When 21 - twelvemonth - old college student Elisa Lam was establish dead in the urine armored combat vehicle of the Cecil Hotel ( now shut to hotel guests ) in Los Angeles in 2013 , the mystical circumstances surrounding Lam ’s disappearing and case captured national attention .
Her body was found after guests of the hotel complained about humiliated water pressure and a foreign taste , which precede employees to look into their piss cooler . That ’s where a hotel sustainment worker found Lam ’s consistence , floating naked , her clothes , watch and elbow room key fruit in the water beside her . Her electric cell phone was never ascertain . The medical examiner listed her death as a drowning . But how did she cease up in the water system armoured combat vehicle ?
Elevator Video Footage of Elisa Lam
Elisa Lam traveled alone from Vancouver , British Columbia , to Los Angeles , and went missing from her Cecil Hotel room soon after she arrived . After a hebdomad of searching for leads , the Los Angeles Police Department released a video recording of her last known whereabouts : security measure camera footage from inside the hotel ’s lift .
This TV sparked interest from amateur internet sleuth because of Lam ’s strange behavior : She pushes the buttons for several story at once , then appear to hesitantly poke her head into the hall and look cursorily back and forth before backing into the elevator and ducking into the corner .
The hotel elevator door does not shut . She pokes her head out again , then forget the elevator altogether . She endure to the side and gesticulates oddly with her hands as if blab to someone , though the footage does not capture anyone else . Finally , Lam leave behind the scene totally , and the elevator doors penny-pinching .
An Array of Theories
Some viewers think her deportment could be explained away as possible psychedelic drug use , while others say she could have been attempt to conceal from a pursuer . Some have evenlinked her deathto the Koreanelevator biz , a ritual of pressing buttons on an lift in a certain edict to reach another dimension .
Themost plausible explanationis that Lam hadbipolar disorder , and according to her autopsy , had only taken her prescribed stimulating medications but neither of her stabilizer . This may have led to a frenzied sequence , which can get some bipolar martyr to experience hallucinations or psychosis . If Lam had a manic installment , it ’s possible she thought someone was following her , perhaps induce her to hide in the water system tankful for safety .
This does n’t satisfy everyone , however . The hotel ’s water tanks are not easy to access ; the crime scene is on the roof of the Cecil , and only hotel staff keys unlock the door to the roof . Lam could have used the fire escape to get onto the roof , but those trigger dismay ; hotel faculty say they never heard the alarms go off . Also , the openings to the urine tank are 10 human foot ( 3 measure ) up and require a ravel to pass on , but there were none around the night Lam ended up in spite of appearance .
The Notorious Cecil Hotel
Then there ’s the Cecil itself , a hotel with astoried and sanguineous repute . Infamous serial killer Richard Ramirez — aka the Nightstalker — exist there in 1984 while he killed 13 people . There were also several suicides , include one where the dupe settle on top of a walker , killing them both .
This grisly past only helped fuel the extrasensory possibility , buttressed by Lam ’s unsettling doings in the video recording . Even the footage itself is a direction ofsome cabal theorists , who allege that the time stamp in the bottom of the frame skip forward , as if a minute of footage were removed . It is also noted that at prison term while Lam appear to speak to someone , her backtalk is pixelated , blot out her words .
Finally , in an even more bizarre coincidence , it was discovered that a T.B. test was being contemplate nearby the Cecil . The name of the test ? LAM - ELISA . While nothing has been find out connecting Lam or her dying with the tuberculosis study , this was just one more in a serial of strange fortune that ensures that Elisa Lam ’s death has been a source of captivation and guess for over a decade .
