Crime Scene: The Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel and the Internet Injustice Machine

Photo by ZhengZhou, CC BY-SA 3.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

On February 1, 2013, a 21-year-old Canadian woman disappeared from the Cecil Hotel in Los Angeles. This, in and of itself, would not normally be a national story. People disappear in big cities. Hysteria about sex trafficking not withstanding, they are usually located fairly quickly. If they are not located or have died, the usual cause is something like suicide or an accident. On rare occasions, they have been the victim of a violent act. It’s the kind of everyday sadness we have gotten inured to.

On February 15, the police released security camera footage of the missing woman in the hotel elevator. This footage, which showed her pressing a bunch of buttons, looking down hallways and acting in a strange manner, went massively viral. For several days, speculation ran rampant on what had happened. Some claimed she was hiding from someone (even claiming to see that person’s foot in one shot). Others said she was on some drug; the Stay on Main hotel (aka the Cecil Hotel) is located near Skid Row. Still others claimed the video had been altered and the hotel or the LAPD were covering up something. There was even speculation about paranormal explanations.

All of this speculation went into overdrive on February 19 when a maintenance worker found her body in a water tank on the hotel roof. Questions abounded. How could she gave gotten onto the roof, which had an alarmed door? How or why would she have gotten into the water tank, which was only reachable by a ladder and accessible through a heavy lid? Why was she naked when she was found and why was the lid closed? Four months later, the LAPD released their autopsy, concluding that she had climbed into the tank and drowned. But this did little to silence the conspiracy theorists, who claimed that everything from a book purchase to a tuberculosis outbreak was linked to some bizarre conspiracy that ended with her in the tank.

This week, the Netflix series Crime Scene: The Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel was released and became their latest quarantine hit. The four part-series goes into the case in almost voyeuristic detail and while I can recommend it, that recommendation comes with some caveats.

Spoiler warnings apply here but all of this will be known to those of you familiar with the Lam case.

The first episode talks about her life and disappearance, the second about the history of the Cecil Hotel and the third about the conspiracy theories surrounding her death. These episodes feel like an Unsolved Mysteries bit stretched out to three hours. Parts of it are interesting; the Cecil Hotel has a long history, starting out rather glamorous but eventually becoming a way-station for drug addicts, sex offenders and the mentally ill (a status very connected with its proximity to Skid Row). It was not at all unusual for people to die there. Murders and suicides had plagued its history and the former manager indicates that deaths were an almost monthly occurrence. The “Night Stalker” Richard Ramirez reportedly stayed there and serial killer Jack Unterweger definitely used it as a base for stalking and murdering sex workers on Skid Row. The police were sometimes called out to the hotel multiple times a day to deal with problems. This was largely unnoticed and uncommented upon because the inhabitants of the Cecil were mostly the dispossessed of society. In the years prior to Lam’s visit, management refurbished and rebranded the property as “Stay on Main”, with the aim of getting internet-savvy young people like Lam to stay there. But many of the problems remained.

However, the first three episodes drag a bit at times without getting to the point. And they spend way too much time with the so-called “web sleuths” and YouTubers who hyped Lam’s death for clicks and likes, “investigating” her death through baseless speculation and occasional voyeuristic visits to the Cecil Hotel itself. At times, this is interesting. At times, it’s infuriating.¹ But most of the time, it’s just terrible. Theories are thrown out with no evidence whatsoever and treated seriously. Similarities between the events at the Cecil and movies or lab tests are underscored with spooky music, when they should be underscored with a laugh track.

It’s not that I don’t see the point here. One of the unfortunate trends of the early 21st century has been internet-fueled mass hysteriae. I’ve commented on this from time to time. From the absurdity of the Fyre Festival to the dangerous lunacy of anti-vax theories to the incitement of Q-Anon, we have seen people’s lives wrecked over tweets, mobs storming buildings based on deceptive videos, and laws passed that restrict our freedom while not benefitting anyone. Even when people’s intentions are good, bad things can happen. And when they are bad, it can be dangerous. The simple fact is that we have a lot of people out there who are dumb enough, greedy enough or cynical enough to feed the latest craze. And we have a larger number of people desperate enough and gullible to believe them. I can see a reason to comment upon this phenomenon. I see no reason to indulge it the way the series does.

Moreover, I think the series misses a critical point here. The similarities between Lam’s death and the movie Dark Water or the odd fact that the TB test used to track the nearby outbreak has a similar name to hers or the odd echoes of her fate in a shock rock video are coincidences. The point is not that these are eerie and disturbing; the point is that if you look hard enough at any case you will find these supposed connections. The point is that if you sift through thousands of pieces of information, you will find a few that strike you as bizarrely linked. But that’s not meaningful and it’s certainly not research. It’s just an intellectual bias.

The water tanks atop the Cecil Hotel. (Netflix)

However, the final episode of the series is very good. After wallowing in the baseless nonsense of internet speculation, the series finally lets the experts speak. One by one, trained police officers, physicians and scientists lay out the evidence in the case and the conclusions they drew from it. One by one, the conspiracy theories crumble to ash and the conclusion becomes inevitable. Lam was Type I Manic-Depressive and seems to have been off her medication. She was known, when unmedicated, to go into delusional and paranoid states, often hiding from things only she could see and hear. Her behavior in the hours preceding her death was erratic and consistent with having a delusional episode. It is entirely plausible that she climbed onto the roof of the Cecil Hotel via the fire escape, found her way to the water tank and climbed in, thinking she could escape whatever she was afraid of. It is certainly more plausible than the idea that someone dragged her body up there. One of the advantages of the documentary is that you get to see the area more clearly and just how difficult it would have been to drag someone up, but how comparatively easy it would have been to climb up. Once she was in the water tank, her fate was sealed. She would not have been able to get out. As she treaded water, she shed her clothes either because they were waterlogged or because of paradoxical undressing. And as it turned out, the lid on the tank was open, not closed, when she was found.²

Many of the “web sleuths” accept this explanation. But some don’t. And I can’t really understand why. The death of Elisa Lam was horrifying enough. She was trapped in a cold dark tank of water, unable to climb out, confused about how she got there, in a deranged mental state that told her that what was outside the tank was even more dangerous than what was inside. She might have lasted hours, treading water, shedding her clothes in desperation until she finally gave in. I can not imagine that awfulness. I don’t want to. It makes me want to fly out to Los Angeles, go onto the roof of every building and weld every water tank shut.

That the truth of this matter isn’t awful enough for some people is appalling. They would rather have their conspiracy theories and their speculation. They would rather feel superior to the professionals with decades of experience.

The documentary closes with an appeal on mental illness for people to get help and for us, as a society, to provide the help and support they need. And I think that’s entirely appropriate. Because ultimately, that’s what this story is about: the people struggling with mental illness, both those on Skid Row and those from middle-class families with social media presence. It was not aliens or sex offenders or homeless people or ghosts that killed Elisa Lam. It was her own mind. That is a tragedy beyond words. And it is a tragedy that also happens tens of thousands of times a year, just in less newsworthy fashion.

1. At one point, internet sleuths accused a shock rock musician of murdering her based on vague similarities between his video and the death of Lam. It wrecked his life.
2. The one thing the documentary does not explain is the little jumps and slowdowns in the elevator video. But that seems straight-forward enough if the recording equipment was old.