Crime Scene - The Vanishing At The Cecil Hotel

On The Lam

Crime Scene - 
The Vanishing At 
The Cecil Hotel
Directed by Joe Berlinger
TV Series Four Episodes 2021

Warning: This one has a few spoilers.

Crime Scene - The Vanishing At The Cecil Hotel is a four episode TV show which seeks to give answers to the mysterious disappearance (and subsequent discovery) in February of 2013, of 22 year old student Elisa Lam... who became an early Internet viral sensation when the final known footage of her acting very strangely in an elevator from a security camera, was released by the police to the general public a number of days after her disappearance. This done in an effort to try and secure ideas from people because they knew only two things from what they saw on those cameras... one is that she never left the hotel and two, an exhaustive search of the hotel did not lead to her discovery. 

The documentary deals with many talking heads pertinent to the case including homicide detectives working the case, a journalist, the manager and an employee of the hotel, a couple who were staying at the hotel (who unwittingly helped turn up a clue as to the discovery of the body)... and a few amateur web sleuths, out of many of the ‘online home detectives’ who tried to piece together just what happened at the time. The film also uses an actress reconstruction of somebody playing Elisa Lam as she writes and narrates her blog from her home in Vancouver, before the period when she went travelling. 

And, when you look at the four minutes of footage of Elisa Lam acting fairly strangely... and not like she is alone on the floor on which the elevator is opened at... you can understand why the whole world was talking about the case. But part of what helped draw people into things was the long standing reputation of the Cecil Hotel itself. 

The Cecil Hotel opened its doors in 1924 but the great depression was just around the corner and so it went from being somewhere fairly grand to stay in to... an 800 room location at the heart of what is now known as Skid Row. A big chunk of Los Angeles filled to the brim with homeless people... a very bad area which has the highest crime rate in the US. Police are overwhelmed just working the daily cases which are thrown up in the area. And it didn’t take the Cecil Hotel very long to share in that reputation. It’s a hotel which looks great in the lobby but, well, let’s just say the actual rooms are a world apart from the elegant entrance. 

It’s a building linked with crime, murder, prostitution, drugs, suicides and pretty much everything you can think of. One of the ex-tenants described it as a completely lawless place and that, you wouldn’t want to be venturing up far beyond the fourth floor ever, as you could find yourself in serious trouble (that last elevator footage of Elisa is, as was figured out by the various internet sleuths, parked on the 14th floor).  Indeed, the manager who was running the building for the last ten years of its use goes on record as saying that the daily occurrences certainly lived up to that reputation and that, in her time, she had to deal with around 80 deaths in the hotel. So that’s an average of eight a year. 

No wonder, then, that the hotel has garnered such a reputation, to the extent that people also believe it’s haunted by various ghosts etc. Examples of just how the hotels reputation grew is the information that the serial killers Richard Ramirez (the infamous Night Stalker) and Jack Unterweger also stayed there while doing some of their killing... the neighbouring Skid Row providing an ample supply of fresh bodies for the slaughter, so to speak. Indeed, it’s mentioned that Ramirez used to re-enter the hotel lobby stripped down to his underwear and covered in blood after a killing and then just walk back up to his room without being stopped or questioned by staff or residents at the time... so, yeah, not somewhere which is a safe place to stay, for sure. It’s also, for you fans of The Black Dahlia case, one of the last places that Elizabeth Short was seen alive in 1947, drinking in the Cecil Hotel bar... so, yeah, I guess people who follow all the true crime stuff know of the reputation of the Cecil for sure. 

The focus of the show is completely on the investigation of Elisa Lam though... and it’s staged in four parts with various red herrings and theories divulged along the way to help make what could have been a one hour documentary continue to build for four fifty minute episodes. Which is quite riveting but, I think I would have been more enamoured of that format if the conclusion to Elisa’s story towards the end of the fourth episode was a little more sensational... or rather, at the very least, an end conclusion that doesn’t contradict the first two words of the title of the show because, if you go with the story put out by the police... there actually is no crime in this instance. 

Towards the end of episode two, maybe a week after she goes missing and after various residents have been complaining that the water they’ve been bathing in, drinking and washing their teeth with has gone a horrible muddy brown, Elisa Lam’s body is found floating naked, face up and in a state of decomposition in one of the four water tanks on the roof of the Cecil Hotel. 

Then the series shifts gears pursuing all the conspiracy theories that this discovery brought up in relation to the case, including the terrible impact on the life of a Death Metal performer, who had nothing to do with it but was hounded as the killer by a section of the internet crowd and, well, some really bizarre coincidences. For example, it’s pointed out at one point just how closely Elisa’s story parallels the plot of the Japanese horror film Dark Water (and its subsequent American remake I would guess... watch the original Japanese movie though, it’s a classic), down to the red jacket worn by both Elisa and the little girl who is killed in the apartment block in the film by being thrown in the water tank on the roof. 

My favourite of the truly bizarre coincidences, which frankly would certainly look suspicious to anybody so you can see why some of the stranger theories started to spring up, is the fact that there was an epidemic of tuberculosis in the Skid Row area a couple of days after Elisa Lam’s body was found and everyone in the hotel had to be tested to see whether they had TB. The name of the particular test needed to determine that is... wait for it... a Lam Elisa ((Lipoarabinomannan Enzyme-Linked Immunosorbent Assay) test. Just wow! There are some other strange types of synergy going on with the case too but, yeah, I’m not going to spoil all that stuff for you.

I’m also not going to spoil the details of the conclusion of Elisa’s tragic end. It’s certainly a good working theory which I can see being a strong possibility. Especially in light of one of the mistakes made by the police, when certain facts about the discovery of the body are accidentally reported wrongly... which unlocks a big layer of the mystery. So there you go... the series has its conclusion and I’m pretty sure the director feels that he’s presenting the final, irrevocable facts of the case... and I’m pretty sure he could certainly be right. However, one thing which did come off from me is that, with all the questions being raised while the complete rabbit hole of evidence (or lack thereof) is being followed... there are still a couple of things I would question in the reconstructed narrative.

One is... I’m not the biggest fan of the concept of ‘paradoxical undressing’* but can see that it’s obviously a thing. Now, I’m not a strong swimmer so I find the idea that someone can simultaneously undress themselves while treading water to save their life somewhat of a questionable possibility... but it’s certainly not impossible, I’m sure. However, I would like to know more about why it was assumed that there was definitely nobody else up on that roof. Yes, it was accessible without setting off alarms if you were persistent but, when the police went to check the first time it’s mentioned that there was a profusion of various bottles and cigarette butts etc on the roof. Which means, surely, that people were going up there with some regularity. So how do we know nobody else was, at the very least, witness to what went on that day rather than the theory which the police are resting their case on (which I don’t blame them for, it’s a fairly credible theory, to be fair)? 

I guess I’ll never know for sure but what I do know is that, despite the mildly anti-climactic ending, Crime Scene - The Vanishing At The Cecil Hotel is, at the very least, an intriguing and gripping documentary mini series and, if you are into things like true crime then you may find this one a good watch. It certainly got under my skin, for sure. 

*Something which also comes up in the Dyatlov Pass mystery... see my review of a book about this here.