Can web sleuths really solve the mysteries of ‘Hotel Death’?
The latest Netflix true-crime hit investigates the killing of student Elisa Lam – and asks why we’ve become so obsessed with tales of the dark and disturbing...
In January 2013, Canadian university student Elisa Lam was travelling solo around the west coast of America, when she checked into the Cecil Hotel in downtown LA.
With its gilded entrance and marble lobby, the 700room hotel looks movie-style luxurious – but 21-year-old Elisa didn’t know that its grand façade hid a dark past.
The Cecil opened in 1924 and was a regular haunt for businessmen and film stars, but it was hit hard by the
Great Depression and soon became home to an unsavoury clientele of serial killers, ex-convicts and drug addicts.
MURDER SPREE
Among the hotel’s more infamous guests were Richard Ramirez – aka the Night Stalker – and Austrian serial killer Jack Unterweger. Ramirez, who murdered at least 14 people in the ’80s, made himself at home at the Cecil, living on the fourteenth floor. After carrying out his killing spree, he would return to the hotel, where he’d throw his blood-soaked clothes in its rubbish bins. Unterweger checked into the Cecil in 1991 after he was released from prison in Austria for murder. Undeterred by his 15-year spell behind bars, he was soon back to his old ways, and was later charged with the murders of three LA sex workers.
VIOLENT INCIDENTS
The hotel was also the scene of a number of suicides, overdoses and unsolved homicides, as well as violent incidents such as stabbings. Locals dubbed it “Hotel Death”. But one of the biggest mysteries of the Cecil was the disappearance of Elisa Lam, which is the subject of new Netflix docuseries Crime Scene: The Vanishing At The Cecil Hotel.
Elisa was meant to stay for four nights at the Cecil – but she never checked out.
Her disappearance baffled detectives, who released footage of her last known sighting in the hope that someone would come forward with information.
The CCTV footage showed Elisa enter a lift on the top floor of the Cecil. She goes in and out of the lift, acting more erratically and furiously pressing several buttons before stepping out again. A panicked Elisa makes animated hand movements as she keeps looking down the corridor, before stepping away from the lift, never to be seen again.
The video quickly went viral, and an army of web sleuths became obsessed with cracking the case – the video of Elisa in the lift has been viewed over 29 million times. Many of the sleuths visited the Cecil and admitted to spending hundreds of hours “investigating”.
But with little to go on, their wild theories ranged from the paranormal and government conspiracy, to an elaborately staged murder.
CYBER DETECTIVES
Some of the sleuths became convinced that a Mexican heavy metal artist, who went by the name of Morbid, was responsible for Elisa’s death. Despite Morbid having proof that he wasn’t even in the US at the time of Elisa’s disappearance, the sleuths were sure of his guilt because his music depicted the macabre, and he’d stayed at the Cecil in 2012.
Worryingly, Morbid became the target of online abuse and trolling. Speaking in the documentary he said, “The web sleuths wouldn’t let it go. There were false accusations, death threats. Every day, every week. There was no escape. I got in a very bad place. I tried to take my life and woke up in a psychiatric hospital.”
Here, Closer speaks to
Hannah Maguire, 30, and Suruthi Bala, 31, creators of the hit true-crime podcast, RedHanded, to discuss why so many people are desperate to solve the mystery…
By Kristina Beanland
❛ THERE WERE FALSE ACCUSATIONS EVERY DAY – THERE WAS NO ESCAPE ❜