Elisa Lam Case Study

Built in 1927, the Cecil Hotel has a grim history of murders, suicides, and even serial killers, but no anomaly was perhaps more shocking than the mysterious death of Elisa Lam. Called an “accidental drowning” by the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD), the college student’s death baffled and fascinated the public. Elisa was seen as a normal girl, but when she checked into the Cecil Hotel she went missing, and was later found in the hotel's water tank with no evidence to suggest how she got there. Elisa Lam was a seemingly usual girl. Loved by her family and friends, Elisa never showed any unusual behavior before the incident; she was a 21 year old Canadian college student studying at British Columbia University in Vancouver Canada. In January 2013, Elisa embarked on a tour of the U.S. west coast. Lam never showed any signs of unusual behavior until she checked into the Cecil Hotel. She was the daughter of Hong Kong migrants and lived in a Vancouver suburb for most of her life. Although Elisa was diagnosed with bipolar disorder, she was a typical college student with many friends and her own Tumblr blog. None of Elisa’s friends or family were prepared for what was to come. …show more content…
The day of her disappearance, Lam was seen lively as ever, buying a book from a local bookstore. On the 16th of February, the LAPD released a video taken on February 1st of Elisa Lam, showing strange behavior in the hotel elevator. Behavior including pushing various elevator buttons at once, peeking in and out of the elevator, and making strange hand gestures as if talking to an invisible person. The video ends with Elisa exiting the elevator and the door opening and closing a number of times. The video, which was posted to YouTube, was shocking to many people, but not as shocking as what happened