Elisa Lam would have turned 34 this year.
Her death at the notorious Cecil Hotel in Los Angeles sent shockwaves through the world, and even now, the mystery of her final moments remains unsolved.
The chilling footage, the strange behavior, and the bizarre circumstances surrounding her disappearance have left more questions than answers.
What truly happened to Elisa Lam? The answer might be closer than we think… or it might be lost forever.
Eerie elevator footage
Some criminal cases just stick with you, and the murder mystery of Elisa Lam is definitely one of those. It’s one of those stories that you can’t forget, no matter how much time passes.
On January 28, 2013, 21-year-old Elisa Lam checked into the infamous Cecil Hotel in Los Angeles. Just days later, she vanished without a trace, sparking one of the most chilling mysteries of our time.
Her last known moments were captured in eerie elevator footage, where she was seen acting bizarrely — entering and exiting the elevator, seemingly agitated, as if she was trying to escape something.
She seemed to press every button on the elevator panel, peeked into the hallway, and then exited the elevator, leaving its doors open. When the doors failed to close after she returned, she left again, and they finally closed a moment later.
Many have since interpreted this as a sign that she was terrified and running from an unseen threat – others speculated that she could have been under the influence of ecstasy or another party drug.
Regular contact with her family
Lam, a Canadian student of Hong Kong descent, had traveled alone to California to explore the state. In the days leading up to her disappearance, she had visited the San Diego Zoo and shared photos from the visit on social media.
The young woman had been in regular contact with her family in British Columbia during her travels, but on January 31 — her checkout date from Cecil Hotel – she failed to make contact.
Her parents, worried, called the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD), and soon after, they flew to Los Angeles to help with the search. Despite a thorough search of the hotel by police, including dogs that combed the rooftop, there was no sign of Lam. They were only able to search so much — the police couldn’t enter every room without probable cause, which they didn’t have at the time.
The Cecil Hotel, notorious for its dark history, had always been a hotspot for mysterious happenings. It’s a place with a history of violence and death, from notorious serial killers to other strange disappearances, giving it an unsettling reputation that only adds to the chilling nature of Elisa’s story.
“Very outgoing, very friendly”
As the days passed, the search intensified. Flyers with her image were posted around the neighborhood and online, bringing the case into the media spotlight. According to Katie Orphan, the manager of The Last Bookstore, Lam had been seen earlier that day, cheerful and lively, picking out books and discussing what she was getting for her family.
Orphan described Lam as “very outgoing, very friendly,” a stark contrast to the bizarre footage captured just hours earlier — footage that was released by the LAPD two weeks after Lam’s disappearance.
But there were also other details that painted a different picture. Lam had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder and depression. Initially assigned to a shared room on the hotel’s fifth floor, she was moved to a single room after her roommates complained about ”certain odd behavior,” according to the hotel’s lawyer. Hotel manager Amy Price later revealed that Lam had been leaving strange notes for her roommates, such as ”go home” and ”go away,” and had even locked the door to her room, requiring a password to enter. These unsettling actions raised concerns for both the hotel staff and guests.
Drank the disgusting water
Despite the limited clues and the police being in the dark, the mystery would finally start to unravel by the end of February. During the search for Lam, several hotel guests began complaining about low water pressure in their rooms. Some even reported that the water was black and had an unusual taste.
“I can’t describe the taste because I have never drunk anything terrible enough to compare it to”, one of the guests, Mike Baugh, later said.
On the morning of February 19, hotel maintenance worker Santiago Lopez decided to investigate. Shortly after, Lam’s naked, decayed body was discovered in a water tank on the hotel’s rooftop. Through the open hatch, Santiago saw Lam lying face-up in the water.
Clothing similar to what she had been wearing in the elevator video was found floating in the water, covered in a ”sand-like residue.” Her watch and room key were also discovered alongside her – but her phone was not found either with her body or in her hotel room.
Elisa Lam cause of death
On February 21, the Los Angeles coroner’s office concluded that the cause of death was accidental drowning, with bipolar disorder listed as a significant contributing factor. An autopsy revealed no signs of external trauma.
While the investigation determined that Lam died from drowning, it failed to explain how she ended up in the water tank in the first place. The coroner’s pathologists expressed doubt about their conclusion, which labeled Lam’s death as accidental.
The hotel’s roof access was locked, with only staff having the keys or passcodes, and any attempt to break in would trigger an alarm. However, the hotel’s fire escape could have provided a way for Lam to bypass these security measures.
Video footage surfaced showing the roof was accessible through the fire escape, and two of the water tank lids were left open.
As for how Lam got into the water tank, there were further questions. The tanks were large, cylindrical, and had no fixed access points.
Workers needed a ladder to inspect the water, and the heavy lids would have been hard to replace from the inside. The employee who found Lam’s body later stated that the lid was open at the time, eliminating the possibility that she closed it behind her. Despite searching the hotel, including the roof, police dogs never picked up her scent during the investigation, adding more mystery to the case.
Crazy theories
Over the years, numerous wild conspiracy theories about what really happened to Elisa Lam have circulated online. In the 2021 Netflix miniseries Crime Scene: The Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel, many of these theories were explored, which sparked some criticism.
One theory highlights the eerie similarities between Lam’s case and the 2005 horror film Dark Water.
In the movie, a mother and daughter notice dark water leaking through the ceiling from the apartment above, and upon investigation, they find a young woman’s body in the building’s water tank. Some speculated that Elisa Lam had orchestrated her own death to mimic the film’s plot, though there’s no evidence to support this claim.
Another theory involves Mexican death metal musician Morbid (real name Pablo Vergara), who had stayed at the Cecil Hotel before Lam’s disappearance. Shortly after Lam’s body was discovered, Vergara released a music video in which he pretends to murder a young woman. Rumors quickly spread that the video was a ”confession” to Elisa’s murder.
However, Vergara was in Mexico at the time, and had been staying at the hotel nearly a year before Lam checked in. Despite this, he received threats and harassment. His life was shattered, and the Netflix documentary highlights the dangers of quickly pointing fingers and blaming people on the internet.
”After that [accusation], the PGR, which is the FBI of Mexico, did come to my home,” Vergara said in Crime Scene: The Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel. ”They asked me if I had made any blood sacrifices for the devil with animals.”
A tuberculosis outbreak?
The most bizarre theory connects Elisa Lam’s death to a tuberculosis outbreak in the area around the Cecil Hotel. According to the Los Angeles Times, over 4,000 people were exposed to the infectious disease in February 2013, and health officials used various tests to trace its spread. One of the test methods used was called ”Lipoarabinomannan Enzyme-Linked Immunosorbent Assay” (ELISA), which, coincidentally, shares the acronym with Lam’s name.
This led some to suggest that Elisa Lam was a secret test subject who was killed by authorities because she knew too much about the tuberculosis outbreak.
However, there’s no factual basis for this theory: The Enzyme-Linked Immunosorbent Assay has been in use since 1971, long before Lam’s death. And when Elisa was found dead, the coroner conducted several tests.
The toxicology reports showed traces of prescription medication matching those found among her belongings, as well as over-the-counter drugs like Sinutab and ibuprofen. A very small amount of alcohol (around 0.02%) was detected, but no other recreational drugs were present in her system.
What her parents believe
Despite all the theories and police investigations, the true circumstances of how Elisa Lam ended up in the water tank remain unknown to this day.
Director Joe Berlinger, who created the four-episode docuseries Crime Scene: The Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel, argued that it was important to address all the myths surrounding Elisa Lam’s death to debunk them.
”I thought it would be kind of an interesting way to turn the genre, the true-crime genre on its head a little bit and take a very famous story that leans into the paranormal and spooky and ultimately pick that apart and set the record straight as to what we think really happened,” he told Daily Express and added:
Lam’s parents appear to believe in the accident theory. In 2013, they filed a wrongful death lawsuit, claiming the hotel failed to ”inspect and seek out hazards in the hotel that presented an unreasonable risk of danger to Lam and other hotel guests,” seeking unspecified damages and burial costs.
Elisa Lam buried
However, the case was dropped a few years later.
Even though we know many details about her death, there are still lingering questions — ones we may never get answers to. Elisa had her whole life ahead of her, and if someone else was involved in her death, that person could still be walking free.
Though Elisa Lam’s final days were marked by confusion and sorrow, her final resting place offers a stark contrast. She was buried on March 9, 2013, at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Burnaby, Canada — a serene cemetery with sweeping views of the mountains and water, nestled just outside Vancouver.
The tranquil setting stands in quiet defiance of the chaos that once surrounded her story.
Elisa would have turned 34 in April 2025, and her tragic fate continues to fascinate and baffle people around the world.
