against mental illness. In a January 2012 post, Lam lamented that a recent relapse had forced her to drop out of several subjects in college. Elisa felt lost at the time and could not find a goal she could pursue. She titled her entry: "You are always haunted by the thought that you are wasting your life." It was a quote from one of Chuck Palahniuk's books. These words became the motto on the 21-year-old's blog. Just over two years after starting blogging, Lam announced that she would be abandoning her current blog in favor of a new one - "Nouvelle-Nouveau", which she started on Tumblr. Its content consisted mainly of photos from the world of fashion, quotes, and own reflections.
Lam contacted her parents daily during the trip. On February 1, 2013, the day she was to check out of the Cecil Hotel and go to Santa Cruz, her parents did not receive any news from her daughter. They became concerned about this and called the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD). The family also flew to California's largest city to help with the search.
The hotel staff who saw Elisa that day said she was alone. The only person outside the hotel who remembered Lam that day was Katie Orphan, manager of a nearby bookstore. The woman mentioned that the missing woman was buying gifts for her family members. She seemed very lively and friendly. Orphan remembered Lam wondering if the purchased gifts would be too heavy and if she could carry them with her for the rest of the trip.
The police searched the hotel to the extent that this was legal. Service and tracking dogs checked Lam's room and looked around the building, but no trace of a Canadian could be found. However, the police did not search all rooms because they did not have sufficient evidence to believe that a crime had been committed. On February 6, a week after the disappearance of Elisa Lam, officers decided that additional help was needed. Leaflets with the image of a woman were posted in the neighborhood and on the Internet. The media also got interested in the matter.
On February 15, after another week with no trace of the missing person, Los Angeles police released a video from one of the Cecil Hotel's elevators on February 1. The video is approximately two and a half minutes long. The video shows Elisa Lam making very strange movements and gestures. After entering the elevator, the 21-year-old began pressing buttons to close the door, but it remained open all the time. At one point, Elisa exited the elevator as if fearing that someone outside was preventing the door from closing. Missing seems terrified.
The film received a lot of attention worldwide due to Lam's strange behavior and was widely analyzed and discussed. Several theories have attempted to explain the peculiar behavior of the missing woman. According to one of them, Lam tried to force the elevator to move in order to escape from someone who was chasing her. Others suggested that the 21-year-old may have been on ecstasy or some other drug. When bipolar disorder came to light, it was also hypothesized that Lam had had a psychotic episode. Personally, I think the strange behavior was caused by mental problems. Perhaps Elisa stopped taking medication or did it irregularly.
Other viewers argued that the movie was modified before it was released to the public. In addition to obscuring the timestamp, they argued that part of the film had been slowed down and almost a minute of footage removed. This could be due to a desire to protect the identity of a person (whether related to the disappearance or not) who would otherwise be in the film.
During the search for Elisa Lam, hotel guests began to complain about low water pressure. Some later argued that it was black in color and had an unusual taste. On the morning of February 19, Santiago Lopez, a hotel restorer, found a woman's body in one of four 1,000-gallon (3,785 liters) tanks on the roof. They provided water to guest rooms, kitchens, and cafes. Through the open hatch, the man saw Lam lying face up in the water. The tank was emptied and cut open because its maintenance hatch was too small to accommodate the equipment needed to remove the body.
On February 21, the Los Angeles coroner's office released a statement about accidental drowning, citing bipolar disorder as a significant factor. According to a full coroner's report, published in June, Lam's body was found naked. Clothes similar to the ones she was wearing in the elevator movie were floating in the water, covered with "sand-like particles." A Canadian's watch and a room key were also found nearby.
Lam's body was bloated and in a state of moderate decay. It was mostly greenish in color, with visible skin separation. There was no evidence of physical trauma, sexual assault or suicide. Toxicology tests showed traces of the substance identical to the composition of the prescription drugs found among her belongings. There are also over-the-counter tablet ingredients in the blood, such as Sinutab and ibuprofen. A very small amount of alcohol was also present (about 0.02 per mille). However, no sign of any drugs was found. Researchers and experts noticed that the concentration of prescription drugs in the body of the deceased indicated that she was taking too little of them or that she had recently stopped taking them.
The investigation established how Lam was killed, but initially, it was not made clear how it got into the tank. The doors and stairs leading to the roof of the hotel are locked, and only employees have access codes and keys. Any attempt to cross them would allegedly set off an alarm. A video posted on the Internet after Lam's death by one user, however, proved that the hotel roof was easily accessible through a fire exit and that the two water tank covers were open.
They wondered how the woman got on the roof and whether she could enter the water tank by herself. All four were cylinders measuring 1.2 x 2.4 m placed on concrete blocks. There was no permanent access to them and hotel staff had to climb a ladder to check the water level. In addition, the tanks were protected by heavy covers that would be difficult to move. A hotel employee who found the body said the lid was open at the time, putting an end to speculation about how Elisa might have closed the hatch. Oddly enough, the police dogs who searched the hotel shortly after noticing her disappearance found no trace or smell - not even on the roof.
The theories related to the elevator recording have emerged. Some have argued that the woman was trying to hide from a persecutor, perhaps someone ultimately responsible for her death. Others said the student was simply frustrated by the elevator failure. Some supporters of the theory that she was under the influence of drugs have not been discouraged by the results of toxicology. A hypothesis has emerged that Lam may have taken unusual drugs that are not detected by standard testing. The very low levels of prescription drugs in her body and the amount of the remaining pills suggested that she was taking insufficient or recently stopped taking bipolar medications, which could have led to a psychotic episode.
The autopsy report was also challenged on the basis of incomplete information. For example, it does not specify the results of tests designed to verify that there was no rape. There was also no information as to whether such a study had been conducted. The report also included information about blood pooling around the anus and rectal prolapse. Some have suggested that this could be a sign of sexual abuse. One pathologist noted that this could be due to gas during the decomposition of the body. Even the coroner's pathologists seemed not entirely convinced that Lam's death was a consequence of the accident.
After Canada's death, her blog on Tumblr has been updated, possibly via an option that allows you to schedule and automatically publish posts. The phone was not found near the body or in the hotel room. It is believed that it was stolen shortly before or after his death. It has not been established whether further updates to Lam's blog were the result of a phone thief, hacker, or Tumblr's Queue.
Interestingly, the backstage of the case resembles the story from the horror movie "Dark Water". It would not be surprising, if not for the fact that the film was first made over 10 years earlier (Japanese original in 2002, American remake in 2005). In the films, the main characters (mother and daughter) discover the title "dark/gloomy water" dripping from the ceiling. With time, they learn that the flooded apartment above them belongs to a family that has disappeared under mysterious circumstances. The body of a missing girl who lived in the building is finally found. It turns out that she was abandoned by her parents and drowned in ... a water tank. There is also a plot of the elevator and the strange operation of its buttons. Coincidence? Probably, but very peculiar.
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