The Mysterious Death Of Elisa Lam

Elisa Lam(Lam Ho Yi )

She was born April 30, 1991 and the daughter of emigrants from Hong Kong.

Lam was Canadian student at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, who was taking a trip, by herself, on Amtrak buses to the San Diego Zoo.
She posted pictures and videos on social media.

January 26, 2013, she arrived in Los Angeles.

January 28, two days later, she checked into the Cecil Hotel, near downtown's Skid Row.
She was initially assigned a shared room on the hotel's fifth floor, until her roommates complained about "certain odd behavior."
She was moved to a room of her own after two days.
Lam called her parents everyday, until the day she disappeared.

On January 31, 2013, she was scheduled to check out of the Cecil and leave for Santa Cruz, her parents did not hear from her and called the Los Angeles police.
Her family then flew to Los Angeles to help with the search.
There was hotel staff who saw her that day and said she was alone. Katie Orphan, manager of a nearby bookstore, recalled seeing Lam that day.

"She was outgoing, very lively, very friendly." 

She was getting gifts to take home to her family. 

"She was talking about what book she was getting and whether or not what she was getting would be too heavy for her to carry around as she traveled." 

Police searched Lam's room and had dogs go through the building, including the rooftop, but the canines were unsuccessful in detecting her scent. 

"But we didn't search every room," Sgt. Rudy Lopez said.

"We could only do that if we had probable cause".

February 6, flyers with her image were posted in the neighborhood and online.

On February 14, the LAPD released a video of the last known sighting of her taken in one of the Cecil's elevators by a video surveillance camera on February 1.

Lam was behaving strange in the video. 

The camera at one of the elevator's rear corners looks down from the ceiling, offering a view not just of its interior but the hallway outside. 

The timestamp at the bottom is obscured.
Lam enters from the left, clad in a red zippered hooded sweatshirt over a gray T-shirt, with black shorts and sandals.
She goes to the control panel, appears to select several floors and then steps back to the corner. 
The door fails to close, she steps up to it, leans forward so her head is through the door, looks in both directions, and then quickly steps back in, backing up to the wall and then into the corner near the control panel. 
She walks to it again and stands in the doorway, leaning on the side. 
She then steps out into the hall, then to her side, back in, looking to the side, then back out. 
She steps sideways again.
For a few seconds she is mostly invisible behind the wall she has her back to just outside. 
Her right arm can be seen going up to her head, and then she turns to re-enter the elevator.
She puts both hands on the side of the door, and then goes to the control panel, presses many more buttons.
She then returns to the wall she had come into the elevator from. She puts both hands over her ears again briefly as she walks back to the section of wall she had been standing against before.
She turns to her right and begins rubbing her forearms together, then waves her hands out to her sides with palms flat and fingers outstretched, while bowing forward slightly and rocking gently. This can all be seen through the open elevator door.
After she backs to the wall again and walks away to the left, it finally closes.

ELEVATOR VIDEO

Some people suggested that the video was altered before it was released.
Some argued that she was attempting to hide from a pursuer, perhaps someone ultimately responsible for her death.

Guests at the hotel began complaining about low water pressure shortly after Lam disappeared.

Some later claimed their water was colored black, and had an unusual taste.

February 19, Lam's body was found, by maintenance workers, in one of four 1,000-gallon tanks providing water to guest rooms, a kitchen, and a coffee shop.

February 21, the Los Angeles coroner's office issued a finding of accidental drowning.

And stated that her bipolar disorder as a significant factor.

The full coroner's report, released in June.

It stated that Lam's body had been found naked.

The clothing similar to that she was wearing in the elevator video was floating in the water, coated with a "sand-like particulate". 

Her watch and room key were also found with her.

Her body was moderately decomposed, bloated and mostly greenish.

It had some marbling evident on the abdomen and skin separation evident. 

This means it was there for quite sometime.

There was no evidence of physical trauma, sexual assault, or suicide.

Not enough of her blood was preserved, so the toxicology reports were incomplete.

They did find traces of Sinutab and Ibuprofen in her system and a very small quantity of alcohol, but no recreational drugs.

One page of the report has a form with boxes to check as to whether the death was accidental, natural, homicide, suicide or undetermined, in large type and a sufficient distance from each other. 

The "accident" box is dated June 15.

Three days later the "undetermined" box was checked instead. 

This was at some point in the three days before the report's release noted as an error and crossed out and initialed.

The autopsy report does not say what the results of the rape kit and fingernail kit were, or even if they were processed.
It also records subcutaneous pooling of blood in Lam's anal area, which could be a sign of sexual abuse.
One pathologist has noted it could also have resulted from bloating in the course of the body's decomposition, and her rectum was also prolapsed.

Some people think that she was under the influence of illicit drugs, suggesting that they might have broken down during the period of time her body decomposed in the tank, or that she might have taken rare cocktails of such drugs that a normal screen would not detect.

There is a question to how she was able to get in the tank by herself and also closing the door to the tank after she got in.

Doors and stairs that access the hotel's roof are locked, with only staff having the passcodes and keys.

Any attempt to force them open would supposedly have triggered an alarm.

The hotel's fire escape could have allowed her to bypass those security measures, if she had known.

All four tanks are 4-by-8-foot cylinders propped up on concrete blocks.

There is no fixed access to them and hotel workers had to use a ladder to look at the water. 

They are protected by heavy lids that would be difficult shut if you are inside the tanks.

Since her death, her Tumblr blog was updated.

Some people say it was through Tumblr's Queue option which allows posts to automatically publish themselves when the user is away. 

Others say the blog posts could have been the work of a hacker or through her missing phone.

Her phone was not found and it has been assumed to have been stolen at some time around her death. 

Did Lam kill herself?

Or was it murder?

Some people think it was the work of evil spirits.

Whatever happened to her, we may never know.

What we do know is that the Cecil Hotel has had a dark past.

Elizabeth Short, victim of the Black Dahlia murder, supposedly made the Cecil her last stop before her death.
Goldie Osgood, the "Pigeon Lady of Pershing Square," was raped and murdered in her room in 1964, by an unknown assailant.
Serial killers Jack Unterweger and Richard Ramirez, the "Night Stalker", both resided at there while active.
There have also been suicides from people jumping from the building.

I think she was playing around with someone. 
I think she went up to the water tank and took her clothes off.
The water tanks didn't always have the covers on.
I think she hopped in the tank and accidentally drowned due to being intoxicated with alcohol.
Whomever she was meeting up there, saw her dead and threw her clothes in the tank, then replaced the lid.