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The story of the mysterious disappearance and tragic death of Elisa Lam has created a lot of noise on the Internet and is well known to most of those interested in crime mysteries. However, one cannot help but admit that over the past year and a half, a certain zone of silence has developed around the circumstances of what happened; the attention of the majority turns out to be focused on some curious details, while circumstances or factors that are significant for understanding what happened, for various reasons, are beyond the scope of consideration. It is difficult to say why such a imbalance arose, but one can guess that if even lovers of paranormal mysteries joined in the analysis of what happened to Elisa Lamb, then one cannot count on clarity and adequacy of judgments.
Meanwhile, the story of the death of Elisa Lam is truly non-trivial and deserves the most careful and objective analysis. And search for analogies, if, of course, this is possible. Sometimes analogies help to understand those circumstances of events or their implicit connections that escape attention when considering a single case.
Eliza's family, consisting of a father, mother, and two daughters - Eliza and Sarah - moved in 2003 from China to Canada. Eliza, born on April 30, 1991, was barely 12 years old at that moment, and therefore the girl quickly adapted to the environment of her new country. This was partly facilitated by the fact that in Vancouver, where the family settled, there was a large Chinese diaspora (in general, numerous diasporas of people from Southeast Asia - Vietnamese, Thais, etc., have long settled in this city, there are also a lot of Indians and Pakistanis ). The family rented a small cafe in Burnaby, an eastern suburb of Vancouver, and started their own business. The daughters helped their parents; although the business was cheap, it still provided the family with some minimum income. Parents eventually bought the cafe and paid for their daughters’ education. Eliza went to work in an outerwear store, and after entering the University of British Columbia, she got a job in one of the branches of HSBC Bank.
Eliza Lam.
Among Elisa Lam's hobbies, her love for jazz and literature deserves mention. During her nine years of living in Western society, she largely accepted the rules of the life around her, although, of course, with some degree of national specificity. She did not smoke or use drugs, but could afford to drink wine or beer in company. Like many of her contemporaries, she quite actively indulged in Internet life, had an account on Tumblr (a quick messaging service), where she regularly sent small notes or comments regarding what was happening to her or around her.
Upon arrival in Canada, Eliza’s parents initially did odd jobs, but in 2006 they rented a small restaurant serving national cuisine in the Burnaby area (in the eastern part of Vancouver). Things went well and three years later they bought the eatery. This establishment can hardly be called stylish or glamorous, and the concept of “restaurant” is applicable to it with great reserve; by our Russian standards, it is more like an ordinary dining room. But it is quite consistent with the unprepossessing area surrounding it and its unprepossessing inhabitants. Even with prices of 4-6 Canadian dollars per dish, the restaurant generates a dividend sufficient for the family to make ends meet and pay for the higher education of two daughters.
The girl loved to travel, and while at school age her mother usually accompanied her on trips, as she grew older Eliza began to travel alone. She traveled several times to the United States, to the state of Washington, which borders the Canadian state of British Columbia, and in the summer of 2012 she took a trip to eastern Canada, visited Ottawa and Toronto, and saw Niagara Falls. For quite a long period of time, Eliza had been hatching a plan to visit California, visit Los Angeles, see Hollywood, so to speak, feel the energy of the place with the highest density of millionaires in the world. At the beginning of 2013, it seemed that all circumstances were favorable for such a trip - Eliza received a Christmas bonus, the semester at the university was over, and her parents did not object to the trip. In mid-December 2012, Eliza broke up with her friend and this separation served as a source of certain negative experiences, so the parents treated their daughter’s desire to “unwind a little” with understanding. In fact, let the girl rest and change the situation. Chinese families are characterized by a strong connection between generations, and Eliza in this regard remained a true Chinese - she sincerely loved her parents and they paid her the same. They called each other several times a day, and if she left Vancouver, Eliza called them daily - this was the law.
Eliza with her sister and mother on graduation day.
Eliza planned to travel through California from south to north, starting in San Diego and ending in San Francisco. The girl arrived in California on February 22, explored San Diego quite safely, and devoted one evening to going to a club with live jazz music. While in this city, she lost her smartphone, borrowed from a university friend during the trip. It didn't turn out very well, I had to buy another one.
On January 26, Eliza arrived in Los Angeles and stayed at the Cecil Hotel, a fairly large 15-story establishment, technically considered a 2-star hotel.
Cecil Hotel. Quite an American extended stay hotel.
Unlike modern hotels, focused on receiving large groups of tourists and a continuous change of clientele, the Cecil belonged to the category of “extended stay hotels” common in the United States. As a rule, these are quite old hotels, which are to some extent similar to the hostels of the Soviet era, with the only difference for the better being that they have hotel services (cleaning rooms, changing bed linen, etc.). Guests in such hotels - usually elderly people - settle in them for many years, receive a discount on room rates, do not cause much trouble to the staff and live quietly. In general, the atmosphere in such “extended stay hotels” is almost homely, the rotation of clients is not very high, the service staff knows the residents and all residents who can cause problems are known firsthand. By the way, the oldest client of the Cecil Hotel settled there in 1964 and at the time of the events described, he had been living there for almost half a century. Like Soviet hostels, on many floors of the hotel there is a "corridor system", i.e. The bathroom and shower are located in the corridor and are for common use by the residents. However, in 2007, Cecil underwent renovation and most of the rooms were renovated. At the same time, rooms on three floors received individual showers and toilets.
Hotel "Cecil" inside: foyer (so-called lobby) and standard rooms. In 2007, the hotel underwent a partial renovation and its number of rooms began to vary greatly in amenities. In the lower part of the building there are more modern and expensive rooms with individual bathrooms and toilets, and on the upper floors the rooms do not have “amenities”. This concept is somewhat reminiscent of Soviet-era hostels, with the difference, of course, that the hotel administration provides hotel services, which no one had any idea about in Soviet “dorms.”
So, Elisa Lam checked into the hotel on January 26, saying she planned to check out on February 1. From Los Angeles, she supposedly intended to head to Santa Monica, in any case, she asked the hotel workers how to get there more conveniently. On January 29, Eliza left her last entry on Tumblr, literally in a few lines, saying that she arrived in Los Angeles and stayed in a tasteless hotel. The post is about nothing...
On January 31, around noon, she called her parents for the last time, told briefly about her life and everything in her story seemed to be as usual.
But on February 1, Eliza no longer called home. And it was strange, because there was a strict agreement between her parents that she would call every day, and if there was no phone call from her daughter until the evening of the next day, they would start looking for her. After waiting all day on February 1 to no avail, Eliza’s father dialed her phone number several times. There was no answer. Then my father called the hotel reception (the hotel administrator on duty, speaking Russian). This conversation, which took place around 8 p.m., made a strange impression on Eliza’s parents: the manager on duty stated that the stay at the hotel, paid for by Elisa Lam, expired at noon on February 1 and since there was no renewal of the reservation, the staff vacated the room, moving personal belongings to the storage room. The administrator could not answer where Eliza herself was, but assured that she was not at the hotel, however, all her things were safe and would be returned to the owner without any payment upon her appearance.
This is a bit of a stupid conversation... How should the parents have reacted to what they heard?
That's right, the parents rushed headlong to the nearest headquarters of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP - Royal Canadian Mounted Police, the Canadians themselves colloquially call the employees of this organization "horsemen", although, of course, they have not been riding horses for a long time). It must be said that the RCMP is not an ordinary police force; this department also has some functions of the intelligence service, so considering a complaint about the disappearance of a Canadian citizen on the territory of another state was precisely the prerogative of the “riders.” The officer on duty helped me correctly draw up a statement, which he registered on the first day. But it is clear that work to verify it could only begin the next morning.
Police millstones in all countries of the world turn slowly, because the laws of the bureaucracy are approximately the same in Russia, the USA, and Burkina Faso. Well, maybe there is a little more bureaucracy in Burkina Faso. On February 4, the Los Angeles Police Department's Missing Persons Unit finally received a tip about a Chinese-Canadian student who had been missing since February 1, 2013. From there, the information was passed on to the Homicide and Major Crimes Unit. It is not entirely clear why this happened, because there was no information about a crime being committed against Elisa Lam. Perhaps, in this case, the police bureaucracy worked what is called “proactively,” anticipating the worst-case scenario from experience. Be that as it may, detectives from the Homicide Investigation Department, perhaps the most prestigious and competent unit in criminal investigation matters, took up the disappearance of the Canadian student.
Investigating information about the girl's strange disappearance was entrusted to detectives Wallace Tennell and Gregory Stearns, police officers with a rather remarkable past and also well-known in Los Angeles. It makes sense to tell a little about them, especially since such a story will help to understand the specific crime situation in which the “City of Angels” has been living for several decades.
Tennell has been active for many years in Los Angeles law enforcement's fight against the street gangs that have terrorized the city since the 1970s. The capital of the American film industry has long been divided into areas controlled by huge (a thousand or more people) youth groups armed to the teeth. These young bandits not only fight with each other, engage in racketeering and protect the drug trade, but are also constantly recruiting new members. Each of the gangs has its own ritual of “initiation” or “initiation” into gang members - this could be, for example, a group beating of a newcomer if we are talking about a young man, or gang rape if a girl is accepted into the gang. But a number of groups, trying to demonstrate their cruelty and uncompromisingness, offer the newcomer to kill a member of a hostile gang as an “initiation”. Very often, complete strangers become victims of such symbolic reprisals, either by chance in the path of young idiots, or unknowingly wearing a T-shirt or baseball cap in the color of an enemy gang (young idiots with automatic pistols haven’t come up with anything smarter than distinguishing each other by color - alone, for example , they dress in red and avoid black in their clothes, others, on the contrary, will never wear red, etc. How can one not recall the famous film “Kin-dza-dza” and the immortal pearl of one of its heroes - the alien Uef, who declared: “ a society deprived of the color differentiation of pants is doomed to degradation! It seems that American street bandits have already reached that cavernous degree of development that was characteristic of the inhabitants of the planet Kin-dza-dza.)
In 2002, a wave of unmotivated murders swept through Los Angeles, the victims of which were people who happened to be on the street - one of the victims was leaving a store, another was sitting with a newspaper on a chair in front of the house, the third was walking towards a car in the parking lot. All victims died from gunshot wounds caused by powerful rifled weapons, which led to suspicion of an attack by well-equipped criminals. All victims were male and their ages ranged from 12 to 72 years. Since none of the property of the victims was missing, the police immediately suspected that they were dealing with the “initiations” of youth gangs. The killers simply drove a car into an area controlled by a hostile gang, drove through the streets, looking for a victim dressed in clothes in the colors of the enemy gang, and shot him.
Following the death of the fourth victim, a task force was created to focus on investigating these crimes. Wallace Tennell actively worked in its composition. It was he who went to the media with a statement that the police department would pay $50,000 to anyone who provided information relevant to the investigation of these murders. As the number of victims grew, Tennell soon proposed increasing the reward amount and it was raised to $100 thousand.
The murders, however, did not stop and the detective raised the question of the need to once again increase the payment promised to the informant. The police department could not do this simply due to its limited resources. Then Wallace Tennell contacted some members of the City Council, who had the power to decide to pay for the services of the informant (or informants) with a special budget assignment. Surprisingly, Tennell managed to find an approach to the right people, and an amount of $250 thousand was allocated from the city budget. Information about this leaked to newspapers and on television, so that the detective’s name then spread throughout the city.
By the way, the story of the murders was never properly investigated. After $250 thousand were allocated from the city budget, the crimes stopped. In total, as part of this investigation, the deaths of 9 men, elderly people and teenagers were recorded. It is believed that the criminals stopped their attacks out of fear that they would be “turned in” by their cronies, tempted by the large amount of reward.
In May 2007, Wallace Tennell again came under increased media attention. And again in connection with a sensational investigation. This time the murder victim was the detective's son, Bryant Alexander Tennell. On May 11, he and a group of comrades headed to a small store located not far from his home in South Los Angeles. A pistol shot was fired from a passing car for no reason, the bullet hit Bryant in the head, as a result of which the young man died on the spot. Detective Tennell was the first police officer to arrive at the crime scene.
The criminals were found, they turned out to be members of one of the street gangs, and the murder was the very rite of “initiation into bandits” that Tennell unsuccessfully fought in 2002. The car was driven by 23-year-old Derrick Victor Stark, already considered an experienced “foreman” and mentor to the younger generation of renegades, and the gun was fired by Devin Stephen Davic, a bastard who wanted to get the position of gang killer. At that time he had just turned 17 years old. Three years later - in April 2010 - he was sentenced to life in prison plus 25 years without parole. Although Devin Davis was a minor at the time of the murder, Detective Wallace Tennell asked the judge to treat the killer as an adult. The detective spoke about the criminal something like this: “he considered himself old enough to hold a gun, so let him bear responsibility as an adult!” As can be seen from the verdict, the judge agreed with Wallace Tennel, which only added sensationalism to this story.
The track record of Gregory Stearns is not without interesting episodes. This detective gained notoriety due to his participation in the investigation of the murder of Sherri Rasmussen, which occurred on February 24, 1986. Sherri was brutally beaten and then shot with a .38 caliber pistol. Policewoman Stephanie Ilene Lazarus, who was in conflict with the deceased over her former lover John Ruetten, came under suspicion. Shortly before her death, Sherry told her father about the threats against her from Lazarus and her father, of course, reported this to the investigation. However, in 1986, the search took a different path: the assumption of an attempted robbery of Sherry Rasmussen began to be considered as the main version. The deceased drove an expensive BMW and wore jewelry that could be mistaken for diamonds. In the area where the crime took place, suspicious persons were seen hanging around shops for no apparent purpose. The investigation focused on finding them. This path led nowhere and in the end the investigation stalled.
In 2009, the old materials were sent for re-examination to the Homicide and Violent Crimes Unit, where they fell into the hands of Greg Stearns and his partner Dan Jaramillo.
Gregory Stearns (right) and Dennis Jaramillo (left), detectives with the Los Angeles Police Department's Homicide and Violent Crimes Unit, unraveled the 2009 cold murder of Sherry Rasmussen, committed almost a quarter century earlier. This investigation brought them national fame. And in February 2013, Greg Stearns took part in another sensational investigation - the disappearance of Elisa Lam.
Detectives most carefully studied all the materials from 23 years ago, checked all imaginable “threads” and “clues”. Their attention was attracted by a seemingly insignificant circumstance - the deceased was bitten on the chest by the attacker. And the medical examiner took a swab from the bite site in the hope of establishing the blood type of the bitten person, if only his gums were bleeding. This examination in 1986 did not produce a result, but the detectives knew well that the expert should take half of the tampon for examination, and should keep the second as a control sample. After contacting the evidence warehouse, they discovered that the biological samples seized during Sherri Rasmussen's autopsy were still stored in the refrigerator. Among them was half a tampon, on which (at least theoretically) the saliva of the person who bit Sherry could remain.
What happened next was a matter of forensic technology. Biological material was actually found on the tampon, from which DNA was extracted that matched the DNA of... Stephanie Lazarus! On June 5, 2009, the LAPD veteran was arrested and charged with murder. At the same time, someone in the police leadership clearly sought to hush up the matter - Lazarus was not fired, but was sent on a multi-month vacation, and for some time the vacation was with salary retained! The situation, you must admit, looked strange - the police madam is sitting behind bars, and the Police Department is paying her money for it... The police union began to raise money in order to post bail and achieve Lazarus' release before trial. The lady behind bars, charged with first-degree murder, had police experience and, in the end, she was honored to retire (when you learn this, you involuntarily remember the complaints about “corruption in the ranks of the Russian police”)! Sensing where the case was heading, the judge set an incredibly high bail amount - $10 million - so that Lazarus was unable to be released on bail and was left “cuckooing on her bunk.”
The scandal spread across the whole country; perhaps all the major news publications wrote about the “Lazarus case,” and television companies devoted their reports to it more than once or twice. In May 2012, Stephanie Lazarus was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole for the first 27 years (i.e. until 2039). Gregory Stearns has deservedly gained national fame and there is absolutely nothing to reproach him for.
And so, in early February 2013, Wallace Tennell and Greg Stearns received a report about the disappearance of Chinese-Canadian student Elisa Lam in Los Angeles. Where did they start? That's right, on February 5 they went to the Cecil Hotel, where the missing woman lived and where her things were supposed to be.
An examination of the items allowed the detectives to draw some preliminary conclusions. First, the fact that they were all kept tightly closed and sealed with duct tape made it highly likely that a police dog trained to recognize scents would be used to track Eliza down. The things clearly retained the scent of the owner, and a trained dog could find the trail left by her. Secondly, the presence of a cosmetic bag with medicines among the missing girl’s belongings, of which there turned out to be quite a lot, did not escape the detectives’ attention. This gave rise to a completely justified question about the state of her health and possible drug abuse. Finally, thirdly, by the presence of a suitcase and a large handbag, one could confidently say that Eliza did not leave the hotel, in other words, she did not move to another place, leaving unnecessary junk at the Cecil. The hotel left jeans, T-shirts, socks, personal hygiene items and other things needed in everyday life. The fact that the owner has not yet tried to get these things back gave rise to very gloomy assumptions about her fate.
On the same day, two dog handlers with dogs were called to the hotel and began inspecting the building. With the help of dogs, a room on the fourth floor was examined, in which the missing girl lived until February 1. The room was already occupied by another occupant, but this did not present any particular difficulties for the dogs, who could smell even small streaks of dried blood. However, this inspection did not give any reason to suspect that a corpse could have recently been lying in Elisa Lam’s room or that bloodshed had taken place.
The search then expanded to “public places,” in Russian housing and communal services terms. Among these, the technical floor located above the topmost residential floor was inspected (this floor was the thirteenth, but was numbered as the fourteenth. The thirteenth floor did not exist in the hotel. The technical floor located above it was considered the fifteenth, although in fact it was fourteenth). It was possible to get to this floor by elevator, but there was no way to get out of the elevator without a special key. However, this floor has been inspected. Of course, the roof of the hotel was also inspected with the help of dogs, the exit to which was also locked with an electronic lock, the opening of which was recorded on the alarm panel of the hotel security service. Although there was no data on unauthorized opening or breaking of locks on the doors leading to the roof and technical floor during the period January 31 - February 5, the police apparently decided to play it safe. However, search efforts carried out using dogs on February 5 did not yield any results - the fate of Elisa Lam still remained unclear.
At the same time, while police were actively scouring the building, detectives Wallace Tennell and Greg Stearns seized video footage from surveillance cameras installed in the hotel. A similar operation followed with video recordings of ATMs located in the lobby and nearby buildings. Finally, footage from street surveillance cameras located in the blocks adjacent to the Cecil Hotel was added to the video archive. It could not be ruled out that Eliza had become the victim of some kind of incident outside the hotel, say, an accident or a robbery on the street. Detectives had to analyze at least 800 hours of video recordings dating back to January 31 and February 1.
The activity of the Los Angeles police at the Cecil Hotel could not go unnoticed. The very next day, the first reports about the search for a Canadian student who had disappeared some time ago appeared in the news of local radio stations and television channels. This information immediately attracted the attention of the Internet audience both due to the unusualness of the missing girl herself (a Canadian citizen originally from China who disappeared in Los Angeles, the capital of the world film industry!), and the mystery of what happened. Already on February 6, the first discussions about this phantasmagoric story began on the Internet, and very soon numerous communities appeared, “tailored” for such a discussion. As time passed, more and more new participants were involved in this interested communication, and soon the story of the mysterious disappearance of Elisa Lam reached the top of the Chinese and American segments of the World Wide Web. With some delay, this topic found its place in RuNet, although it should be immediately recognized that discussions in the Russian-language segment, for obvious reasons, were secondary in relation to the American one.
I apologize in advance to Encore for encroaching on its bread, but after the post about Judy Smith, I hung out on Crime Fiction and found this story.
Man is amazingly structured - everything that frightens us, that defies our understanding, attracts us with the same force. We are afraid of pain, but throughout our history we have invented thousands of ways to inflict it on our own kind; we are afraid of death, but in the Middle Ages, like kites, we flocked to the square to see it. Death itself is always incomprehensible, incomprehensible, terrible... and attractive. We have learned to understand the causes of death, but we are not able to overcome it, because death lives by its own laws, not obeying us. It is the biggest mystery of the universe. But when an old man passes away from life, we humble ourselves - a person has seen many sunsets, let him go in peace, and it’s a completely different matter when death overtakes a young person, full of hopes and desires. And it comes in a strange, mysterious, mystical way.
One of these mysterious deaths was the strange death of Elisa Lam in Los Angeles.
21-year-old Elisa Lam arrived in the City of Angels, California from Canada on January 26, 2013.
She was a fragile (wore size XS), pretty girl with jet hair and brown eyes: her height was 163 cm, weight - 46 kg. She was fluent in English and Cantonese.
Lam was traveling alone, and Los Angeles seemed to be an intermediate destination on her itinerary. As she wrote to her sister, her final destination was the city of Santa Cruz. The real purpose of her journey remains unclear to this day. She described her trip to America as a trip to gain new experiences and get rid of depression. Eliza was interested in music and photography, was a fan of the Harry Potter novels, and considered actor Ryan Gosling to be her male ideal.
According to her sister, Lam was fond of jazz, was in touch with some guy from Los Angeles on social networks and loved to visit nightclubs where her favorite jazz performers performed. However, this was not the first time she traveled, sometimes without explaining the purpose of her travels to her relatives.
Chinese by birth, Lam immigrated from China to Vancouver with her parents and younger sister a little over 9 years ago. Since September 2012, Eliza has been a first-year student at the University of British Columbia, which she was supposed to graduate by 2016.
For reference: founded in 1915, the University of British Columbia is one of the best universities and research centers in Canada. In global rankings of higher education institutions, this university ranks 40th among 17,000 universities in the world.
Studying at the university takes 4 years (of which the master's degree is 14 weeks), that is, at the time Lam arrived in Los Angeles, she had only studied at the university for a few months.
On weekends and evenings, Eliza worked as a simple saleswoman in a women's clothing store, trying to earn extra money for her family. Paying for university studies cost a tidy sum, yet the Lam family was not particularly wealthy. Having settled in Canada, hardworking immigrants rented an operating Chinese restaurant called “Blue Ocean”, where they ran their small business, which was the main “breadwinner” of the family.
According to the testimonies of the restaurant's regular customers and neighbors, the Lam family was a typically Chinese family. Leading a rather secluded lifestyle, they were always friendly, friendly, hardworking and smiling, but they did not let anyone into their lives.
Arriving in Los Angeles, Eliza decides to stay in a rather gloomy place - the Cecil Hotel. Built in 1920 at 640 S. Main Street, the Cecil Hotel was originally a luxury hotel, but was soon pushed out of the market by more expensive hotels and became a cheap, low-end hotel that barely matched the standards of service and decor. up to 3 stars. The only place where the decor fully met hotel standards was the lobby. Only here there were beautiful plants in tubs, the administration desk shone with cleanliness and order, and this was the only place with free access to WI-FI.
It is surprising that after the tragedy that happened to Eliza in this hotel, journalists will pull out the entire 90-year history of this place, declaring it a haven of evil and otherworldly forces. In fact, the hotel's bad reputation was created, firstly, by its close location to the notorious Skid Row area in Los Angeles, and secondly, by several stories of suicides that occurred there.
Indeed, the Skid Row area has long been a gathering place for alcoholics, beggars, homeless people and prostitutes who lived right on the street in cardboard boxes and tents. In the forties, about 50% of all crimes in Los Angeles were committed in the Skid Row area. And it was for this reason that in June 1947, Police Chief Clemence B. Horrall carried out a massive sweep of the area, arresting 350 homeless people. However, the area was soon again overrun by marginalized people. The homeless had nowhere to go, and after arrests they invariably returned to Skid Row. During the 40-90s of the 20th century, several attempts were made to remove the “homeless area” from the face of the city of angels, destroying the temporary homes of the “dregs of society” that lived there. But the actions of the law enforcement officers always turned out to be ineffective, and the Skid Row area continued to live its unusual, impoverished, dangerous life. In the end, after yet another destruction of homeless buildings, they filed a lawsuit against the police, accusing them of violating the rights and freedoms of ordinary American citizens. The beggars, oddly enough, won the lawsuit, and since then the city has had to come to terms with the existence of this tumor on its face.
As for the suicides committed at the hotel, they actually took place. And the reasons for this were not the ghosts and spirits that lived in the hotel, but ordinary everyday troubles, sometimes pushing people to suicide. Over the more than 90 years of its existence, 3 such events occurred at the Cecil Hotel and all of them, alas, are prosaic, investigated and do not have any mysticism in their history. This hotel was often chosen as a place to stay by people with financial and other personal problems, besides, which of the average hotels can “boast” that nothing terrible has ever happened within its walls?
For example, 50-year-old Helen Gurney, who committed suicide on October 22, 1954, jumped from the window of her seventh floor room due to a terminal illness.
Unmarried Julia Moore threw herself onto the pavement from an eighth-floor window on February 11, 1962, finding herself in a difficult financial situation, aggravated by an unexpected pregnancy from a man who refused to recognize the child as his own. And 27-year-old unbalanced Polina Otton jumped from the ninth floor after breaking up with her husband. Unfortunately, in addition to her life, she also took with her the life of 65-year-old Italian Giorgio Gianini, who was passing under the windows of the Cecil Hotel at that very moment.
In my opinion, if these events are called mysticism, then I am afraid that most of the bridges, cliffs, hotels and high-rise buildings in the world will have to be called places controlled by evil forces. In fact, all the evil committed by people is done by them of their own free will, and not under the influence of devilish voices whispering to them.
Another argument used by adherents of otherworldly forces, accusing the hotel of conspiring with the devil, is that at one time two world-famous serial killers stayed at the Cecil Hotel: the “night stalker” Richard Ramirez and the Austrian prostitute killer, journalist and crime show host Johan (Jack) Unterweger.
Jack Unterweger
For reference: Jack Unterweger, a little-known serial killer on the Internet. An Austrian, born a prostitute, raised by an alcoholic grandfather, at the age of 16 he was first arrested for attacking a prostitute. Then he was sentenced to life imprisonment for numerous crimes, including murder in 1976. But in prison he became interested in literature, editing and journalism. Having corresponded with many famous writers and journalists, he began to demonstrate “correction” and soon, as an example of the healing effect of art and literature on a crippled criminal soul, he was released in 1990. Having entered the free world, Unterweger suddenly becomes a “fashionable toy” of the Viennese elite, gaining fame, fame, connections, and therefore money. Soon Jack is invited to host a well-known crime program on television and chronicles in the most expensive printed publications. He no longer looks like an ex-convict. On the contrary, Unterweger becomes a role model for Austrian dandies, wearing expensive white suits, diamond cufflinks and driving around in luxury convertibles.
However, soon a mysterious maniac appears in Vienna, brutally killing prostitutes. “It’s funny” that it is Unterweger who writes the main articles about him. He asks to help the police and zealously helps them investigate crimes that he himself commits.
Indeed, in 1991, having received an order from one of the Austrian newspapers to write a series of articles about the crime of the city of angels, he arrived in Los Angeles and lived exclusively in cheap, gloomy hotels located close to the city's hot spots. Unterweger will spend several days of the five weeks during which he is in America at the Cecil Hotel. Despite the fact that at the time of his arrival Jack was a fairly wealthy man, the choice of cheap hotels was also determined by his desire to be closer to the places where his main victims - prostitutes - gathered. So there is no mysticism visible here either. Many serial killers choose this way of life, wanting to be closer to their “prey.” In Los Angeles, Unterweger will kill 3 prostitutes, but all these murders will have absolutely nothing to do with the Cecil Hotel itself.
A lot has already been written about Richard Ramirez, but I will only say that this terrible killer committed most of his crimes in Los Angeles and its suburbs, hanging out in various flophouses and cheap motels. So it is not surprising that the Cecil Hotel became a temporary refuge for him more than once. However, as in the case of Unterweger, Ramirez did not commit a single murder within the walls of this hotel.
As you can see, the Cecil Hotel, although it really has tragedies and ominous facts in its biography, is just an ordinary example of a cheap hotel, where, alas, criminal elements and people with a shaken psyche sometimes settle.
So, having arrived at the hotel on January 26, Elisa Lam informs the receptionist that she intends to live there until February 1, and checks into a small room on the 4th floor.
According to the testimony of hotel workers, she behaved normally, without demonstrating any strange behavior, spoke little, did not demand anything, did not take anyone to her room, and apparently spent most of her time outside the hotel walls, walking the streets of the city of angels. However, every day the diligent daughter made phone calls home to Vancouver, assuring her family that she was fine.
Eliza arrived in Los Angeles from San Diego, where, on the eve of the flight, she visited some American, apparently closed pub, the so-called speakeasy (this is how underground drinking establishments were called in America, starting from the days of Prohibition. This name comes from two English words and means “to speak quietly,” that is, it was not customary to speak out loud about such establishments). Eliza will later write to her sister that she received a lot of impressions from visiting the pub, but the feeling of a wonderful evening will be overshadowed by the unpleasant incident with the loss of her mobile phone. An interesting point is that this phone did not belong to Eliza, but was given to her for use by some friend from Vancouver, which indirectly confirms her difficult financial situation.
Over the past 4 years, Eliza has suffered from prolonged depression, which she has repeatedly written about on her blog. She had problems sleeping, and two months before arriving in Los Angeles, her boyfriend left her precisely because of the girl’s unbalanced state of mind. This loss aggravated Lam’s depressive mood; she began to write about suicide, clarifying that she did not drink alcohol or use drugs, but in her statements she did not condemn this, but said that she understood the reasons for such escapism from reality by other people.
Already in Los Angeles she arrives with a set of medications prescribed to her by the doctor to reduce the effects of depression and stabilize her mental state. The drugs included the antidepressant venlafaxine, the bipolar disorder drug lamotrigine, and the antipsychotic quetiapine, which Lam apparently used as a sleep aid. Subsequently, the police will find all these drugs in her belongings with a prescription, a doctor’s prescription and partly with empty blisters.
It was not possible to establish what Eliza did from January 26 to January 29. Only on the 29th she left a single message on Tumblr (Tumblr, a microblogging service that allows users to post text messages, images, videos, links, quotes and audio recordings):
"I arrived in Laland...
I stayed in a monstrous building.
When I say monstrous, I mean terribly tasteless.
But on the other hand, it was built in 1928, so it's almost decadent and that's cool.
I'm sure the Great Gatsby should be filmed here."
And again, no one knows how Eliza whiled away January 30th.
Only the next day, January 31, in the afternoon, the hotel staff sees her in the lobby, talking on the phone. Her parents receive a call from her in Vancouver, but what they are talking about remains a secret to the general public to this day.
It is known that it was on this day that Lam visited a bookstore with the prophetic name “Last” (“Last”), where she purchased a couple of vinyl records and several books costing a dollar. Katie Orphan, the owner of the store, remembered the strange visitor well. According to her testimony, Lam was excited and twitchy, she spent a long time choosing books, loudly repeating that the dollar was a good price that satisfied her. In general, Orphan got the impression that Eliza was a little out of her mind, attracting the eyes of customers with loud, lengthy monologues and scaring them away. It is Katie Orphan who remembers Elisa Lam last. After the girl visited the bookstore, there was not a single witness who saw Eliza Lam alive.
Beginning February 1, 2013, Lam stopped calling her family in Canada. A couple of days later, the Lam family realizes that something extraordinary has happened and files a report with the local Vancouver police about the disappearance of their daughter in Los Angeles. A week passes in international legal delays, and only on February 6 will the Los Angeles police officially begin investigating the disappearance of a Canadian citizen in her city. And the first thing they'll check is all the security footage from the hotel. By reviewing hours of footage, police will find the latest footage, dated January 31, in which Elisa Lam is clearly visible sometime between 2:00 pm and 3:00 pm.
Everyone who watched this recording will be shocked by the vision of the captured Eliza for a long time, not allowing them to forget the bizarre, incredible and strange behavior of the missing girl.
Here is the video:
Already on February 13, the film will hit YouTube and the media, causing an incredible surge of interest and discussion. Based on the video, it became obvious that Lam had some problems, but there was no explanation for her strange behavior. Someone, having viewed the recording, claimed that they saw inappropriate behavior of a person in a state of drug intoxication, someone spoke of insanity, others claimed that someone was stalking Lam.
Each of these versions had the right to life, but also raised a lot of questions. However, none of the versions explained the girl’s disappearance.
Meanwhile, residents of the Cecil Hotel increasingly began to grumble and complain to the administration about the quality of water supply in the building. It should be noted that the hotel rooms are designed in such a way that there are no showers in the rooms themselves. The room has a bathroom and a sink with water, but the bathrooms on the floors were shared, which in itself caused significant inconvenience to the residents. And then, to add to all the other constraints, the water pressure in the taps decreased significantly. Every day, the hotel management began to receive dozens of strange messages from residents that the water flows only barely, when the tap is turned on, initially it has a strange dark color and smell, and the water has acquired an unpleasant sweetish taste. It became obvious that there was some kind of breakdown in the hotel's water supply system.
It is worth at least a little understanding of the water supply system at the Cecil Hotel. Being a 15-story building, the hotel has 4 metal tanks measuring 3 m high and about one and a half meters in diameter, located on the roof of the building. Water is pumped out using pumps located in the upper side of each tank.
Photo of 4 metal tanks located on the roof of the Cecil Hotel. On the right in the photo you can see the entrance to the roof, equipped with a blocking lock.
According to security rules, only hotel staff had access to the roof, and the door to the roof itself was blocked with a digital lock. When an intruder entered, a signal about an intrusion on the roof of an intruder should have been sent to the alarm system display.
On February 19, early in the morning, the technician allegedly unlocked the door and began inspecting the water tanks. Having thrown back the loose lid on top of the tank (the lids are clearly visible in the photo and are all unfastened), in one of the tanks, to his horror, he notices a naked dead body floating upside down. The call to the police on February 19 will sound at 10.15 and within half an hour, firefighters and law enforcement officers will begin to remove the body from the tank. This process will take almost 5 hours.
The dead person will be the missing Elisa Lam, whose completely naked body somehow inexplicably ended up in the hotel’s water tank. But why was Eliza undressed? At first, this moment completely disconcerted the police, bringing to mind the sexual implications of the girl’s death. It was unclear where her clothes had gone. She didn’t end up naked on the roof of the hotel. However, after emptying the tank, at the bottom the police were able to find almost all of her clothing: a sweatshirt, a T-shirt, shorts, flip-flops and a wristwatch exactly the same as in the video filmed in the elevator.
The location of the death of the Canadian tourist caused the greatest bewilderment. How could a fragile girl end up so high, and even in a place to which access was supposedly completely blocked? A lot of questions arose about the condition of the body, the cause of death and the manner of death. Most importantly, it was completely unclear whether Elisa Lamb's death was an accident, suicide or murder. There was a huge amount of work ahead, which the police and local coroners immediately took on.
First of all, we tried to figure out exactly how to get to the roof of the hotel. As it turned out, in addition to the main entrance, one could also get to the roof through fire escapes, which the hotel is equipped with on different sides according to fire safety standards. They were accessible directly from the corridors and windows of some rooms on each floor. There were 3 such stairs.
In addition, no one could be sure that on the day of Eliza’s death the main door to the roof, which was subject to blocking, was in working order.
Of course, the hotel managers swore and swore that they always kept this system under control, not allowing it to remain open. However, any person knows that sometimes circumstances are stronger than us, and human negligence has claimed many lives through its indifference. In their right mind, none of the managers or employees of the hotel would admit to their negligence, realizing that in any case they would suffer for improper performance of professional duties. In a word, the police understood that Lam herself and a possible criminal could get onto the roof if necessary, and there were several ways to do this. Therefore, I am somewhat surprised by the opinions expressed about the impossibility of getting onto the roof of the Cecil Hotel. As you can see, this is not impossible at all.
Now the police had to find out the cause of Eliza's death in order to decide whether it was suicide, an accident or murder. All hotel employees and guests were interviewed in several visits, the police tried to find all the people who were familiar or in any way connected in the past with Eliza. But there was no evidence or evidence to support one version or another. According to the testimony of family and friends, Eliza never used drugs, and there were no apparent reasons to kill her either. However, the fact that a person has never used stimulants does not mean that this could not happen to him for the first time. And when asked about the girl’s mental health, her relatives remained silent or evasively answered that everything was fine with her. Meanwhile, the drugs found in her personal belongings told a different story, clearly indicating that the deceased had quite serious mental problems during her lifetime.
The first page of the report on the drugs found in the room.
The second page of the report on the drugs found in the room.
I will briefly describe what kind of drugs were found in Eliza’s room.
Advil is the same as ibuprofen. Anti-inflammatory, antipyretic, analgesic.
Dexedrine is the trade name for dextroamphetamine, a drug similar to amphetamine. Dextroamphetamine is used in the treatment of ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder) and narcolepsy (daytime attacks of irresistible sleepiness and attacks of sudden falling asleep, attacks of sudden loss of muscle tone while clearly conscious, disturbances in night sleep, the appearance of hallucinations). In addition, it is a recreational drug and, with prolonged use, can cause mental dependence.
Side effects:
According to studies, repeated use of dextroamphetamine causes paranoid hallucinations in humans.
Lamotrigine is an antiepileptic drug used in the treatment of epilepsy and bipolar disorders. Treatment of bipolar disorder with lamotrigine is associated with an increased risk of developing suicidal thoughts or behavior.
Quetiapine is an atypical antipsychotic used to treat chronic and acute schizophrenia, bipolar affective disorder and some other mental illnesses.
Sinutab is a vasoconstrictor drug that relieves the symptoms of colds and runny nose.
Venflaxin is an antidepressant indicated for the treatment of major depression, as well as anxiety neuroses of various etiologies.
Wellbutrin is the same as bupropion. An atypical antidepressant, similar in action to amphetamines, an antiepileptic drug, is also used to treat ADHD.
Thus, in this list we see two drugs of general use: analgesic and cold medicine. And 5 drugs used in psychiatry. With the exception of Dexedrine, all medications were prescribed by Dr. Sarah Scarfe. As it turns out later, the psychiatrist treating Eliza.
But the discovery of these drugs did not answer the main question - how the girl died. Now only Lam's body itself could help understand the cause of her death, which means an autopsy was ahead that could shed light on the mystery of her death.
The coroner's initial examination determined that Lam had fallen into the water tank while still alive. This was evidenced by many classical signs of a drowned person, and not a drowned corpse. In particular, a person who falls into the water alive will have lungs swollen with water (the so-called “balloon lungs”), because in the water the person makes breathing movements, gradually choking. The entire surface of the lungs is dotted with profuse hemorrhages. And the most reliable sign of drowning in water is the presence of finely bubbled foam mixed with blood in all respiratory organs. Also in the corpse, a lot of water is found in the stomach, small and large intestines, water transudates even into the brain. In the case of Lam’s corpse, numerous traces of blood foam were found in her respiratory organs, which indisputably proved her death in the water.
If death occurs before the person is immersed in the liquid, there will be no water in the lungs of the corpse, because the person no longer made breathing movements.
However, the foam that appears during drowning in the respiratory organs of the deceased may also appear in the event of some other incidents. In particular, such discharge can also be found by a pathologist in cases of head trauma, heart failure or drug overdose. The coroner who examined Eliza's body was able to determine that the girl had no signs of heart failure - physically her heart was completely healthy, and there were no signs of head trauma.
However, there were no suspicious marks on Lam’s body at all: there were no injuries, wounds, marks from injections or beatings, or defensive wounds. Her left knee was only slightly hurt. It was on the basis of these signs that the coroner was able to confirm that Eliza Lamb fell into the water tank alive. However, the question remained: did Lam climb into the tank on her own or could she have been placed there in an unconscious state? Only a toxicological examination could solve this dilemma.
It is known that some people who read Elisa Lam's autopsy report had other questions. In particular, there is a version that Eliza could have been raped during her lifetime. But the autopsy report gives a completely unambiguous answer to this question - no, there were no signs of violence on the deceased girl. And this fact also “played” into the version of either suicide or an accident. All that remained was to wait for a toxicological examination, which could answer whether the girl was under the influence of alcohol, pharmaceuticals or drugs at the time she got into the tank with water.
Only at the end of June 2013, the Los Angeles police would publish the results of this examination, confirming that no foreign chemicals were found in Elisa Lam’s body, which could finally convince the police that Eliza had mental disorders that led to her death. When I say “no foreign chemicals detected,” I do not mean the medications prescribed by the psychiatrist. For just traces of some of them were found in the blood and liver. But the examination failed to find traces of narcotic and toxic substances.
Found pharmaceuticals, a recording in the elevator indicating her inappropriate behavior, testimony from an ex-boyfriend and messages written by Lam herself on her personal blog and Tumblr confirmed that Elisa Lam could suffer from bipolar disorder, that is, an alternation of depressive and manic states. Apparently, Lam's depressive state in Los Angeles gave way to a manic stage. Based on the number of medications prescribed and taken by her, we can conclude that Eliza exceeded their dose, which could lead to a mental breakdown.
The video recording of Lam in the elevator shocks many when viewed, causing a state of mystical horror. Leaning low towards the elevator control panel, she haphazardly presses several buttons at once, but the elevator does not listen to her, remaining open and motionless. Meanwhile, all these points are explained quite simply and logically. Eliza suffered from myopia, but while in the elevator, she does not have glasses on, so she is forced to bend low
The Mysterious Death of Elisa Lam is a true story about the mysterious death of a girl named Eliza Lam. A Canadian student is staying at the damned Cecil Hotel. Her death attracted a lot of public attention due to her strange behavior, which was captured on CCTV footage just minutes before her death.
THE MYSTERIOUS DEATH OF ELIZA LAM
There are secrets so creepy and strange that they will haunt the mind until the end of time. Elisa Lam's story is one of them.
In February 2013, this 21-year-old student from Vancouver, Canada, was found dead on the roof of the Cecil Hotel in a water tank in Los Angeles. The coroner who performed the autopsy determined that death was the result of an accident and the girl had drowned. During the autopsy, no traces of drugs were found in her body. However, the story is not as simple as the police reports say. First of all, a careful study requires the recording of video surveillance cameras that filmed Eliza in the hotel elevator literally a few minutes before her death. Here's a video.
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The four-minute video, which can be easily found on YouTube, shows Elisa Lam pressing all the buttons on the elevator and waiting for it to move. Seeing that the elevator doors do not close, she begins to behave extremely strangely.
First, Eliza enters the elevator and starts randomly pressing all the buttons. Then she waits for something, but for some reason, the elevator doors do not close. She begins to look around as if she is waiting for someone or trying to hide from someone. At the 1:57 mark, she starts waving her hands very strangely, as if talking to someone or something... Then she leaves. The elevator doors then close and the elevator starts operating again.
Immediately after the events captured on video, Elisa walked onto the roof of the hotel, climbed into a water tank and drowned in it. Her body was found two weeks after her death, after hotel guests began complaining about the strange taste and color of the water. Incredible.
Having seen the CCTV footage, most people would have concluded that the girl was under the influence of drugs. However, Eliza did not use drugs, as evidenced by the autopsy results. When you start studying Elisa Lam's story in more detail, things get even more confusing.
The Dark History of the Cecil Hotel
Built in the 1920s, the Cecil Hotel was intended to serve as a haven for wealthy individuals and businessmen who might stay in Los Angeles for a day or two. However, the hotel was soon overshadowed by other more glamorous hotels. The hotel is located in a disadvantaged area of Skid Row, and soon the owners had to change their policy, renting out rooms for a long period at low prices. The hotel's reputation quickly declined when cases of numerous murders and suicides that took place within the hotel's walls became known, as well as the fact that famous serial killers lived there.
Part of the dark history of the Cecil Hotel were two famous maniacs, Richard Ramirez and Jack Unterweger.
Ramirez, nicknamed the “Night Stalker,” a maniac, lived at the Cecil Hotel in 1985, in a room on the top floor. He rented it for only $14 a day. While remaining undetected, he was able to kill 13 women. He hid his bloody clothes in a trash can in the evenings, and then returned to his lair through the back door.
Jack Unterweger, also a notorious maniac, was a European journalist who reported on Los Angeles crime for an Austrian magazine in 1991. He settled at the Cecil Hotel, as if paying tribute to Ramirez.
He was accused of killing three prostitutes in Los Angeles during his stay at the Cecil Hotel.
Richard Ramirez and Jack Unterweger
In the 50s and 60s, the Cecil Hotel became famous as the site of suicides who jumped from the hotel windows.
Helen Gurney, a woman in her 50s, jumped from a seventh floor window to her death on a hotel overhang on October 22, 1954.
Polina Otton, 27 years old, jumped from a ninth floor window after an argument with her estranged husband on October 12, 1962. Ottone fell on George Gianinni, 65, who was walking along the sidewalk. Both died on the spot.
There was also a murder of a guest at the hotel. Osgood, nicknamed “Pigeon Goldie,” a retired telephone operator who was known as the protector and feeder of pigeons in a nearby park, was found dead in his hotel room on June 4, 1964. He was stabbed, strangled and raped. This crime remains unsolved.
Elisa Lam's case is just another horrific chapter in the hotel's history, and we're left wondering what the hell is going on in this place?
Mystical coincidences
Another interesting fact is that Elisa Lam's case is remarkably similar to the plot of the 2005 horror film “Dark Waters.”
Dahlia, the film's protagonist, moves into an apartment complex with her young daughter, Cecilia.
Both names are symbolic and echo real life. Black Orchid (Black Dahlia) is the nickname given to Elizabeth Short, a woman who was the victim of a grisly murder in 1947 - believed to be a ritualistic murder. She is said to have been at the Cecil Hotel and drinking in a nearby bar shortly before she was killed.
The name of the daughter Cecilia, in the film, surprisingly echoes the name of the hotel “Cecile”.
After moving into a new apartment, Dalia notices dark water flowing from the ceiling into their apartment. In the end, the woman discovers that a girl named Natasha Rimski drowned in a water tank on the roof of their house, which is why the water turned dark. The building owner knew about this but took no action. Elisa Lam's body also remained in the water tank for two weeks until residents began complaining about the “dark water.”
The ending of the film is also frighteningly juxtaposed with reality. In a malfunctioning apartment building elevator, the ghost of Cecilia's mother braids her hair.
Was Elisa Lam the victim of one of the ritual murders, where the killer mirrored the plot of a Hollywood film?
Another strange coincidence. Shortly after Elisa Lam's body was discovered, a deadly outbreak of tuberculosis occurred in the Skid Row area near the hotel. You probably won't believe it, but the medical term for tuberculosis testing that is used in such situations is LAM-ELISA. This is just an incredible coincidence.
Unsolved mystery
Los Angeles authorities ruled in June 2013 that Elisa Lam's death was an accident and that Elisa was likely insane when she committed suicide.
However, this formulation does not provide answers to all questions. How did Eliza, who was supposedly out of her mind, end up getting to the water tanks, which are very difficult to access? How did she get on the roof? And how did she close the lid of the water tank?
As is usually the case, the authorities did not share the results of the investigation into such a strange death. What really happened? Why are there so many mysterious coincidences? Why did Elisa Lam act so strangely in the elevator? This whole story is literally surrounded by mystical secrets, and the authorities, it seems, simply did not want to get involved in this.
We want to end this article with a slogan from the movie “Dark Waters”:
“Some mysteries are not meant to be solved.”
FavoritesSo I will sometimes add them out of interest)
Elisa Lam is a 21-year-old Chinese-Canadian visiting Los Angeles who became famous thanks to a strange video recorded by a security camera in the elevator of the Cecile Hotel on January 31, 2013. After this recording, the girl disappeared. The video, which preserved the last moments of her life, shows Eliza pressing all the elevator buttons, but the elevator does not close, and then we see Eliza hiding from someone. Then she gets out of the elevator, looks around, runs into the elevator, presses the buttons, but the elevator again does not want to close the doors. Minutes pass, Eliza exits the elevator and the doors close. We don't see her anymore.
Security camera video in the elevator!
Traces of Eliza were discovered on February 19, when hotel guests began to complain to staff about the quality of the water. The liquid in the taps darkened, the pressure weakened, and a strange taste appeared. Employees climbed to the roof where the water supply system is located in American high-rise buildings. There, in a tightly closed tank, a naked Eliza was found, for whom her parents had been looking for two weeks with the police at that time. They came to the United States when their daughter stopped calling and sending emails.
The story of poor Eliza resembles either a Japanese horror film, or a real Hollywood thriller with many unknowns, or the beginning of a mystical novel about, for example, a global Illuminati conspiracy. Here are some versions!
Murder - accidental or planned.
Some Internet users claim that Eliza's inappropriate behavior in the elevator is the result of drug or alcohol intoxication. At home, in Canada, the girl did not drink and was not interested in illegal substances. Perhaps, in five days in such a nest of depravity as Los Angeles, she managed to get into bad company, who treated her to drugs.
According to this version, it was with new acquaintances - or with the characters of drug hallucinations - that Eliza talked as she ran out of the elevator. Once on the roof with the “company,” she could somehow upset her companion or companions, and she was drowned in the tank. One should suspect here, first of all, the Cecil staff, because only they could have direct access to the tanks and ladders.
But the case fell apart - not a single suspect could be identified. Interesting results also came from the pathologist. According to him, no known drugs, hallucinogens, or alcohol were found in the tourist’s tissues. Also, no traces of any violence against her were found: there were no blows, abrasions, or signs of a struggle. Moreover, it was established that death occurred in the water - she choked, but did not try to avoid it. The extract from Toronto states that she was not registered and was not seen in subcultural associations, did not express a desire to commit suicide, etc.
Based on the results of the autopsy, a decision was made - the case was closed, the death was declared an accident. How Eliza got on the roof, how to explain her strange behavior before her disappearance - and, apparently, death - the police are no longer interested in all these questions.
Suicide
Many researchers of this case are confident that Eliza suffered from schizophrenia or another mental disorder, although her relatives do not confirm this version. This is evidenced by the girl’s unusual behavior in the video and several blog entries. Besides, no one she knows in Vancouver knows why she suddenly went to California alone. According to doctors, the symptoms of schizophrenia can be hidden until a certain time and appear under stress.
One of the last photos of Elisa Lam: a self-portrait in the toilet of the Cecil Hotel
However, recently in her diary on the blog site Tumblr.com, Eliza wrote that she was managing to get rid of depression. She characterized her trip to the USA as a trip to lift her spirits, new experiences, and stories. Eliza loved fashion and music, took a lot of photographs, was a fan of the Harry Potter novels and actor Ryan Gosling, and communicated on the Internet. If it was suicide, it was not planned. In addition, she could not climb to the roof on her own, find and set up a ladder, or open and close the tank.
One of Eliza's last selfies at the hotel.
Mystical death
This option is followed by fans of Japanese horror, who are expecting the imminent appearance of Eliza's ghost in the hotel corridors. The Asian girl who drowned in a water tank on the roof is a character from the famous horror novel Dark Waters by Koji Suzuki. In the book, little Mitsuko accidentally falls into a tank when left unattended and becomes a ghost terrorizing the residents of a high-rise building. In the American film adaptation of "Dark Waters" - let's note the second coincidence - one of the heroines is called Cecilia.
Illuminati sacrificial ritual
The day Eliza disappeared, January 31, is the eve of Imbolc, a pagan festival celebrated on February 1-2. At Imbolc, the turning point between winter and spring, ancient priestly religions performed rituals involving human sacrifices to please their gods. This fact opens up a string of amazing details about the death of Elisa Lam, from which the skin is covered with goosebumps. Details from the present and the distant past...
Let's start with the person of serial killer Richard Ramirez, who stayed at this hotel in 1985. He is known as a Satanist - some of his 14 victims after death were subjected to abuse similar to the ritual actions of the priests of Lucifer, which also includes the Illuminati. By the way, Ramirez lived on the 14th floor, where Eliza’s elevator ride ended.
A little more about the numbers: in the video you can see exactly what combination of buttons Eliza presses several times in a row. These are 14, 10, 7, 4 and the elevator stop button. The Gospel of John, chapter 4, verses 7, 10, 14 describes Christ’s conversation with a Samaritan woman from whom he asks for water. “Jesus answered and said to her: If you knew the gift of God and Who says to you: Give Me a drink, then you yourself would have asked Him, and He would have given you living water. And whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never thirst; But the water that I will give him will become in him a fountain of water springing up into eternal life.” Isn't there too much water in one story?..
The next eerie coincidence: in addition to the consonance with the English word “lamb” - “lamb, sacrificial lamb”, Lam is the name of the demon that the legendary occultist and Freemason Aleister Crowley, founder and participant of several secret occult societies, spoke about in his notes. His occult works have been cited more than once by those considered to be Illuminati and Freemasons. In 1889, while staying at the Cecil Hotel... but only in London, Crowley wrote the poem "Jephtha" - an adaptation of the biblical apocrypha about a judge who sacrificed his daughter Seilah to the Lord. The names Seila and Elisa consist of the same letters, and both names are translated from Hebrew similarly - “Demanded” and “Devoted to God.”
During Elisa Lam's stay in Los Angeles, the city was gripped by an outbreak of tuberculosis, the test for which was called - you won't believe it! - LAM Elisa. This test was developed in Vancouver, where Eliza lived with her family after moving from Hong Kong.
The hotel building houses the office of the design agency Invisible Light, whose logo is very similar to the main sign of the Freemasons - the triangle of the All-Seeing Eye. Now the agency does not work; on its page Invisiblelight.tv there is only this symbol.
Signs and coincidences... There are too many of them in this incident. The Illuminati or another force had a hand in the death of Elisa Lamb, but the picture, made up of details, will give odds to any mystical horror film. On the day when the ancient priests performed human sacrifices, a young girl, possibly a virgin, somehow ends up in a huge tank of water. Her body is decomposing, gradually dissolving into liquid. The population of a hotel with six hundred rooms drinks this water for two weeks.
Around the girl's name, her life, her last day - there are more than a dozen indications that she was doomed to become a victim given to the water. Just as the ancient Jews, Celts, and Germans ate the remains of sacrificial animals, so the guests of the Cecile unknowingly completed a ritual by consuming parts of the remains of Elisa Lamb.
There are many questions in this story, and the main one is why?
Other facts about the Cecil Hotel
The Cecil Hotel is covered in blood. There are many stories about this place related to murders, suicides, rapes, and historically it is located in an area that was once fertile for lovers of sexual pleasures and the underworld. However, renovation work has recently begun there.
Serial killer Richard Ramirez, the "Nightcrawler," often stayed at this hotel, on the 14th floor (which is actually the 13th), where he disposed of his bloody clothing after hunting his victims while remaining in a small room. Sometimes he would stay there for several days, listening to loud music.
Homicidal journalist Jack Unterweger, known as the "Vienna Strangler", also stayed there, researching the history of L.A.'s red light district while killing several prostitutes there.
Elizabeth Short, also known as the "Black Dahlia", stayed temporarily at this hotel shortly before she was brutally murdered: Elizabeth's mutilated body was found on an abandoned lot on South Norton Avenue in Leimert Park, near the Los Angeles city limits. -Angeles. The body was cut into two parts at the waist and dismembered (external and internal genitalia, as well as nipples, were removed). The woman's mouth was cut from ear to ear.
According to an article in the Los Angeles Times, in 1962 a woman jumped out of a hotel and, while committing suicide, also killed the pedestrian she landed on.
Two years later, Goldie Osgood, the famous "Lady Dove" of Pershing Square, was raped and murdered in her room at the same hotel. Her case remains unsolved.
Formally, the hotel has 14 floors, but in fact there are thirteen. This was done on purpose, due to inherent superstitions. Many US hotels also practice this.
Initially, the hotel officially announced that they had 700 available rooms, however, nowadays only 600 are available. One of the unoccupied rooms is the 666th.
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