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On January 26, 2013, 21-year-old Elisa Lam checked into the Cecil Hotel, but early in her stay, she was relocated from a shared room to a private room due to "odd behavior." She was last seen January 31. Her parents, David and Yinna Lam, who'd been in daily contact with their daughter, quickly reported her missing. Lam's belongings, including her wallet, ID, and laptop, had been left inside her room. A Los Angeles police bulletin had mentioned that Lam spoke English and Cantonese, used public transportation, possibly had mild depression, and was headed to Santa Cruz, California. #Missing #ColdCase

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The police had issued an appeal for assistance from the public before releasing a video with Lam wearing a red hoodie inside the elevator in the hotel. In the footage, Lam presses multiple buttons, looks out the elevator, moves back into the corner, steps outside the elevator, and waves her hands. This video went viral, which sparked the internet's interest in the case. One theory arose that Lam was playing what is called the Korean elevator game, in which pressing elevator buttons in a specific pattern will supposedly open a portal to another dimension. #KoreanElevatorGame? #ElisaLam

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While Lam was still missing, several guests at the Cecil Hotel began to complain about low water pressure. On February 19, 2013, a maintenance worker peeped into the 4-foot-by-8-foot water tanks and spotted a dead body, which turned out to be Lam's. The worker later said in court documents, "I noticed the hatch to the main water tank was open and looked inside and saw an Asian woman lying face-up in the water approximately twelve inches from the top of the tank." The roof had been previously searched with the assistance of a police dog. However, no one had checked inside the water tanks. #TheBodyHasBeenFound #ElisaLam'sBody

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The investigation into Lam's death continued following the discovery of her body. Any entry to the roof was supposed to be restricted to hotel employees. An interior staircase to the roof had a locked door that was equipped with an alarm and was said to be working, which should've alerted the staff if it had been opened. Three fire escapes also provided access to the roof. In her autopsy and toxicology tests, the coroner had issued a ruling that Lam had accidentally drowned. Though there were no indications of physical trauma to her body, and no drugs that might have contributed to her death were found in her system. The coroner's report mentioned Lam's bipolar disorder as a significant condition that played a role in her death. Due to a negligence lawsuit against the hotel that was filed by Lam's parents (the suit was dismissed in 2015), the lead investigator from the case gave a deposition. "My opinion is that she fell on her medication, and in her state she found her way onto the roof and got into the tank of water," Detective Wallace Tennelle stated. The detective also noted, "My partner and I tried to figure out how somebody could have put her in there, and it's difficult for someone to have been able to do that and not leave prints, not leave DNA, or anything like that. So she climbed in on her own." #Investigation #TheAutopsyofElisaLam

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1. https://newsroom.ap.org/editorial-photos-videos/detail?itemid=4ce2711801468a2f1d3b63643c29c926&mediatype=video

2. https://www.biography.com/crime-figure/elisa-lam

3. https://people.com/what-happened-to-elisa-lam-cecil-hotel-11680025#:~:text=Meanwhile%2C%20investigators%20began%20to%20piece,could%20find%20a%20new%20lead.

4. https://historicflix.com/the-bizarre-case-of-elisa-lam-what-happened-to-her/

5. https://www.cosmopolitan.com/uk/reports/a35488625/elisa-lam-theories-cecil-hotel/

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Lam's story provided inspiration for movie screenplays, as well as an episode of the television show Castle and the series American Horror Story: Hotel and a four-part documentary detailing Lam's mysterious death, Crime Scene: The Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel which premiered in February 2021

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Lam's unusual behavior in the CCTV footage from the lift initially led to people believing she was murdered, perhaps by someone not caught on camera. Elisa's body was found naked, which led to suspicions of foul play. It was also noted that the lid on the water tank was closed when the detectives came to investigate the discovery of her body, something which would have been very unlikely the young woman could've done herself had she climbed in the tank if you consider the distance between the water level and the lid. However, in the Netflix documentary, the hotel maintenance worker who found Elisa inside the water tank claimed the hatch had been open and that he had closed it after the discovery. Despite this, some online theorists even went so far as to accuse a specific person of being responsible for Elisa's death. 'Morbid' (aka Pablo Vergara), the founding member of a metal band, had uploaded a video of himself inside a room at the Cecil Hotel just a couple of days after the student's body was found. In that video was a teaser for a new music video entitled 'Died in Pain,' which featured lyrics referencing a woman drowning in water. Some amateur detectives online believed this was too much of a coincidence to pass by. The allegations of murder against Morbid became so intense he went on to release a video at the time proclaiming his innocence, insisting he had been in Mexico recording an album at the time she went missing (which was true). Years on, the singer told the Netflix documentary makers that he had suffered mental health issues as a result of the incessant accusations laid upon him. "I received death threats every day. There was no escape. I tried to take my life, and I woke up in a psychiatric hospital," he said.

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The case may be closed, but a reconstruction of how Lam died reveals some confounding circumstances. For Lam to have entered the water tank on her own, she would have needed to make her way to the hotel roof undetected, either through a locked and alarmed door or by a fire escape on the side of the building. Next, she would have clambered onto the water tank platform and climbed a 10-foot ladder on the side of the tank. She then would have had to open a heavy water tank lid before getting inside. And at some point Lam presumably undressed. When she was located, her body was naked, while her clothes were in the tank with her. The Cecil Hotel, which rebranded itself as Stay on Main prior to Lam's stay, has a gory history that may have contributed to speculation about Lam's death. The hotel has been the scene of multiple murders and suicides, dating nearly as far back as its first days of operation in 1927. In the 1980s, serial killer Richard Ramirez, known as the Night Stalker, stayed at the hotel. Jack Unterweger, an Austrian serial killer, was a guest in 1991. #CaseClosed? #AtTheCecilHotel

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Elisa Lam was known to have suffered from various mental health disorders, as she had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder and depression in the years prior to her trip. The 21-year-old also kept a Tumblr blog, titled Nouvelle-Nouveau, which police detectives and online communities scoured for clues after her disappearance. In some posts on the blog, Elisa referenced struggles with her mental health, sharing one quote that read, "No matter how much I feel, I’m not going to let it out... If my heart starts going crazy, I’m not going to tell everyone in the world about it. It doesn’t help anything. It just makes everyone’s life worse." Upon discovery of her body inside the water tank, it was considered whether the young woman may have purposely tried to harm herself. The coroner ultimately ruled this theory out, however, stating that "a full review of circumstances" didn't support the suggestion that she ever intended to take her own life.

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Theory: Someone From the Hotel Was in on It

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Theory: Someone From the Hotel Was in on It

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This theory was derived from the eagle-eyed viewers who noticed a discrepancy in the time displayed on the CCTV footage of the young woman in the lift. From the 2:30 mark of the video, Elisa disappears out of sight, but the footage keeps rolling. Zoning in on the time stamp on the video, people noticed it was quite blurry and suggested it had perhaps been tampered with, eliminating 53 seconds of film. Others suggested it had been slowed down at points to edit parts of the video out; the elevator door jumps suddenly at around 2:57, which only added to the speculation. The question was, why would someone tamper with the video? And how did they gain access to it? From there, the idea was born that someone from the hotel or perhaps the police department had something to hide. There was another odd coincidence pointed out, stemming from the bookstore where Elisa Lam was last seen in person. The Last Bookstore in LA was, ironically, the final place Elisa was known to have come into contact with anyone. Even weirder, the post code its domain is registered to is V5G 4S2. Theorists at work entered this code into Google Maps, and it pinpointed none other than the exact spot in which Elisa Lam went on to be buried.

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Theory: Her Death Was a Copycat of a Film

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Theory: Her Death Was a Copycat of a Film

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Web sleuths invested in the case quickly began drawing comparisons to the horror film Dark Water. In the film, the body of a girl is found in the water tank on top of an apartment block after guests noticed the water looked dark and tasted funny, which was exactly how Elisa Lam's body came to be discovered. In the film girl's name was Cecilia, which people think is pretty similar to the hotel's name. Some people entertained the idea that perhaps Elisa's death was as a result of someone trying to create a copycat of the film in real life, but this is just another one of those things that ultimately comes down to coincidence.

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Theory: She Was a Tuberculosis Test Study

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Theory: She Was a Tuberculosis Test Study

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The online communities investigating Elisa Lam's death noticed that there was an outbreak of tuberculosis in Skid Row, which is just a few blocks from the Cecil Hotel, around the time she went missing. Their attention zoned in on it even more when they discovered that the test for the specific strain of tuberculosis going around was named the LAM-ELISA (standing for Lipoarabinomannan (LAM) Enzyme-Linked Immunosorbent Assay (ELISA). Conspiracy theorists jumped on it, speculating that Elisa may have been being used as 'a biological weapon' of some kind to help eliminate the homeless population in the area. Fuel was only added to the flames when it emerged she was a student from the University of British Columbia, which has a notable tuberculosis research center. It was suggested that Elisa Lam may have been executed by whoever had plotted to use her as warfare, perhaps after she 'learned too much' or something. Needless to say, this was not a primary avenue of investigation for LAPD; however, Elisa's autopsy did reveal that she didn't have any signs of tuberculosis at the time of her death.