[distant siren wailing]
[tense music playing]
[Marcia] Whenever you have
a situation like this,
we investigate the case as a homicide
until it's not.
When Elisa Lam was found, she was naked.
Um, clothing was found
at the bottom of the tank.
At that time,
because we had no idea
why she ended up in the water tank,
her body becomes a piece of evidence.
I feel bad for saying it that way,
but we have a responsibility,
and the body will speak to you.
[Kading] Investigators elected
to drain the tank…
and to let her body
softly float down to the floor.
And then cut an access point
into the side of the tank
to remove her body.
Investigators also had to fingerprint
anywhere that was potentially touched
by an assailant.
But ultimately, nothing was revealed
that would have pointed
towards a potential suspect.
[Marcia] We have a strange thing here
in that there was nothing to support
that a crime of violence occurred.
There was no physical evidence found.
Looking back at my career after 34 years,
the Elisa Lam case was extremely unusual.
It raised
all different types of questions.
[helicopter whirring]
How did she end up here,
in a water tank
-on the roof of the Cecil Hotel?
-[siren wailing]
Do we have a crime here?
What actually happened?
[uneasy music playing]
[elevator dings]
[camera shutter clicking]
[dog barks]
[newswoman] A hotel with a notorious past
is the site of another bizarre case.
Police are trying to find
exactly what happened
after a missing woman's body was found
in the Cecil Hotel's water tank.
[newswoman 2] Police are trying
to figure out if the death was foul play.
They have not named any suspects
or made any arrests.
Kyung Lah, CNN Los Angeles.
[Price] After Elisa Lam was found
in the water tank upstairs,
the interest in the hotel was just…
absolutely through the roof.
It was like that from the beginning.
[uneasy music plays]
Hey, what's up? It's Kimii.
Welcome back.
There's this famous-- infamous hotel
called Cecil Hotel.
[man] Today, we're driving to the Cecil.
This happens to be the site
of one of the most bizarre mysteries
I've ever read.
[Cooper] Elisa Lam's death is a tragedy.
But for people on the internet,
this is really exciting stuff.
They started to fashion themselves
as, you know, investigators,
and I think that people fed
into this kind of bigger-than-life fantasy
of what it meant
to try to solve this case.
[man] That's it.
That's where I'm staying.
[Price] A lot of people
were coming to the hotel.
You know, it really has become
like this obsession. It's crazy.
[Lordan] I think all of us,
we just wanted to get inside.
All right. Let's do it.
We were all honestly looking
for the answers.
Just looking for the truth
of what could've happened here.
[man] Entering the Cecil Hotel.
[Kimii] This is it,
the very opulent lobby.
[man 2] Still in the same exact state
as it was when Elisa Lam was here.
-So this is the floor she was staying on.
-This is the floor she stayed on.
[Sobhani] Throughout the years,
up through 2016,
I must have visited the Cecil Hotel
at least ten times,
if not… somewhere between ten and 20,
just to… to take in the environment,
the atmosphere,
to get a glimpse
of what Elisa's last days were like.
[man] The room everybody's interested in.
I went to Elisa Lam's room,
I got in trouble for it.
-[man 2] Are you filming?
-I'm not. I'm on my way back to my room.
The security's all over you.
They have security cameras all around,
and they're watching them now.
So, this is what the room looks like.
[Lordan] I'd heard
there was security all over,
and we wouldn't be able to hang out there
for a couple minutes
before getting kicked out,
um, but we were able to stay there
quite a while.
[whispering] Where's the elevator?
[man whispering]
I think this is the elevator. Kimii!
-The elevator.
-[Kimii] Oh.
[man] Dude, my heart's beating.
I don't want to go in.
[Kimii] Just being in there
took my breath away,
because I watched that video
probably ten times.
[Lordan] The big mystery in this case is
why is the elevator staying open?
[Dean] Some people suggested
the door stays open so long
because someone is outside the door
holding the door open button.
[Sobhani] It looked as though
Elisa Lam was in distress,
and, uh, she was pushing
all the elevator buttons frantically.
A lot of people have asked
about the button sequence,
what she's hitting in there.
If you look at it very closely,
at the bottom of that center row
that Eliza pressed on
is a button called "door hold."
[elevator dings]
[Lordan] There's the door hold button,
right there.
That's what Elisa Lam pressed.
I was just like, "Well, let's start
to recreate a bit of what she did."
And hit the door hold button.
We actually set a timer on it.
We learned
that when you press that button,
the elevator doors stay open
for two minutes.
I don't know if she realizes
she was doing that,
but by hitting that bottom button,
she was telling the elevator
to stay there.
The mystery of the elevator
not working properly is solved,
but it seems like she's engaging
someone else out in the hallway,
which calls to the fact that there was
probably someone else involved.
[Kimii whispers] We gotta be quiet.
[man] And get the f*ck
out of this elevator.
[Kimii] Okay.
[Lordan] We also wanted to know
which floor of the hotel
the elevator video was on.
We know that Elisa was staying on five.
[Kimii] In the video, you can see
she presses this row of buttons.
What happens is, when she presses 14,
it lights up while her thumb is on it,
but as soon as she takes it off,
it goes out,
because she's already on that floor.
[Kimii] We're on the fourth floor,
so this won't light up.
[man] So she was on the 14th floor.
[Lordan] Through this, we learn that
the elevator video was on the 14th floor,
which is just one floor below the roof.
[Dean] In the video,
Elisa exits the elevator to the left,
heading down the hall.
It would make sense that whether
she's being pursued by a m*rder*r
or whatever was going on with her,
she could very well
be heading for the roof at that time.
[Lordan] If you make that left,
you'll see this big beam of light
at the end of the hallway,
and it's the window
that leads out to the fire escape.
Get a shot of this.
[woman] Maybe she made her way this way.
[Sobhani] It's possible that one of these
could have been opened. See?
[woman] Very true.
[Lordan] When the LAPD searched the hotel,
the search dogs apparently did find
a hit of her scent
at one of the windows on the floor
that she's staying on.
Maybe that was where she climbed out.
If you go out on that fire escape,
it is kind of like
a traditional staircase,
until the last level.
It literally turns into a ladder
that's just mounted
on the side of the building.
-[siren wails]
-Fifteen floors up,
you can really get a good sense
of how kind of scary it is
for that last level,
because there's nothing to protect you
if you're up there.
[uneasy music playing]
[Dean] It's psychologically terrifying,
but there's no reason
Elisa couldn't have done it.
You would just have to not be psyched out…
that if you fall off the ladder,
you're plunging to your death.
[siren wailing]
[Lordan] But we learned
that the fire escape
wasn't the only way to get to the roof.
Another very interesting possibility
is that she exits
to the left of the elevator
and goes to the stairwell
that leads right to the roof.
-[Kimii] I'm not going up there.
-[Lordan] There are two internal stairs.
One of them does include roof access.
[man] Here's the stairs to the rooftop.
[suspenseful music playing]
[Lordan] Up there, you've got a doorway
that supposedly needs a key
to deactivate the alarm.
[Sobhani] I remember seeing a… a sign
that said that it was alarmed.
[man] "Entry into room area prohibited."
The alarm looks like
it's probably set up to trigger,
should someone try to get that door open.
[Sobhani] However, in my experience,
I pushed against it.
I didn't hear anything go off.
[horns honking]
-[man] Okay, guys. Wow.
-[Kimii] This is the roof.
-It's a really whole view of downtown L.A.
-[man 2] It's really bright.
[Kimii] When I actually went there,
it was a few years after Elisa's death.
The security guard unlocked the roof
for us and let us up there.
[Sobhani] As soon as you got outside,
there were cigarette butts
all over the floor.
[Lordan] You've got beer bottles
all over up there.
There is graffiti all over the place.
[Sobhani] You could tell it was a place
where people would go frequently.
[Kimii] There are hand prints on the side.
[man] Ugh, Kimii!
[Kimii] My gosh, this is so crazy.
-[man] Imagine this at night.
-I know. No way I could do it at night.
[Sobhani] At one point
when I was on the rooftop,
in the same area as where Elisa
may have had her last steps…
[siren wailing]
…I was thinking to myself…
what it must have been like for Elisa.
There was noise
from the traffic around town.
[siren whooping]
The next building…
was a football field away.
And what really concerned me
was the idea that if someone screamed…
[uneasy music playing]
…would anybody hear them?
[sirens wailing]
[Price] It's hard to wrap your head around
how she died in that water tank.
No one around.
Not be discovered for quite some time.
It's… It's terrible.
[siren wailing]
I know there are a lot of questions about
the water tank and how she got up there,
but the answer is quite simple
of how she got up there.
I believe that she took
the exterior fire escape.
Is there proof? No, there's no proof.
But if you open the door…
[door opens]
…an alarm starts going off
-at the front desk in the lobby.
-[alarm blares]
Do you think we would just have an alarm
going off when we're running a business?
You have to have a key
to turn it off.
[alarm stops]
[in Spanish] Only maintenance, the owners,
and security guards had keys.
After they found that girl…
the police checked the door,
and it was fine.
That's why I don't think she got
to the rooftop through the door. No.
[distant siren wailing]
[tense music playing]
[banging on door]
[Kading in English]
From the initial discovery of the body,
the whole thing right off the bat was…
was very strange.
If you were going to dump somebody's body
in a place like a water tank,
-it would have been planned out.
-[knocking]
That would indicate
it's somebody familiar with the location.
Who within the hotel
could be a potential suspect?
[elevator dings]
The investigation was ongoing,
but, at that time,
we weren't able to find evidence
that other guests or hotel employees
would have been a danger to her.
[phone ringing]
My partner and I decided
that we would go back and review
all the video tape from the hotel,
to recreate her whereabouts
and interactions with people.
We sat there and we…
we watched the video several times.
And we discovered
there was some footage
that showed her coming into the hotel,
and she was with two guys.
This is the only interaction
caught on camera
between Elisa and somebody else.
[Marcia] By looking at the footage,
we were able to conclusively verify
an exchange of a box
that one of the males was carrying.
Elisa takes control of the box,
and then she continues on into the hotel
with the box,
and the two males turn around and leave.
Which was an interesting development,
because did she know these people?
Maybe they had something to do
with Elisa's death.
Investigators went back
to her personal belongings
and discovered that with the property
that she had left behind…
that same box was present.
[Marcia] The box lead us
to The Last Bookstore
in downtown Los Angeles.
[Kading] The Last Bookstore,
which is where Elisa had visited
prior to disappearing.
[Marcia] The people at the bookstore
remembered that Elisa made a purchase.
She was talking about
what books she was getting
and whether or not what she was getting
would be too heavy to carry around
as she traveled or take home with her.
[Marcia] We learned it was due to either
the size of the books or the amount,
but she was a little bit afraid
of being able to carry those herself.
And so, these two individuals
delivered this box to the hotel.
My partner and I kept an eye out
to see if they came back to the hotel
at a later time.
But they never came back.
So, ultimately,
there was no reason to believe
that there was
any malicious activity going on.
As an investigator, you realize that,
"Wow, we're back to…
back to square one again."
[Kading] When you're in a position
where you don't know what happened,
the next step would have been
to further any leads from the public,
but it's a double-edged sword.
People get involved themselves,
these internet sleuths,
looking into the case…
[phone rings]
…contacting the police department…
[man] I think she was
on the fourteenth floor.
[woman] I think she accessed the roof
through the fire escape.
[woman 2] I think that night,
the alarm didn't go off.
[Kading] …give their perspective
on things,
their ideas about what might've happened.
-[woman] I think there are…
-[man] I think it could be…
-[woman 2] Definitely suspicious.
-[man 2] There was more involved.
And all of that can become overwhelming.
-[door opening]
-[dog barking]
[door closes]
[phone chimes]
[Lordan] There's a lot of things
people discovered at the Cecil,
and that can be used to piece together
what happened to Elisa.
But…
we still don't know
if Elisa was by herself that night.
If she was alone,
when you're talking about the logistics
she had to go through to get on the roof…
And then, beyond that,
getting up on top of these tanks,
and then, for some reason,
get inside of it…
[metal scraping]
…we have to ask the question,
how would she have even gotten in there?
[dog barks]
If you were investigating this rooftop,
you can see the water tanks
are approximately ten feet high
and six feet in diameter.
There's a ladder and there's a metal hatch
located on the top of the water tank.
[Lordan] The lid weighs 20 pounds.
It is not hinged.
So it's literally a piece of square metal
with a lip on it
that kind of fits over this hole
in the top of the tank.
She could've lifted the lid
to get into it.
[woman] But why would she go
in the water tank?
I feel like you would have to be
on something
to ever think it's a good idea
to jump into a water tank and take a swim.
[Lordan] It just makes me
wonder personally
if she was on a party drug,
you know, or having a bad LSD trip.
[computer mouse clicking]
[Elisa Lam] I don't abuse any drugs.
I don't drink alcohol.
I do feel proud that I withheld
from doing senseless partying,
but, at the same time,
if I wasn't so uptight,
I would have had an easier time
dealing with stupid people.
There's no evidence
she was a recreational drug user,
but it's not crazy to think
a 21-year-old woman in Los Angeles
might be experimenting.
[Sobhani] Going back to Elisa's blogs,
we also know
she had her struggles with depression.
She was taking the antidepressants,
but she was having these highs and lows.
[Elisa Lam] I had a relapse.
Fellow bipolars,
you may be the only ones
who will understand what this is like.
It's a vicious cycle, isn't it?
I'm just so tired.
So very tired.
I don't want to live like this.
[somber music playing]
[Sobhani] She was
in a vulnerable position,
and some people are thinking
that it was suicide.
[Elisa Lam] Sometimes you look out
at the world
and you see nothing worth liking.
Sometimes I look at myself
and see nothing worth liking.
I want to k*ll myself.
It scares me so much
that I'm thinking about it.
[sighs] I'm waiting for this to pass.
And tomorrow, it will hopefully be gone.
[Lordan] If you were gonna commit suicide,
a lot of people suggest,
why wouldn't you just jump off the roof?
Maybe if that was too grisly
of a death for you,
I can see you
possibly going in the water tank,
but why remove your clothes?
Really does not make much sense.
[siren wailing]
[Sobhani] What made things
far more suspicious
was that we learned through the LAPD
that when Elisa Lam's body was discovered,
it was said that the lid was closed.
[man] I did not see personally
Ms. Lam's body in the water tank,
so I don't know exactly
the condition of the body.
The tank has a small lid
that allows for looking inside of it.
My understanding is that lid was closed
when our officers went up.
[Lordan] So that raises
a very big question.
How does the lid get closed?
[Sobhani] No ladders were inside the tank.
If she were to float on top of that water,
there would've been considerable distance
between the tip of her fingers
and the lid.
[Lordan] There's nothing for her
to stand on.
How was she able to get this metal hatch
back into position
and closed on top of there?
How would she have done that herself?
It didn't make sense.
So that led to people concluding
there had to be someone else involved.
There had to be someone
that came along and put that lid on top.
If there is someone that did that,
how else are they involved
in what happened to Elisa?
[uneasy music playing]
[man] I don't believe that Elisa…
went into the water tank
under her own power.
I believe that she was k*lled
on the rooftop,
and then she was
placed into the tank afterwards.
My instinct was that she was m*rder*d.
[uneasy music playing]
[Harlowe] The fact that she was naked
suggested her clothes had been off of her
before she went into the tank.
A lot of people were wondering,
"Could she have been sexually assaulted?"
[keyboard clacking]
[man] Somebody may have
did something to her,
or planning on raping her,
and she fought, and might have k*lled her.
Then this was a way
to get rid of the body, quick.
[Sobhani] We have every reason
to be concerned
that there is a mysterious k*ller
out there.
There are many different suspects
that come to mind.
Some people say it was a hotel worker.
They have the key
to have access to the rooftop.
[man] I think one of the employees
brought her to the roof.
I think she was coerced and led up.
Maybe the hotel didn't want
to take blame, covered it up.
[woman] It was an inside job.
They were trying to protect someone.
This is a huge cover-up by the hotel.
[Lordan] At that point, we were all
feeling that someone in the hotel
has to be involved,
and this has to be a foul play scenario.
[helicopter whirring]
[McSorley] In the Skid Row area…
females are the number one victims.
I mean, huge… huge victimhood.
Human trafficking, sexual as*ault,
and abuse that you see on the streets
here, it's… it's incredible.
[Mungin] Women go missing on Skid Row
nearly every day.
No one really knows where they go.
They just disappear.
But those deaths and murders
have always been a problem.
That history was always there.
[Cooper] In 1991, um, Jack Unterweger,
a journalist from Austria,
comes to Skid Row.
Checks into the Cecil Hotel.
And he's actually on assignment
to do a story
about red light districts in Los Angeles.
1991, that was pretty much
around the same time
I was staying at the Cecil.
Used to be a lot of women, prostit*tes,
that used to hang around there.
[siren wailing]
Back then, on 6th Street
between San Pedro and Central,
which is about five blocks,
they used to call that the h* stroll.
The Cecil was right down the street.
[Cooper] Jack Unterweger
begins to research a story
about how the police
deal with street prostitution
in downtown Los Angeles.
[siren wailing]
He even arranged to go on a drive-along
with the Los Angeles Police Department
to see the local prostitution hotspots.
And he really immerses himself
in the lifestyle
of both johns and prostit*tes
in the course of researching this story.
Regularly having prostit*tes
come up to his room at the Cecil.
However, unbeknownst to everyone…
Jack Unterweger is actually
a convicted k*ller.
Um, a pimp.
A r*pist.
In 1974, back in Austria,
Jack Unterweger is sent to prison
for raping and murdering a young woman.
Almost immediately after he is released
from prison in the very early 1990s,
women begin disappearing
and showing up dead in his vicinity.
Unterweger is immediately under suspicion.
So Unterweger flees to America
and the murders stop in Austria.
The murders pick up almost immediately
in downtown Los Angeles.
Three young women working
as street prostit*tes are found dead.
This picture shows the ligature
that was around the victim's neck.
[Cooper] He got his kicks out of creating
a very special type of knot
that could be used to throttle someone
to unconsciousness,
then loosened
to allow them to come to…
repeatedly.
It was a very, very cruel death
that he inflicted upon his victims.
But he ultimately ended up getting caught
and was unable to escape
from the long arm of justice.
For Unterweger,
the Cecil was a good location
from which to scout victims.
[Mungin] This story
is part of a larger narrative
that goes on and on and on,
and it has been for the last 75 years.
Where, on Skid Row,
you see this underbelly of crime,
you see this underbelly of r*pe,
and it's because
we have constructed that area
in a way that violence
is going to naturally occur there.
And so, when you ask the question of,
"Can a 21-year-old girl
feel safe on Skid Row?"
The answer is no.
[siren wailing]
[Tovar] I'm Jason Tovar.
I was an associate deputy medical examiner
with the Los Angeles County
coroner's office.
I think the most exciting thing
about my job that I like is the unknown.
We get a case that comes in
and it's a very big mystery.
In this case, there was a potential
for sexual as*ault.
There was a potential
for suicide, homicide, and accident.
All things are in play.
In any case, it's important to know
time of death.
When I reviewed the clothing
found in the tank with her,
I did identify that her clothing matched
what was seen in the video.
This suggests that she may have died
either that day of her disappearance
or very close to that time.
Um, however, we really don't know.
[Marcia] When she was missing,
we checked the roof.
[helicopter whirring]
But there was nothing to suggest
she had gone up there.
So we wanted to know how long
Elisa had been in the tank.
[Tovar] When I first examined the body,
she was in a state
of moderate decomposition,
consistent with somebody found
after some time being submerged in water.
With decomposition, as time goes on,
more and more changes occur.
The temperature of the water,
the temperature on the roof,
and, you know, what kind of day it was,
all variables that could either
speed up or slow down
the changes seen in her body.
But they were unknown.
So, in this particular case,
there was really no way to know
how long she had been in the tank.
The next step then would be to determine
whether or not it was foul play
or not foul play.
[Marcia] It's extremely important
to determine if she had been k*lled…
at another location, whether it was
the roof, hotel room, hallway, wherever,
and dropped in the tank.
[Tovar] I looked for signs of injuries.
I didn't identify any fractures.
There's no g*nsh*t wounds or stab wounds
or evidence that she was strangled.
[Kading] Given she was naked,
a r*pe kit was tested,
and there was
no foreign biological material
found under her fingernails
or within her orifices.
So there was no indication whatsoever
that there was a sexual as*ault issue.
[Tovar] Ultimately, there appeared
to be no evidence
of external or internal injuries
that could have led to her death.
The next step then
would be to try to figure out,
could she have actually,
for whatever reason,
climbed into the tank and… and drowned?
Sometimes when a person drowns,
you may see foam in the airways.
The lungs can be very congested
and filled with fluids.
I didn't identify those findings,
but the absence of those doesn't
necessarily mean it wasn't a drowning.
[Marcia] A comprehensive review
of the body was done,
but we haven't proven
one way or other at this point
what was the cause of death
and the mode of death.
[Tovar] At the end of the autopsy,
we really don't know
why she was found in a tank.
Was there somebody else there?
It was a very suspicious death.
So, at that point in time,
we had… had decided
that we wouldn't provide
a cause of death at that moment
and wanted to wait
for all the tests to come in.
The toxicology results
should shed some light
on whether there were drugs in her system,
but tox can take a number of weeks
potentially to come back.
It was a very high-profile,
you know, in-the-media case.
You know there's gonna be
this outside influence
trying to… to put pressure on you
to… to hurry up.
This is a job that you can't rush.
We need to do this in the right way.
[keyboard clacking]
[man] Ever since I first found out
about Elisa Lam,
I can't stop thinking about it.
When I go to bed, when I wake up.
Not knowing the truth is k*lling me.
[man 2] I spend hours thinking about
what she could be looking at, looking for,
waiting for, thinking.
I just need to know what happened.
[woman] No autopsy released to the public?
We need someone to call and obtain
the public record of the autopsy
and tox results to find out more.
[Lordan] A lot of people were wondering
why the autopsy report
took so long to come out.
[deep breath]
I remember we waited months.
It made a lot of people,
including myself, really concerned.
[woman] I wanna know what the delay is.
I think it's very suspicious that the LAPD
hasn't released the autopsy information.
Police have this information,
but we don't,
and I wonder why they haven't released it.
And, on top of that, nobody seems
to be able to get her police file.
What are they hiding?
[Lordan] People started talking about
the fact that back when she was missing,
LAPD supposedly searched the roof.
If you have LAPD searching the roof
with dogs,
how do you not find her?
[woman] They did not find
any trace of Lam anywhere.
The police claim they didn't go anywhere
near the water tanks. Why?
[man] Or was it just to delay
the discovery of her body?
So a lot of people are now
running rampant with, "Hey,
someone at the LAPD might have delayed
when Elisa's body was discovered."
But why would they do that?
I think that there was a big cover-up
by the LAPD.
[woman] There is some speculation
that someone that worked on the case
and someone that worked at the hotel
were possibly working together.
The LAPD, they might have been given
some money to shut up. Who knows?
[man] Did the cops
try to cover something up with the hotel?
[Lordan] In terms of cover-up theories,
you have people speculating
that someone in the hotel
might have done something to harm her.
[siren wailing]
And we now think that there is some
potential for the LAPD being involved.
[reporter] She had been in a tank
on the hotel roof as long as 19 days,
while water from that tank
actually flowed…
[Dean] A lot of people thought,
"If the cops are hiding something,
maybe we can help figure out
what happened to her."
But as people really dug into it,
they started to find other peculiarities.
[Kimii] I did some research and found
similarities between Elisa Lam
and the movie Dark Water.
[Dean] Dark Water
was originally produced in Japan
ten years before Elisa's disappearance…
and then pretty quickly remade in 2005
for the U.S.
Another puddle.
[sighs] I'm sorry about that.
[Dean] It's a horror movie
about a mother and daughter
who move into this dilapidated
apartment building,
much like the Cecil Hotel.
In the movie, the little girl
is wearing this red jacket.
That's really similar
to the one that Elisa's wearing
in the elevator video.
[Dean] On top of that, there's a scene
where this discolored water
comes pouring out of the faucet.
[Kimii] That's really creepy,
because people staying at the hotel
complained their water was black,
which was how Elisa was found
in the water tower tank.
But the biggest coincidence is…
[girl screams]
…the little girl dies
by falling inside of the water tower tank
that's supposed to be locked.
If you reduce the plot of Dark Water
down to its basic elements,
it's almost the story of Elisa Lam.
You don't have to be a conspiracy
theorist to look at that and say,
"What are the odds?"
And, "That can't be real."
And yet it was.
Some people speculate
that maybe someone was deranged enough
to be carrying out
what happened in this movie to Elisa.
You wonder,
"Is this an incredibly elaborate,
staged m*rder inspired by a movie,
or is it just a crazy coincidence?"
Coincidence is something
that happens once, maybe twice.
But when you get three, four, five,
six times, that can't be a coincidence.
It's gotta be synchronicity.
A synchronicity is when you have
a compounding series of things
that seem to be related
but have no obvious connection.
The only way
you could possibly explain away
all of these simultaneous occurrences
is that there's some
higher forces at play.
And Elisa's story
is just riddled with synchronicities.
Mind control, Canadian involvement,
social engineering.
Invisibility cloak technology
for the military.
Of course, the dreaded Illuminati
even comes up.
Is it a cover-up
to hide a new strain of TB?
What's curious about that
is when she stayed there,
there was some kind of outbreak
of tuberculosis in the Skid Row area.
Officials in Los Angeles County
are asking for federal assistance
containing an outbreak of tuberculosis
among the homeless.
County officials say
more than 4,600 people
who live on Skid Row in downtown L.A.
have likely been exposed.
They've asked the CDC
for help containing the outbreak.
[Price] Health Department arrives one day,
said, "we had a TB outbreak at the hotel
and people needed to get tested.
This outbreak of tuberculosis
happened only a matter of days
after her body was found
in the water tank.
And then you have
this really bizarre twist in that
a test that you give someone
to detect tuberculosis
is called a LAM-ELISA test.
It is Elisa Lam,
just with the two words reversed.
The fact that she's named the same
as the tuberculosis test,
that just itches in my brain a little bit
and makes me wonder
if there's any connection.
It's just too fantastic.
It just… What a coincidence.
A very weird coincidence,
a hugely weird coincidence.
[Harlowe] No joke,
spelled the same way and everything.
[Dean] Web sleuths begin to suggest
that this is evidence
of some government conspiracy.
So people are wondering,
"Was she an agent for some government
or some t*rror1st group?
[Lordan] Some people theorize
that Elisa Lam
is effectively a biological weapon.
…sent to L.A. as part of a campaign
to infect the homeless population
in order to reduce their numbers.
But the government had to take her out,
because she knew too much.
Because she could expose
whoever it was that had sent her there.
[Dean] On top of that,
the University of British Columbia,
which is where Elisa took classes,
has a fairly well-known
tuberculosis research center.
I'm as skeptical as they come,
and I don't actually believe
there is any connection there,
but it is really, really f*cking weird.
How do you explain that?
I don't know.
But there's so many bizarre parallels.
You can't ignore that.
Another one of those
is about The Last Bookstore.
People have gone online and figured out
that The Last Bookstore,
if you look up the website,
and then look up
the registrar information,
there is a zip code that comes up
for the mailing address.
And if you put that zip code
into Google Maps,
it brings up Burnaby, BC.
And quite specifically,
the pinpoint for the center of that town
is the cemetery where Elisa is buried.
There's so many different things going on
with synchronicities in this story.
[uneasy music playing]
And of course,
right in the middle of everything
is the Cecil Hotel.
The Cecil Hotel is known
for multiple suicides, multiple homicides.
It really makes people wonder,
"Is there something evil going on here?"
I believe the Cecil Hotel is haunted.
Yes, I-I do.
I do believe it is evil.
I believe that's why
these things have happened there.
Hail, Satan!
[woman] That's what draws in
these K*llers, the suicides.
[elevator dings]
[uneasy music plays]
Does Elisa's death have something to do
with the Cecil Hotel's dark past
or the Cecil Hotel being haunted?
[eerie music playing]
[man] Something paranormal chased her.
[woman] She was possessed,
and an evil spirit
told her to k*ll herself.
[woman 2] Maybe a ghost brought her
to the rooftop and drowned her.
[Dean] I mean, what are the odds that
one place would be historically troubled,
and then be the home
of this, you know, incredibly mysterious
disappearance and death?
People think it can't just be random,
it can't just be coincidence.
[Mungin] Throughout the years,
the Cecil has become
this exalted space of crime,
of violence, of…
of… of… of spookiness.
So when it comes to the Elisa Lam case,
I think that we're hoping for a ghost.
I think we're hoping
for a monster from the depths
that just came in and captured her
and threw her in a tank.
Because it's what we've come to expect.
[Cooper] It'd be easier if we could
just tell you the Cecil is haunted
and it's got some sort of uncanny force,
but nobody knows that.
But there is something haunted
about a lot of pain and struggle…
and people having their lives fall apart
in there.
Not what we normally think of as a ghost.
But it does feel different
in places where people have suffered.
[reporter] This story is unbelievable.
-Bizarre, isn't it?
-Yeah. As days go on,
we learn more, or learn that we don't know
as much as we should.
-We don't know enough.
-Yeah.
How close are police to finding out
what happened to Elisa Lam?
Well, Victor, the short answer is,
not close at all.
So we still don't know how she died.
[dog barking]
[Lordan] There's a few different buckets
of web sleuths online.
You've got conspiracy theorists
with just crazy speculation.
But then there's this mix of people
that want to dive deeper
to find more of the truth in the story.
[Darrah] Maybe we will find something.
Maybe we'll discover something
that nobody else figured out,
and we'll be able
to have justice for Elisa.
[Sobhani] There are
many questions remaining,
and there was every reason
to be suspicious that she was m*rder*d.
[Dean] If it's a m*rder,
then you need a m*rder*r.
So there was, like,
a massive mobilization of web sleuths.
Essentially, a virtual manhunt.
[Harlowe] A lot of people
started to investigate on YouTube,
looking into the employees, guests,
anybody who was connected
to the Cecil Hotel.
Every piece of video that existed
of the Cecil online was being analyzed.
Then someone out there, I don't know who,
stumbled on the footage of this musician
who called himself Morbid.
I'm here at the Cecil Hotel, downtown L.A.
[Dean] People discovered
he's a death metal musician,
I guess you would say,
who seems to be obsessed
with violence and death.
[death metal playing]
And they found a video that was shocking.
[singing indistinctly]
It centered around a young girl
running for her life,
until she's eventually m*rder*d.
[Dean] The part
that creeped people out the most
was that this video appeared online
just a couple days after Elisa's death.
The timing seemed suspicious.
So people kept looking into him,
and they found another video,
and this one was really creepy.
He's got blood on his face,
and his background
was a picture of Ted Bundy…
a very well-known serial k*ller,
and Elizabeth Short, the Black Dahlia.
[man] People say that Elizabeth Short
supposedly was seen at the Cecil Hotel,
sometime just before her death.
That ties not only Elisa,
but the hotel itself.
[Harlowe] Finally, people started finding
his other songs.
I will let your tender remains rest ♪
In the deep, cold ocean ♪
Where no sounds or screams
Will ever be heard ♪
[death metal playing]
I'm thinking China ♪
Elisa Lam was Chinese,
and the lyrics talk about a girl
dying in water.
When you put all of the things together,
it does seem kind of crazy.
[uneasy music playing]
People thought he was almost trying
to send hints and messages.
Like he was screaming from the rooftops,
"Look at what I did to her."
[Lordan] A lot of people thought,
"Is this some type of calling card
from a m*rder*r type situation?"
People truly believed this guy's a k*ller.
I mean, really,
how can this all be a coincidence?
[somber music playing]
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