Situation Elisa Lam: “Lam was trying to get the elevator to move in order to escape from someone”

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Elisa Lam’s death in a water tank at the notorious Cecil Hotel shocked Los Angeles in 2013. To this day, nobody knows how she died or how her body got there.

Lam, the daughter of immigrants from Hong Kong, was a student at the University of British Columbia, although she was not registered at the beginning of 2013.

Elisa Lam during her days as a student at the University of British Columbia. Photo: Facebook/LAPD

For her trip to California, Lam traveled alone on Amtrak and intercity buses. She visited the San Diego Zoo and posted photos taken there on social media. On January 26, she arrived in Los Angeles. After two days, she checked into the Cecil Hotel, near Downtown’s Skid Row. 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. According to Amy Price, the manager of the Cecil Hotel and Stay on Main at the time of Lam’s disappearance, Lam was leaving notes for her roommates that said “go home” and “go away,” and would lock the door to the room and require a password for entry. A few days before her disappearance, Lam attended a live taping of Conan in Burbank, but was escorted off the premises by security due to disruptive behavior.

Elisa Lam went missing while she was staying at the Cecil Hotel in Los Angeles. Photo: Robyn Beck/AFP/Getty Images

Lam contacted her parents in British Columbia daily while traveling up until the day she disappeared. On January 31, 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.

Hotel staff who saw Lam that day said she was alone. Outside the hotel, Katie Orphan, manager of The Last 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.

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 dogs 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. 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.

On February 13, 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 January 31. 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.

Investigators looking over security footage of Lam at the Cecil Hotel. NETFLIX

Several theories emerged 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. Others suggested that she might be under the influence of ecstasy or some other party drug, but none was detected in her body. When her bipolar disorder became known, the theory that she was having a psychotic episode also emerged.

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. 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. Through the open hatch he saw Lam lying face-up in the water. The tank was drained and cut open since its maintenance hatch was too small to accommodate equipment needed to remove Lam’s body.

A worker stands on a water tank on the roof of the Cecil in Los Angeles California February 20, 2013. The body of 21-year-old Canadian tourist Elisa Lam was found in a water tank on the roof of the hotel three weeks after she went missing. Photo: Robyn Beck/AFP via Getty Images

On February 21, the Los Angeles coroner’s office issued a finding of accidental drowning, with bipolar disorder as a significant factor. The full coroner’s report, released in June, stated that Lam’s body had been found naked; 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.

Rescuers try to remove Elisa Lam’s body from the water tank on the rooftop of the Cecil Hotel. Photo: KTLA

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, or suicide. Toxicology tests showed traces consistent with prescription medication found among her belongings, plus nonprescription drugs such as Sinutab and ibuprofen. A very small quantity of alcohol (about 0.02 g%) was present, but no other recreational drugs. Investigators and experts have however noted that the concentration of her prescription drugs in her system indicated that she was undermedicating or had stopped taking her medications recently.

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. The hotel’s fire escape could have allowed her to bypass those security measures; her scent trail was lost near a window that connected to it. A video posted to the Internet 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.

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; 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. The hotel employee who found the body said that the lid was open at the time, 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.

Proponents of the theory that the elevator video shows 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. The very low level of her prescription drugs in her system, and the number of pills left in her prescription bottle, suggested she was undermedicating or had recently stopped taking her medication for bipolar disorder, which might have led to a psychotic episode.

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. It also records subcutaneous pooling of blood in Lam’s anal area, which some observers[who?] 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, and her rectum was also prolapsed. The coroner’s pathologists were ambivalent about their conclusion that Lam’s death was accidental. [failed verification]

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. 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.

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