Case of Elisa Lam

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The Cecil Hotel in 2005

Elisa Lam (born April 30, 1991 in Vancouver , British Columbia , † beginning of February 2013 in Los Angeles , California ), also known by her Cantonese name Lam Ho Yi (蓝 可 儿), was a Canadian citizen. February 2013 from a water tank on the roof of the Cecil Hotel in downtown Los Angeles, after she was missing for almost three weeks. The mysterious circumstances of her death sparked media attention around the world and helped make the case an internet phenomenon.

background

The Cecil Hotel in Downtown Los Angeles in 2013.

Lam was the daughter of Hong Kong immigrants who ran a restaurant in Burnaby . She was fluent in English and Cantonese. In August 2012, Lam was enrolled in a course at the University of British Columbia , but the university said she was no longer enrolled at the time of her death. Lam had bipolar disorder and, according to her sister, was taking several medications to treat it, including Wellbutrin , lamotrigine, and quetiapine . According to her parents, Lam has never expressed any intention to commit suicide or attempted suicide. There are reports that she had disappeared for a short time in the past.

During his lifetime, Lam ran the “Ether Fields” blog on Blogspot . She later ran another blog on Tumblr , on which she wrote about fashion and art, but also about personal things such as fears, depression and doubts about her lifestyle and her life decisions. Six months after her death, the blog continued to be updated. The explanation given for this was Tumblr's queuing function , which allows users to post posts at a specific time in the future. Alternatively, it is speculated that someone might have hacked her Tumblr account .

In the days before her death, Lam had been backpacking California alone and posted several photos of her travel destinations on the internet. Some of the pictures were taken at the San Diego Zoo . On January 26, 2013, she took Amtrak to Los Angeles, where she checked into a shared room on the fifth floor of the Cecil Hotel. She was given a single room on the same floor three days after arriving after her roommates complained about her "strange behavior." On January 31, 2013, she went to a bookstore near the Cecil Hotel to buy gifts for her family. According to a bookstore employee, Lam was "very sociable, very lively, very friendly" and wondered if her purchases were too heavy to carry around the rest of her trip. Shortly before her death, Lam's cell phone was stolen.

Search for missing persons and elevator video

Prior to her disappearance, Lam had been in daily telephone contact with her family, the last call being on January 31, 2013. On this day, Lam, whose checkout from the Cecil Hotel was scheduled for February 1, 2013, was seen for the last time by the hotel staff. When her parents stopped hearing from her on February 1, 2013, they notified the Los Angeles Police Department in early February and traveled to Los Angeles to look for their daughter. The police inspected Lam's hotel room and used sniffer dogs to search the hotel and its roof, but the animals were unable to trace the missing persons. In the absence of sufficient suspicion of a criminal offense, it was not legally possible for the police to search each of the hotel rooms. On February 6, 2013, police officers distributed wanted papers in the vicinity of the hotel. A day later, the police and Lam's family went to the public at a press conference asking for information from the population that could lead to the discovery of Lams.

A few days before Lam's body was found, LA Weekly journalist Dennis Romero posted a video on his YouTube channel that showed a surveillance camera of an elevator in the Cecil Hotel. The video, dated February 1, 2013 and with no soundtrack, is Lam's last known recording. Romero refuses to provide information about how he got the photo. At the beginning of the four-minute recording, the elevator door opens and Lam enters the elevator car. She presses the buttons on several floors and then stands in a corner of the elevator that cannot be seen from the hallway. The elevator does not respond, the door remains open. Lam looks out of the elevator several times and then steps back into the elevator car. At the end of the shot, she leaves the elevator and gesticulates with her arms, the elevator door closes and opens several times.

Lam's behavior in the video has been described by the media as "strange" and "strange", among other things. To many viewers it appears as if they are interacting with an invisible person or hiding from someone. Body language experts who analyzed the video concluded that Lam did not appear scared, but rather appeared to be flirting with someone. They give the impression that they are excited, playful and sexually aroused. Their behavior is comparable to that of people who are under the influence of a party drug .

Several amateur internet investigators believe the video was edited before it was released. It is speculated that around 54 to 55 seconds of the video material were cut out, the time stamp was made illegible and the video was slowed down. The alleged processing is explained, among other things, with the fact that the police might want to protect the identity of other, innocent people who are also shown in the video, which is why they cut out the corresponding sequences.

Find and autopsy of the body

After Lam's disappearance, hotel guests complained about problems with the water supply. They reported insufficient water pressure, a blackish discoloration and a strange taste of the water. As a result, on February 19, 2013, a hotel employee examined the water tanks on the hotel roof, which supplied the bathrooms in the hotel rooms, the hotel kitchen and a coffee shop with water. In a three-meter-high tank he found Lam's naked body, which had been lying in the water for weeks.

According to the autopsy report, Lam's body had no alcohol or drug residues. Also, no traces of outside influence were visible on the body. Her death was classified as an accident by the coroner. Drowning was named as the cause of death.

Reception of the case

The case became an internet phenomenon as the elevator video published by the police was widely discussed and analyzed online. On YouTube alone , the video was clicked almost 15 million times and commented on around 14,000 times by June 2016. Numerous theories are circulating on the internet about Lam's death. Some suspect that the elevator video shows how the Canadian tries to escape from her killer. Others believe in paranormal activity, a suicide or drug accident, or during a psychotic episode .

Contributing to the mystification of the case is that the Cecil Hotel was the home of serial killers Richard Ramírez and Jack Unterweger in the past and that there had been several suicides there in the 1950s and 1960s . One of the mysterious circumstances of the case is that at the time of Lam's death, a tuberculosis test called the LAM-ELISA was being carried out in the neighboring Skid Row neighborhood .

The case has found its way into popular culture and served, among other things, as an inspiration for film and television acts.

literature

  • Jake Anderson: Gone at Midnight. The Mysterious Death of ELISA LAM. Citadel Press, New York, NY 2020, ISBN 978-0-8065-4005-4 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Ian Young: Disgust at plan to turn Elisa Lam's water tank death into horror movie. In: South China Morning Post. March 4, 2014, accessed March 31, 2019.
  2. ↑ Jennifer Moreau: Condolences, notes, left for family at Burnaby restaurant. In: Burnaby Now. February 27, 2013, accessed March 31, 2019.
  3. ↑ a b Jake Anderson: Gone at Midnight. 2020, p. 17.
  4. ↑ a b Alan Duke: How did woman's body come to be in LA hotel water tank? CNN, February 23, 2013, accessed March 31, 2019.
  5. ↑ a b c d e Jennifer Swann: Elisa Lam Drowned in a Water Tank Three Years Ago, but the Obsession with Her Death Lives On. In: Vice . October 29, 2015, accessed March 31, 2019.
  6. ↑ a b Jake Rich: 15 Facts And Theories About The Mysterious Death Of Elisa Lam. In: The Richest. February 21, 2017, accessed April 6, 2019.
  7. ↑ a b c d e f g h i Christine Kewitz: The mysterious death of Elisa Lam in a backpacker hostel remains a mystery. In: Motherboard . July 11, 2016, accessed March 30, 2019.
  8. ↑ a b c d e Marelise Van Der Merwe: The Elisa Lam mystery: Still no answers. ( Memento from September 7, 2018 in the Internet Archive )
  9. ↑ Drishya Nair: Elisa Lam Death: Friends Call Her Caring and Conscientious, Autopsy Result Inconclusive. In: International Business Times . July 2, 2014, accessed March 31, 2019.
  10. ↑ Emma Reynolds: How girl found dead in water tank set the internet on fire. News.com.au, October 30, 2015, accessed March 31, 2019.
    Elisa Lam Case: Autopsy fails to find a cause of death for woman found in Los Angeles water tank. In: CBS News. February 22, 2013, accessed March 31, 2019.
  11. ↑ Jake Anderson: Gone at Midnight. 2020, pp. 16-18.
  12. ↑ Jake Anderson: Gone at Midnight. 2020, p. 19.
  13. ↑ Andrew Blankstein, Adolfo Flores: Woman's body found in water tank of skid row hotel. In: The Los Angeles Times. February 20, 2013, accessed January 28, 2015.
  14. ↑ a b Jake Anderson: Gone at Midnight. 2020, p. 28 ff.
  15. ↑ a b Kim LaCapria: Elisa Lam Video Analyzed, Drug Use Suggested But Not Proven. In: Inquisitr. February 21, 2013, accessed April 6, 2019.
  16. ↑ Elisa Lam Death: Officials analyze water in tank where missing Canadian woman was found dead. In: CBS News. February 21, 2013, accessed March 31, 2019.
  17. ↑ Heiko Behr: The "case" Elisa Lam: The whole world has conspired. In: Deutschlandfunk Kultur. June 18, 2016, accessed March 31, 2019.
  18. ^ Alan Duke: Hotel with corpse in water tank has notorious past. CNN, February 23, 2013, accessed March 31, 2019.
personal data
SURNAME Lam, Elisa
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Yi, Lam Ho; 蓝 可 儿
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Canadian citizen
DATE OF BIRTH April 30, 1991
PLACE OF BIRTH Vancouver , British Columbia
DATE OF DEATH February 2013
Place of death Los Angeles , California