Nouvelle/Nouveau - The Elisa Lam Conundrum

Elisa Lam, found dead on the 19th February 2013

The Cecil Hotel, a budget hotel with 600 rooms in Downtown Los Angeles. Built in 1924, the hotel was intended to attract business customers. However, it has since garnered a much darker reputation.

The hotel today is known for several suicides, criminal activity (which includes three murders) and most notably served as lodgings for Richard Ramirez in 1985 and Jack Unterweger in 1991. It is also, supposedly, one of the last places where Elizabeth Short (The Black Dahlia) was said to have been sighted.

However, on the 19th February 2013, Canadian Student Elisa Lam was found dead and naked in one of the water tanks on the roof of the Cecil. Most of her clothes and other personal possessions were found floating about her person, however her mobile phone was not recovered.

Elisa Lam was a 21 year old student at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver and was the daughter of two immigrants from Hong Kong. Her parents owned a restaurant in the Vancouver suburb of Burnaby. But, Lam was not registered at the UBC when she departed in January 2013 for what she called her "West Coast Tour," a trip to Southern California, which she spoke about on her Tumblr blog, titled "Nouvelle/Nouveau."
Lam had intended to visit San Diego, LA, Santa Cruz and San Francisco. She mentioned wanting to visit San Louis Obispo, but had been unsure if she could.

Elisa travelled on her own, using intercity busses and Amtrak. Prior to arriving in LA and checking into the Cecil Hotel, Lam had posted photos of a visit to San Diego Zoo on social media. She arrived at the Cecil on the 26th January, 2013.

Several years before embarking on her trip across the West Coast, Lam had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder and had been prescribed such medication as Wellbutrin, Lamictal, Seroquel and Effexor as a means of dealing with her condition. Lam's family (who had reportedly been keeping her bipolar disorder a secret) Elisa had no history of suicide attempts, nor self harm. However, there was some indication that she had, at a previous time, gone missing for a period.
Lam maintained a blog from mid 2010, entitled "Ether Fields," through to 2012. Over the course of this time, she posted various things on her blog, mostly involving accounts of her life and struggle with her disorder, as well as models in fashionable clothes.
On the 27th July 2012, Lam made a post titled "Tumblr" on Ether Fields informing her followers that:

"I am much more active on tumblr. This is going to stay as a reminder of what I was thinking."

Lam's new blog featured less of her own words, focusing more on models, fashion and found photographs. The epigraph for her new blog was the same as her old one, a quote from Chuck Palahniuk, "You're always haunted by the idea that you're wasting your life."

While on her travels, Elisa kept in touch with her parents back in Vancouver, speaking with them on a daily basis. However, when Lam was supposed to check out of the Cecil Hotel on the 31st January, her parents panicked and contact the Los Angeles Police Department. After she was reported missing, Elisa's family flew to Los Angeles to help with the search effort.

Hotel staff who had seen Lam on the day of her disappearance had reported that she was alone, but Lam had purchased a book from a nearby bookstore, managed by a woman called Katie Orphan.
Ms Orphan had described Elisa as

"She was outgoing, very lively, very friendly"

Ms Orphan told CNN that

"[Elisa was] talking about what book she was getting and whether or not what she was getting would be too heavy to carry while she was travelling."

Police searched The Cecil Hotel to the extent that they legally could, but noted that they could not search every room in the hotel unless they probable cause to believe that a crime had been committed within the room. On the 6th February, Lam had been missing for a week and so the LAPD decided that they'd need more help. Flyers with her image were posted in the local area and online, social media was ablaze and brought the disappearance to the attention of the media.

After a second week of searching, the LAPD decided to release a video taken by a CCTV camera on the 1st February in one of the hotel's elevators. The video garnered worldwide attention and has been deeply analysed and discussed.

Viewers of the video have described it as deeply disturbing and many have posed the theory that Lam had been suffering some sort of psychotic episode, linked to her bipolar disorder. Others have suggested that she was trying to escape a pursuer and even that she was experiencing some form of paranormal activity. Other viewers have argued that the video had been tampered with prior to being released to the public, even going as far as to suggest that a whole minutes worth of footage had been edited out.

Whilst the case was earning itself more and more attention in the media, guests at The Cecil Hotel began to complain of low water pressure in their rooms. Some complained of discoloured water with an odd taste and so employees of the establishment began to investigate.

It was on the morning of the 19th February that one of the hotel employees went up to the roof, to investigate the four 1000 gallon water tanks that were stored up there. The tanks were pumped from the cities water supply and supplied the guests rooms and the coffee shop downstairs. The man investigating the tanks found Elisa Lam's naked, dead body in one of the tanks. Immediately, the police were informed of this development.

The four water tanks on the roof of the hotel

All of the Cecil's short term guests left, horrified that they had been drinking water contaminated by a decaying corpse for two weeks. While the county health department found that the water had not been contaminated, they issues a "Do Not Drink" order nonetheless.

According to a long term guest, there had been a flooding on an upper floor following Lam's disappearance. 

How Lam got into the water tank remains undetermined. The doors and stairs leading to the roof are locked, only accessible to the employees of the hotel. Any attempt to force them would have triggered an alarm. However, the fire escape of the hotel would have allowed Miss Lam to bypass the security measures, had she been privy to that information. 

It was further questioned whether she could have gotten into the tank by herself. Each of the water tanks were 4-by-8 foot and were propped up on concrete blocks. There was no fixed access to the entrance hatch on top of the tanks and hotel workers had to use a ladder to get up there. The tanks are protected by heavy lids and would have been incredibly difficult to put back in place once inside. 

The autopsy on Lam's dead body reported that they had found Lam's death to be an accidental, noting her bipolar disorder as a significant factor. The full report was released a whole four months later, in June, after it had been postponed several times. It was reported that she had been found naked in the water tank, with her clothes, watch and room key and they were coated in a "sandy particulate."

Elisa's body was "moderately" decomposed, bloated and greenish. There was marbling evident on the abdomen and skin separation was evident. The pathologists found no evidence of physical trauma or sexual assault, although rape and fingernail tests were done. There was no evidence that Lam had committed suicide. There was no alcohol or recreational drugs found in Lam's system, but they did find traces of her medication, as well as well as nonprescription drugs such as ibuprofen and Sinutab. 

However, the autopsy report itself has frequently been questioned. It does not say what the results of the rape and fingernail tests were, it records significant pooling of blood around Lam's anal area, which some observers said was an indicator of sexual assault; however, one pathologist noted it could have been caused by the decomposition of Lam's body. Even the pathologists appeared to be unsure as to their conclusion that Lam's death was accidental. One page of the report requires the pathologists to check whether the death was homicide, natural, accidental or undetermined. The accident box was checked and dated as June 15th, but the undetermined box was checked instead three days later.

Since her death, someone has been updating Lam's blog on tumblr. Her phone was not found in Lam's hotel room, nor on or around her body. Many have assumed that her phone was stolen sometime around her death. It remains undetermined whether or not the updates to her blog are the result of a hacker or if the person (or persons) unnamed who stole her phone are making them. It is also unknown whether the blog updates are related to Lam's death.

The questions revolving around Lam's disappearance and death did not stop post-mortem, she remains a question in peoples minds to this day. Various theories have sprouted online, some linked to the Cecil's dark past, others linked to Lam's bipolar disorder. Paranormal activity, a psychotic episode and other possibilities have been raised regarding the whole event, with the "elevator video" particularly fresh in peoples mind.

What has always captivated this blogger, regarding the elevator CCTV footage, is the way that Lam's hands and arms move when she gesticulates. At certain parts, it does not look so much as if she is talking to someone, but rather as if she is trying to feel around for something, as if her vision had been impaired. Furthermore, when Lam returns to the elevator and pushes the buttons for a second time, it also appears as if she is struggling to visualise them.

While no recreational drugs were found in Lam's system, some have asserted that they may have been lost during the bodies decomposition and so could not be detected in a toxicology screening. This may go some way as to taking a step in the direction of an explanation of the CCTV footage. However, as is obvious, there is no definitive way to prove that such assertions are correct.

While I assert all of this, I accept the fact that my theory is just that. A theory. I believe it is damn near impossible to ever explain the way Lam was acting during the CCTV footage and I would be surprised if anyone ever finds concrete proof to back up any particular theory.

However, the questions that still continue to vex are these: Who has access to Elisa Lam's Tumblr blog? How did she get into the water tank and, if she was assisted, who helped her?