Elisa Lam

Elisa Lam, a 21-year-old Canadian student from Vancouver, was traveling alone through California in January 2013 when she checked into the Cecil Hotel (also known as Stay on Main) in downtown Los Angeles, a hotel with a long and notorious history including connections to serial killers Richard Ramirez and Jack Unterweger. She was last seen on January 31.

When Lam was reported missing, police searched the hotel and released elevator surveillance footage that became one of the most discussed videos on the internet. The footage shows Lam entering the elevator, pressing multiple floor buttons, then peering out as if checking whether someone is in the hallway. She appears to talk and gesture to an unseen person and exhibits increasingly bizarre behavior before walking out of frame. The elevator doors, notably, do not close during the entire four-minute clip.

On February 19, guests at the Cecil began complaining about low water pressure and dark, foul-tasting water. A maintenance worker checking the four large cisterns on the hotel's roof discovered Lam's naked body floating in one of the tanks. The tanks were enclosed and accessible only via a locked hatch and a fire escape, and the lid was reportedly found closed. How Lam reached the roof and entered the tank was unclear.

The Los Angeles County Coroner ruled Lam's death an accidental drowning, citing bipolar disorder—for which she had been prescribed medication—as a significant contributing factor. The ruling suggested she had been experiencing a manic or psychotic episode. However, many questioned how she could have accessed the locked roof, opened the heavy tank lid, and entered the tank, particularly if she was disoriented. The case became a global internet phenomenon and the subject of the Netflix documentary 'Crime Scene: The Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel.' It remains officially an accidental death, though questions linger.