A body recovered from a water tank atop the 

Cecil Hotel in Downtown Los Angeles on February

19, 2013, was identified as that of Elisa Lam, also known by her Cantonese name, Lam Ho
Yi (藍可兒; April 30, 1991[1] – February 2013), a Canadian student at the University of British
Columbia in Vancouver.[2] She had been staying at the hotel when she was reported missing at
the beginning of the month. A maintenance worker discovered the body when investigating guest
complaints of problems with the water supply and pressure.
Her disappearance had been widely reported; interest had increased five days prior to the
discovery of her body when the Los Angeles Police Department released a video of the last time
she was known to have been seen, on the day of her disappearance, by an elevator security
camera in the Cecil Hotel. In the footage, Lam is seen exiting and re-entering the elevator, talking
and gesturing in the hallway outside, and sometimes seeming to hide within the elevator. The
video went viral on the internet, with many viewers reporting that they found it unsettling.
Explanations ranged from claims of paranormal involvement to bipolar disorder, for which Lam
took medication. It has also been argued that the video was altered prior to release. [3]
The circumstances of Lam's death, once she was found, also raised questions, especially in light
of the hotel's history in relation to other notable deaths and murders. Her body was naked[4] with
most of her clothes and personal effects floating in the water near her. [4] It took the Los Angeles
County Coroner's office four months, after repeated delays, to release the autopsy report, which
reports no evidence of physical trauma and states that the manner of death was accidental.
[5]
 Guests at the Cecil, now re-branded as Stay on Main, sued the hotel over the incident and
Lam's parents filed a separate suit later that year; the latter was dismissed in 2015. Some of the
early Internet interest noted what were considered to be unusual similarities between Lam's
death and the 2002 horror film Dark Water.[2] The case has since been referenced in
international popular culture. It was the subject of Crime Scene: The Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel,
a four-part 2021 Netflix docuseries.

Contents

 1Background
 2Disappearance
o 2.1Elevator video
 3Discovery of body
 4Other issues
 5Litigation
 6In popular culture
 7See also
 8References
 9External links

Background
Lam, the daughter of immigrants from Hong Kong,[6][7] was a student at the University of British
Columbia[2] although she was not registered at the beginning of 2013. [8]
The Cecil, where Lam spent her last week

For her trip to California, Lam traveled alone on Amtrak and intercity buses.[1] She visited the San
Diego Zoo and posted photos taken there on social media. [9] On January 26, she arrived in Los
Angeles. After two days, she checked into the Cecil Hotel,[10] near downtown's Skid Row.[11] Lam
was initially assigned a shared room on the hotel's fifth floor; however, her roommates
complained about what the hotel's lawyer would later describe as "certain odd behavior" and
Lam was moved to a room of her own after two days.[10]
Built as a business hotel in the 1920s, the Cecil had significant financial difficulties during
the Great Depression of the 1930s and never recaptured its original market as
downtown decayed around it in the late 20th century. Several of Los Angeles' more notable
murders have happened at or have connections to the hotel: in 1964, Goldie Osgood, the
"Pigeon Lady of Pershing Square," was raped and murdered in her room at the Cecil, a crime
that has never been solved.[12] Serial killers Jack Unterweger and Richard Ramirez both resided
at the Cecil while active.[13] There have also been suicides, one of which also killed a pedestrian
outside the front entrance of the hotel.[14] After recent renovations, it has tried to market itself as
a boutique hotel, but the reputation lingers.[15] "The Cecil will reveal to you whatever it is you're a
fugitive from," says Steve Erickson, a journalist who spent a night in the hotel after Lam's death.
[14]

Lam had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder and depression. She had been prescribed four
medications—Wellbutrin, Lamictal, Seroquel[16] and Effexor[17]—to treat her disorders. According to
her family, who supposedly kept her history of mental illness a secret,[3] Lam had no history
of suicidal ideations or attempts,[16] although one report claimed she had previously gone missing
for a brief period.[3]
In mid-2010,[18] Lam began a blog named Ether Fields on Blogspot.[3] Over the next two years, she
posted pictures of models in fashionable clothing and accounts of her life, particularly her
struggle with mental illness. In a January 2012 blog post, Lam lamented that a "relapse" at the
start of the current school term had forced her to drop several classes, leaving her feeling "so
utterly directionless and lost." She titled her post, "You're always haunted by the idea you're
wasting your life" after a quotation from novelist Chuck Palahniuk. She used that quote as
an epigraph for her blog. Lam worried that her transcript would look suspicious with so many
withdrawals and that it would result in her being unable to continue her studies and
attend graduate school.[19]
A little over two years after Lam had started blogging, she announced she would be abandoning
her blog for another she had started on Tumblr, "Nouvelle-Nouveau".[20] Its content mostly
consisted of fashion photos, quotes and a few posts in Lam's own words. The same Palahniuk
quotation was used as an epigraph. [20]

Disappearance
Lam contacted her parents in British Columbia every day while traveling. On February 1, 2013,
the day she was scheduled to check out of the Cecil and leave for Santa Cruz, her parents did
not hear from her and called the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD); her family flew to Los
Angeles to help with the search.[21][22]
Hotel staff who saw Lam that day said she was alone. Outside the hotel, Katie Orphan, manager
of a nearby bookstore, was the only person who recalled seeing her that day. "She was outgoing,
very lively, very friendly" while getting gifts to take home to her family, Orphan told CNN. "[She
was] talking about what book she was getting and whether or not what she was getting would be
too heavy for her to carry around as she traveled," Orphan added. [23]
Police searched the hotel to the extent that they legally could. They searched Lam's room and
had dogs go through the building, including the rooftop, but the canines were unsuccessful in
detecting her scent. "But we didn't search every room," Sgt. Rudy Lopez said later, "we could
only do that if we had probable cause" to believe a crime had been committed. [11] On February 6,
a week after Lam had last been seen, the LAPD decided more help was needed. Flyers with her
image were posted in the neighborhood and online. It brought the case to the public's attention
through the media.[1]

Elevator video

The elevator video, to the point where Lam leaves without returning

On February 15, after another week with no sign of Lam, the LAPD released a video of the last
known sighting of her taken in one of the Cecil's elevators by a video surveillance camera on
February 1.[11][16] In approximately two and a half minutes of footage, Lam, alone, makes unusual
moves and gestures, leaving the elevator at one point while its doors remain open, even after
she appears to have pressed every button. When the doors fail to close after she returns, she
leaves; the doors close later.[24]
The video drew worldwide interest in the case due to Lam's strange behavior, and has been
extensively analyzed and discussed.[24] It was reposted widely, including on the Chinese video-
sharing site Youku, where it got 3 million views and 40,000 comments in its first 10 days. Many of
the commentators found it unsettling to watch.[25]
Several theories evolved to explain her actions. One was that Lam was trying to get the elevator
car to move in order to escape from someone who was pursuing her. [25] Others suggested that
she might be under the influence of ecstasy or some other party drug, but none was detected in
her body.[26] When her bipolar disorder became known, the theory that she was having
a psychotic episode also emerged.[3]
Other viewers argued that the video had been tampered with before being made public. Besides
the obscuring of the timestamp, they claimed, parts had been slowed down and nearly a minute
of footage had been discreetly removed. This could have been done simply to protect the identity
of someone who otherwise would be in the video, but had little or nothing to do with the case, or
to conceal evidence if Lam's disappearance and death had been the result of a criminal act. [3]

Discovery of body
During the search for Lam, guests at the hotel began complaining about low water pressure.
Some later claimed their water was colored black and had an unusual taste. [27] On the morning of
February 19, Santiago Lopez, a hotel maintenance worker, found Lam's body in one of four
1,000-gallon (3,785 L) tanks located on the roof providing water to guest rooms, a kitchen, and a
coffee shop.[28] Through the open hatch he saw Lam lying face-up in the water. [29] The tank was
drained and cut open since its maintenance hatch was too small to accommodate equipment
needed to remove Lam's body.[16][28]
On February 21, the Los Angeles coroner's office issued a finding of accidental drowning,
with bipolar disorder as a significant factor.[30] The full coroner's report, released in June,[3] stated
that Lam's body had been found naked;[16] clothing similar to what she was wearing in the
elevator video was floating in the water, coated with a "sand-like particulate." Her watch and
room key were also found with her.[30]
Lam's body was moderately decomposed and bloated. It was mostly greenish, with some
marbling evident on the abdomen and skin separation evident. There was no evidence of
physical trauma, sexual assault,[30][31] or suicide.[30] Toxicology tests showed traces consistent with
prescription medication found among her belongings, plus nonprescription drugs such
as Sinutab and ibuprofen.[32] A very small quantity of alcohol (about 0.02 g%) was present, but no
other recreational drugs.[33] Investigators and experts have however noted that the concentration
of her prescription drugs in her system indicated that she was under-medicating or had stopped
taking her medications recently.[34][35]

Other issues
The investigation had determined how Lam died, but did not initially offer an explanation as to
how she got into the tank in the first place. Doors and stairs that access the hotel's roof are
locked, with only staff having the passcodes and keys, and any attempt to force them would
supposedly have triggered an alarm.[36] The hotel's fire escape could have allowed her to bypass
those security measures;[14] her scent trail was lost near a window that connected to it. A video
posted to the Internet by a Chinese user after Lam's death showed that the hotel's roof was
easily accessible via the fire escape and that two of the lids of the water tanks were open. [37]
Apart from the question of how she got on the roof, others asked if she could have gotten into the
tank by herself. All four tanks were 4-by-8-foot (1.2 by 2.4 m) cylinders propped up on concrete
blocks;[38] there was no fixed access to them and hotel workers had to use a ladder to look at the
water. They were protected by heavy lids that would be difficult to replace from within. [3] The hotel
employee who found the body said that the lid was open at the time, [34] removing the issue of how
she could have closed the lid from inside. Police dogs that searched through the hotel for Lam,
even on the roof, shortly after her disappearance was noted, did not find any trace of her, [11]
Theories arose pertaining to the elevator video. Some argued that she was attempting to hide
from a pursuer, perhaps someone ultimately responsible for her death, while others said she was
merely frustrated with the elevator's apparent malfunction. [3] Some proponents of the theory that
she was under the influence of illicit drugs are not dissuaded by their absence from the
toxicology screen, suggesting that they might have broken down during the period of time her
body decomposed in the tank or that she might have taken rare cocktails of such drugs that a
normal screen would not detect.[3] The very low level of her prescription drugs in her system, and
the amount of pills left in her prescription bottle, suggested she was under-medicating or had
recently stopped taking her medication for bipolar disorder, which might have led to a psychotic
episode.[34][39]
The autopsy report and its conclusions were also questioned based on the incomplete
information. For instance, it does not say what the results of the rape kit and fingernail kit were or
even if they were processed.[3] It also records subcutaneous pooling of blood in Lam's anal area,
[30]
 which some observers suggested was a sign of sexual abuse; one pathologist noted it could
also have resulted from bloating in the course of the body's decomposition, [3] and her rectum was
also prolapsed.[40] Even the coroner's pathologists appeared to be ambivalent about their
conclusion that Lam's death was accidental.[3]
Since her death, her Tumblr blog was updated, presumably through Tumblr's Queue option that
allows posts to automatically publish themselves when the user is away. Her phone was not
found either with her body or in her hotel room; it has been assumed to have been stolen at
some time around her death. Whether the continued updates to her blog were facilitated by the
theft of her phone, the work of a hacker, or through the Queue, is not known; nor is it known
whether the updates are related to her death.[3]