[man 1] Okay, cameras are up.
-[man 2] Set all back here?
-[man 1] Set.
[man] What do you think people imagine
when they picture the manager
of the Cecil Hotel?
Unfortunately,
a lot of them were thinking
there's some crazy, creepy person
behind the scenes that just doesn't care
and is running this hotel
where all these bad things happen,
and it's not true.
That's one of the reasons
I wanted to do the interview,
because I want the world to see
that who was actually running it
really cared about the hotel
and was running it properly, you know?
[uneasy music plays]
But I would say there are a lot
of, like, unique challenges
when you are running a hotel
like the Cecil.
A lot came with the place.
It wasn't even
first couple days in the job
where the maintenance manager said
that we had a problem.
I said, "What do you mean?"
[uneasy music playing]
[woman rhythmically panting]
[TV playing indistinctly]
[door creaking]
One of the, um, guests died at the hotel.
It was hard to process.
It's hard to process.
[camera shutters clicking]
Before working at the hotel,
I mean, I'd never had any experience
with a dead body or coroner,
you know, or even the police.
[siren wailing]
That was, like, a real eye-opener for me.
Come to find out, well, you know,
this happens all the time.
The maintenance manager,
he walked me through the entire hotel.
Along the way, he'd just point and say,
"Someone died here, someone died there."
Suicides. Overdoses.
Murders.
At one point, I think I asked him,
"Is there a room here that, like,
maybe somebody hasn't died in?"
I never got used to that.
Never got used to that.
[uneasy music playing]
[elevator dings]
[camera shutter clicking]
[newsman] It's now been two weeks since
anyone has seen or heard from Elisa Lam.
LAPD's elite robbery-homicide section
is on the case.
Police are worried
that foul play could be involved.
They got several tips after the story
made headlines about a week ago,
but since then,
they've hit a roadblock.
They're hoping anyone with information
comes forward now. Mike, Tamara.
[newswoman] Thanks, Scott.
[Lordan] My name is John Lordan.
Uh, in terms of title,
I consider myself a YouTuber,
which has been added
to the dictionary now.
Elisa Lam is the reason why I started
my YouTube channel.
It was after I saw the elevator footage
of her in the Cecil hotel.
The video was originally released
to the press
as a message from law enforcement
to ask the public for help
in terms of finding this girl.
She's a missing person at the time.
It's just very strange
and kind of bizarre and creepy.
And that kind of pulled me in.
I was wondering,
"What the heck is going on?"
And then Dennis Romero,
who is a reporter
working for the LA Weekly,
puts it up on his YouTube channel.
That's when it just blew up
in a whole, unexpected way.
[Dean] It was huge on YouTube
and on message boards,
and especially places like Reddit,
and it pings around the internet
and gets shared because it's so weird.
It just sort of took off.
It went viral.
[Lordan] Back in 2013,
the concept of a viral video
was still very new to us.
When the video was put on
a Chinese affiliate website…
[reporter speaking Mandarin]
[h* in English] …it got millions of views
within week and a half.
This case garnered
international attention.
All of a sudden,
it has over 25 million views.
[Dean] The video just spread
like wildfire.
In… In the web sleuth community,
it created this… this feeding frenzy.
Elisa Lam.
Okay, Elisa Lam.
[in Swedish] The mystery of Elisa Lam.
[in English] The bizarre case
of Elisa Lam.
[woman] It is one of the most
creepiest videos.
It makes you want to learn
what really happened.
I mean, there has to be something more
here. What are we missing?
That elevator video
literally has spooked all of us.
Where did she go?
[Dean] Web sleuths are a community
of people online who live to solve crimes.
There've been many cases where they've
been genuinely helpful to investigators.
It's a hobby for people.
It's a hobby that becomes an obsession.
[keyboard clacking]
[Lordan] We all knew there must be
more to this story.
I started thinking, like,
"Hey, wait, if we get our brains together,
we can work
on solving something together."
Hello Brain Scratchers,
it's me again, John Lordan,
and we're going to be
looking into the Elisa Lam case.
Just want to send a couple of thank yous
to commenters that gave
some very good, uh,
pieces of new information to me.
[Lordan] The thing I noticed most was
a lot of people were talking about
the footprint that Eliza left digitally,
especially when it comes
to her social media.
It really made a lot of people wonder,
"Is there something here that we can
actually learn and apply to this case?"
So I started reading through
a lot of her Tumblr posts.
She was writing for years.
And I was just trying to understand
who she was as a person.
[Elisa Lam] Tumblr…
I am so grateful I found you.
You remind me the world is big
and I have a place in it somewhere.
This is her nouvelle-nouveau Tumblr.
Um, you can see that she was really
kind of posting a lot of artsy stuff.
You got an old picture of Bowie here,
a lot of cool paintings and artwork.
[Harlowe] She was a big Harry Potter fan.
[man] She was obsessed
with The Great Gatsby.
[Harlowe] You could tell
she was an introvert at heart
and, you know, needed to be creative
and write or read or reflect on things.
[keyboard clacking]
[Elisa Lam] In a way,
I know exactly what I want.
I know my future job
must not be behind a desk.
I know I want to travel endlessly.
I want to experience it all.
[Harlowe] Browsing through her social
media, something else stands out.
Elisa might have been
going through some stuff.
[thunder crashing]
[Elisa Lam] Apparently, I'm bipolar.
A few good days
followed by a week of sleeping.
That is the pattern.
Depression sucks.
[Sobhani] She had her struggles,
but she was seeking treatment
to help herself feel better.
[birds chirping]
[Elisa] Finally found the antidepressant
that has made some difference.
Today was much better.
She was just like any twenty-something
on a pursuit to get to know herself.
[Elisa Lam] I will put things
in perspective and remind myself:
you are strong, you are capable,
you are special.
[Lordan] There's something
about her honesty
that came through in her writing,
and that really resonated with me.
I think that that's the same
with all of us.
This sounds strange,
but I began to feel connected to her.
Her Tumblr really made people
feel like they knew her
and wanted to help her.
Putting yourself in her shoes,
you wanna feel you've done everything
you can to figure out what happened.
[Dean] From what we know
based on her social media,
she didn't seem like someone
who'd run off
and stop communicating
with her family, right?
That means that, you know,
something bad has happened to her.
[phone ringing]
[Marcia] At this point
of the investigation,
after we've released the video,
it just blew up in the media…
[newswoman] This surveillance video
shows the woman acting strangely
in a hotel elevator. She walks in…
…because her behavior on the elevator was…
was unusual.
When we first watched it, my partner and I
were just sitting there staring at it.
[rewinding]
At one point,
I remember talking to my partner.
I said, "How many buttons did she push?"
He goes, "I think she punched
a bunch of 'em."
And all of a sudden it's like,
"Oh, wow, this is interesting."
[Kading] You have to evaluate the video
and interpret it
to kind of understand the mindset
that she may have had
when she disappeared.
She appears to be stable on her feet.
It doesn't appear that she's drunk.
You know, she's not swaying or stumbling
or anything like that.
But when you look at her hand movements,
it's almost like she's reaching out
to touch something that isn't there.
You do have to consider that she could be
on LSD or something mind-altering…
because this particular area
was a place that drugs are rampant.
[siren wailing]
[Cooper] If you stepped outside the Cecil…
within half a block, you'd be at one
of the biggest open-air drug markets
in the western United States.
She would almost certainly
have been offered heavy narcotics.
So we've got to figure out if she had been
having a drug-induced experience.
So investigators return
to the Cecil Hotel.
[siren wailing]
They learned that when she checked in,
Elisa had been sharing a room at the hotel
with a couple other girls.
Eventually these girls began to complain
about her behavior.
And so that prompted the hotel to move her
into a private room by herself.
[Marcia] In talking to the hotel,
her behavior was somewhat unusual
over a period of a few days.
Whether it's drugs
or if there's something else going on,
we all felt that now we're looking
for somebody in a state of mind
that could render her more vulnerable
to someone taking advantage of her.
So our level of concern starts going up.
[Dean] During this period,
the web sleuth community
just continued to dig into this…
this creepy-a*s video.
At first people thought, like,
it's just such bizarre behavior.
She seems like she's communicating
with someone, but she's alone.
You can't help but wonder,
like, "What the f*ck?
Why is she acting this way?"
[Lordan] I'm trying to stay
very logical about it.
I watched this video
a whole bunch of times again.
Just trying to find any information
that might be helpful.
Maybe that other people
hadn't considered before.
The first thing you have to wonder is,
she's pressing the buttons,
but the elevator isn't doing
what you would expect.
It's not going anywhere.
Why was it staying open like that?
[in Swedish] Strange.
It's just very strange.
She keeps looking outside of the elevator
for whatever reason.
What would she be looking at?
[Lordan] It's like she's wondering,
"Is someone keeping the elevator here?"
[Harlowe] Is there some unseen person
standing outside of the elevator,
holding the button
so that it doesn't close?
[man] What if someone
purposely stalled that elevator
to keep her from leaving?
[uneasy music playing]
At one point,
it looks like she's almost panicking.
It almost seemed
like she was hiding from somebody.
You wonder, "Maybe there's someone
in the hall she's interacting with."
If you look closely at the footage,
you'll notice one frame,
one particular pinpoint and spot.
It is blurry a little bit,
but some people say
that you could see a shoe.
Something that Elisa was not…
was not wearing.
A lot of people think
there's another foot there.
[Lordan] It doesn't seem to be in line
with her feet.
It looks like it's twisted in an odd way.
My gut keeps leaning towards
there being someone outside the elevator.
[woman] I think that someone was there
that night at the elevator,
but it doesn't show who.
[woman 2] It could've been someone
who she knew beforehand.
Had she met someone in L.A.
while she was there?
[Lordan] A lot of people linked it
to a post that Eliza made previously
right before her trip to the U.S.,
about planning on meeting people.
[Elisa Lam] Meet-up applications
now accepted.
[Dean] It's not inconceivable she met
a guy she liked and maybe a date went bad.
Like, maybe someone she met had…
had come after her.
She seems afraid.
[Sobhani] Elisa also
had been blogging about…
the kind of unwanted attention
she was getting.
[Elisa] I'm going out tonight.
[sighs] I really hope
no creeper comes near me.
Show the slightest inclination
and they hound you.
She said there was guys
trying to hit on her and follow her,
and this was just, you know,
not long before she went to L.A.
[siren wailing]
[woman] Anyone could have
followed her to the hotel.
It could have been a person
from the street.
It could have been a guy
staying at the Cecil Hotel
who was trying to attack her.
[Lordan] If Elisa was being followed
by someone involved in her disappearance,
we need more information
to figure it all out.
[horns honking]
[Price] L.A. can be pretty scary…
especially as a young traveler.
I know that moving to Los Angeles
was a real eye-opener for me. [laughs]
It's just very different.
I grew up in the country, if you will.
It was pretty quiet, for the most part.
I certainly wasn't exposed
to a lot of things.
When I first moved here,
I had learned not to go towards downtown.
Like, don't go back there. It's not safe.
[siren wailing]
But in 2007, it was starting to turn.
There was G*ntrification going on.
[reporter] Los Angeles, California.
It has never been known
for downtown living,
but there is a development boom
in the area that should change that.
With more than a half-dozen
major construction projects underway
and several others cleared to start,
will make downtown living
the next trend in Los Angeles.
[Price] You know, because of Skid Row,
it was still pretty much
the scariest part to be in Los Angeles.
But people were buying into,
you know, this new idea.
Downtown L.A. was gonna be hip.
Especially where the Cecil Hotel is,
7th and Main.
[horn honks]
The hotel was sold
for 26 million dollars in 2007.
[horn honks]
At that point, it was basically
the worst hotel in downtown.
[laughs]
So when I was hired,
my role was to really fix up the place.
But the truth is, I was a bit nervous,
'cause, I mean, I'd never actually worked
at a hotel at all.
Real big, uh, learning experience for me,
I'll say that.
[clock ticking]
I treated it like a corporate job.
I would be the girl
in the pearls and earrings.
Like, you know, ready to go.
[whirring]
The plan was always
that the whole building
was gonna become the Best Western
or something like that.
[whirring]
It was a challenge.
At that point, we had
probably 80 tenants in the building.
And a lot of them lived there
30, 40 years.
They're not paying a lot of money.
I mean, some $400 a month.
So the new ownership wanted the tenants
evicted from the hotel.
And that's when we got a stop work order.
It came to our attention that this hotel
was designated a residential hotel,
and you have restrictions.
Only some of the rooms
could be rented as a hotel,
and all the other rooms
had to still remain monthly rentals
for our tenants.
[Mungin] The Cecil
and other hotels like it
are part of a program on Skid Row
that allows for homeless
or lower-income individuals
to have a home
for a couple of weeks or a month,
and in some cases, even years.
[Price] Because of the legal parameters
around the hotel,
we were on a holding pattern
of what we're gonna do.
[muffled yelling]
It felt like there's just no chance
that it could ever be successful.
I mean, there were
so many shady residents there.
-[woman yelling]
-[thudding]
[thudding and yelling]
And because of that,
there's only so much you can control.
You know, bad things just kept happening.
We… We… We consistently
had people pass away.
I-I-I believe in the ten years
that I worked there,
there was about 80 deaths.
[distant horn honking]
[Cooper] Throughout its history,
the Hotel Cecil
has always had a dark persona.
The details are… are haunting.
It's always been a hotbed for death.
[siren wailing]
[horn honking]
So 1931, you have W. K. Norton,
the earliest reported suicide.
In 1934, a resident of the hotel
committed suicide
by slashing their own throat
with a razor.
And the death didn't stop.
1962, this young woman,
Pauline Otton,
was fighting with her husband Dewey
up on the ninth floor.
[screams]
I guess she'd had enough,
so she decided she was gonna jump
out the window, teach the guy a lesson.
It's a very busy boulevard.
This guy was just walking down the street,
and they were both instantly k*lled.
[horns honking]
-[thud]
-[people screaming]
And death from above takes him out,
with no chance.
[siren wailing]
In 1964, "Goldie" Osgood
lived in the Cecil.
Her nickname was "Pigeon Goldie,"
because she regularly would come out
and feed the pigeons.
So, her nickname was "Pigeon Goldie."
Everybody knew her.
And someone attacks her in her room
in the middle of the day.
And she's r*ped, stabbed, strangled,
and left there on her bed.
[siren wailing]
It's heartbreaking.
So as Skid Row gets tougher
into the 1980s,
the Cecil Hotel became
sort of a powder keg.
Lawless. It pretty much was lawless then.
[indistinct chattering]
Back in the '80s,
I would never go no farther
than the sixth floor.
[uneasy music plays]
Usually the higher floors at the Cecil,
people used to get k*lled up in there.
Once they got a guy in the room…
they would rob him, beat him up,
and throw him out the window.
So if you didn't watch yourself…
you might come flying out of there
with no wings.
[Cooper] It's one of these hotels
that's well-known for this type of crime.
The Cecil was a place where serial K*llers
let their hair down.
One was a figure
who stayed upstairs on the 14th floor,
was paying $14 a night for his room.
He liked to scare, t*rture, torment,
k*ll, r*pe human beings.
[newsman] Californians know him
as the Night Stalker.
He's the sadistic k*ller
wanted for a series of murders and r*pes.
[newsman] He strikes in the night,
and police say he has k*lled 14 people.
[newsman 2] The crime spree
covers 50 miles.
The suspect varies the time, place,
and type of attack,
attacking single women,
elderly couples, children.
Anyone, any place
where windows are left unlocked,
the homes poorly lit.
Nobody knows where this individual
may strike next.
[indistinct police radio chatter]
My career in law enforcement
overlapped with my father's.
He was in charge of investigators
in the Glendale Police Department
during the Night Stalker case in 1985.
The level of fear within the community
was nearly indescribable.
[g*nshots]
[reporter] Those who don't already
have g*ns are buying them.
-Locks are selling well, too.
-It's frightening.
Who wants to be next?
I don't. No one else does.
[crying and speaking indistinctly]
The violence that the victims experienced
ranged from being handcuffed,
to leaving a sketch of a pentagram
on a m*rder victim's legs,
to near-decapitation.
On at least one occasion,
he actually removed someone's eyes
as his human trophies.
After committing
some of the most brutal murders
that happened in Southern California ever,
he would come back to the Cecil…
-[siren wailing]
-…in the middle of the night.
He would be in the back alley,
covered in blood…
taking off his clothing.
[Schave] And he would walk
in his blood-stained underwear barefoot
up to his floor
and into his room, repeatedly.
[Cooper] And that's cool,
and no one's got a problem with that
because it's that kind of heavy place.
Police in Los Angeles
believe they have their man.
Richard Ramirez arrested today,
-after being held by an angry crowd.
-[clamoring]
We, the jury in the above-entitled action,
find Richard Ramirez guilty of m*rder.
Hail Satan!
[newsman] California's agonizing
summer of death
at last seemed to have come to an end.
[Cooper] The Richard Ramirez presence
at the Cecil
tells you a lot
about what kind of place it was…
which is a place
that a maniacal serial k*ller
is comfortable coming home. Home.
[dog barking]
[people chattering]
[Price] Sure, if you go through history,
there were some really tough times
for the place.
I just feel like the Cecil Hotel
has really
suffered from, you know, a bad reputation.
People call it The Suicide.
Hotel Death.
One of the reviews once was like,
"The Cecil Hotel is a place
where dreams go to die."
I'm just like, "Really? Wow."
I mean, come on. I don't think it's fair.
Like, how do you escape that?
That was when we invented Stay on Main.
Because of the restrictions
around the hotel,
we developed a concept
for two separate hotels in one building.
The Stay on Main hotel would be
a youth hostel for the modern traveler.
And the Cecil would be
for our tenants and other guests.
If you're looking on Expedia,
or how you book your travel plans,
the Cecil Hotel and Stay on Main,
they were totally different.
The Stay on Main was a clean slate.
We were able to kind of map out
three separate floors within the Cecil.
The building's 15 stories,
without a thirteenth floor.
The tenants were on two and three.
The Stay on Main Hotel
would be four, five, and six.
And then the Cecil Hotel
was the remaining floors.
And we had a separate front door
for Stay on Main.
I mean, we even, you know, created
two different lobbies in one building.
So that's how it was divided.
I felt like I could see the vision
of what this hotel could actually be.
But we certainly didn't have
a lot of money to spruce it up.
So we started with cosmetic upgrades.
Fresh paint.
Bunk beds.
New bedding.
Even the colors we used…
bright orange.
Different front desk staff,
they're dressed differently.
It was a different experience
checking into Stay on Main.
People liked the concept.
You know, the young travelers
really started staying at the hotel.
We started to get positive reviews.
We were actually able to charge more.
So, it was really almost a Band-Aid
of a way for income.
But the reason why
we were able to succeed
was because the Stay on Main
was a different property altogether…
with one exception.
You know, the… the common elevators.
They're accessible to anybody.
But you couldn't avoid that.
We never got a lot of questions about it.
Wasn't really anything
that was really a concern.
[McSorley] The Cecil had two elevators
that the long-term and the short-term
residents would, uh, use.
If you were staying at the Stay on Main,
you would have to sometimes interact
with someone
that's completely bugging out…
or someone that just came out
of an insane asylum, or a jail or prison.
It could be disgusting there.
We used to call it,
like, the vertical toilet.
[elevator dinging]
[Kading] Well, the Cecil Hotel
had kind of evolved over time.
But that doesn't necessarily mean
it's safe.
That's where it can be misleading.
[keyboard clacking]
[Cooper] When Elisa Lam
looked on the internet
for an affordable, cool place
to stay downtown…
she ended up in a place
called Stay on Main.
And it had trendy branding.
She probably thought
she was staying in a really cool place.
I think that Elisa Lam was almost
like an insect caught in a trap.
The Cecil called to her.
It… It changed what it was,
and it made itself a place
that yelled for someone like her…
[elevator dings]
…to come inside.
[uneasy music playing]
[elevator dings]
[Marcia] It seemed like everybody
took interest in the Elisa Lam case.
It could actually make our job
a little bit harder,
because a rumor
could easily become a false lead.
And because we chose to only provide
a limited amount of information,
people took the time…
to investigate the case on their own.
[Sobhani] If someone were to ask me
how many hours I've spent on this case,
it will go into the territory of hundreds,
maybe thousands of hours.
For much of the time
that I spent researching the case,
I was in-between jobs.
So, for me,
it gave me a sense of purpose.
[keyboard clacking]
I'm John Sobhani, I am a dental student,
and I am a co-founder of the Elisa Lam
discussion group on Facebook.
We are a dedicated group to the case,
and we focus on the facts
that are out there.
[man] This video is a gift.
It's all here, folks. Last seen location!
[woman] This video creeps me out.
I've watched it a thousand times.
[woman 3] I believe she could be
in serious trouble.
[Sobhani] More people
have been delving into this video
and were able to notice things
that look suspicious.
[Dean] One of the biggest pieces
of evidence that web sleuths spotted
was the video itself.
[Harlowe] The timestamp is so unclear.
There's no way to tell what it says.
That is supposedly the timestamp
that is part
of the security camera system.
That is a mess.
[Lordan] The timestamp looks muddled
in a way where it's really hard to make
any sense out of the actual characters.
But it's also hard to understand
how it got damaged in that way.
Like it's been intentionally knocked out.
Why would the video be edited
so that the timestamp was unreadable
before it was released to the public?
Another thing
which made people incredibly suspicious.
If you look at when her hands are moving,
you can see that they're moving,
you know, very slowly.
[woman] It looks as though the footage
was deliberately slowed down.
[Lordan] Someone does an analysis
where he notices
the milliseconds are not moving properly.
And the seconds aren't moving properly.
They determine the video
has essentially been slowed down
33 to 35 percent.
That certainly makes the video
look more strange
and… and kind of bizarre and creepy.
[man] It does look strange, but it's
a lot more weird when it's slowed down.
So why did they slow it down?
[Lordan] There's a few other
interesting things people notice.
It was definitely tampered with,
I think cut in places.
You see the cut
when the door's about to close.
[Lordan] You'll see the elevator door
jump about six inches,
and then all of a sudden keeps closing.
That just confirms
that the video was altered.
And even though you can't see
the busted-up time code,
you know the order of numbers.
So once people start
kind of decoding the time code,
they notice 53 seconds
just completely disappear.
[uneasy music playing]
[Dean] What was on that missing footage?
That missing minute
might be the magic b*llet.
Um… maybe it shows someone walking by.
[Dean] A lot of people believe
it was footage
of the person responsible
for Elisa's disappearance.
[woman] Anyone in that footage
would be a person of interest.
Some people think it was edited
to remove someone from the video.
The edits could have possibly been done
by the hotel
before it was provided to the police.
[siren wailing]
[man] There was a small period of time
where management of the hotel
had access to the footage
and they did
what they wanted to do with it.
Who else could manipulate the camera
to have the missing minute in it?
[Sobhani] Some people say
it was a hotel employee.
It would have to be someone
who had access to it
or had control over the people
who had access to it.
[Lordan] Something's weird here.
Is there some type of cover-up…
within the Cecil Hotel?
What's going on?
So, the elevator footage
seems to really interest people,
and that's where, you know,
a lot of this gets kind of caught up.
"Have you seen the elevator footage?"
People ask me.
Of course I've seen the elevator footage.
I provided the footage.
We provided all that
to the police department.
You know, we… we gave it all.
There's no way that could have been edited
by somebody at the hotel.
People choose to believe
that somehow, you know, we did that.
That's their choice.
[siren wailing]
[Mike Baugh] We didn't know
about the reputation of the hotel.
I was just reading that it was cheap.
You know, we didn't pay loads of money,
so you get what you pay for.
After a few days of, um,
staying in that hotel,
we realized, yes, it was, um…
What's the word?
I can't think of the word.
-It was horrendous.
-It was horrendous, yeah.
[Mike Baugh] About five days
into the holiday…
[woman yelling indistinctly]
…things got worse
from that point on, really.
[siren wailing]
-[Sabina] I was struggling to sleep.
-[horns honk]
[loud bass beat]
[Mike] There was a party below us,
or at least it sounded like that.
[people chatting and laughing]
We noticed there was a smell of weed
in the room,
um, which was coming through the vent
in the bathroom.
Also, we noticed, um,
that the water pressure was very low.
You turn the tap on,
why is the pressure blocked?
Why is there no water pressure?
And the water's quite discolored.
It was… It was like a… a dark color,
like… it had like a brown tint to it.
[Sabina Baugh] We were brushing our teeth
using that water.
We were showering in that water.
Uh, we did, um, drink the water,
but it did have a funny taste to it. Um…
We complained and moved
to a different room two floors up.
The water pressure never got better.
The receptionist told us
that they will ask maintenance guys
to come and get it looked at.
[Price] There was a complaint
about water pressure.
So I asked maintenance
to check for possible clogs,
you know, see if everything's okay.
[Lopez in Spanish]
I constantly had to check
for anything that could be broken.
Twenty-four hour maintenance.
Day and night.
[uneasy music playing]
[sighs]
So I said, "I'll go figure it out."
On the third floor.
I would open the faucet
and it would go…
[rattling]
When you turn on the faucet,
it makes a noise.
So I told my partner,
I told him, "There is a problem."
The roof has four tanks.
I thought there wasn't any water
in the tank,
or it was clogged.
The main tank is where the water
starts to circulate.
I went to have a look.
There is a ladder on the roof
to get to the tanks.
On top of the tank,
there's a little hatch.
And when I went to look…
that's when I saw her.
Mm-hmm.
She floated up.
She was white.
Like a ghost.
I was surprised. I was like, "What?
This is the one we are looking for."
[Price in English]
He walked into my office…
and he told me
that Elisa Lam was in our water tank.
I started thinking to myself, "What?"
How could somebody be
in a water tank for 19 days?
You know, water people are drinking,
people are bathing out of…
How is it possible?"
Before calling the police,
I… I did call my mother… [chuckles]
and let her know that something bad
had happened and to get ready.
[siren wailing]
Next thing, it's a mob scene.
There were no less than 100 people
on the roof.
[siren wailing]
According to investigators,
when officers arrived at the scene,
the tank hatch was closed.
When they peered inside,
uh, they saw that Elisa Lam
was floating face-up.
She was in a considerable state
of decomposition,
and, uh, naked.
Her clothes were found
at the bottom of the tank.
The whole thing is suspicious
because you don't just normally
find people floating in water tanks
on top of buildings in Los Angeles,
especially naked ones.
[siren wailing]
[Mike Baugh]
We heard lots of police sirens.
We saw news companies just outside.
We sat in the lobby.
We didn't know what's going on.
We approached the receptionist
about the situation.
They wouldn't say anything.
We felt like they were hiding something.
We didn't… We didn't really touch…
[Mike] The only thing I could do
was speak to the reporters.
They said, "They found the body
of a missing Canadian student,
um, in this hotel."
I looked at him and said, "What?"
I could not believe it.
A developing story,
and this is a strange one.
The body of a missing Canadian tourist
has been found in this water tank.
[newswoman] The woman inside the tank:
21-year-old Elisa Lam.
[newswoman 2] A very sad,
grisly set of circumstances here,
especially the way the body was found.
When I first heard what happened to her,
I was wondering if it was even true.
I… I wasn't sure.
And I started looking at social media
to confirm it.
It was just mind-blowing.
[reporter] Four tanks connect
to the hotel's drinking supply.
Hundreds of residents and hotel guests
had been using it.
Before we found out, we had a shower,
brushed our teeth, drank water.
It tasted horrible. It had a very funny…
sweaty, disgusting taste.
It's a very… very strange taste.
I can barely describe it.
It's a horrible taste.
[Sabina] I had all these thoughts
running through my head.
Um, it made us feel sick to the stomach,
and I think it traumatized me
for life now.
[reporter] Water from the tap,
something the Cecil Hotel
doesn't want you to see.
Hotel resident Alvin Taylor
helped us videotape it with a cell phone.
Really churns my stomach.
[camera shutters clicking]
[Price] The media circus was unbearable.
I advised our entire staff
that they weren't allowed
to be giving comments, um, to the media,
just because a lot of it
gets misconstrued.
What's the benefit?
We quickly had to shut down the hotel.
All the hotel guests
we had to reassign to other hotels.
Many people reported that they were
disgusted and upset about the experience.
I mean. how do you think it felt
to work there? It was scary.
[Marcia] We had no idea how long
Elisa had been in the tank.
At that point,
we're all looking each other like,
"Okay, how and when did she end up here?"
You know? It's not making sense.
We checked the roof.
We felt confident that she wasn't there.
[somber music playing]
-[helicopter whirring]
-[siren wailing]
[newsman] In Los Angeles,
police are struggling to figure out
how the body of a Canadian tourist
ended up in the water tower
of a Skid Row hotel.
Now these are the final, haunting images
we have of Elisa Lam.
[Sobhani] When Elisa Lam's body was found,
it was not the news that a lot of us
wanted to hear.
We all wanted her to be alive.
So… [sniffs]
Elisa was someone who I'd never met.
Why do I feel like I've just lost
a friend, a sister?
Someone that I genuinely care about.
Turned out a lot of us felt the same.
[woman]
[man]
[man 2]
[woman 2]
The LAPD is not calling this
a homicide right now.
Investigators are calling this
a suspicious death.
They have not named any suspects
or made any arrests.
Kyung Lah, CNN Los Angeles.
[Sobhani] I was…
in a state between heartbreak and…
being infuriated.
Why did it have to happen this way?
Is there an explanation?
I felt like the answers,
it's in front of us. It's clear.
I knew it was up to every one of us.
If we just remain vigilant…
can we get justice?
-[man] What is going on here?
-[man 2] No way this was an accident.
-[woman] Something wicked happened.
-[man 2] Who did that?
-[woman 2] Someone knows the truth.
-[woman 3] Why put her body in the tank?
[man 3] Maybe someone
wanted her to be found.
[man 4] I need to know what happened.
[Harlowe]
I have to investigate everything.
[uneasy music plays]
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