21-year-old Elisa Lam was a Canadian student and tourist who disappeared at the Cecil Hotel in downtown Los Angeles in 2013. Elisa vanished, only for her lifeless body to be discovered weeks later in a water tank on top of the hotel. She was last seen alive on January 3, 201,3, and then was reported missing by her parents on February 8, 2013. Elisa Lam decided to go on a trip to California to get a getaway from her studies with her parents’ permission. She traveled alone on the Amtrak, which was a national railroad passenger corporation, and took many buses to reach her destination, California. When Elisa got to California, she went to visit the San Diego Zoo and uploaded many photos on social media and her blog. Later, on January 26, she arrived in Los Angeles, California, and checked in at the Cecil Hotel two days later, which was located in downtown Los Angeles. Elisa was assigned some roommates at a hotel, but later on was moved to a room of her own due to her roommate describing her weird behavior Elisa would do. As the days passed by, Elisa contacted her parents every day, following up to the day she disappeared.
On January 31, 2013, Elisa Lam was scheduled to check out of the Cecil Hotel and leave for Santa Cruz, but she never checked out. On that day, her parents started to worry, not hearing from their daughter Elisa, which turned out to be weird since she would do that every day since she arrived at the hotel. After a few minutes of trying to contact their daughter Elisa, they called the Los Angeles Police Department, and then her family flew to Los Angeles. When the police arrived at the hotel, staff members who saw Elisa that day said she was alone. Later on that day, police legally searched the hotel with their dogs for a sign of Elisa, but sadly, neither of them found any clues that led to Elisa.
On February 13, after another week without a sign of Elisa Lam, the Los Angeles Police Department released a video caught by one of the cameras in an elevator in which you can see Elisa going into one of the elevators of the hotel and making unusual movements and gestures. In the video, you can also see that Elisa presses every button in the elevator and keeps going in and out of the elevator. At some point, the elevator doesn’t close the doors, which makes Elisa go in and out of the elevator again, and leave at one point when the elevator doors close a few minutes after she left.
During the search for Elisa Lam, many guests at the hotel started complaining about low water pressure. Later, another guest at the hotel declared that their water was colored black and had an unusual taste. Then the morning of February 19, Santiago Lopez, who was a hotel maintenance worker at the hotel, found Elisa Lam’s body laying facing up in the water which was found in one of the four 1,000 gallon tanks located on top of the roof of the hotel that provided water for the guest rooms, the kitchen, and the coffee shop. Her body was moderately decomposed and bloated, and her body was mostly greenish with some skin separation events. Her body was found naked, with the clothes similar to what she was wearing in the elevator video also floating in the water, and her watch and room key were found in the water as well.
The police never found any evidence of physical trauma, sexual assault, or suicide, but they found what could have been the cause of Elisa’s death. When her parents heard the news, they were devastated to find out. After some investigation, the Los Angeles Police Department closed the case as an accidental drowning. Though the mystery surrounding Elisa Lam’s death remains a source of intrigue, her story serves as a dark reminder of the importance of mental health care and the unpredictable nature of life itself.
