by Lise LaSalle
Elisa Lam was a 21-year-old Canadian tourist who was found dead in a downtown Los Angeles hotel’s rooftop water tank in February 2013. Lam was from Vancouver, British Columbia and had traveled alone to Los Angeles on January 26, 2013, intending to stay a few days before making her way to Santa Cruz, California. She was last seen on January 31, 2013 by workers at the hotel, but on February 19, a maintenance worker found her body in one of the four 8-feet-tall, 4-foot diameter tanks on the hotel roof. A crew had gone to check the tanks because some of the hotel patrons were complaining of low water pressure.
Authorities had searched the roof of the hotel earlier during an investigation into her disappearance but had not opened the four cisterns. It was not even considered a possibility at the time.
The historic Cecil Hotel was located near Skid Row and it did not take long for the mystery to take a turn for the occult when Elisa was found dead because of the strange circumstances surrounding the event and of a surveillance video of Lam inside an elevator pushing buttons and behaving oddly.
Authorities ruled in June 2013 that her death was an accident. The only explanation offered for her being found in a very difficult to access
water tank was that she was bipolar and probably ended up falling or placing herself on purpose in the cistern. The bothersome aspect of this theory is that the workers had to cut the tank open to remove Lam’s body. I have a hard time comprehending how she accessed the tank because the rooftop area was locked and protected by an alarm system. The tank she was found in had unlocked openings but it looked difficult to climb into and she would have had to shut the lid on her own.
The coroner report indicated that the medical examination found no visible signs of trauma on her body and toxicology tests were negative for factors leading to her death. So the conclusion was that her drowning was accidental and her bipolar disorder was considered a ‘’significant condition.’’
The footage of Lam in the elevator is also very odd and when you watch her hand gestures and how long the elevator stays open, it raises questions. But it can probably be explained by her mental state and the fact that she may have pushed several buttons causing the ride to remain in place. Is she spooked by something or in the throes of a mental meltdown? I would tend to think she was having an episode and being alone at the Cecil in LA might have aggravated her condition.
As troubling as it is, we probably can chalk her actions to mental illness and not to the Shining. But for adepts of the Twilight Zone and Hitchcock, there is plenty about this story to let your mind wanders to the dark side. So if you are looking to hang your hat on a murder mystery, Lam’s death contains all the right elements:
The Cecil Hotel has a history of spooky events. Serial killer Richard Ramirez, known as the “Night Stalker,” lived on the hotel’s 14th floor for several months in 1985. Johann “Jack” Unterweger is another serial killer who lived in the hotel in 1991. A woman was found dead in 1964 after her room was ransacked and she was stabbed, strangled, and raped by an unknown assailant. A number of suicides happened at the hotel while patrons leaped from their windows, including a woman who jumped from the 9th floor in 1962 and killed a man walking below.
Lam’s death resembles a murder mystery plot. The movie Dark Water tells the story of a young woman found drowned in a hotel water tank. A scene in the movie depicts an elevator malfunctioning, and a character named Cecilia. Cecilia is damn similar to Cecil if you want to go there.
The name of a medical test is similar to the victim’s name. Shortly after Elisa Lam’s body was found, national health experts were called to Skid Row near the hotel to investigate a deadly persistent tuberculosis outbreak that local health officials called the largest in a decade. Thousands of people might have been exposed to TB and the test to diagnose tuberculosis was the LAM-ELISA.
It sounds very creepy and the elevator scene is chilling but it is no doubt a malfunctioning elevator causing a poor girl some grief. But it could easily had made her a target to a stalker or killer. It is in fact, very hard to believe that she climbed into one of the tanks willingly when she was so manic and scared. Plus, how would she have known that this tank was unlocked. Luck of the draw?
Elisa could have been frightened because of paranoia but she might have been scared of someone. Let’s not forget that the Cecil was crawling with very strange long-term residents who might have noticed the poor girl. The staff having access to the roof should also have been questioned more thoroughly.
If she was suicidal, it would have been easier for her to jump from a window or take all her pills instead of climbing to the roof. This girl was scared to go in the elevator and she would have made her way to the roof and climb on a steep cistern’s ladder?
The access to the roof was through a door connected to an alarm but it was not the only way; there was an emergency fire escape to the roof off a fifteenth floor window. It means that Lam would have had to open that window to climb up. But it is difficult to imagine that she would have done it without being coaxed or directed by another individual because of her demeanor in the elevator. Someone had to have noticed her and she became an easy target.
Elisa had a blog, a Facebook page and a Twitter and Tumbler account. Those who read her information recall that she suffered from bipolar disorder and manic depression. From all accounts, she was an excellent writer who made you feel deeply about her depression and life’s predicaments. She used to be into fashion but after falling prey to the disease, she stayed in her room for 3 years, unable to motivate herself to work or go to College. She felt lost but after the right medication, she quit her blog stating ‘’this is going to stay as a reminder of what I was thinking.’’
She went on to get a part time job, planned to return to university and to travel to make up for wasting her time all those years. She had 
been to Toronto and wanted to visit Europe. She probably ended up in this sleazy LA hotel because the price was right, but it is unsettling. She was into the arts so the retro style of the place might have been attractive for this young soul who might not have known its shady past.
The Cecil became the heartbreak hotel for Lam’s parents who are suing its owners. Their lawyer requested all the videos and a list of the sexual offenders that resided there at the time.
Their daughter was found naked at the bottom of the tank and her clothes were nowhere to be found and they want an explanation. It is conducive to the theory of another party being involved. Maybe she fell in naked but the idea of her walking around the hotel in this condition requires a leap of logic. I also read that she was found naked and that her clothes and watch were retrieved from the bottom of the tank. It is difficult to differentiate between facts and fiction in this case, but even if her clothes were in the cistern, it would have to mean she went in and disrobed and removed her watch or she brought her personal effects when she was climbing and she jumped in. It sounds so illogical that it is surprising that the police did not declare it a suspicious death right away.
She could easily have been stalked and attacked but it seems that her mental illness and the possibility that she stopped taking her meds, were a recipe for disaster. Being in a strange hotel alone might have triggered psychosis. I hope that her parents will get the answers they need to get closure.
In the meantime, a movie project is already in the works and the conspiracy theories abound, and I do not think that LAPD is losing sleep over this case.