Rotten Mango - #42- Mysterious Death of Elisa Lam

Episode Date: February 25, 2021

Guests of the Cecil Hotel started complaining about water quality issues - their tap water was brown and had a strange taste to it...  They sent a maintenance man to go check on the water tanks on the roof that only staff had a key to - as it was a restricted access area and armed.  There he found the body of Elis Lam in one of the water tanks. She had been missing for 3 weeks. How did she get up there? Why was she in the water tanks? What about the elevator footage? Things just get stranger from here... Source Notes @ rottenmangopodcast.com To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Hello, hello, welcome to the podcast that might land us in boiling water in hot water, hot sizzling hot tub jacuzzi water. Can you believe we don't have a jokuzi? That's a Kanye West coat. Yeah, you bet your dollar it is. It's a Kanye West coat. Quote. Quote. Like that's a easy shirt. So today's podcast is about Alisa Lam. And this has been one of my most highly requested podcasts ever. And I do want to mention that this is a redive. So I probably did my initial research on this case like two, three years ago, but I was also such a noob with research that I, yeah, I don't, so I redid all of my research and I still feel like I have very, very similar feelings and similar, just, I just think some of this is weird, okay? Now, I think a lot of people have been requesting it a lot recently because of the Netflix series that has recently come out about the haunting at the seasonal hotel. I'm pretty sure that's what it's called. Now, I think a lot of people have been requesting it a lot recently because of the Netflix series that has recently come out about the haunting at the Cesar Hotel.

I'm pretty sure that's what it's called. Now, I want to mention that I freaking love Netflix. Okay, anything Netflix puts out, I'm a sucker for it. Unsolved mysteries. Thank you for bringing that back. Okay, everything usually pushes my buttons in the perfect way. But this poor, for part series just did not do it for me. It was really intense. I feel like in a lot of their other true crime docuseries,

there is a lot of storytelling of the actual events that took place, which as this one, there were three main episodes. The first three episodes were really doing deep dives into these crazy conspiracy theories, which I know that all of us have been intrigued by, especially when it comes to this particular case, right? But I think because they saved a lot of the crucial evidence till the very last episode It just felt like they did a docky series not on a Lisa lamb

But I mean, I guess maybe that's why they called it the haunting at the sea so hotel But I guess I went into it thinking it was gonna be about a Lisa lamb and it just seemed all about like these crazy conspiracy theories and I feel like if someone did it. You feel like a lot of ghosts and supernatural. There's ghosts. There's supernatural. You know, there's like, they kind of poke out, maybe there was like a serial killer on Skid Row

and the fact that Richard Ramirez stayed at the Cecil Hotel, which is actually not been proven. It's only been proven by like a night clerk who was like, oh yeah, Richard Ramirez, he was to stay here, you know, so it hasn't been factually said like there was no I mean, but also you're talking about the Cecil hotel. They don't have these crazy record books It focused a lot on that and I guess I wasn't expecting that so maybe that's why I didn't enjoy it as much But maybe you guys let me know how you enjoyed it So I'm gonna be covering the Alisa Lam case as well, but we're gonna start with you know who is Alisa

going to be covering the Alisa Lam case as well, but we're going to start with, you know, who is Alisa, the Cesar Hotel, and then we're going to get into the series at the end. Because I feel like that's kind of like the order that I like to do it. It just makes more sense to me, and I feel like once you understand the full depth of the story of what happened and what the evidence that we do have, the theories start to sound more dumb. Whereas if I start with the theories first, of course, we're going to be like, go! So it's crazy, right? And then just like kind of go down into that deep rabbit hole.

And I have, I have an inkling of why people are so into the theories in this one. I have an inkling and it's gonna be really, really, really dark and it's not a conspiracy theory. So let's get started with Elisa Lam. So I'm sure the story starts in the same place with everyone. 2013 Downtown Los Angeles at the Cecil Hotel. I'm gonna get into the history of it all later,

but let's get into the actual day. So February of 2013, the guest start complaining to the Cecil Hotel reception desk like, hey, you know the tap water in my shower and my sink? What's red and brown? Like it's literally a black color. And everyone's just casually calling them, like, are you gonna do something about it?

Like, should I get a brittah filter or something? And some called and said it has a funny taste. Someone like, it smells a little weird. Some people call saying that they have no water pressure. Like, there's barely any water coming out of the sink. So they're just a little bit confused. So they start complaining. Now, at first, it seemed like the receptionist,

they were just kind of moving people around to different rooms. And we're just like, OK, we'll go stay in this room then maybe the water pressure is better there. And then finally, after enough complaints, they sent Santiago Lopez, who is a maintenance worker, to go up to the top floor where the water tanks are to check out what's going on. So he takes an elevator to the 15th floor,

then he enters in a staircase and an indoor staircase, then he goes and he disarms the alarm system So the alarm system is for restricted access areas such as the rooftop of the Cecil hotel. Now let's say you were to open this door without Disarming the alarm, then the alarm would ring at the front desk down in the lobby But also on the top two floors of the Cecil hotel, which is like an emergency exit type of situation? It seems like it, but it, but like, it gets weird. That, that comes into question. So it seems like maybe it has just to do with the fact that it's like a rooftop where I don't even think it has like railings.

Like when I see videos of it and photos of it, I'm sure there's like a small ledge, but it's definitely not like a rooftop bar. A maze. We have seen those water tanks. We actually went apartment hunting in downtown LA and they showed us a unit in the building that I really wanted to rent at.

It was like a straight view. A unit that was a straight view of the CISO hotel water tanks. And like the leasing agent was just casually like, oh yeah, that's the hotel. And I was like, oh yeah. So do you want to pay a bit $1,000,000 for this unit? Because it's ruined downtown LA. And I was like, I don't think so. But thank you so much. It was a lot. I mean, I don't think it's like a haunted or spooky. I just, knowing my true crime brain, I just wouldn't want to stay there all day, every day, and stare at the

water tanks while I do research for other cases. I just, I think I would drive myself crazy. And so, um, he goes up to that floor. He disarms the alarm. Now, if the alarm went off, like I said, a lot of people would have heard it. Then, once he gets to the rooftop, he walks to where the water tanks are. Now, there's four giant water tanks. I mean, these are some big old boys, okay? I believe they're about 10 feet in height and about like, I wanna say six feet in diameter. So they're massive, they're huge. Now they're also on top of a four foot platform. So you have to climb up the ladder to get up the platform, then the water tanks are elevated on top of the roof. Then he has to climb specific ladders per each,

you know, water tank. And he saw one that had its lid open. So he immediately started climbing up to see what's going on with that one because the lid shouldn't be open because the water should be clean and not contaminated by the pollution of downtown LA. Now the lid itself becomes a point of contention. Now a lot of people think, oh my god, like a 10 foot tall 8 diameter water tank, how is the lid off?

That's insane. Well the lid itself was on there, but there was a small almost like a hatch. So like a small little square and you could take the lid off of that. Now that's what like the maintenance workers would do because I mean the lid, I believe the lid itself would be physically impossible to take off by one person. So they open a small opening? Yeah, so it's an opening, it's not necessarily a hatch. So like you completely take the lid off, it's not hinged on one side, but it's big enough

for a person to fit through. So there's no question about that. And the lid to that little small opening is about 20 pounds according to court documents on the very top of a water tank. Also, you just removed. Yeah, you just remove it. And then you can push it to the side.

You can even just push it off, I think it looks like. And so he had seen that that one was off. So he was like, oh, well, I better climb out there and see what's going on. So he gets up there, climbs up the ladder, and he looks down, and so he had seen that that one was off so he was like, oh well, I better climb up there and see what's going on So he gets up there climbs up the ladder and he looks down and he sees the body of a woman who had been missing for three weeks This was 21-year-old Alisa Lam She'd been in that water tank for three weeks now who is Alisa Lam? Like we need to talk about who she is before we get into the actual crime, not crime, the mysterious death.

Alisa Lam was born in Canada in 1991. She was first generation immigrant, so her parents were immigrants from Hong Kong, and she was born in Canada. They both owned this Chinese restaurant. Now she was studying at the University of British Columbia, the beginning of 2013 she wasn't registered. So it seems like she was kind of struggling with her schoolwork. She had a blog spot and a Tumblr documenting everything. Like she just really talked about how she felt about things and it's really intense. Now I know that the Netflix

Rocky series made it out to look like like these internet people which I'm sure a lot of them were and maybe you think I am too. We're kind of obsessive over Liza Lam, just like, oh my god, I've never met this girl, but I'm her best friend, and I felt like a part of me died. It just kind of phrased her in the sense of like, whoa, are these like YouTubers more like stalkers or like, what's going on? But I want to say that if you actually read through a lot of her Tumblr posts, I wouldn't say it's like connection,

but your heart just kind of like crumbles. Because I think she had really relatable struggles. And I think that's what made this case just more intense. So she was struggling a lot with her mental health and she was recently diagnosed with bipolar disorder. So she was going through a really uneasy time in life. She was struggling with accepting her diagnosis. And at the time, it didn't seem like she maybe

had the clearest path of treatment just like clearly laid out like, oh, I'm gonna do ABC and D and everything's gonna be okay. And I think 21 years old already is the age where you're just, you got a lot on your mind. And so she tells her parents, listen, I just got diagnosed with this thing. I'm dealing with my mental health.

I wanna go on a solo trip to America. I wanna do like this West Coast tour and I really think that I can just like come back me like maybe I can find myself during this like an e-pri-love experience right and she was so excited she was looking forward to it. Obviously her parents were not excited like at all they were just really worried that everything going on with her at the moment was just going to impact how she travels. I mean it's a completely different country. She's also 21 years old. I mean maybe it's dangerous even if it was the same country you know it's just a lot and so everyone got on the same page though eventually. Her parents came around and they were like you know what?

Maybe we can all treat this as like a hopeful experience. We're gonna get on board. Maybe this is like a reset button. Maybe this will ultimately be good for Lisa because that's all they ever wanted for her. And she told them, listen, I'm gonna call you every single day you're gonna know where I am and it's gonna be amazing. So January 22nd of 2013, she starts her trip and she immediately heads to San Diego,

which is a beautiful place. And so her plans were to go to LA, then Santa Cruz, then San Francisco, and then I believe back to Vancouver, Canada. And so she said San Diego was amazing. She would call her parents every single day. She was blogging. She was on her tumblr. She was updating every day for her travels. Now she was also finding a lot of mental health support from fellow tumblr

people. So this was really like a place for her to express her true thoughts and her feelings, it seems like. And a lot of these people on tumblr, they were going through the same thing. And these struggles are ones that we could all kind of relate to. So she felt like she was wasting her time compared to all of her peers. She was dealing with depression. She said that she would lay in beds multiple days at a time, just hating herself and binge watching the office. Like I'm like, we've all been there. Her sleep pattern was getting a little bit wonky. She eventually withdrew from a lot of classes. She said that she felt lost and directionless, and you know, she finished three courses after spending three years at university, and she felt like she was a first-year student

for all three years, you know, because that's what her credits would add up to be. She always wanted to be in fashion, and she was so into it, and she would talk about it a lot on her Tumblr page, but then she would also kind of get mad at herself because it's like, wow, this is my passion and I'm not acting on it, like what does that mean, you know? She had a lot of things that she wanted to do and I think she just needed time to like find herself really, right? That's what a lot of people say. So on her Tumblr, she had outlined her entire trip on her Tumblr page.

Now this becomes a point of contention because of course in any other situation I would say oh my gosh, this is a huge red flag like don't do that and I still would say don't do that But a lot of people pointed this as evidence that someone killed her and it was murder, right? Because it's like she had her entire itinerary out there She didn't necessarily say that she was going to this hotel and this hotel But it seemed like she was like oh on this date. I'm gonna be headed for Los Angeles And people knew that she was you know kind of, traveling by using the Amtrak and stuff, so it just, it seemed like it was a little dangerous. Now, her top quote at the top of her Tumblr page

was, you're always haunted by the idea that you're wasting your life. And this is a Chuck Palo quote, I don't know how to say his name. He wrote Fight Club and a book called Haunted that I was really into and he is a really, really good author. So that was his quote at the top of her blog. And so she arrives in LA January 26th and she starts making reservations at the C.C.C.L. Hotel online for January 28th

through the first of February. Now what's very interesting about this is I couldn't really find out where she was January 26th to January 28th through the first of February. Now what's very interesting about this is I couldn't really find out where she was January 26th to January 28th, but I'm sure the police know and I'm sure it was nothing crazy, okay? So I don't think again that this is a point where oh this is a conspiracy like where was she in LA? I'm sure she maybe she was staying somewhere else. So she gets to the Cecil Hotel and she rented a hostile like room, which means that there are bunk beds and you're sharing it with other people.

It's the most affordable way to stay at the Cecil hotel rather than having a room by yourself and she really wanted to stretch her money and she was like, it's gonna be all girls, it's gonna be fine. She eventually gets moved to her own room because the room may start to complain to the front desk about odd behavior. They kept saying that they didn't want to share a room with her that she was exhibiting odd behavior and they didn't know what to do. The hotel manager on the Netflix special, she claims that she has never spoken publicly about it. So I'm not sure if that means that she has told the police

this but just never said it to the press. But she said that Alisa was writing notes to these roommates and leaving it on their beds. Like post it notes that said, go home, get out, like go away and just leaving it on their beds. And sometimes she went and when they go to the bathrooms, get out, like go away and just leaving it on their beds. And sometimes she would, when they go to the bathrooms, so this hostile like situation meant that they had shared bathrooms, almost like a college dorm situation.

So the hotel, you didn't have your own bathroom in the unit, you would have to go into the hallway and use that bathroom. So if they went to the bathroom or they had left, she would kind of barricade the door into their room and say, what's the password to get into the room. So they just didn't really feel comfortable with her and the hotel manager said, okay, like I'm just gonna put her in her own room. Now let's talk about the Cecil Hotel history, okay? It's really intense.

There are so many rumors about the Cecil Hotel and I couldn't find evidence of a couple of things, so we're gonna talk about what happened. Now this hotel is 700 rooms. That's a lot of things, so we're gonna talk about what happened. Now, this hotel is 700 rooms. That's a lot of freaking rooms. When it was built in the 1920s, they wanted to make it as tall as they were legally allowed. So they made 15 floors, they put in 700 bitches and that thing, rooms.

And it was a, by a guy by the name of William Banks. And he had a lot of bank because it cost $1.5 million to work on the hotel sea soul, which in today's money is about 20 million dollars. Now I think it recently sold for like 80 million. Yeah, so it's a lot of money, right? And he really wanted to target rich people who are traveling for business. They he was like, okay, you're gonna come stay at the diesel hotel.

And I think that's kind of what adds this eariness to it. Because when you walk in, you are expecting something that's very different from what you get because the entire lobby feels like it's stuck in the 1920s, but at the same time, it doesn't feel cheap. Like there's marble everywhere. There's like these giant pillars and columns and marble, and he really made it for the upper elite that we're traveling through LA. Now, it's rumored that Richard Ramirez, the night stalker, stayed there, right, who is an infamous serial killer in LA. Now the reason that there are rumours is because there have been witnesses who came forward and said that he would come to the Cecil Hotel. He would take off his blood soaked clothing after he murdered people, throw it into the dumpster, and then walk through the hotel, but naked sometimes in his underwear, and nobody questioned him because that was very

common at the Cecil Hotel like that's how chaotic this hotel was. Now they also said that he- Oh you mean that's very common. I know they also said that he stayed on the 14th floor so these are really specific information so I don't know if this is true but I couldn't find any like verifiable like for fork insure that he stayed here. It was just a lot of different people who worked at the hotel and maybe were around the hotel that were like, oh yeah, he used to stay there. Now, obviously, I said $20 million for the upper echelon

of Los Angeles. And then now I'm saying, serial killer walked naked through the lobby every single day. You're like, how did they get there? How did they get from opening to Richard Ramirez, okay? Because I'm sure serial killers were not their target audience. It just doesn't make any sense. So after three years of construction in downtown LA,

they opened and then the great depression hit. It was really bad. Like it was just really horrendous timing. So two things turned this into the absolute shitshow that it became, the great depression being one of them. And then the second was that they were super close to an area called Skid Row. Now Skid Row is, I'm sure if you guys live in the United States, you've heard of Skid Row. I'm pretty sure every like major metropolitan area has like their own version of Skid Row and it's really, really,

really bad. Not because I'm one of those people who drives bad. It's like, oh my god, homeless person. It's really bad because the way that LA does it is that if you get out of jail or if you're just released from like a mental institution and the police are like, uh, there's anyone picking you up, like, what's going on? And you say, no, they will drop you off at Skid Row. So most of the homeless shelters, yeah, most of the homeless shelters and resources for people who are down on their luck that are homeless on Skid Row. And like this little square in Los Angeles, downtown Los Angeles. And so they just kind of get dumped there.

Now driving through Skid Row is like one of the shittiest things ever because being a female, that's into true crime. I'm like, oh my god, this could be dangerous for me, right? But then at the same time, you like want to do something. Like you want to like help someone. It's just, it's so sad. It's so sad. There have been reports that homeless people literally get dropped off by the cars. Like literally police will fill up their cars

of homeless people because if you see a homeless person in Beverly Hills, these Beverly Hills, Hill-Hillians, I was gonna say Hill-Billy, and I feel like that word's not acceptable. But, you know, these Beverly Hillsylians, they'll be like, excuse me, not on my redayow drive, you don't. And so they'll just drop them off its kid row. Wow.

Or they'll just put them on a bus to skid row. So it's like, it's almost a way that the city kind of um, makes it act like the homeless problem isn't there, but it's obviously there. And they don't really do anything to help the population. They just kind of try to tuck it away. And then the rest of LA can go on living life as if this problem doesn't exist, which is really skitty.

Shitty, which is really shitty, okay? So if you guys are interested, there is something called the Skid Row Housing Trust. Anyway, you can donate there and they help people on Skid Row. So continuing. So when the Great Depression hit, there's even more crime around Skid Row, obviously.

So the Cecil Hotel, they can't charge these extravagant rates because it's like, um, excuse me, I could walk out of this hotel and then get robbed. Like, what do you mean? Why are you charging me so much to stay here? And all of these rich businessmen, they didn't want to stay here because the close proximity to crime. So they just were getting... So Skid Row was just super close to... Yeah, just so close. And then I think every year Skid Row just gets bigger and bigger and bigger and like more uncontrollable because the way that they're handling it,

the government is the city government. And so it was just getting really, really intense. So instead of getting the type of businessmen they wanted, they started getting a different type of businessmen. I'm talking like drug dealers. I'm talking there was a lot of sex work in Cecil Hotel. There was a lot of drug dealers organized crime and it was just a lot of people who were down on their luck. So like I said, Richard Ramirez was rumored to stay there. Last week's mini-sode is actually about

someone who stayed at the Cecil Hotel. A serial killer. This one is confirmed. His name is Jack Unterveger. I say his name wrong all the time, but he's an Austrian serial killer who was really into kind of copying Richard Ramirez almost. You should go watch that mini-suit. And so there was a lot of people that, listen, listen to the mini-suit. There were a lot of people staying there.

A ton of deaths, a ton of suicides. So there was a guy by the name of Percy who shot himself in the head because he was staying at the hotel and he was trying to make up with his wife and kids and he was trying to be like, listen, take me back, like I want to go back home. And they were like, no, we don't like you. And so he killed himself. There was a man by the name of W.K. Norton who was found dead in his room after ingesting like a bunch of poison capsules and he had checked under on there like a fake name so people didn't know was this murder was the suicide we don't know. Then in March 1937 a woman named Grace Margot she fell from a ninth story window

and her fall was broken by telephone wires so she started getting tangled up in these telephone wires as she was trying to jump out of the window and it was really bad she later died in the hospital and it was intense. Now it gets increasingly worse. There was Dorothy Jean Purcell and this is probably the most famous Cecil hotel story right from back in the day. She was 19 years old and she was sleeping in bed at the Cecil hotel with her boyfriend who was 38 years old and his name was Ben Levine. He was a shoe salesman. And so she is laying there. She wakes up in the middle of the night and she's like, oh my God, my stomach hurts.

I don't know why my stomach hurts. So she goes on over to the bathroom. And apparently she had no idea that she had just gotten into labor. Now, I don't know if it was because the time that this took place, but she didn't wanna wake up her boyfriend. She was like, I'm not gonna go and wake up Ben, you know?

Men need their sleep. So she just like gave birth in the bathroom. And she claimed that her baby was still born but the doctors later found out that the baby was born alive and she opened the window and threw the baby out the window. Now the baby actually landed on the roof of the building that was next to the seasaw at the time and she was obviously charged of murder and three psychiatrists they studied her and they were like okay well she, mentally confused at the time of the murder

So she was found not guilty by reason of insanity. What a history. I wonder if every hotel has these things for you. I look into it too! Because I was like, there's gotta be! There's no way that the CISO hotel is like the only haunted hotel. There's a ton of haunted hotels, but for different reasons it feels like the CISO hotel was But these are not even haunted. These are just crimes or you know things that happen. Yeah, so it seems like this one does have a lot of deaths Yeah, I wonder because what a most hotel want to hide these stories. Yeah, right? That's not good for business. I feel like it has to do with how it was set up. I feel like if the CISO hotel was always planned to be kind of like a motel situation,

maybe these crimes wouldn't be of such big news, but because they were originally positioned as this upper elite like five star hotel, and then these people started dying there, I think then it became like this thing of like, oh, something weird's going on there, because I guess in guess in our brains, someone got murdered at a motel. Oh shit, you know, but also at the same time, like lots of shit goes down in motels. Stuff goes down in motels, but you know what else goes down? I just don't understand online shopping sometimes because

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That's stitchfix.com slash rotten for 25% off when you keep everything in your fix. Stitchfix.com slash rotten for the people in the back. There was also the situation of Pauline and George. So, Pauline, she jumped from the 9th floor window after an argument with her husband, and she landed straight on a pedestrian and instantly killed him. His name was George. Now, the police get there, there was no witnesses, and they immediately thought, okay, like this was a couple, whether they knew each other, their friends, or maybe one of them is a murderer, but it seems

like they had jumped out the window together, that doesn't make any sense, like it was that intense. They start looking into it and they realize that George had his hand in his pockets and he was still wearing his shoes, which would make it physically impossible for him to have jumped out the window, because his shoes would have popped off from the impact. And he wouldn't have, nobody really jumps out the window with both their hands in their pockets. So that's when they realized, oh my God, George was literally just a pedestrian

who was walking by the Cecil Hotel and someone fell on him and killed him. Oh. And so then obviously that made the reputation a lot worse because now it became, oh my God, it's not even just about not staying in the Cecil Hotel. It's about being careful when you're walking around the Cecil hotel, right?

Which you know what always triggers me I read somewhere one time that like a air conditioning unit fell out of a window in New York City and like bonked someone on the head And I don't know if they were seriously injured or had been killed I'm not entirely sure. I don't even know if this is an urban legend or a true crime, right? And ever since then if I ever visit New York City or if I'm like in downtown LA and I see any AC units out the window, I start getting paranoid or I start kind of like doing like hippity hoppities around the sidewalk. Oh man, I get scared. I get scared, okay? So then pigeon Goldie Eyesgood was an unsolved murder still unsolved to this day and her murder was particularly

sad. So she was a retired 79 year old woman and she stayed at the hotel now her name was called Goldie Osgood with they called her pigeon for a nice reason she loved feeding the local pigeons nearby and it wasn't even like she would be eating lunch and feed them she would have birdseeds she would literally get birdseeds and then she would feed the pigeons and she was found raped, strangled, and fatally stabbed to death in her hotel room and her entire room had been ransacked. And I think the way that the police found her made it much more sad because, you know, she always wore this like Dodgers cap and that was next to her body.

She had a bag full of birdseed that was left near her body when they found her and there was a man who was walking nearby covered in blood. Like in a park nearby, just covered in blood so he was arrested but for some reason he was acquitted for her murder and her murder to this day has still gone unsolved. Now of course anytime we bring up the Cecil Hotel we've got to talk about the Black Dahlia. Now there is no proof that I can find anywhere that the Black Dahlia actually ever stayed at the Cecil Hotel days before her death

If you guys don't know Black Dahlia her real name is Elizabeth Shortis one of the most Infamous unsolved cases in Los Angeles and she her murder is still unsolved But some people are saying oh my god like right before she died She stayed at the Cecil Hotel or like she met someone at the Cecil Hotel But I couldn't find any proof of that anywhere. So I think overall it just really was a place for people who were down on their luck. It was a bit of a chaotic place, people shared bathrooms, people shared rooms. It just wasn't necessarily your version of like this five star crazy downtown Los Angeles Hotel.

It's definitely not like the Los Angeles dream, right? Now they rebranded as the stay on main in 2007 they sold the hotel for 26 million dollars and they decided if the new owners were like let's fix up the place so they decided at this time they had 80 full-time residents these people had been living at the CCO hotel for like decades at this point and they were paying like close to $400 a month in 2007 which that is an insanely low amount of rent in downtown Los Angeles, okay? And there's 80 people living there as apartments.

Yes. And they're paying $400 a month. Yes. It's because of all of the housing regulations thank God for those because without those elderly-want-of-their-grandfather didn't. Yeah, they're grandfathered in. They can't get them out, right?

So the new owners did try to evict them, but because now this hotel was not known as a regular hotel, but it was a residential hotel. They had a bunch of restrictions. So they had to have a certain number of units that were for long-term rentals, and they had to keep that, you know, the exact rate, like they couldn't just suddenly shoot up their rate, but they also wanted to fix up the other room so that they could be rented like a hotel room, right? So they did this really strange thing and it's kind of hard to explain, but the stay on main Was a hotel inside of the Cecil hotel. They had two different entrances two different lobbies But they all shared the same elevators. So the main like full-time tenants They stayed on levels two and three the lobby was obviously on level one

And then the stay on main was on four five and six so is there a seasonal hotel or not really yes And then the rest of the hotel rooms are the seasonal hotel now the reason that they're different because you're like Why isn't everything this day on main it's because obviously the full residential ones they just kept it as is here The tenants here you go by right and then this day on main just three levels were gutted and renovated now I wouldn't say it was like the top notch renovation like flip or flop HGTV but they like painted the rooms all orange and they had these like hand chairs that are orange there they have bunk beds so they weren't marked they weren't marketing it for like oh this is the new Beverly Hills Hotel or the montage.

They were saying, hey, if you're a young traveler and you're looking for something like a hostile or... You know, kind of like a motel. This is trendy. This is hip wearing downtown LA. Woo, right? Now, the other floors from 7 to 15, they didn't renovate. I don't think they had the budget. So they just kept it like the older looking rooms and they called that the Cecil Hotel. So it's like really a lot. So you've got like almost like apartments, then the stay on main, then the Cecil Hotel. Now like I said, two different lobbies, different, you know, different vibes, different marketing. If you go on like trip advisor, it's completely different ways to book in. It's completely different. Everything looks different, right? They even had different

staffs that were dressed differently for the different lobbies. So they worked really, really, really hard on this. And the one thing is that they always shared the common elevators and you can access any floor on these elevators. So technically the residents could go to stay on Main, stay on Main, could go to the Cecil Hotel and all vice versa. Just one hotel. Just one hotel, honestly.

This was just like the biggest marketing cartwheel ever. Which like I don't blame them, but it's it's just one hotel, right? Now the hotel manager in the Netflix documentary series she claims that the 10 years that she worked there She saw close to 80 deaths Now it's not necessarily saying murders are suicide but a lot of overdoses a lot of natural causes Just a lot of death in that hotel a lot. I mean, I couldn't fact check that, but seems pretty accurate. So American Horror Story Hotel was actually based on the Cecil hotel. So the entire season called American Horror Story Hotel is based on this. So anyways, back to Elisa.

So she writes in a lot of blog posts talking about, she kind of talks about the Ciso Hotel in one and she says something along the lines of that it's really gaudy but then again it was built in 1928 hence the art deco theme so yes it is classy but then since it's LA it went on crack fairly certain this is where Basil Irman needs to film the great Gatsby so her plan was to check out around January 31st to February 1st right and she didn't call her family that day. She would have five days of exploring in LA. She enjoyed it.

She said that she was going to call her family the day that she checks out. And that phone call never came. So the family was immediately on the move. I mean, she had been so good in San Diego. She had been so good. And on the rest of the days that she was in Los Angeles, so why would suddenly this day be completely different?

She didn't tell us that she had plans to like, I don't know, go to Disneyland and wouldn't have time to talk to us. There was nothing. She was supposed to check out today. So they start freaking out. They immediately call the Vancouver Police Department who then directs them to the LAPD and they get up the plane tickets straight to America. They were like, we're going. Like, this is our daughter. We got to go now. So the police start heading to the Cecil hotel and they searched the public areas But they couldn't get any search warrants to search the private rooms now. There are Kind of mixed things so some people were saying that the police actually tried around going room from room like knocking on the doors Being like hey, can I search her place?

But also we're talking about the Cecil hotel I don't think any of the guests would have been like oh yes, absolutely officer, right? They're just kind of like we're probably doing some shady shit, too Like I came here to go unnoticed. Thank you very much. So they just didn't really get to get into any rooms. They did search the roof with search dogs and they didn't find anything. The only time that these search dogs got any trace of Alisa's scent was from the fifth floor, which is where she was staying. There is a window and that leads to like a fire escape situation. And so they, they were

barking at that fire escape situation. Now that fire escape, it's one of those like old school New York looking fire escapes where you can like take the stairs up and then all the way up and it you can kind of like sit on there. If you're like trying to do like a little dramatic moment, right? Now that goes all the way up to the roof where the water tanks are. It's not an easy trek. It's really intense. The last part of it, it's no longer stairs, but it's just a ladder on the side of the building. So you would have to climb up that to get to the roof.

So it's interesting. So they start barking there. Now immediately after they start their investigation, the police said, listen, LAPD got a, we got to spread our resources because there was a guy by the name of Christopher Dorner, who was 33 years old, and he was a former LAPD got a, we got to spread our resources because there was a guy by the name of Christopher Dorner who was 33 years old and he was a former LAPD officer that was trying to murder other LAPD officers. Now the reason for it that they don't tell you in the Netflix documentary series is because

well the whole man had itself resulted in five deaths and including his own but also a lot of people wounded. Now the LAPD did publicly admit that they fired Christopher Doherner for reporting excessive force. So Christopher Doherner had seen someone use another police officer use excessive force and reported it to his superior saying, hey, like we shouldn't be doing that. That's not in our rule book. And they fired him. And he is black. Just keep that in mind. Oh no. So they retaliated, they fired him and then he went on a very intense killing spree. Now what gets even more crazy is that 9 LAPD

officers shot 107 bullets into two woman's newspaper delivery truck because apparently Christopher Dorner's truck looks very similar to theirs and they thought the sound of the newspapers dropping onto the sidewalks sounded like gunshots. So these nine officers, they shot 107 times into the truck of this little lady who was just delivering newspapers and I believe she was with her mom or like old sister. They were both wounded. They did get a pretty vague settlement from the LAPD and like Los Angeles Which I I feel like maybe as a silver lining, right? But it was just so bad. It was so bad. So they barely had any detectives working on the Alisa Lam case Because they were so busy trying to you know catch Christopher and it was like this whole thing

So six days after her disappearance the LAPD finally give a press conference and they're like asking for help They say listen her parents flew down from Vancouver and you can actually see them in the background of the press conference, right? And she's been missing since the 31st. It's just so bad, right? And the reporter has asked if anyone warned her about like staying at the Cecil hotel. Like literally, the reporter was like, hey, do you think anyone warned her about staying there? And the police were like, I don't think she had any idea that might be a location to be concerned about. So I think this goes to again, the problem with online is that the stay on main does really look like a very hip and trendy place. So but she also she booked stay on main. Yeah. But does she know the history of C-Sol? No, it doesn't seem like it. Not that I

could find. Maybe she found out after she got there, but I mean, it's just, it's a little weird. They start investigating, okay, well, we need to find out who were the last people who saw her, what did the hotel staff think, like was she, you know, behaving weird because what's going on? Now, one of the last women to see Alisa was Katie Orson, who worked at a bookstore by the hotel.

Now, I saw a lot of people making a couple of conspiracies because of the name of this hotel, but I can assure you this is actually a really cute Instagram spot. It's called the last bookstore, which now that I think about it, if I didn't live in LA and if I didn't go there and if I didn't see Instagram pictures from there, I too would be like, that is a little eerie and a little scary to have something called the last bookstore. She was there. She was there. And you know Katie said that she was talking up.

She was buying a lot of records. So they sell like those records, the music records. They also sell a lot of books, like a lot of beautiful books and a lot of older books, too. And she was like, yeah, well, she was in here and she was purchasing a ton of books. And then she was talking about, oh, well, this one's for, so-and-so back at home, like this one's for, my mom,

this one's for my dad. And everything indicated that she had plans to make it back home and that she was in really good spirits and she was incredibly happy. Like the only concern that Alisa ever brought up to Katie was like, do you think that these are gonna be like too heavy? Because I'm going to like Santa Cruz next and then San Francisco, right? But there was no indication that anything went weird. Now they also traced down the fact that Alisa went to a burbank live show So it's kind of one of those I don't know which one in particular it was But you can be part of like a live audience like a studio audience for a particular show

And she she went in there She wrote a very long rambly letter and asked the security guard to give it to the host of the show Which I'm assuming is a celebrity now the, the security guards, they were immediately on edge because they're like, whoa, what does that mean? What does this letter even mean? It's not, it doesn't even just say, I love you. I don't know what it said, right? But it was just long and ramply.

And so they decided to escort her off the premises. They claimed that she was acting erratically and strangely the whole time, so they were very concerned. So they escorted her out of the premises. That's a little odd. Yeah. Now the hotel manager on Netflix also claimed that Elisa would do these strange things like come into the lobby and scream, I'm crazy but so is Los Angeles and everyone would look at her and just say, well that's strange but I mean I guess so is Los Angeles right. So nobody really thought

anything of it and this also isn't really any type of behavior that you can call the police for, I don't think, right? So the hotel staff said that day's leading up to her disappearance. She was enacting too odd. Like, it seemed like she had these moments where it was like a little strange, but nothing like too, too crazy that they had to like

call someone and be like, oh my god, I like what's going on with her, right? She was always alone. They never saw her in the company of anyone. It didn't seem like she had friends that she was constantly meeting. Just very normal. So the police decide to release elevator footage. And this is probably, I'm sure you guys are familiar with this video, but I'm just going

to walk you through it, the best that I can with my works, right? So this is when they're in hope to find her. Yes, they said, listen, we have like these pictures of her, but you know, we're hoping that the CCTV in the elevator helps people get the word out to look for her. Now, I kind of get it. I kind of get it. I can kind of get how maybe something like this

could draw a lot of attention to the case, which is exactly what it did. I kind of get maybe you want someone to see more footage of her, but I mean, it's elevator footage. It's not like the most clear footage. It's also not, it made it worse than solve anything. Like it made the whole case more mysterious to everybody than actually like, oh yeah, okay,

like let's all look for her. It just caused a lot. So the cop thought the footage is very weird. They're odd. So they're like, here you go, guys. So that's where a lot of conspiracies come from, too. Like why would the LAPD release such footage if they know that the person that is inside the footage looks like they're acting very erratically?

There is something about this footage does rub me the wrong way, but I am not one of those believers that like the cops were onto something like that. Okay. Okay, so the footage itself, so it seems like we were able to figure out and when I say we like Netflix and you know all these recorders and you know everyone involved, not involved, but you get it. Yeah. So they said that it looked like she was on the 14th floor, which is about one floor below the rooftop where the water tanks are, right? And she was acting strangely, so she gets on to the elevator very calmly. At this point, she's not acting strangely at all. She pushes a couple of buttons in the middle row. Now she dies. But she doesn't live on 14th floor. No. You just see her walk in. Yeah. Okay. And so she pushes

some buttons in the middle row, and you can kind of see that she's crouching towards the buttons, which a lot of people were thrown off by, but Alisa does wear glasses and it doesn't seem like she had them on that day. So whether she didn't put on her contacts or she just couldn't see clearly, maybe that's why. So she pushes a couple buttons, then she realizes that the doors won't close. Then all of a sudden she kind of looks like maybe she's a little skeptical, like that's what the body language feels like, and then she just quickly whips her head out of the elevator, looks side to side, and then whips

yanks her head back into the elevator. Almost as if she is trying to catch someone, or she doesn't want to be seen looking out, right? So then at this point she pushes her back against the wall, which kind of gives me like a very anxious feeling, right? And then she hides next to the elevator buttons out of sight from the hallway, like pushed up against it. So if you were to walk by the open doors of the elevator you wouldn't necessarily see her inside unless you stick your head in. Now some say it looks very playful like she's playing hide and seek with someone, some people say it looks like she's scared and hiding from someone and then she completely steps out of the elevator, steps back in, steps to the side, steps back and forth. It almost looks like she's doing

like a square dance is what a lot of people say. Then she comes back in and starts pressing buttons. And again, the elevator doors are still not closing. Now she gets back out and she starts doing these hand movements, right? Now a lot of people say that these hand movements look like her wrists and her fingers look nonhuman and they look broken and I disagree with that one. Then she comes back in and she starts like rapidly pressing buttons. Then she goes back out and at one point she just starts like pushing her hair back. Like kind of like got her hands both on her head.

Like what's going on right? Yeah I just want to know what the hell is going on with the elevator. What the hell? Yeah and then kind of like waving her hands around and then she just like leaves. Now there's one point where she's like bending her knees, people who like kind of over-analyzed that, and then she walks away, and then you don't really see the rest of the hallway, so we have no idea. Maybe she took the stairs. Maybe she took the stairs back to her room. Maybe she went to the rooftop.

We don't really know from that point. Now, I do want to kind of break down this elevator footage, okay? Because I've got a lot of thoughts about this one. Now, there are redditors that said that she probably put it on service mode or hold. Hold. Hold. So there were a lot of people, a lot of YouTubers, unfortunately, that went to the CISO hotel and stayed there to kind of like see what's going on, what's so haunted about this place.

I know, we're such a classy breed of humans, we're the best, really, truly. So they're staying there, and they went on to the elevator, and in the middle row where she was pressing was the number five. So that makes sense, so she's trying to look for her floor number. But they're underneath all of that,

was also the hold button. And if you press that, the elevator doors will hold for two minutes. They just won't close, right? Unless I guess maybe you hard press on the clothes, you know? So that kind of explains why the elevator doors were open. Now I feel like, along with a lot of people, that she probably pressed that hold button without realizing it

because she didn't have her glasses on. And with those hand gestures and what she's doing, like when she looks out, maybe she like, heard something, okay? Like I look out like that too. She just looked out then she gets back in then she's like maybe a little paranoid She's like, okay, that's a little spooky. Then she like hides a little bit and then she's like, okay No, like I just need to get the doors closed like this is what I'm thinking is going through her head now the little square step thing I've actually done that before the square step like people thought it was really weird. Why is she moving like that? Is she dancing with someone is she playing a game in her head like what's going on? The square stuff

I think is for her to try to trigger the motion sensors of an elevator like I don't know No elevator works a lot of the times if it's not closing I will do like a out-and-end movement with my body because I'm like, I don't know where the sensor is So I'm hoping it gets me right and then there the hand thing if you look at the footage when she's doing the Weird twisty things with her hand, it's almost like her wrist is bent and she's got her finger spread out and kind of like waving it,

but in a slower motion, that again, she's doing it very close to the elevator door. So I'm thinking like she's like, hello, like where is the sensor to this? What's going on? And so I think that's kind of what's going on and then maybe with her hair, like the whole hair on the hand things,

she's just like, what's going on with this elevator? Like I would be really stressed. I'd be like, okay, that's really weird. Then she walks away. So a lot of people had a lot of problems with this elevator footage. Some people said that she looked like a puppet doll with like strings attached because her movements were so odd. There was a point where she like bends her knees kind of strangely, which like, when I I say strangely I know you're probably like envisioning some body horror film with like the bends like the

Knees bent backwards, but that's not at all. She's kind of like bent her knees a little and like squatted Maybe she thought the sensors were down there I just feel like it kind of looks like someone who maybe is a little paranoid and just was kind of frantically like Oh, I'm alone in this elevator won't like close like yeah, like what's going on? I just want to like get to my room. I don't have my glasses. Like imagine you can't see right now. Like that's going to add a lot more anxiety.

That's going to add a lot more paranoia in my belief. So people also claim that there was a shoe in the corner when she's like walking away. I don't see that. So a lot of paranormal conspiracy. Yeah, or like possessed, she's hanging out with someone out of the frame of the elevator camera, like a real person. Some people say she's hanging out with the ghost. Some people say like she's acting like not a human because her fingers were all spread weird. I think she's just trying to trigger the elevator motion sensor, right? Yeah. And then all of a sudden it seems like the elevator starts to work again

which I don't really think is all of a sudden because you know it is a two-minute hold but a lot of people are like why does it work after she walks away? Why does it work? I don't know. There were a lot of questions about the elevator footage. I can see it though. I can see why I could get to a minute too. Time it too, like two minutes from the point. So that's where it gets weird. So this part, I don't really know what my feelings are. I guess I know feelings, but it just,

the timestamp is really distorted on the elevator footage. Now it could be because the hotel is using a very old system and it's unreliable, but a lot of people believe maybe it was edited in post by the hotel or the LAPD. There was about people think about 53 seconds that are missing, some people think certain parts of the video are slowed down. Why? So I think that there probably was editing. And I think it's because there might have been a completely innocent bystander who walked

by and because of how Profile this case was maybe they just added it out for privacy. How do you know there's a time stamp? Well the time stamp is like distorted But it like you can if you analyze it by frame by frame people are saying like this is where there's like it's just weird She's like a chunk of time is missing Okay, and then people trying to say there's something happened. Yeah, I don't think, I don't think the whole thing about this that I don't get is I don't think that the seasonal hotel and the LAPD are in bed together. If I felt like they were, then maybe I could jump on this theory

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So people are saying that the footage looks slowed down, which I can kind of see maybe in certain parts. I'm like, okay, that does look like slower than usual movements. I mean, I guess my brain is kind of running on the logical side of like, if I was trying to motion something, maybe I'll do it in like a slow dramatic motion as well. Now some people are saying that the LAPD did this to intentionally make it look more spooky, to intentionally make her look more erratic, you know, and odd behavior. Like this looks more odd, right?

But I also think maybe they slowed it down so you could like actually see what's going on, but I'm not sure. Like imagine they just like release like a two second clip and be like, okay, like thanks, but no thanks. What did you just do? So I'm not sure why. I don't even know if it's slowed down. I don't really know, right? I just think I don't know. It's weird. So they find her body February 19th close to three weeks after she went missing.

Now they get that call because like I said, all of the people were complaining about the water pressure. It's smelling weird, it's tasting weird, all of that jazz. Now when the police arrive, this is where all the craziness happened. One of the police officers, I think they like gave an interview to the press and they said that yeah my officers reported that the lid was closed when we got here. But in reality it was actually open when they got there. It was open when the hotel maintenance worker went up there. It was actually open when the LAPD got there. But because of this game of like telephone like the officers are all there and they're like oh my god what, what's going on? Like with it open? And he just like said, oh no, it was like closed. And that itself got used over and over again because physically if you were to go in, you couldn't close it behind you. So that made everyone believe, well there's got to be another person. But I do think, you know, let's say it was closed,

the maintenance worker could have easily just like closed it like, oh my god, and then just shut it closed, right? After he saw Alisa's body. So I don't think that that's like the biggest point of contention, but a lot of people, especially the Netflix series, was just hooked on this being open or closed, open or closed, open or closed, right? I mean, it does change the narrative. It does, it does. But the truth is, it was open. But I think what's more important is when the maintenance worker got there and he said it was open. So I don't think it matters what the police found the situation. Exactly.

And because he could have closed it, you know, because he's like, oh, you know, I should close this. Exactly. So I mean, the point of the matter is when he got there, the lid was open. And I think that's the most important thing, whatever happened with the police is whatever happened with the police, right? So February 19th, they find her in the water tank now it's it's a big one a thousand gallon tank on a four-foot elevated platform on the roof right I mean huge huge

so they have to get her body out and so they had a drain it completely and they cut it open from the side and they were able to get her body out they couldn't have someone dive in to retrieve her I think it has to do with maybe contamination, you know, for the divers, because I'm sure at this point it was probably not a lot of water in there. I think, yeah. Okay. So she was really badly decomposed. She was in there for three weeks. Yeah, it was February and LA, but I mean, up there on the 15th floor, I'm sure that gets a lot of sun. I'm sure it's just... Yeah, water close. Yeah, so she was, there was also a very long debate initially about was she found naked, was she found in her clothes,

but she was actually found naked with her clothes in the tank. Now there are very, very reasonable reasons for this, I believe. So the first being that some say it's paradoxical, undressing, like what we talked about in the dial-off pass, right? Which is that you get hypothermia, which February and Los Angeles at night can get really cold. And the water tank I'm sure is cold, right?

So you get hypothermia, you believe that you're hot. It's like this physiological thing that happens to your body and you start taking off your clothes. The other one that I believe is that she was probably trying to stay afloat and her clothes are soaking wet. They're dragging her down. So she just takes them off So it's easier to float until you can try to figure out your next step

So I think she probably was like okay, I need to take these off, right? But that became like a huge argument later on there was also in the autopsy later We find out that there's a sand like texture that was kind of all over her clothes now this sand like texture Some people are like what is that right? A lot of people said it matches the particles on the floor of the roof. So like the roof top You know how it's kind of like grainy maybe like the cement is grainy. They don't use like hardwood obviously And so people think that does that mean that her Her clothes were taken off before she went into the tank and like rolled around in the on the floor And then she like brought it up with her

or someone threw it in after her. So there was that theory. I think that she probably laid down on the roof before getting into the water tank. And the reason I think that is because a lot of people hung out on the Cecil rooftop. That is also another point of connection. They make it sound like it's this incredible,

like wow, high security. You gotta pass the secret service and your mom and your fourth grade teacher And then give them the magical password and then you got to get into Hogwarts like they may get seemed like it's really intense But remember what hotel we're talking about. It's the CISO hotel It's not gonna be the most high security highly regulated Well functioning hotel like we literally just said people said a serial killer, Richard Ramirez, just ran through naked. You think that they're really restricting the roof access,

like it's the most important thing in the world. But I tell you say there's an alarm system. Some people say that there are a lot of people, like YouTubers, were able to get up on the rooftop. Some people just asked a security guard, and they were just like, hey, can you let us on the rooftop? And if you look at pictures of the rooftop, there's graffiti, there's like beer cans. I'm not when Alisa was found, but

well at least not that I could see of like beer cans, but if you look at these like YouTube videos of people who went to the rooftop in the sea, so who tell there's like beer cans everywhere. So it looks like a hang-up spot. They can get up there. It seems like it. It looks like a hang-up spot. I think definitely for sure you can get up any of the four fire escapes on the exterior of the building, right, without any alarm. And so I think that maybe she laid down on the roof because I mean LA at night is pretty or during the day is pretty. And if you are on a rooftop, it might make sense in my head to kind of lay there and enjoy it for a second maybe, right? So I mean, I just don't think that she

likes someone stripped her over clothes and then tumbled it around on the rooftop floor and then threw her in the water tank and then threw the clothes in. I feel like that one is harder to explain in my head. And I'll get to why. So she gets out, then they had to do the whole autopsy. So the autopsy itself was ruled in accidental drowning with bipolar disorder as a contributing

factor. So they believed that she was probably experiencing some sort of psychosis, had a break, and ended up in the water tank. They don't think that it was suicide. They think that it was like something like psychosis, you know, like a very accidental death. And some people say that while they're having this type of psychosis, they experience delusions, hallucinations. Maybe she was hallucinating and went into the water tower. I mean, the elevator footage kind of did confirm a little bit of like the

psychotic break theory, like just acting a little paranoid, acting a little strange, right? Why is she at the 14th floor? Yeah, I don't know. That's so odd. Maybe she wanted to get to the rooftop because like I said, it's like a hangout spot. Wait, but why how did she end up at 14th floor? Is she trying to go up or go down? She's trying to go down. You say she pressed level five. So why is she at 14th floor? She went

from 5th to 14th. Maybe she like already went to the rooftop and now she's like headed back down. to 14th? Maybe she like already went to the rooftop and now she's like headed back down. You can access it through the 14th floor. So maybe she's like headed back down and she's like oh like maybe I'll grab my stuff and go back there later because it's like like a fun hangout spot or something. Then that proves the theory of she went up by herself. Yeah. If she already been there once. Yeah. Or maybe yeah. That's what I think. Right. All I'm wrong about the 14th floor. Yeah, what? The 14th floor is really odd. I mean, but maybe she's also like exploring the hotel, right? She could have just been exploring or like I don't know if the Cecil Hotel has this.

Now I'm just coming up with shit out of my butt. But like I stay in her hotel once where they have vending machines and like a little room on every floor. And if I didn't like the snacks on one out, go to the other one. That is very specific. This is really specific, yeah. Yeah, and then I'd be like, oh, these snacks suck. And then I'd go to the next floor. And I'd be like, oh, these snacks suck. And then I would just keep going up until I was like,

oh, these are good. She's like, yay. So I don't know, right? So people said that you experienced illusions. And that's when the whole medication thing came up up and maybe she wasn't taking her medications properly. So she was on two antidepressants and an antipsychotic. Now in her system the autopsy showed that she it looked like there was only evidence that she had taken one antidepressant in her system. Now it's really hard to say. It's really

hard to say because this could have been a situation where she has a timeline for these medications. Maybe she doesn't take them all at once, so maybe she was expecting to take it later in the day. We don't really know. Maybe she was under-medicating. Now, the time of death, we don't really have a time of death. We have the day that the elevator footage was filmed, and so we're thinking maybe she died on that day or very close to that day. But the autopsy doesn't have a confirmation of this was her time was filmed. And so we're thinking maybe she died on that day or very close to that day. But the autopsy doesn't have like a confirmation of like this was her time of death. She wasn't drunk. She didn't have any drugs in her system. Everyone, when they just saw the elevator footage, they kind of assumed that she was on ecstasy because she was acting radically, but it turned out that she was on no drugs. Now, some people say that if you take your antidepressant, but not your antipsychotic

when you prescribe both, it leads to a high risk of experiencing hallucinations and mania. Now, I mean, I can't really say, I don't know anything. So maybe she could have just taken them later in the day, but she didn't get around to it. It's just, I don't know. Now in her room, they did find more pills than would have been filled. So there is this speculation that she was

under-medicating for maybe a couple days into the trip. Maybe she was just like, I feel great. I don't want to take this one, right? So it did look like she was undertaking those medications. Now the autopsy reports no foul play. There was no external or internal injuries that could have led to her death. The autopsy did process a rape kit

and there was also no foreign biological material found underneath her fingernails, and within her body on any orifices. So there is no indication of any sexual assault. Now, I'm not saying that you can find sexual assault evidence after being in the water tank for three weeks, but I just, I don't see. So they just said that there was no indication.

Now, these results for the autopsy took months to be released. Oh, people were pissed, people were so pissed, and this made it like more insane. Why won't they release the autopsy results? Are they hiding something from us? What's going on? And I think maybe it has to do with the fact that, you know, I feel like this is a situation of people getting really invested in the case, right? But also, maybe a distrust in a lot of systems that we have in place.

So it seemed like a lot of people were just distrusting of autopsy results. And you guys know, in the true crime community, there's a lot of distrust in autopsy results when the deaths are really suspicious, like last week's episode. And, you know, a very suspicious person happens to have judges as parents, then you start all confused and you're like oh like this hot-ups is a little weird. Oh my god the corner is friends with his judge mom. That's crazy right? So we think that that just like added fuel to the fire and everyone's like why won't they release it? Now the medical examiner's office said that they were just waiting for a lot of results, the toxicology results, the raid kit results, and they didn't want to rush it, especially because this is a high profile case, not only is it a high profile, but we're talking for an affairs.

She's a Canadian citizen. So it's like, this is really intense, like no one wants to fork it up. So we just got to get it right. So during this, a lot of people had questions. How did she get on the roof? This is a restricted access area only. There is an alarm system that would have the alarm blower at the front desk but also like the top two floors. This doesn't make any sense. But also the LAPD when they brought in the dogs, there was no trace of

a Lisa in the water tank. Some people were like, how did she even know that the water tanks were up there? Like, how did she even know that the roof top was up there? Like all of these things. I think for the restricted access again, it's almost like we are trying to explain what the Cecil Hotel is, but then also expecting the Cecil Hotel to be a five-star hotel, right? Like this would be a lot more suspicious at like a hotel, like I don't know, like the Marriott, I'd be like, whoa, Marriott was going on. But like the Cecil Hotel was a very chaotic place. I mean, it seemed like the employees were underpaid way in over their heads. There was just so much chaos going on at all times.

I mean, she said for the 10 years that she worked there, there were 80 deaths. And it's just, it's- It's like every other month. Yeah, so I can only imagine that maybe like the roof access is not their top priority. I'm sure that they don't have guards just like ready to go. Like, oh yeah, don't let nobody on the roof. It just seems a little weird that we almost expect the Ciso hotel to be suddenly like this amazing safe place when it comes to the roof access. Now the water tanks. I think she probably saw them. I mean I'm sure you can see them from like a lot of different places in

LA. I just I don't know. Some people were just like how did she know the water tanks were there? I don't think it really matters right? Maybe she bent up there once. Yeah or maybe like she saw it from like another building those water tanks are huge You can really see them on the roof like they're not hidden by a wall or anything They're just like on the roof just for water tanks right there Now the hotel claims that there's only four ways to access the roof So the first is the door from the 14th floor of the hotel to the roof that's always locked and armed. So the 14th floor, you go up a staircase and that's where the door is.

Yeah, not the 15th, yeah. Okay. So what kind of explains why she's at 14th then? Mm-hmm. And then they said that it's always locked and armed. And only a member of the maintenance team or the hotel staff or security would have a key to unlock it. They said that the alarm didn't go off any time in January 2013 or February 2013, meaning

no one set the alarm off during those two months. Now there are three exterior fire escapes, sorry I think I previously said four but it's three and they run down the entire side of the building and there's like it's just looks like a fire escape right. Now like said, this is not like a high security place So a bunch of youtubers vlog them going up to the roof of the seasolta Through the stairs look through the stairs through everything They were just like we asked a security guard to open the door for us and he disarmed it and we're just like on the roof While we're on the roof we saw these beer bottles so it looks we're just like on the roof. While we're on the roof, we saw these beer bottles,

so it looks like other people were on the roof. So I wouldn't necessarily say it's like, it's like this crazy, like, oh my god, how did you get up there? It just seems like they're kind of just letting everyone up there and they probably don't want to claim any liability. So I think that there is motive for the hotel to lie about. No, we've got this alarm, you know? So that to me kind of makes sense.

So the lid of the water tank being open did cause its own problems, not just because it's like, oh, well, like who closed it, right? The maintenance worker said it was open, now the police are saying it's closed. But it also caused the problem of the police said that they searched the roof

with those canine dogs. But how did they not see that one of the water tanks like doors was open? Isn't it all the way on top that you can see? It is on all the way on top. So I can't tell because I've never been on the rooftop. But like from like pictures, I feel like you could maybe see,

but also maybe the canine handlers were so busy with the dogs that they weren't. Maybe they just don't expect something to be inside of the tank. Yeah, so maybe they don't even think about it. And maybe they saw it was open and they're like, okay, that seems a little like contamination, but not our problem.

They also did send a helicopter over the sea soul and they, that didn't, because they were helping to illuminate the roof to help the police look for Alisa, but the helicopter didn't notice that the lid was open. But again, it could just be like, that's not my problem. We're looking for a woman. We're not looking for a water that the lid was open. But again, it could just be like, that's not my problem. We're looking for a woman.

We're not looking for a water tank door to be open. Yeah. Because it's really uncommon to find people in water tanks. So then people, because of that, people started assuming that the hotel was lying. Maybe they said that the maintenance worker is lying that the hatch was even open. Maybe it was closed when he got there.

And he opened it up and he saw a lease up. Because if that were the case, it would 100% be foul play Because she could never close the door on her way in So someone had to close it behind her But the autopsies don't show any bruising or scratching that looks like she had been carried up Okay, so that means that she probably had to walk up the ladder herself But people are saying well people have guns. Maybe she was being held at gunpoint to do this. I just don't really see how that makes sense, right? So that's kind of what's going on. We're getting into the theories now.

The first theory, I just want to start with the one that kind of makes sense to me, and it's the mental health theory. I think that maybe she was having a psychotic episode. A Columbia University psychiatrist came out and said that she had all the harmary signs of someone who was going through an episode. She was paranoid. She was pushing the buttons, her hand movements, everything. And if her medicine was prescribed her

and she had taken it incorrectly, it could have caused an episode like this. It could have made it even worse. So the indications of the meds not being taken correctly, I mean this kind of maybe is why her roommates were thrown off by her behavior and people always say like, what about the elevator? Well, like I said, the glasses. You know, she was on floor five, so she's pressing all the middle buttons. It's not like she's pressing all of the buttons, like she's like trying to get out of the floor, like take me to any floor, right? It looked like she was trying to aim for her floor and she was like

right up against the button is trying to read the numbers I think that she probably accidentally pressed the hold button and maybe all of this was happening meanwhile I'm sure it's already paranoia inducing to be in an elevator by yourself on a floor trying to get to your room when you don't have your glasses on so I think all of that maybe also factor in the energy of the hotel and I'm not saying energy as in ghost or spirits But I'm saying like you know if you go somewhere like I think that's the reason I'm scared to go to the Cecil's because I I read about all these deaths that happened and it's not necessarily because I think their ghosts are gonna pop out and be like boom I just think I'm gonna get

Extrasensitive to every little noise and every little thing I see, right? So maybe while she's staying there she heard some things or maybe she did her own research and maybe that was kind of affecting her mental state. Now what one redditor pointed out was something called psychomotor agitation which often occurs with mania or anxiety. This is common, more common in people with bipolar disorder and they use movement to release that tension. So they have like tapping, they start and end tasks abruptly, they pace, they fidget, hand ringing. I don't necessarily know what that means, but that's very interesting.

Crowded thoughts, moving objects for no reason. So it's almost like you're trying to get rid of this tension in your body by doing things with your physical body. So common things are like twisting your hands, tapping your fingers on a surface, taking off clothing, then putting it back on. So I mean, a lot of things can also come with it, such as trouble making decisions, confusion,

trouble sleeping, false belief that someone is out to harm you. So hearing sounds or voices that aren't there. So I think it seems like that. In my opinion, I don't wanna say, like this is my opinion and I'm right, right? Because I don't know anything. But I think if you were like, Stephanie, I'm gonna punch your dog unless you just tell me

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People think whether it's a hotel guest or a hotel employee, you know, a lot of people think it's a hotel employee because they have access to the roof, they have access to the security footage and maybe they could have tampered with it, but maybe they disarmed the alarm. They got access to the roof, they knew where the water tanks were, you know. They tampered with the CCTV footage because Alisa did write on a Tumblr post about creepers. She said that people were bothering her during her stay and it implied that she might be followed. She does act like someone who believes that they're being followed, but that doesn't necessarily mean that she is being followed. Mm-hmm.

Now, a main contributor to this theory is that her Tumblr page kept updating after she passed. And people were really, really scared about that, and they thought maybe the killer is like taunting us. Like maybe the killer is like doing some sick twisted shit. Like this sounds like a zero killer. But again, you can schedule a post on Tumblr. And a lot of the posts were not in any indication that it was like a zero killer or some sick twisted killer behind it. Like, for example, she had one that went up December of 2013. That was the last one actually. And it was Christmas related. So what people do on Tumblr is like, they find something and they're like, oh my god, I really like that. But when you're on on Tumblr you have so many things in like your archives I guess I don't really know how Tumblr works but you just like schedule it in advance so none of that had like any crazy writings or anything mysterious it was like Christmas here's a

Christmas tree that was very aesthetically cute but it did kind of fuel the theory for a while like oh my gosh does this mean something a lot of people were stuck on the fact that there were a hundred full-time residents at the CISO hotel during the time that Alisa was there and so everyone was like maybe one of them as a killer maybe one of them was a sex offender who was living at the CISO hotel ooh CD place right I couldn't find any record that any sex offender was living there during the time that this all took place but I if I were to believe that this is murder I just don't think it'd be a full-time resident I I think it'd be someone stopping by. Why would you do this in your place of

residence? And then place her in the water tank that you're going to be drinking water out of. It just doesn't make sense to me. I mean, it's a little questionable. So maybe it was another guest, I guess, is what people think. So people think maybe someone convinced her to take a dip in the water tank. They were like, it's fine, like it'll be like a pool and they just kind of like let her drown after she jumped in. Maybe they were like, I'll help you out. Back out, which I just, I don't see what the point of that would be. I mean, because I've never really heard of a murder just like watching you drown. Typically they will drown you or strangle you or shoot you, but like I've never heard of them just like watching you drown in a water tank I feel like murders get off on like the actual kill

You know if that makes sense so I just don't know how that makes sense So then a guy by the name of Pablo Morbid Vergara got into so much heat So he goes by Morbid and he was falsely suspected by all of the internet people and when I say all of the internet people I mean like a small percentage of the internet people I wouldn't say all the youtubers or reddit redditors or true crime obsessed people are into this But um people thought that he killed Alisa Lam Even though he wasn't in the country at the time of her death. So who is he? He's a death metal musician in Mexico City

and they found a video that he posted, a music video, a couple days after Alisa's passing and it was a young girl running through the woods until she was savagely murdered. Now people thought it was weird because it was only a few days after Alisa's death. Then he had another video where his face had blood all over it and in the background he had a bunch of pictures

of Ted Bundy and Elizabeth Short who is the Black Dahlia and everyone's like oh my god the Black Dahlia Straight up the Cecil Hotel even though there is no evidence to back that up now I have a problem with this one because I feel like Ted Bundy and Black Dahlia are probably some of the most notorious Cases in the world and like let's say you're like a death metal artist like you're gonna be you know Like these are the types of people maybe you might put in your background you're not gonna put up like Bill Gates or like I don't know who's like a lesser known serial killer right like Ted Bundy is a face everyone knows they have a feeling towards that they get a vibe

if they see Ted Bundy's face you're producing this music you have blood all over your face you're not gonna use the picture of like I I don't know, you know what I mean? That's just not, has nothing to do with. So they were like, oh my god, the Black doll, you're a straight out the sea, so hotel, this is him giving us hints that he's the murderer, like the killer is communicating with us. And then he had another song about a girl who died in water and there was like a quote in it, like a lyric, something about, she was like from China. And yeah, so people are like, oh my god, he did it. I didn't want to mention there's like a lyric something about she was like from China and yeah so people like oh my god he did it

I didn't want to mention there's like a billion people from China so yeah I don't know now he did have a vlog at the CISO hotel which is kind of where it all started which was in February 2012 a year before she was ever at the hotel and he was there for three days but they thought because he had already been to the Ciso Hotel a year earlier and then he was producing these types of music videos and he is wearing this type of makeup, dressing this way and they just really came for him. Like he was accused so much of murdering Alisa that he had to come out with a video and he was so scared.

He had never done this before, you know, like who gets accused of murdering someone on a daily basis So he wore this like mask and he used a voice changer because he was so terrified And he said I wanted to inform you that I am innocent But of course people are like oh sure sure Ted Bundy said he was innocent So they just like went on and on they gave him so many death threats the the SP actually came to his house to ask him questions, but he had proof, like he had passport stamps of being out of the country, he had contracts with his record label being like, I was literally at this place on those days, like I wasn't even in the United States, let alone California or the Cecil Hotel. And he even told the internet that

and a group of internet buttholes didn't care. They just didn't care. His YouTube channel got taken down and he came out in the Netflix documentary, which was really brave, that he tried to take his life at one point, because that was his love and passion and his creative outlet, and now it was all gone, because everyone just thought he was a killer for no reason. That's cool. So he couldn't even do what he loved, he couldn't even do what he worked so hard on, spent his life doing. I don't know why I'm, I'm, I'm pretty sure this is my first time hearing about it. About him?

Yeah, I feel like I, this never like came up. Prior to the Netflix docuseries. I feel like I would have remembered because they did show like snippets of his music videos and I'm like I feel like if I saw that in research I would have remembered. Yeah I don't think I heard you talked about that before. Yeah so I don't know if it was like a small group

of people or if it was a large group of people either way I think the actions of that we're disgusting. I think it genuinely was because of the way that he looked in the songs that he sang. Now we also have the theory of the LAPD and corruption, which usually I'm like all aboard, which usually I'm like yeah I can see it, like I'm not going to automatically shut it down and be like no everyone's a good person right, but I feel like they really only cover stuff up for two reasons.

Either they fucked up in a way that is just so horrendous. You know, they're like, we got to save our own skin, cover it up, cover it up. Or I feel like someone's paying them big bucks. And I don't think the CISO hotel is either of these situations. So I don't think the LAPD in this situation, in this particular situation, had a reason to do any cover-up, any damage control, nothing really. Some people were insinuating maybe because of the whole Christopher Dorner situation, they were just feeling extra sensitive and maybe they didn't check the water tanks, so they

were just like, whatever, let's just like lie to people. But I just, I don't know, it just seems a little bit weird, unless maybe the owner murdered her. But like that doesn't make sense, I don't even think he lives in LA. I don't know who the owner is, right? I just don't think that makes sense. Because like, think about it. If one singular individual lets

say a hotel guest or a hotel employee, they murder Alisa. Why would the LAPD cover up for these types of people? The LAPD only covers up for like the super rich people. So I just don't, I mean, I feel like it'd be so much easier for them to be like, hey this bitch did it by. So then some people think that the LAPD was working with the owner of the Cecil hotel to just try to cover it up and make it not seem so murderous and just say it was an accident, but I think

it's actually worse. I'm sure if the hotel owner has got to have some brain cells in their brain, I feel like it makes more sense to if someone did do this to, you know, out that individual. This employee is a bad apple. This bad apple could have been anywhere to be honest, but he happened to be here and he happened to do this disgusting deed. Compared to, oh my god, this hotel is haunted. I feel like for business purposes, it just doesn't make sense that they'd be like, cover it up, cover it up. Yeah, exactly. It seems a lot more damaging the way that everything went about it. Now, the one thing that really fueled this theory

is that there were some markings on the autopsy. So when they released the autopsy results, they have the section of the autopsy that says, OK, check the box. Was it an accidental death, a undetermined homicide, suicide, they have all of these. And at first, the accident or the undetermined was marked. And then the accidental was marked and then the undetermined was crossed out. So a lot of people were saying like, who bribed them? Who bribed them to cross it

out? I mean, what's going on? I don't I feel like they weren't bribed. But I also think this just goes to show, okay, in this situation, I think it was a little overboard or a lot overboard but I think it goes to show how little we trust the LAPD for sure I mean they are not they don't have the best track record so I can see why people are questioning everything and there may be situations where because people question shit new things come to light but I think in this situation it did a lot more harm so then we we have the tuberculosis test theory. Say that one more time, stuff. tuberculosis test theory? That's a... wow, she's so good at English. So February 21st of 2013, just two days after her body was found, the LA Times reported the biggest outbreak of tuberculosis

in LA that has ever happened, and it was focused primarily on Skid Row, which was right next to the Cecil Hotel. Now here is where the conspiracy part of this comes in, like I'm talking full on Facebook conspiracy part. The testing kit to see if someone has tuberculosis is a urine test kit and it is called LAM-ALISA. Now what makes the conspiracy, even more conspiracy, is that this company that sells the Lamb Dash Alisa kits, which is spelled exactly like Alisa Lam's name, is based in Vancouver, which is where Alisa Lam is from.

I mean, the coincidence of that is a little odd, no? Yeah, I think the coincidence is crazy odd, but this is my least favorite theory, I just like can't get behind it It's just like one in those like weird one in a million coincidences So what are people saying? So they said okay, but here you just have to know that the test was named Lam Alisa before she was born even So this like some people were trying to say like she was the reason that it's called that or something, right? But a lot of people say that she was sent from Vancouver to Los Angeles to infect the homeless

population with tuberculosis so that they can all die. And Los Angeles doesn't have to deal with their homeless population. Again, if you believe in this conspiracy theory, please don't. But secondly, if you do, I think this just shows this entire case just shows how little people trust the LAPD more than anything. Like do you really, I mean, I wouldn't put anything past them, but there's one. I'm like, there's no way. I just can't wrap my head around.

I'm like, I just don't think that that could happen. It just seems crazy. Then some people said that she's a plant so that tuberculosis could get overlooked. So if you type in Alicellam, you're not gonna get tuberculosis, you're not gonna get the tuberculosis test, you're gonna get just what happened to her, you're gonna get Cecil Hotel,

you're gonna get all these different Google searches. Like you know how they say that the Illuminati plans celebrity divorces and celebrity scandals around the time that crazy things are happening in politics Or like people are doing shady shit that they don't want to show up on the news So they were saying like this is a situation Celebrities that we divorce every day. Yeah, and then the celebrities are like what? This doesn't think this is planned. Yeah, like I this one

I don't think at all cuz yeah, yeah, so then another spin-off So as you can see there's a lot of conspiracies with this one. There's like spin-offs. There's sequels. There's prequels There's your mom. Sorry, I just had it so everyone's like, okay, this is weird So the first spin-off is she's there to infect people the second spin-off is the illuminati spin-off that she's here to cover it up So that your Google search results aren't about tuberculosis, it's about the mysterious death that the season has. Why they don't want us to find out about that? I don't know.

Maybe then the LAPD have to do something about it. And who cares about Google searches? You know what I mean? Google's quaking right now. Google is shaking. Yeah, that went, yeah. And's Quaking right now. Yeah, that went yeah, and then another spin off. You're not gonna like this one is that her death was fake and she's still out there somewhere and it was all fake so that no one can find out about the tuberculosis outbreak in Los Angeles.

Now I think in today's day and age it's even harder to believe because with everything going on with COVID, we know how dumb Los Angeles are with COVID, so we can kind of assume no one would care about tuberculosis. They'd be like, oh shit, we're all dying. Let's still party. So I just, it doesn't make sense why they would put in this effort to like not put in the new cycle. And the part about her death being faked is a lot of people are referencing the Tumblr how she kept posting with those scheduled posts But like imagine imagine the the government LAPD is like, hey, we're gonna fake your deaths

And everyone is analyzing this Tumblr and they're just like, yeah, go do your thing drop some hints cool Listen if they allow that like what? So then there is also the theory that everyone's just like a paid actor and this was like a whole setup to get, you know, whatever out of the news cycle. Again, I, there's just no way this is such a high profile case. It just doesn't make any sense. Someone would have, you know what I mean, like this, this is bad. So then there's another spin off. Yeah, the tuberculosis ones, they just like don't stop coming. So then they said that she went to LA to get tested for tuberculosis and they were like experimenting these crazy drugs on her and she started to have these really

bad symptoms. That's why they had to pull the plug on the testing and she either as a result of these symptoms ended up in the water tank. So then everyone was like, oh my god, like we got to hide up this crazy human experimentation. So we got to make it look like it was an accident because maybe she is having a side effect from this and this and that. And maybe it's big pharma. I don't know, I feel like people just like to throw in the word big pharma. I don't know. This is all in the documentary too. Some of these subcategories were not in the documentary.

Just like the parts about her name being the same as the tuberculosis test were all up in the documentary. And I see that they took snippets of YouTubers, YouTube videos talking about, I mean, that's a crazy coincidence. And kind of almost made it seem like these YouTubers are like full on tuberculosis conspiracy. And I'm like, but I know that most of these people, I mean, they're probably not.

They're probably just literally just as I am telling you what the theories out there are. Like, we've just compiled the information from the internet and are providing it to you in this format, right? But they kind of edited it in a way that made it seem like all these YouTubers were like, what a coincidence! What a coincidence!

And so it kind of made us look a little crazy. I literally said that earlier too, huh? Yeah, but like that's not you being like, What a coincidence! This is true for sure, right? Yeah. But they kind of framed it in a way that was like that. So I was like, oh man, we look bad. I mean, I wasn't in it, but like we look bad, bad.

So then the other theory is that she gave tuberculosis to everyone because they drank the water supply and this was in the hotel sea soul So the she spread tuberculosis on skid row But there's no evidence that she has tuberculosis like it's been confirmed that she does not have tuberculosis Unless then you want to hit me with the will they're just covering it up? Then I don't know what to tell you now. We have the Japanese dark water theory This one feels new to me too. I feel like this one I didn't remember researching like three years ago. I feel like I just got

into this theory, not like into it believing it, but just popping up on my research. So there was a 2002 film from Japan and they have an American remake of this movie called Dark Water that was made in 2005. So it's basically, they're kind of referencing the American version. So there's this young girl by the name of Natasha who drowned in the rooftop water tank in an apartment building. Then a few years later, a woman and her daughter by the name of Cecilia, which everyone's like, oh my god Cecilia Cecil, I can't say anything. But these are like kind of common names, you know. So they were like, oh my god Cecilia, move into the building and the spirit of Natasha haunts the entire building.

So sometimes they turn on the faucet. There's no water pressure. Sometimes they turn it on and it's black water just like coming out of the faucet, you know. It's just like really gruesome. Now in the 2005 remake, there is footage of the mom standing in the elevator of the apartment building and the English shot from the same corner that Eliza Lam's footage is shot from the Cecil Hotel. But I mean, there's only so many corners that an elevator you can put a security camera

for it to be effective, right? So it's either the left corner or the right corner, right? So they were like, oh my god, it's almost like this is a recreation of that scene. She's like standing in the elevator just like Cecilia's mom is standing. Natasha were a red jacket throughout the film. Alisa was wearing a red jacket throughout her elevator footage, and they just were like, this is it.

So there's two theories that come from the Darkwater theory, the first being that it's a snuff film. Someone wanted to turn art into life. So someone like a crazy serial killer was like, oh, I'm going gonna recreate this scene, whether they forced her to do all of these things or maybe they convinced her and they were like, wouldn't it be fun to just like act out this movie? And she went along with it until it was too late before it got serious. I mean, people think maybe this makes sense because the elevator footage

almost looks playful. Like some people say it looks playful, like she's like playing hide and seek with someone. I don't believe this one, but I also don't believe the fact that like there's some crazy dark snuff film Hollywood director like hanging out at the seashell hotel trying to get like a young girl to just do these things. Now theory number two is in the midst of her psychotic break that she wanted to act out this movie. Maybe she had an obsession with this film. Maybe the Chuck quote on her Tumblr bio. So that kind of indicates maybe she is into like these psychological thrillers or these horror movies because that's kind of like the genre

that he is very, very proficient with. So maybe she seen this movie and she wanted to act it out. And so people, especially in the Netflix documentaries, they were saying there's too many coincidences. They would redjack it. The water tank, someone died there, then the water. But like my thing is, red jackets are common, first of all. If someone dies in the water tank,

I feel like the logical chronological events would be that the water would turn a different color. So it doesn't seem like, oh, but what about the water, the tap water being brown? Like, that's a coincidence. Oh, but she was in a water tank. That's a coincidence. I feel like, well, no, it's because just the water tank

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are you calling me no no no you're a thing of the past I use honey now honey has found it's over 17 million members over two billion dollars in savings that's insane. Stop getting FOMO. You need to use honey. And if you don't have it already, you could be straight up missing out on free savings. It's literally free, installs in a few seconds,

and by getting it, you'll be doing yourself a solid and supporting this podcast. How Get Honey for free at joinhoney.com slash run for the people in the back that's joinhoney.com slash rotten for the people in the back that's join honey.com slash rotten. Then we've got the elevator game theory. This one I remember, yeah, here we go. So people are saying, why did she push all those buttons? Why did the door is not closed? Why did her fingers look so long and distorted and almost non-human? Why did she have her glasses on? You know? What's going on?

So the elevator game is a game that's played primarily, I believe, in like Japan and Korea is where I see a lot of people saying like, oh, I heard it's popular in these countries. I wasn't too familiar with it until I started getting into like, no sleep Reddit. And it's essentially a game that you get onto an elevator and you try to project yourself into a different portal. Which like, it's always kind of dumb because they tell you that if you are able to successfully enter another dimension by using the elevator game,

like you're just gonna be depressed and people are gonna try to kill you. So I'm not sure why people are like, let's go to that dimension. So you have to pick a building with over 10 floors. You have to locate an elevator that nobody else will be actively using. Then you've got to enter from the first floor.

You've got to be alone. So this already itself is kind of weird. Then you have to visit floor number four, then two, then six, two, 10, five, one. So you have to like stay in the elevator and press all these buttons after you get to that floor. Now when you go back down to one, if the elevator starts moving up instead of down,

that means the ritual has been successful. And whatever floor it opens up now is the portal to another dimension. There's a couple of like, either films or show made about it. Yeah. Do you believe in stuff like this? No.

Yeah. What the heck? Yeah. All these like elevator manufacturing companies. I huh? I didn't know what I was creating was a portal to another dimension. I am Elon Musk. I should have charged more money I should have charged more like imagine like the hotel owner just gets like a fat ass bill for electricity Yeah, when these movies come out and they're just like what why who's using the elevator so much now If the elevator arrives at the first floor they said that the player must exit the building and the elevator as fast as possible

Don't ever look back because you'll get you'll get murdered if you look back, okay? I know now other things that you need to know with the elevator game. Why do you need to know this? I just need to tell you okay So women may enter the elevator on the fifth floor. You can't look at her or talk to her. Don't interact with her. And if you do, she will come to you in your dreams and she will haunt you and she'll be incredibly hostile.

So let's say you're looking for a portal back to the real world. A lot of people think maybe Alisa played the elevator game and she thought that the water tank was the portal back to the real world. Maybe she was in another dimension. Maybe that's why she was on the 14th floor because she pressed one but it ended up in the 14th floor and she was trying to leave, you know, she was like, oh no, the ritual worked. I'm in another dimension but the elevator wouldn't move. So she started freaking out so then she was looking for a new portal to leave and it was the water

tank. I mean I can see why people hate true crime youtubers after this case I can see it I can see it so much I can see it I hate us. So a lot of people were posting on Reddit threads after this elevator footage was released being like I played the elevator game and this happened to me and the people aren't lying like this this is real, this is real. Now I believe most of those people are actively lying. I feel like the other half of those people are kind of experiencing something similar to Bloody Mary. So you know the legend where you go into a very dark bathroom and you repeat Bloody Mary

to a mirror in complete darkness, like 13 times. And if it works, a woman appears in the mirror behind you and scratches your face off sometimes, she might even kill you. This was my favorite elementary school game. Okay, because I... It's just, I like, I hated it, but I also would like try to do it all the time. I don't know what was wrong with me. I have issues. Now, some say it's called Bloody Kathy or just straight up like Kathy, which much less scary or Redrum which is murder spell backwards but there's a lot of psychology that goes into this so there's something called the troxler effect where if you stare into a mirror at your eyes long enough that your whole face starts to look strange and it gets distorted and so I feel like maybe if you believe that the elevator

game exists it there's got to be something psychological happening like I don't think you're in a different dimension I'm sorry yeah show. Yeah, show some proofs. Show some proofs! Text me from the other dimension! Send some pics, film a TikTok! Yeah, exactly. So then we have the ghost theory. This one is just really short. Some people say, specifically, Richard Ramirez's ghost killed Alisa, which I think is just not just... Then there's the theory of the witches and the Satanist.

So she died at January 31st. The next day is February 1st, which is the beginning of spring that a lot of witches and Satanists, they're also like, they're like not the same group, but like people are like, just lump them all together. Why don't we throw in indigenous people at the same time? Cause that's what they do in a lot of cases.

They're like, we don't understand something, so we're just gonna blame it on indigenous people at the same time, because that's what they do in a lot of cases. They're like, we don't understand something, so we're just gonna blame it on indigenous people, because like, don't they do like sacrifices? So they were like, yeah, they needed a sacrifice or else spring won't come. I'm like, spring will come, don't worry. So that was a theory. Then there's like, nowadays there's a new theory

that I found on Reddit that was the invisible man theory, and I think it has just to do with the movie coming out this year. And so people are looking back and like, oh you know how everyone kept saying she was interacting with someone who looked like they weren't there whether they were out of the view of the camera or ghost. Well what if it was someone in like an invisible suit. Now there are, I didn't see these Tumblr posts on my own so I don't know if these actually even existed but apparently Alisa had written on Tumblr posts on my own, so I don't know if these actually even existed, but apparently Alisa had written on Tumblr about some invisible cloak technology.

So I don't know if this has anything to do with Harry Potter or the Marvel comics, or I think it's Marvel, right? Whether it has to do with that, but some people believe that maybe the military was like reaching out to her because they like, I don't know. I don't know. Listen, if the military was reaching out to her, they would have reached out to me because they like I don't know. I don't know. Listen, if the military was reaching out to her, they would have reached out to me by now because my Google searches are insane. So they thought maybe it has to do with that. Maybe she knew too much about

the specific technology. Another thing that made it crazier is that there's something called the Invisible Light Agency and on Google Maps, it was located inside of the CISO Hotel. I mean, I don't know what the invisible light agency is though. In the world. So those are kind of all the theories. So I can see why people are very, yeah. And I think when these theories are presented, it feels like maybe because we say it like this, maybe people think that a big group of people, I feel like in most situations, there

are small groups of people that are very vocal about a theory that most people aren't going along with, you know, such as Richard Ramirez, this freaking ghost. So random things, a lot of people said that the hotel did not alert the guest and a lot of them were still drinking the water, showering, they turned on the news and they were like, oh my god, they looked downstairs, there was police everywhere, they were like, oh my god. They looked downstairs. There was police everywhere They were like, what's going on? Turned on the news and they were like drinking a cup of tap water While this is happening the hotel says that absolutely no, we told them everything Now the hotel said that they were

Still accepting reservations during this time But they informed everyone that you can't use the water and they will provide bottled water Now Elise's parents did sue this day on main because it was a wrongful death suit. They believe there was negligence on behalf of the hotel that led to her death. They said that there's no evidence that the rooftop alarm system was actually working. There is no CCTV on a place like the roof that has water tanks. It feels like you should put a security camera out there, right? There's no locks on the water tanks because if you're not even thinking about death, that's a very easy way to contaminate the water supply of a ton of people at once. If I just put like a

cyanide in there, everyone's dead, like what? That's very not safe. So the prosecutor and the judge said that Aliso is negligent and Aliso's family was negligent and the lawsuit was eventually dropped. Whaaat? Which like, can you be a little nicer? How rude can you really be? I personally think that, I mean, it's gotta be like one of those unspoken things where people were just on the roof in the hotel were saying, well, we have an alarm so we can't be held legally liable, but it's just like a known hangout spot I feel right so that was dropped in 2015. A lot of former guests came out after all of this and said that they

constantly went on the roof all the time they would like just hang out under the stars and drink beers and like just look at the city lights of LA like downtown LA and it was just like a secret hangout spot there was graffiti on a lot of parts, so either an employee is getting artistic during break time or they're letting people up on the roof. Now these are a little bit of my thoughts, right, which are not theories. I think that the case blew up because of two things. I think like all of these theories really show a couple of things, right? It's just in my perspective. I feel like we just don't trust the LAPD for one. And I think it's like, maybe we don't want to face the fact that people are out here like living in conditions like

this. Like there is a hotel where 80 people die in 10 years over overdoses, drug related things. Like maybe we just want to act like it doesn't exist. Like no, we'd rather believe that this hotel is haunted than the fact that shit, people are living like shit. And in L. LA, you've got giant houses in Hollywood Hills, you've got some of the richest people in the world living in LA, and I think it's just hard to come to terms with the fact that while that's happening, we also have so much death in a place like the Cecil Hotel in Skid Row. I think it's just a really sobering fact, and I think maybe people would rather believe in the paranormal than believe, wow, these class differences are out of this world.

I just think maybe they're just trying to compartmentalize it. I also believe that if maybe Alisa were someone who came from lowering come families and maybe she was an LA native, maybe she was staying in and out of Skid Row, I don't think that this would have blown up. So I think that's why people are like, well, obviously, it's gotta be something paranormal. And I think that comes to like my second thing is maybe, maybe we just like don't want to say mental health was the cause. I mean, this one's hard to say because I do believe that there's a ton of situations where

a case is ruined because it's determined to suicide. And I think that they didn't do adequate investigations or maybe it feels a little bit shady or someone's like tampered with something right but sometimes I believe like we would rather believe in ghosts than like mental health because we can't control ghosts, we can't control murders because like how are you responsible for other people's actions, we can't really control serial killers so maybe we're like hey mental health is something we can try to control as a society like maybe we can be more alert, maybe we can be more aware and do these things but instead of like taking that responsibility on as a whole, we're just like,

but what about the elevator game? What about it? That exist. So I mean, I think maybe it's a factor of all of this. Because I do see, like I think the reason I kept bringing up like the CISO hotel one is it's so strange even if you watch the Netflix docuseries we keep talking about the CISO hotel as if it's like this crazy shitty thing like oh my god the great depression hit now it's full of drug dealers and drug users and sex workers oh like it's dangerous filled with crime right but at the same time we're like where's the CCTV footage how is she allowed on the rift there's no way she's allowed on the rift it's armed. So it's kind of like where like, I don't know how to explain it. Does that make any sense?

But also with like the Netflix documentary series, I think there was a lot of um, like emphasis on Skid Row and the crime and what's going on there. But not a lot of emphasis on like what happens to like the mental health of people around this area. So it's just so strange. It's like, you're talking, you're constantly saying that Cecil Hotel is in the middle and the midst of Skid Row, but the Cecil Hotel is haunted. Whereas Skid Row is this crazy criminal section. I don't know, it's just it's very strange. So maybe that's why we thought it might be collectively we all got into these crazy theories because I can't sit here and act like I did not get you know swept into these rabbit holes at one

point or another. So January 2017 the hotel was sold to a group of hoteliers in New York City and they are gonna do a full renovation they're actually putting a bar and a pool up on the roof and they might be opening up in 2021. Well that article I read in 2019 before the pandemic got really crazy So maybe even later due to that, but they are planning to open up It's gonna be like a a live hotel situation. So like a residential side part and a actual hotel part They're trying to revamp it. Yeah, still going still going because I think it's considered a historical landmark now. I think LA voted on that. So I don't think that they could actually like get rid of it. Not suggesting that they do, but you get it. So I hope you guys enjoyed

today's podcast. I tried to be as straightforward with this one. I know that I kind of went off on a couple of tangents, but I hope this, this, you liked it. I'm so scared. I feel like I kind of went off on a couple of tangents, but I hope this this you liked it. I'm so scared I feel like I'm gonna get canceled listen, I don't believe in any of these theories, okay? Okay, bye