Timesuck with Dan Cummins - 29 - The Mysterious Death of Elisa Lam

Episode Date: April 3, 2017

On February 1st, 2013, 21 year old Canadian college student Elisa Lam vanished while staying at the Cecil hotel in downtown Los Angeles. Her nude, decomposing body isn't found until the morning of February 19th, after hotel residents complain of foul-tasting water. A strange, four minute hotel elevator camera video capturing the last moments she's ever seen alive goes viral, and a murder mystery is born that has the internet obsessed to this day over what really happened. Find out what conclusion I come to on today's Timesuck.

On February 1, 2013, 21-year-old Canadian college student Alisa Lamb vanishes while staying at the Cecil Hotel in downtown Los Angeles, California. In an attempt to locate her, the LAPD releases the last known footage of Alisa's security camera footage taken from the hotel's elevator. Alisa's behavior in this footage is strange to say the least. And because of how strange it is, the clip makes its way online, goes viral, and has been viewed almost 20 times as of today.

I've watched it numerous times myself the last couple of days, and Alisa's behavior in light of what happened to her with an hours of the footage is a little chilling. Two weeks after her disappearance, Alisa still hasn't been found. And now, hotel, Cecilil guests are complaining about low water pressure and brown water seeping out of their taps.

And then, on the morning of February 19th, two and a half weeks after disappearing, Alisa's body is discovered by Cecil, hotel employee Santiago Lopez. When he decides to check the hotel's water tanks to solve the recent water related problems. And he does solve the problem. He finds out what's plugged in the pipes and tainting the water supply releases nude decomposing body floating in a rooftop water tank. Several months later, the corner rules the cause of death as accidental drowning. But was it an accident? How did she get on the roof in the first place? It wasn't easy.

Why would she climb into an enclosed rooftop water tank? Why would she naked? Why is she the subject of today's episode at all? The internet offers a lot of theories about her death and all of them are explored on a real life murder mystery today on TimeSuck. Happy Monday, TimeSuckers. I hope you enjoyed sucking that sweet Ronald over the weekend. That's Serpiel Ron.

Hope you enjoyed that exotic Scientology teet hit in your lips. Thanks for all the emails, iTunes review, subscriptions. Thanks for buying those sweet 300% baby raccoon shirts from the store on Timesackpodcast.com. Thanks for all the Amazon purchases, using the Amazon button on the website, the PayPal donations, topic suggestions.

Sorry again, I haven't gotten back to anyone. I've gotten back to no one. The last like week and a half, just been crazy busy. And I will sit down and reply to everyone very soon, the moment I have time to do so. So thanks for being patient with me on that. I have a murder mystery to get into today. A topic suggested by Isabella R on the time

set common board in Austin Jones via time suck email Who also encouraged me to research the hotel she died in the seasolanda and I did and it was worth it And my son Kyler Kyler Cummins actually picked this topic as well. He did he didn't know about it beforehand, but I let him listen to You know some select time suck episodes in his instrument rows as well Not all of them but some you know they're, even his sister Min Rose as well. Not all of them, but some, you know, they're only 11 and 9,

but they're well aware of Dad's terrible, since he's human already. So I try and hide it. Why not give a little honest view of some subjects in the early life. And I kind of wanted to know what I was doing for Monday's episode for today. And I told him I was having a hard time deciding.

So he wanted to help me out. He wanted to check out the topic list. So I let him look it over. And for some reason, the topic of the mysterious death of Alisa Lam stuck out to him. So I thought, why not? However, he might be a little pissed now because I'm not sure I'm going to let him listen to the show.

He asked for. He gets scared a little easy still. And I think this one might be a nightmare maker. There's some creepy shit it gets discussed today. So if you're watching, if you're listening to this episode alone in the dark, I don't know, turn the little night light on. You know, close you up one of the covers, pull them up with just a little tighter, a little closer up to your chin.

But first, before we talk about how scary everything's going to be, let's get into some time-sucker updates. Updates, get your time-sucker updates. Learned a little bit about how to read, write, and speak or good are. Thanks to some time-suckers this week. Pretty soon, I'm going to be the goodest, most knowledgeableest, mostest, goodest speaker that ever was as dist-dist. I'm going to share two emails that are helping me get there today. First is from Evan.

This subject is your Killin' Me Cummins. The message is first off, I mean the subject in two ways. You're killing me in the good sense because I'm enjoying this shit out of time, suck. And I thank you for that. Oh, I appreciate that. I've been a fan of your comedy for years and was glad to see this podcast.

I was apprehensive, but all it took was one episode and I was in. Not to get to the bad sense in what you're killing me, Cummins. You seem to enjoy dropping the et cetera's. However, you like way too many goddamn people in this world pronounce it et cetera like EECK et cetera. And it's fucking killing me. Anyway, keep up the good work. I love listening to TimeSuck while I work my autopilot no-brainer acquired goddamn chalk fix. I love the way that these emails are written man. The best fucking fans.

Yeah, you know what, I definitely get a little sloppy with my pronunciation for sure. On a lot of stuff. On a lot of stuff. I have to focus so hard. It's something in my head about like not wanting to sound pretentious I think is a lot of it. Growing up in a small town not wanting to sound all city slick and smart or something. I don't know.

But et cetera, you're right. I do say et cetera. Now do you point that out? It's et cetera. Et, et, et, et, et, et, phone home, not ECK. Okay, et cetera. I'm gonna work on that, et cetera. Second email that comes from Thomas Kavanaugh,

subject to his basic grammar, number slash amount. Now this one wasn't just a mistake, but I truly didn't know this. So I appreciate this. Dear Dan Bro, huge fan. I'm going to attempt myself, I'm going to exempt myself, excuse me, from any grammatical errors to avoid any ironic faux pas. With that said, I celebrated my 21st birthday last night. Ah, young man, and I'm severely intoxicated. Actually, I loved that the one mistake he made is, he put, he put, I'm intoxicated, like I am, which it's perfect and spilled severely wrong, spilled it severly, which again, that might have even been intentional. If it was Tom,

Bravo, because everything else is perfect in this email. And then when you talk about being drunk, which again, that might have even been intentional. If it was Tom, bravo. Because everything else is perfect in this email. And then when you talk about being drunk, it's like your brain's like, oh, that's fuck these words up, because we are drunk. Okay, anyway, nonetheless, what happens to come to mind, I guess this is evidence of how much of a fan I am, was the fact that I've been meaning to shoot you

an email regarding some grammar, dude. When talking about things that are discrete quantities, AHAA are countable. I do love that you have to like dumb down for me discrete quantities, which yeah I would have known when you met by that. So I needed that. I needed that dummy down truly. Use the word number. When you talk about things that are continuous or uncountable, use the word amount. For example example number of illuminati space lizards But amount of water. Who do you need jumped in do I didn't fuck I didn't fucking know that I appreciate that Tom I appreciate that Tom Kavanaugh Okay, all right, so it's like it's like an amount of water like there's a lot he jumped into a large amount of water

Not into a large number of water Hopefully I wasn't saying that but I Yeah, I bet I do make that mistake because I didn't know that was even a mistake to be made. And then Tom finishes, I know I suck, but in a good way, Tom, but I'm pretty sure that would help you moving forward. Dude, keep sucking shit head. Ha ha. Sincerely, Tom Kavanaugh, fellow liberal arts major. Ha ha. Again, I love the, uh, I love the key adding the keepsucking shit head. I don't know why that stuff makes you laugh so hard but it always does. Maybe it's because that's the way I talk to my family. We throw a lot of curse words around at each other. We were amused by it.

And you know, it's funny. I used to get annoyed by so-called grammar police, but as I get older and read various YouTube comments, for example, I realize how important it is to have a firm grasp of how to both write and speak, you know, your native language appropriately. You know, because I feel like without it, you know, I'm going to, I'm going to just, like a lot of people, devolve into this state of idiocracy with a language based entirely on slang, saying stuff like, go away, baitin'. You know, an ordinary contributor to society or doctor say stuff like, well, don't want to sound like a dick or nothing, but your chart says you fucked up, which is another of the accuracy quote. So I appreciate it as I get older. I appreciate being

called out on it. Because when no one gets called out, then we all end up just getting fucking dumber and dumber rist and dumber rer-rist. No, but we already have YouTube comments like, did he died? Did he died? I was on some website for Dham YouTube comments. Did he died already? And the best one I came across, some guy expressing this admiration for gold.

Quote, hi there. In ma opinion, ma, not my, gold is supposedly, not supposedly, supposedly, in historically, the letter N instead of the word AND, not even an ampersand, just N, the shiniest metal ever, either in terms of what it's worth, no apostrophe, even though in this case it's being used as the contracted form of it is,

or it's historical presence as the shiniest durin, not durin, Durin. All eras, eras being capitalized for some reason. Maybe eras actually is capitalized, but with all respect, it's no apostrophe again, ma, again with the ma, humble opinion. With no one ever, oh my God, ma, humble opinion. With no one ever corrected me,

I could easily be that guy in a few years. Maybe not quite that bad but close. I do love that he's really into how shiny gold is. Not about how rare to me. I mean, I'm sure being shiny helps, gold being valuable, for sure. But also, it's rare, you know, like if fucking gold was as common as just gravel, you know, if gold was as common as just basic kind of sedimentary rock or something, it wouldn't have the value.

It's got to be rare too, but I love that for him, it's all about the shine, man. It's fucking, it's the shiniest. It's the shiniest. It's the store of the shiniest. It's the shiniest during all of Eris. You know what I mean? It's like super shiny. And you know, supposedly, supposedly and, supposedly, and historically, shiniest.

Well, thanks for educating me, as I educate myself, and you all with what I find. I love the team effort, love all the learning we're having fun with, making knowledge funnest again. Thanks, time suckers. I need a net. We all did. Okay, so Lisa Lam.

Who was she? Who was this person? We're talking about today. In January of 2013, Lisa Lam, a 21-year-old Canadian student at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, the daughter of immigrants from Hong Kong who ran a restaurant in Vancouver, a beautiful picturesque metropolis surrounded by scenic pine forest mountains, planted on the Pacific. Probably the most gorgeous city I've been in in North America, like truly. She embarked on a solo trip around the west coast of the United States. Her intention was to visit San Diego, then work her way up through Los Angeles, Santa Cruz, and finally San Francisco. She traveled alone, using trains and buses to creep from one destination to the next, and

all in all it seemed like a rather exciting adventure. During the first leg of what she called her West Coast tour, Lamb regularly contacted friends and family. She checked in with her parents daily. She posted photos online of herself in various locations, such as at the San Diego Zoo. And then she finally arrived in Los Angeles on January 26 and checked in to the Cecil Hotel downtown.

Now, there's not a lot of information online about who Alisa was. I couldn't even find like, what did she study in college? Guessing her family isn't interested in letting millions of people online who are obsessed with her death know anymore about her. And why should they? I don't blame them. She wasn't like a celebrity or a known person at all. The only thing that became sadly known about her was her death and disappearance. And so there's, yeah, there's, there's not a lot of info available. Her Facebook account appears to have been deactivated. But you can still access her blog, which is Esther, Esther Fields, like ETH or Ether.

Sorry, Ether Fields, I thought it was Esther for a second. Ether Fields dot blogspot dot com, her Tumblr, my gosh, nuvel, nuvo tumblr dot com. If you just Google, I'll put these links on the website at timestockpodgast.com, but if you just Google Alisa Lam Tumblr or Alisa Lam blog, and it's LAM, Alisa Lam Twitter, it's at LAM, B-E-T-E-S. That stuff's still up there. And on Twitter,

you know, you can tell she's funny. She's smart. She has tweets like on January 10, 2013. She tweets, anyone who doesn't work in something history-related, aka museum, and uses the word curate to describe their work is delusional. Hashtag bloggers. That's funny, man. It's actually smart and funny. January 14, 2013, as I get older, parentheses, and have more disposable income,

I dress more like a little English schoolboy. December 24, 2012. Sometimes I forget that people are stupid and then someone opens their mouth. I relate to that one. Yeah, I had a lot of stupid shit comes out of my mouth. I'm finding out on my chest, but I also relate to, yeah, I'm annoyed by other people.

So she seems, I don't know. She just seems cool. She retweets info about Jack White, Nietzsche, new films, fashion design. She follows the Twitter accounts of companies like Out of Print T's, a literary apparel company that donate to book for every product sold to a community in need. She follows Lost and E minor, an online publication of inspiring art, photography, music, and more.

She follows Sadie Magazine, an alternative independent magazine for young women. She follows the Onion Magazine, an alternative independent magazine for young women. She follows the Onion, Craig Ferguson show. She's film buff following the Criterion Collection, a company dedicated to gathering a publishing the world's greatest films, gathering Anne Publishing, excuse me. She follows Brian Cranston, Rashida Jones, tons of other actors and actresses. You know, reading her Twitter, she seems to me for lack of a better word to be fucking cool. Now the kind of girl I would have been very drawn to myself, honestly, at 21. She's adventurous, she's intelligent, artistic, sarcastic, funny, she's beautiful.

She's not the person that's supposed to end up naked and dead in a downtown hotel rooftop water tank. Now you read her blog and Tumblr and you like her more, at least I do. She uses the quote from Chuck Ballooniac, one of my favorite authors, is a header on each. The quote is, you're always haunted by the idea, you're wasting your life. You're always haunted by the idea, you're wasting your life.

And Chuck, she's clearly introspective, you know, she doesn't just live on the surface. Chuck, if you don't know, by the way, is the darkly comedic author of Fight Club, Choke, and Visible Monsters, amongst many other cool books. Another dark, brooding creature of the Pacific Northwest is Chuck, based in Oregon. Her Tumblr blog contains sense of pictures of high fashion

quotes from authors like Virginia Woolf, such as quote, why she reflected, should there be this perpetual disparity between thought and action, between the life of solitude and the life of society. This astonishing precipice on one side of which the soul was active and in broad daylight, on the other side of which it was contemplative and dark as night. All right, man, she seems old for her years, you know? She seems dark and contemplative, you know, sometimes. There's pictures that suggest Romantic soul. One with the quote, he could not have known then that one day seven months later, he would meet for the first time. The woman asleep behind the window below which he passed and that she would change his life.

Another quote is, I would kiss you in the middle of a lightning storm. I would kiss you knowing it would kill me because I'd rather be left for dead than left to wander what thunder sounds like All right. All right. There's some fire. There's some fire in Alisa, you know There's art. There's quotes from the princess bride one of my favorite movies. My name is Amigo Montoya You killed my father prepared to die a Movie I now know is directed by Rob Reiner thanks to you time suckers. There are another update a while back There's also quotes that suggest someone prone to dark thoughts. Someone prone to depression.

One being quote, I don't think people love me. They love versions of me, I have spun for them. The easy parts of me to love. Who's going to love the girl that can't stop crying? The girl that hurts herself. The girl that is losing control. The girl that is so sad, you can't get out of bed. The girl that keeps pushing everyone away. Who's going to love the monster and me? Who's going to love me now?

And then for further emphasis, she highlights the love versions of me. Clearly, that little refrain resonates with Alisa. And then her last blog post, before she moved over to Tumblr on April 22, 2012, it's titled Worry of a Twenty-Something, and it just simply states, I spent about two days in bed hating myself. That's pretty intense. That's pretty intense. I was a moody young person, still moody a little bit older person now,

but I never spent a couple days in bed hate myself. Why is she traveling alone? I couldn't find out with this artistic soul was studying in college, but I did find out she'd recently either dropped out or at least taken a leave of abs and she wasn't signed up for future classes. Why would she do that?

Yeah, and then why would she head out just alone? Did she recently go through a tough breakup? Did she want to do a little soul search and was she unhappy and in need of a big change? And why the emphasis on versions of me? You know, was she leading some sort of secret life or friends and family were unaware of or did she at least think they just,

they didn't get who she really was, which I guess is a common, you know, problem just human beings in general face, but it seems a little more important to her than most. You know, and I think about her kind of trip, reminds me of a trip I took at her age, my junior year of college, I tons of friends, good friends in Gonzaga.

Gonzaga, by the way, good luck in tonight's NCAA men's basketball match men as championship game against UNC. Go Zags, man, first time in the final four, first time in the championship. But anyway, it would have been easy to enjoy my junior year at school, just go back to my kind of comfort zone. The comfort zone, I've just recently established, go back to the same parties, have a blast,

but I just felt like another change would do me good. I signed up for a semester abroad in London. It wasn't a popular study abroad program, only one other kid from Gonzaga even went, and it was a kid I didn't even know at the time. I'd be staying with a host family, not in some dorm or apartment with a bunch of other people my age to at least commiserate with. I'd be thousands of miles away from any family. But I wanted to do it because it felt like a good place

to really kind of reflect about what I wanted in life. You know, that age you're trying to figure out, what am I going to do with the rest of my life? And it felt like a good place to kind of try and figure that out. And then when I was there, we had a 10-day break in the middle of the semester. And most of my classmates went off in some group, most, you know, with some couple of kids from the program and traveled somewhere. Actually, all my other classmates did that, but I decided to trek out totally alone.

Just me and a hiking backpack, bouncing through France and Italy and Switzerland on a train pass. Half the time I wasn't around a single other person who spoke English. It was interesting, interesting feeling to be around so many other human beings, but to be so alone. I was almost stranded once in Rome with just a couple hundred bucks to my name.

It was both terrifying and exhilarating, very exciting. And I'm so glad I did it. I learned a lot about myself. I learned I could get by on my own if I had to. But I did that as a six foot one dude, dude with the goatee and a shaved head at the time. You know, I wasn't that afraid of bad guys because I looked like a bad guy.

You know, I looked a little dark and sinister. I can't imagine doing that as a five foot, five inch, a hundred and twenty oneone-pound woman, like Alisa. It seems more reckless, and I hope everyone stands, how that isn't some showvinistic thought. It really isn't. I actually am a feminist, women are absolutely intellectually equal to men.

However, I'm also a realist, and women are significantly physically smaller, weaker, more vulnerable, able to be overpowered far more easily. And if that wasn't true, anybody listening is like, no, come on, shut the fuck up. All right, there wouldn't be gender division within sports. Be realistic. Men and women could just compete in everything together. Let's get rid of the WNBA, and let's just have women play in the NBA if they're physically equal. Get the fuck out of here. You know, I've got into our many arguments with women, I hope there's a lot of thoughts. And I just find it hysterical to me that I'm not going to be a man who is a man who is a man who is a man who is a man who is a man who is a man who is a man who is a man who is a man who is a man who is a man who is a man who is a man who is a man who is a man who is a man who is a man who is a man who is a man who is a man who is a man who is a man who is a man who is a man who is a man who is a man who is a man who is a man who is a man who is a man who is a man who is a man who is a man who is a man who is a man who is a man who is a man who is a man who is a man who is a man who is a man who is a man who is a man who is a man who is a man who is a man who is a man who is a man who is a man who is a man who is a man who is a man who is a man who is a man who is a man who is a man who is a man who is a man who is a man who is a man who is a man who is a man who is a man who is a man who is a man who is a man who is a man who is a man who is a man who is a man who is a man who is a man who is a man who is a man who is a man who is a man who is a man who is a man who is a man who is a man who is a man who is a man who is a man who is a man who is a man who is a man who is a man who is a man who is a man who is a man who is a man who is a man who is a man who is a man who is a man who is a man who is a man who is a man who is a man who is a man who is a man who is a man who is a man who is a man who is a man who is a man who is a man who is a man who is a man and women, numerous men, so I have a strong sample group here, numerous men bench over

350 pounds. I have never, not one time, not a single time witnessed a single woman bench over 150 pounds ever, ever, ever. I have seen a woman in a powerlifting compression t-shirt online who looked like she'd taken enough steroids to come to a small horse, Becca Swanson, sorry Becca, if you're actually not on Roy's, I just don't see it. Bench 551 pounds on YouTube, which is fucking incredible. And by the way, Becca would fuck me up. This is a big lady. Incredible.

However, as incredible as that is, the men's bench press record, 1,102 pounds by a human orangutan hybrid who goes by the name of Tiny Meeker. And the only tiny part of him, I'm guessing it's his balls, shriveled by years of continuous steroid cycling. Tiny could do more than kick my ass, he could grab my legs and rip my ass in two, like a normal man ripping apart a turkey wishbone.

His forearms look like a powerful man's thighs. You know, he's one of those dudes. If I didn't see video of him, I would swear he's just still photos were photoshopped. I'm blip, let's say, but that's the difference. 551 compared to 1,100, literally almost twice as strong. But no, actually, what am I talking about?

That's fucking crazy. I'm so bad about that. Exactly twice as strong. Exactly, exactly twice as strong. So anyway The small woman who does not look like a royd riddled powerlifter this college kid question her life this intellectually curious adventure His beautiful young woman decides to check into the Cecil hotel the last week of January in 2013 She's gotten away from the cloudy rainy, you know winter and Vancouver. She's enjoying sunny days in the mid 60s

She's staying downtown instead of Santa Monica or Venice Beach or Silver Lake. And she's seen the Cecil. It's just really, really as a huge level of intrigue to her story. Because that's a very curious and specific choice of accommodations. This isn't some random Sheridan or Maryott

or even some like normal like youth hostel. This isn't some budget holiday ends, motel six. The seasonal hotel is one of the most probably notorious hotels in America. It's the real life inspiration for the hotel Cortez, which is the setting for the fifth season of American Horror Story. You know, the season about the horrible murderous hotel. A series that premiered over two years after at least the Lambs' appearance, I actually just started watching it earlier tonight after being reminded of it by this research.

And it looks pretty good. I feel like I might like it enough to be able to watch it despite the fact that Lady Gaga stars it. I don't know why. I have a real irrational dislike of her. I don't even know exactly what it is, but she just comes across like someone I would never want to spend time with. But anyway, I do like some of her songs. I don't know. Why am I fucking talking about Lady Gaga?

When I can be getting into some weird facts about the Cecil Hotel. Weird facts. Weird facts. Alright, weird fact number one, the Cecil Hotel opens and almost immediately becomes a slum. The Cecil Hotel opens in 1924 as a 700 room upper-class hotel in what was considered at the time a swanky section of downtown Los Angeles. And during this, you know, initial years, it enjoyed great success as a tourist destination as a residence for middle-class Angelinos, however, not very long after that, by the 1930s, early 1930s rapidly changed, and the

sea soul became known as a budget hotel for the traveling salesman and for transients. The sea soul was the end of the road for many of Skid Rose residents and consequently became the scene for a number of suicidesides prompting some residents to call the hotel the suicide instead of the Cecil. Number two, let's talk about these suicides. The first of many of them, it occurred in 1931 when a 46 year old Manhattan beach resident W. K. Norton intentionally overdosed on pills

right after checking into the hotel. Several more suicides would follow. And then later, after numerous suicides in 1962, an especially notable suicide happened, after arguing with her estranged husband, 27-year-old Pauline Ahten jumped from her ninth floor window before hitting the ground, she managed to land on 65-year-old George Gianni, who just happened to be walking by at the time,

both were killed instantly. Fuck! Man, that's what a bummer for that dude. What a bummer to be. I mean, you know, you don't want to die. I guess there's a variety of ways you don't want to die. But to die, it's fucking so mediate above, it's fucking kills themselves, and then their suicide kills you.

And as bad as I would feel for the family of Pauline in that case, always so needlessly tragic when someone takes her on life, I feel way worse for the family of George. Dude, just walking on the street, mind his own business, he's 65, you know, odds are statistically, he probably just retired. Just retired, he's gonna enjoy his golden years.

Let's pretend he has a decent pension even, you know. He's gonna, maybe he's just fucking about a boat. He's gonna do some shit with his boat. Just thinking about his boat and then this random lady fucking falls at him, just kills him. Or what if, what if he'd actually, what if he was out walking?

Cause he just had an argument with his own wife. And he did that, you know, she's been telling him for years, you know, that you know, he shouldn't just fly off the handle when they get a little argument, that he's just, you know, take a walk around the block, cool off, and come back and talk about it.

And now he does it. And he goes to walk around the block, and he's trying to cool off, and then he's killed by the side effect of an argument from another couple, fucking the irony, man. And for years, his family has to have the weirdest conversation every time someone asks how he died. Wait, no, wait, so your dad killed himself?

No, no, no, no. Pauline killed herself and killed my dad. Wait a minute. So she, some lady, she killed your dad and then she killed herself. No, no, no, no. She killed herself and then she killed my dad. She killed my dad by killing herself. What? No, she threw herself out of a building and onto my dad. What did your dad do to her? No, nothing. My dad was trying to get away from my mom and Pauline was trying to get away from her husband and then they both got away from everyone forever Murdered number three on the weird fact there are other murders as well such as the still-insolved murder of Goldie Osgood known as the pigeon woman Goldie was found in her room with a Cecil robbed, raped, and strangled, and stabbed. That's a lot of fucking R words and S words. She was robbed and raped, strangled,

and stabbed. On June 4th, 1964, a retired telephone operator, she was known to spend her days in nearby Pershing Square where she fed the pigeons. Next to her body, they found a paper bag filled with bird seats. Well, you know what? It sounds like a crime of rage. With Goldie, I'm guessing maybe she was killed by somebody who really fucking hated pigeons, like more than her. But then they saw her as the source of more pigeons. It saw her creating more of what they hated. And for that, apparently, she had to pay.

There was the Black Dahlia, number four connection. 1947, Black Dahlia murder of Elizabeth Short. It's also connected with the Cecil, rumors of the hotel being the last place that Elizabeth was seen alive. I believe some people have written in asking about that as a time suck. It's going to have to happen one of these days, Black Dahlia murder. Number five, serial killers. And you heard me right plural serial killers have called the Cecil their home

The the most notorious is the night stalker and I can't remember if anyone's written it about him or not I think so though Richard Ramirez man holy shit. I've heard of the night stalker, but this guy I thought I thought reading about Bundy was bad But I read a little bit about this son of a bitch. He's a fucking devil himself. From 9th and 84 to 9th and 95, the people of Los Angeles lived in fear of an active serial killer known as the Night Stalker. The Night Stalker was sought in connection to several home invasion robbery slash homicides occurring throughout the LA area, as well as a few in San Francisco.

It wasn't until his capture at 9th and 95 that the world learned the killer's name Richard Ramirez. During his killing spree, Ramirez took residence at the Cecil. When Night fell, Ramirez would exit the hotel in search of victims. And then he would return to the hotel, you know, later that night, covered in victims blood. He'd then go around back to an alley where he would shed his clothing, toss him in a dumpster, and then return to his room and his underwear. As a fuck up his hotel was at this time.

It wasn't even unusual for some dude to return to his room half naked and bloody. None of the residents of staff ever reported anything odd about this. And Ramirez is a monster yet truly worthy of his own time suck for sure. I'm not going to go into all his details now because again, it would be an hour of richer Ramirez stuff, but I do want to give a little info into how fucking evil this Cecil hotel resident was. You know, during those two years that he was active Ramirez burglarized homes all over LA, raped and tortured over 25 women and killed at least 14 people. And here's a couple examples of how terrifying this motherfucker was.

On the night of May 29, 1995, Ramirez drove a stolen Mercedes Benz to Minrovia stopped at the house of Mabel Ma Bel 83 and her sister Florence Nettie Lang Nettie Lang and Ma Bel Nettie Lang's 81 Oh my god, there's these two little old ladies I'm picturing out in Minrovia, which is a sleepy little suburb. God damn it. Find in a hammer in the kitchen. He bludgeoned and bound the invalid laying in her bedroom, then bound and bludgeoned Belle before using an electrical cord to electrically shock her. Then he rapes Lang. Then he uses Ma Belle's lipstick to draw a pentagram

on her thigh as well as one on the wall of both bedrooms. Discovered two days later, both women were found alive, but Comatose Belle later died of her injuries. The next day, he drives the same car to Burbank, syncing to the home of Carol Kyle, 42 at gunpoint. He bound Kyle and her 11 year old son with handcuffs, ransacked the house, then released his Kyle to direct him

to where the family's valuables are. And then after releasing the son, sodomizes the mom repeatedly. I'm sure these fucking kids heard it, if he didn't actually see himself, repeatedly ordered her not to look at him, telling her at one point he would cut her eyes out, fluid the scene after retrieving the child from the closet.

Okay, I guess he least fucking left the boy in a closet, Jesus Christ. And then he binds the two together again with handcuffs. Do terrified LA. And they're still uncovering more crimes he committed. By the way, in 2009, a DNA sample connected him with the April 10, 1994 rape and murder of a nine-year-old girl in San Francisco, that motherfucker.

Oh, Jesus Christ. He fast-ordered the nation during this trial with not only his crimes, but his open worship of Satan, shouting hail Satan during his trial, drawing a pentagram on his palm, he identified as a Satanist and had even taken a trip to San Francisco in 1983 to personally meet Anton Levey, founder of the Church of Satan in San Francisco. He learned various Satanic rituals

and undoubtedly performed many of those, probably often at the hotel Cecil. Now I don't believe in Satan personally, but that is some seriously creepy shit, and I wouldn't love him doing it at the hotel I was going to stay at. As much as I don't believe in hauntings and demons on a rational, logical level, they scare the fuck out of me still on some emotional level, and I would never choose to stay in a hotel where all that weird shit went down.

Now quick note on Satanism. I think there's a lot of misconception about Satanism. I know I've had a lot of misconceptions, I've had to point it out randomly actually. When I've done jokes, talking shit about Satanists and people are like, well, actually what they believe is, well, here's how it's defined at thechurchosatin.com. The church based on Levei's teaching. This is from their website.

Founded on April 30, 1966 by Anton Levei, we are the first above ground organization in history, openly dedicated to the acceptance of man's true nature, that of a carnal beast living in a cosmos that is indifferent to our existence. To us, Satan is the symbol that best suits the nature of we who are carnal by birth. People who feel no battles raging between our thoughts and feelings, we do not embrace the concept of a soul and present in a body. He represents pride, liberty, and individualism.

Qualities often defined as evil by those who worship external deities, who feel there is a war between their minds and emotions, as Anton Levei explained in his classic work, the Satanic Bible, man, using his brain, invented all the gods, doing so because many of our species cannot accept or control their personal egos. Feeling compelled to conjure up one or a multiplicity of characters who can act without hindrance or guilt upon whims and desires. All gods are thus externalized forms, magnified projections of the true nature of their creators, personifying aspects of the universe or personal temperaments which many of their followers find to be troubling. Worship in any God is thus worshiping by proxy those who invented that God.

Since the Satanist understands that all gods are fiction instead of bending on a knee in worship too or seeking friendship or unity with such mythical entities, he places himself at the center of his own subjective universe as his own highest value. We Satanists are thus our own quote gods. And as beneficient deities, we can offer love to those who deserve it and deliver our wrath within reasonable limits upon those who seek to cause us or that which we cherish harm. Ha! Ha! Well, apparently, I may be a Satanist. I don't know, a lot of this shit actually resonates with me. And apparently Ramirez ignored the within reasonable limits part of the Santanic philosophy on wrath.

Or maybe the old church Satan should modify their scripture a little bit. Maybe reasonable limits is a little too subjective. Sodomizing moms and bludgeoning and raping disabled 80 year old women might have been totally reasonable acts for that souless fuck from Mirras. All right, so he's one of the Cecil guests, all right? Live there for a couple years,

putting his evil into the walls. And then we also have serial killer Jack Anteveger. And Jack, he's Austrian serial killer, Johann, says his real name, Johann Unterveger. And he made the Cecilus home base while killing LA prostitutes in 1991 before being caught in 1992 and then killing himself in prison.

During Enterveger's time in Los Angeles, three prostitutes, Shannon Exley, Irene Rodriguez, and Sherry Ann Long were beaten sexually assaulted with tree branches, Jesus, and strangled with their own bras. Michael Fassbender is in talks to a playjack and entering Hades, a movie based on John Leakes true crime novel about Jack Huntervegger, who was, strangely, a celebrated Austrian journalist and bestselling author who had let a double life investigating murders by day and killing by night.

Kill 11 people across multiple contents. There's a whole time's talk about that as well. Because actually how I became a journalist, just getting sucked into him for a little bit, he killed somebody who was like 18 across, he was strangled, heard the bra, then was sentenced to life in prison. And then while he was in there, became like a playwright and kind of artist of some note to over in Austria, got a bunch of the kind of the artistic community on his side that he was, he was, you know, rehabilitated.

He was a model prisoner. Why should his life be wasted? You made one bad mistake. Blah, blah, blah. And they end up after his minimum 15 years of his life sentence to let him out. And then he becomes kind of, yeah, like this journalist, you know,

about, you know, criminals and about, you know, how this kind of model of how people can be rehabilitated and then starts investigating crime himself, while also almost immediately going back to killing prostitutes. That's why I think, man, when you do certain crimes, you're fucking done. You're strangled some prostitute with the bra, you don't get rehabilitated. You do get rehabilitated. You have a bullet rehabilitate your frontal cortex. That's what I think.

OK, so number six, we're still in the weird facts. The Cecil in 2013, while the Cecil has since changed his name to stay on Maine and close for renovations after being sold to New York real estate developer Richard Boren for 30 million who has designs on making the 600 room Cecil a more upscale joint catering to young professionals. The 2013 Cecil, at least a lamb state out, was still scary as fuck. A 2013 curved LA article said the longtime residents still called the Cecil home for about $470 a

month, which is like beyond cheap and alley. Like if you're reading that in I don't know like a Peoria or or you know some suburb Outside of Jacksonville, Florida where you're like four suburbs deep. You remember like, well, you know, whatever 400 70 months for one bedroom That's reason that's normal Not for LA not for LA in 2013 A steal of a deal for like a like a two-bedroom two bath in 2013. Now it would be like a you know a deal for like a two bed and two bath in 2013 that would be like a thousand or 1,200. For 70 a month it's like for the people who are just like,

this is the last step before homelessness. I'm not even fucking kidding. Tourists who like in the place still like kind of European hostels, they were paying $40 or $50 a night for a room that may have not even had its own bathroom. they may have to share it with other residents. The early times build it as they place where, quote, the hip and the nearly homeless meat. And it's located just a few blocks from the infamous downtrodden Skid Row area of Los

Angeles, which is, I didn't see in Skid Row the first couple years I lived in LA. And I finally went and checked it out and blew my fucking mind. It's a third world within a first world. It is a third world, like, ten city of junkies, untreated blatant mental illness, open drug use, hard drug use, out of this fucking street.

Violent offenders, it's a really good place to meet some really bad people, struggling with extreme poverty and a lot of other issues. And the Cecil was the kind of place, a level three sex offender would live, a sex offender like Alvin Taylor. The Cecil resident CNN interviewed

about water problems occurring at the Cecil following the discovery of Alisa's body in the water tank. The kind of guy who might, you know, sexually offend again, maybe a higher fucking body in the water tank. Boob so that was a Cecil. That's where Elisa went. And did someone murder her there? I think it's certainly a possibility.

But I don't think it's likely. The cause of death was listed as accidental drowning and there were no signs of sexual assault, despite Alvin and a bunch of other creepy piles of shit living at that fucking rat den. What I wonder is why would Alisa stay at the Cecil in the first place? Like I said earlier, like to me, it feels very intentional. I'll get into exactly why I think that in a bit. But for now, let me just say that she must have known something about the hotel's dark past. She was active on social media. I'm guessing she was good with Google. And these stories come in fast when you type in the name. Like, if you're looking to state the season,

when you type in the season, you know, maybe one website regarding roommates, room rates comes up. And then there's, for every nine hour close about just fucking horrid that has happened there over the years. And, yeah, it's not a secret. It's an notorious place, very infamous dark place. So why would a girl who days before had tweeted about having more disposable income now

than she'd ever had? A girl who, you know, is in to keep it up with expensive fashion trends. Why would she stay at a $4 a night hotel, blocks from arguably the worst neighborhood in all of LA, a city with a fair share of horrible neighborhoods? Well, whatever the reason on January 31, 2013, Alisa Lam disappears. Her social media posts have probably stopped.

Her daily correspondence with her parents inexplicably ceases. A search has organized her parents fly down from Vancouver to LA. The disappearance is widely reported in the news, and yet no evidence is found, and no one is sure of what had become of her. The police had the entire hotel search from top to bottom, including the roof dogs are

used to go through the roof and each floor no trail of lamas picked up, which all adds to her mystery. It was if Alisa Lam had just stepped off the face of the earth. The only clue anyone had to her disappearance initially was a very disturbing 4 minute YouTube video that went viral. This is a security camera footage from the elevator video. And let me describe to you this video as best I can without you actually watching it. Okay, so the video starts off, and again, this is just like a corner shot from an elevator.

It's like, like if you walked into an elevator and looked up into the right, that's where the camera angle is. That's where the camera is right there. So she walks in entering wearing a red zippered hooded sweatshirt over a gray t-shirt, black shorts and sandals. She's not wearing a bra or at least a bra was not found in the water tank later, along with her body and other clothes. And the shorts, by the way, were a man's shorts and one blogger pointed out, it sounds kind of like post-coital attire, right?

Like something you'd wear back to your hotel after a hook up. Because this is a girl, this is, you know, a girl on an adventure, 21 years old, and known for dressing very well. You know, is she wearing the shorts of a man she just leapt with, and then could he be connected to her death?

You know, maybe, maybe. Okay, but back to the video. She enters the elevator normally, she's alone, she does almost immediately, and there's no one else in the elevator, like the whole four minutes, you never see another human other than her. But she does something almost immediately

that's a very strange thing, once she gets inside. She lights up not just one floor, like you know, you would normally do in an elevator, you just want to go to you know what floor you're gonna go to You don't want to stop at every floor But she lights up like several buttons and what looks like a very deliberate sequence She starts with the top button on the left column and then she just pushes all these buttons on the way down in that column And then just backs up and waits for the door to shut but for some reason it doesn't And then the real creepiness starts you quickly pops out out, she looks side to side, then pops back in the

elevator. And maybe she's just checking to see if someone has pushed the hotel button outside, which would explain why the doors didn't shut. So that part, popping out would be normal. It's just her franticness, the way she does it. Her movements are not normal. They're a little odd. She goes back in the elevator, and then after a moment seems to hide near the buttons. So now she puts her back up into the corner. So if you were looking inside the elevator coming down the hall, you wouldn't see her now. She's hidden around the corner. If you walked in the elevator where she is, you'd have to break immediately to the left and hide yourself against that wall closest to the hallway.

where she is, you'd have to break immediately to the left and then kind of hide yourself against that wall closest to the hallway. And then now 50 seconds have passed since the door opened and the door still haven't started to close, which is odd. She pops back out again slowly, steps out and then still facing away from the elevator to her stepping out.

She does this weird little side-ship step, like this weird little shuffle to the side. And then she steps back into the elevator, then forward again, back into the hallway. Now, now over a minute has passed, the door still haven't tried to close. So now she sidesteps out of view of the elevator camera, still facing forward, away from the still open doors, 90 seconds after the first stepping moment she stepped into the elevator, and now agitated at least the steps back inside. And I be fucking agitated too. Sometimes I'm fucking agitated too. Sometimes I'm fucking wrong with this elevator.

She goes back to the buttons, she pushes all the ones on the left hand column again, and then she steps back out of the elevator and is now facing the open door. Two minutes have gone by. The door still not closed. Maybe one of the buttons she's pushing is keeping the door open. The video description doesn't say. And then things start to get super weird. Standing in the hall, Lisa starts making

very specific, repetitive, unnatural motions with her arms and hands. Honestly, she looks like she's a witch, trying to cast a spell. Very, very strange motions, just not normal motions, not normal body posture, kind of hunched over in an odd way, I don't know how to say it. And then she walks away.

And then three minutes after she stepped in the elevator, initially the doors finally, finally close. 15 seconds later, they open again. 10 seconds after that they close. 15 seconds later they open again. 10 seconds later they close. And then the video is over. And then she's never seen alive again.

So a few weeks after Lam's strange elevator antics and her disappearance, hotel residents began to complain of low water pressure and strange tasting discolored water. And then on February 19th 2013 a worker, a worker as I was sent, mentioned earlier Santiago sent to check the hotel's water tanks which lies suspended 10 feet over a heavily secured area with alarm systems in place. When one of the water tanks is opened, inside was found the water log corpse of Elisa Lamb.

Found over two and a half weeks after she mysteriously disappeared, she was completely new, covered in sand like substance, which is never explained, with her clothes and belongings bobbing about in the murky water beside her. It was later determined that she'd been floating about and decomposing in the fetid tank. Now, there are three main theories about her death. Like, how did she end up in that tank? Three main kind of groups of theories. The first one is that, you know, somebody killed her.

You know, but who? Who killed her? Some on the web speculate a hotel employee. Because they also speculate like the tape was edited. A lot of people think this tape looks like there's some weird cuts. I don't notice it. Maybe I'm just not looking hard enough. I didn't watch it several times.

But there's speculation that the tape was edited to make it look like she was alone. But maybe there was somebody else there with her. And also maybe this somebody worked at the hotel, and that explained how she got up on the roof because there is, there's four ways to access that roof. One of the ways is you can just go through a door. There's a door, but the door sets off an alarm unless you have, you know, work at the hotel

and can deactivate the alarm. And the alarm never went off. And then the three other ways are these fire escape stairways that lead to a climbing, this little metal ladder that you have to climb to get up there. Now, she could have climbed what one of these fire escape stairways alone, but even as she did, the tank was in a difficult spot to reach and there was no ladder to see, meaning that this little five and a half, you know, five, foot, five inch woman, 120 pounds would have had to kind of do a gruelingly hauled herself up to the tank.

Then undress, lift up a heavy latch, and then plunge herself in along with her stuff. It wouldn't be easy, but it could be done, but it wouldn't be easy. And again, there seems to be this time jump in the video that a lot of people talk to about this. And if the video is altered, who altered it, why, why did they do it? I don't think it was. And if it was, I think it was a harmless editing. Because I think the LAPD, if it was edited in some of the faries way,

obviously they would have realized that. And I think the investigation quickly would have turned from missing persons investigation into a murder investigation. All right, so it wasn't like a hotel employee, was she killed by some man or maybe men that she had just met in LA, possibly evermantically? Supposedly, there's another piece of hotel video surveillance footage from the lobby that was not released to the public

earlier that day that shows Lam entering the building with two men under what the web describes as mysterious circumstances. One police detective on the case described the footage thus quote, we did see her coming with two gentlemen. She had they had a box gave it to her. She went up to the elevator.

We never saw them again on video. All right, well why wasn't that video released? I guess to protect the identity of people who never ended up being suspects maybe, you know, what was in the box? What were they given her? Why are two men given her a box and a hotel lobby? So now this led to the idea that perhaps these men had to do with, you know, was in the box? What were they given her why are two men given her a box and a hotel lobby? So now this led to the idea that perhaps these men had something to do with you know lamb's demise

But again, there's no hard evidence to that effect and the footage remains merely kind of just an odd curiosity You know and if you know and if it really was that suspicious why weren't they charged why wasn't her death ruled a homicide now Another group of people that the some people in the web think may have killed Lisa Lamb is Yolumnaadi. Of course, of course, they're blamed. Most of these rumors about the Luminati point to some tweet of hers about an invisibility cloak being developed by Canada as reported by the Canadian edition of the Huffington Post,

their business edition. I read the article, I followed her tweet. The article states that the United States military is reportedly backing a Canadian company's development of material that can render soldiers invisible. Maple-based British Columbia based, or Maple Ridge, excuse me, British Columbia based, hyper-stealth biotechnology, as a fucking ghoul-sounding company, has developed, quote, quantum stealth, a type of camouflage that bends light around the wearer or an object to create the illusion of invisibility.

And some conspiracy theorists think she knew something about this cloak, and then the Illuminati had her killed. That is the dumbest shit ever. All right, she didn't fucking know anything other than what I just read. She tweeted a link to an article that was not a secret. It was an article written in a widely distributed publicized magazine that everyone has access to. That's not fucking knowing too much.

That's knowing just enough. That's knowing what someone has chosen to let you know in public domain. You know, maybe she just thought, I don't know, that invisibility cloak is super fucking cool. Like any other rational person would think. Ah, I wonder if they made that actually. That was a couple of years ago. One of these fucking visibility, now the illuminati got their invisibility cloaks. That's what's happened now.

Now the fucking lizards don't have to shape, they don't have to shape shape anymore, they can just put on their Canadian cloaks. Okay, continuing with the murders, there's also speculation that a serial killer got her because a year after, at least it disappeared in February 2014 in aspiring young Mexican actress, psychology graduate Carmen Yaera, Norega Esparazza, 27 disappears in Mexico City. A year later, her badly decomposed remains are discovered in a rooftop water tank.

And the neighborhood she lived in after residents complained of bad tasting water. All right, same kind of shit. As with Alisa, no one has been arrested in connection with her death, but the preliminary cause of death is that she was choked. lived in after residents complained of bad tasting water. Same kind of shit, is with Lisa. No one has been arrested in connection with her death, but the preliminary cause of death is that she was choked. So did whoever choked Carmen and put her in a water tank,

also, kill Lisa. Are there other bodies floating out there in water tanks right now waiting to be discovered? And also, even though Lisa's death was ruled in action in old drowning, at least one corner disagrees, or at least he leaves the door open to murder. Dr. John Hissarot, a former deputy corner and Pittsburgh,

who has conducted thousands of autopsy, reviewed Lam's autopsy and said this case was unusual. Based on the autopsy report alone, Hissarot said it was possible, Lam could have been suffocated by someone, who then threw her body into the tank. That's why I say the better manner of death in this case is undetermined, as it quote from him. So, you know, it could be, you know, suffocation very close to strangulation, both in water tanks,

about a year apart, you know, Mexico City, not really all that far from LA. I don't know, so maybe Syraciller Supernatural forces is another possibility to discuss it. Length, especially on the web. Again, of course, of course it's discussed at length on the web. The web fucking loves, is that finding out with this podcast, conspiracy theories and paranormal activity. Fucking loves it. And a lot of people think Elisa was either possessed by some evil supernatural force living

in the hotel or trying to escape. I'm sure American Horror Story, that show getting going didn't help this line of thought. And there is the Cecil Hotel has that dark ominous history with so much death and pain. All that happened in one, you know, building Is there something in the building itself now that is causing all of this? I guess that chicken in the egg thing did a lot of bad shit just Happened in the I guess it's not the chicken in the egg never mind It's just I guess it's just a coincidence that a lot of that should happen in the Cecil or is the Cecil somehow causing this bad shit to happen You know and people kind of who go along with this line of thought, a lot of them claim

to see a mysterious gray shadowy presence in the elevator with Alisa. I don't see it. I watch it several times. I don't see anything. Maybe my eyes are going. Maybe I'm a member of the Illuminati and just don't even fucking know it. And I just automatically, you know, try to squash the truth. Maybe I'm not seeing it, you know, because I don't want to. I just, I don't believe enough. I don't know. I always used to hear the argument about ghosts.

Well, you know, only people who believe in them can see him. Well, then that's not fucking true. That's nonsense. Why would they be that fragile? All right. Another, okay, another theory. Here's the other big, so there's the murders I've discussed.

There's the supernatural forces possibility and then the third major kind of area of, I would say, oh, people who assumptions about why she died or whatever, the third most common cause of death attributed to her death is mental illness, actually. I think it's a more plausible theory that she had some kind of psychotic break and put herself in that water tank. It would be difficult, certainly unusual, but far from impossible for her to give in that

tank alone. What I haven't mentioned yet is that at least it did suffer from mental illness. She was bipolar. She had a long history of suffering from the bipolar disorder. It suffered psychotic breaks in the past. Remember, this is a girl posting about not being able to get out of bed for two days because she hated herself so much. Maybe adventurous was the wrong word to describe why she removed herself from college,

decided to travel alone and stayed those city hotels. Maybe she did because she was mentally ill. You know, again, the history of bipolar disorder is mentioned with her. It's mentioned in the autopsy report. The opinion of the report reads as follows, quote, the decedent, which is a fancy autopsy word I just learned used to refer to a person who was just died. I don't know why I say just, he could have been died a long time ago. Died as a result of accidental drowning. A complete autopsy examination showed no evidence of trauma in toxicology studies

did not show acute drug or alcohol intoxication. Decedent had a history of bipolar disorder for which he was prescribed medication. Toxicology studies were performed for the presence of these drugs. However, quantitation in the blood was not performed due to the limited sample availability. Therefore, interpretation is limited.

A police investigation did not so evidence of foul play. I think I wrote so, but it's show. It did not show evidence of foul play. A think I wrote so, but it's show. It did not show evidence of foul play. A full review of the circumstances of the case and appropriate consultation do not support intent to harm oneself. The manner of death has classified an accident. All right, so did you catch that part

of not being able to tell for prescription drugs were under system? Basically, due to decomposition, I'm guessing, and how long her body was submerged in water, they don't know they weren't able to run the proper tests to find out if she was taking the proper meds. And if she wasn't taking them, you know, she was alone after all, she was unsupervised, making the strange choice to go to the seashell in the first fucking place, she could have

entered a manic state. A manic state causes people to do crazy shit. According to a first-hand account of someone obsessed with a case on Reddit who also claims to take medication for a bipolar disorder himself, quote, the first primary observable suggestion that Elisa was suffering from a manic episode is the psychomotor agitation she displays in the video, especially with her hands. Psychomotor agitation is defined as, quote, a series of unintentional and purpulist motions that stem from mental intention and anxiety of an individual. This includes pacing around a room, ringing one hand's uncontrolled tongue movement and

other similar actions. Psychomotor agitation is a symptom of a manic state. Now, I've seen a lot of people making similar moves to what Alisa made in that elevator when I lived in LA saw a lot of manic episodes. There was a Starbucks near my apartment last couple years I lived there that it felt like it was built on some kind of fucking

crazy magnet. I have never seen so many severely, mentally ill people congregate in a private business in my entire life before or since. I mean, it was unbelievable. It was unbelievable. I remember every time I ever went there, something insane happened.

Like something literally insane. Like one of the times I thought it was really funny that stood out as I'm sitting there having coffee. And this guy just comes in wearing like, I like he was going to war something, it's crazy military fatigues, but I got the feeling he was never actually in the military. Maybe someone in his delusion,

he was some kind of military hero, and he came in just fucking screaming at everybody, making a crazy ruckus. The whole place is very anxious, he's screaming a lot of violent stuff. And then he walks over, and I love how how I've always noticed this about some people who are really insane, seemingly insane in public, that they'll be like crazy crazy crazy crazy and then suddenly just like pull their shit together and act totally normal for like 10

seconds to do something and then go back to crazy crazy. He comes in, comes in real hot, comes in real hot, yelling all the stuff and then calms down as he gets near the beverage counter, looks over the drinks, takes the one he wants, just grabs some dudes coffee, and then goes back to scream me and then just walks out with a free coffee. So I saw that there. One time I went there, and I was, because it was the closest Starbucks to me, I was, every time I'd go there, I would just think, I should never fucking go back there. Why did I come again?

And then a few weeks later, I'm like, well, it's close and I would go again and just hope against all experience that there would not be somebody completely out of their mind there this time. And I remember one time I was like, fuck it. I got to get two hours of stuff done. I don't want to go to another cov shot. I'm just going to get it done here. And a dude sat so close to me at the stool. Like he was his face could have not have been more than one foot from my face. That's like, like a ruler length away from my face. Very close.

I'm looking straight ahead of my computer. He's looking, trying to like, he's like looking into the center of my brain. He's trying to see what's going on inside my brain. And 45 minutes, he does not stop staring at me. And I just chose to use it as like a weird mental test. I'm like, I wonder if I can just for fuck. How long can I fucking just stare at my screen with a strange human, boring into my brain

a foot away. And it turns out I can do it for at least 45 minutes. Yeah. And then there was this one guy, though, that made me why I got on this whole tangent, that maybe think of the Alisa and the elevator thing. There was this dude, like this balding kind of older white dude with like, he always had a dirt on his face.

I mean, he looked like somebody who just, again, just obviously mentally ill. And he was always pacing around the street around that Starbucks. And he was always doing shit with his hands And he was and he was always caught in these loops He was repeating motions and stuff and he was very fucking manic He was really going hit a lot of shit to do. He looked at you. He like he had a lot of appointments to get to

a lot of a lot of business state care of and then he was doing all that and I think This I bring this whole thing up because with Alisa, I think if Alisa would have looked like that dude, if everything with her disappearance remains the same except for who the victim is, just by appearance, by physical appearance, if the person was like wearing raggedy clothes and normally wore raggedy clothes and had dirt on their face and just looked mentally ill, no one would ever suspect murder or supernatural forces.

Because there is no evidence of that. The police found no evidence. There's no circumstantial evidence of any kind of murder. I think people suspect those things with Lisa Lam because she didn't look like that dude. She was pretty, she was well dressed, she was witty, she looked like she had her shit together. Except on a chemical level, she had a very similar brain to that guy. One capable of turning her into a version of that guy, if she stopped taking her meds. And this mental illness angle led me to my opinion of what I think happened. So here's what I think happened to Elisellem. According to WebMD, the symptoms of a manic episode can include, among other things,

grandiose beliefs and poor judgment. I think those two symptoms combined to contribute strongly to her death. I think they both relate to two movies I strongly suspect she was very familiar with. The first film is a 2002 horror movie called Dark Water. Now this is a Japanese horror movie, the main character, Yushimi, is living in a horrible rundown apartment and there's something wrong with the water in her building.

There's this leak in the ceiling, it's getting worse by day. There's this apparition of a young girl that keeps showing up, a ghost that likes to play this kind of hide and seek game, kind of like how Lisa played it in the elevator. You know, popping out from around corners, popping back in, weird motions.

The spirit of this young girl eventually leads to a she-me to the building's roof. Mm-hmm. And then to the building's water tank. She realizes the young spirit was a girl named Mitsuku, who had gone up to the tank and then accidentally fallen into the water. And she's been haunting the building ever since. And then this spirit tries to kill Yoshimi.

And why other than the tank and the CD accommodations, so I think that A, Alisa saw this movie and B, it had something to do with her death, well, it's because of the sequence of buttons she pushes in the elevator. She lights up all the buttons to the left in a very kind of specific way. Well, there are numerous scenes in 2002's Darkwater involving Yoshimi having problems with an elevator and in one of these scenes she lights up multiple lights all on the left. You know, it's very similar button configuration in the Darkwater elevator than into the Cecil's elevator. But that's not the only coincidence. There's a second movie and the second movie is the So that's not the only coincidence. There's a second movie.

And the second movie is the 2005 dark water remake. Now in the 2005 American remake of Dark Water, starring Jennifer Connelly, in the role of the Yushimi character, the character's name is Dahlia. How many women are named Dahlia? How many grown women in 2005, according to BabiesCenter.com, about 10 per million. And even that sounds fucking high to me.

I've met a lot of people torn around to withstand it for years. I have yet to meet a single dollia. Dollia to me is clearly a reference to Black dollia. And I say that because dollia's daughter, Jennifer Connelly's daughter, in the movie is named Ceci. Ceci, Ceci is in Cecil, right? The Cecil hotel rumored to be the last place

to Black dollia unsolved murder victim was last seen alive. Now, I'm not the first person or 100th person to make this connection between dark water and the death of the Lisa Lam. This is out there already. This is a fairly common conspiracy. I found this connection online in multiple blogs and videos,

or I say, kind of a conspiracy coincidence. However, in the blogs and videos I find, they either talk about what a weird coincidence is, or there's part of some satanic or illuminati conspiracy, or that the movie is somehow foreshadowed, or predicted supernaturally, at least the lam's death. Cause her to die in a way. I don't think that's it. I don't think that's it. I think we have a young woman on some sort of spiritual quest, a young woman prone to depression, a person really into film and TV. As most youth are, I would bet my life that she has seen both of those dark water movies.

She stopped taking her medication. I'm guessing I've no total proof of that. But I'm thinking she stopped taking her medication. She's entered into a manic state, you know, outside the hotel. Katie Orphan, manager of a nearby bookstore, was the only person who recalled seeing lamb earlier that day. The day she disappeared and said, quote, she was outgoing very lively, very friendly.

She went and bought some gifts, take home with her family, Orphan told CNN, very lively and very friendly. She's fucking manic, and she's staying in a hotel. She's sought out specifically because of those movies. And then she starts feeling haunted by the hotel, just like the movie, she's working herself up. All right, and she is acting weird before the elevator. Originally, she was staying in a hostile type room with a few other guests,

but then she was moved by the hotel to her own room when her roommates complained of certain odd behavior. How odd did this girl have to misbehave for roommates to complain about her behavior at a fucking dive as dumpy as the Cecil? I don't know. I think she thought she was seeing things. Maybe she thought she was seeing the ghost of a little girl trapped in a hotel water tower,

just like the two fucking movies. The two fucking movies she saw and then came to the Cecil because of. I'm very convinced of that, in my mind. Maybe her mental illness is manifesting delusions of grandeur in the form of uncovering some porn paranormal entity. You know, or maybe she just really is, feels like she's trapped in a horror movie.

You know, her mind almost forgets that it was just a movie, you know, because she is mentally ill, she was on an adventure, you know, what's more adventurous than finding a ghost? And if she's truly having some type of psychotic break, how real would this ghost have been to her, you know? Real enough to climb inside the water tank to look for it, real enough to keep treading water until it appeared? I don't think she tried to kill herself.

Nothing I can find about her reads of a potential suicide. If she wanted to kill herself, there would have been a lot easier ways to do it, you know, the seasonal and the seasonal history of suicide. If she came to the seasonal, because of its history of suicide, it was called the suicide, you know, it didn't involve, it wouldn't involve a complicated drowning. It would involve throwing yourself out of a fucking window and hoping to hit a pedestrian below. Now, the elevator ritual combined with ending up

in the water tower combined with dark waters, clear illusions to the Cecil hotel, I think at least a new what she was doing. On, well, you know what I mean? As far as new what she was doing, as far as following this kind of movie patterns. I don't think she totally knew what she was doing because I think she was literally out of her fucking mind at the time of this death. Now, but why did she strip down once she got inside the water tank?

That, I don't fucking know. That has nothing to do with the movie. It would have been great if in 2005 Jennifer Connelly got negative for dark water. I was like Jennifer Connelly's physical, physical prime. And I think she's one of the most attractive actresses of all time, but I think it was pure mental illness that had at least to make the nudity decision. I don't know, so personally, here's what I think about all of this. I think losing your mind to a degree, you think you're seeing ghosts is scarier than actually

seeing ghosts. If that's what actually happened, I would be terrified to see a ghost. And I've always thought this since I was a little kid, not because I would think the ghosts were real. I still wouldn't think they're real, but even if I saw one, if I saw one, clear as day, I wouldn't think it was real. Unless I saw somebody else, that would be scary, but I'm talking about by yourself.

You know, I wouldn't want to see a ghost by myself because I would be convinced that I just got fucking insane. And I no longer had control of my reality anymore. I'd be scared that, you know, other horrible visions are gonna follow me for the rest of my life anymore. I'd be scared that other horrible visions are gonna follow me for the rest of my life. Like how scary is that to not be able to trust your own thoughts?

That's terrifying to me. Like I am much more scared of my mind deteriorating than I am of a paranormal entity. You know, you can move away from a haunting, you can exercise a demon or a spirit, but sometimes with a mind slips, never stop slipping. So maybe the real Alisa, not the version of herself, the people love that she referenced on our blog

that she made a point to highlight, maybe the real Alisa was struggling with some serious dark thoughts, struggling with some thoughts she didn't understand, struggling with maintaining a grip on actual reality that no one around her realized. Maybe her death is an example of how severe mental illness can strike anyone.

It's not just for some middle-aged dude zipping up and down the fucking sidewalk on Santa Monica Boulevard, to realize, maybe her death is an example of how severe mental illness can strike anyone. It's not just for some middle-aged dudes zipping up and down the fucking sidewalk on Santa Monica Boulevard, looking like he's going to the craziest meeting of all time, face covered in dirt, looking like an extra, and the hills have eyes. Cartoonersley and Sane, it can be the cute little Asian girl,

the little college dude with the perfect fashion and the clever posts. And we should take it seriously when we see signs of mental illness to anyone, because it can truly strike anyone. This episode was kind of a reminder of that for me. Or maybe I'm reading all the shit into this situation. And some dude she met on Tinder had a late night booty call, you know, slash fucking

water tower skinny dip session with her. She accidentally drowns, he freaks out and he takes the fuck off. Maybe fucking into water tower was on her bucket list. I don't know, I don't know her. None of us do. Maybe that's the real version of herself. She was hiding all those years, you know? I wasn't there, but that's my take on it. You've heard it. I've added now to the Alisa Lam murder mystery. And now these are my top five takeaways. Time, suck, tough, five takeaways. Number one, if you're a small woman and wants to travel around the country or world alone,

stay in nice fucking hotels with security guards instead of living sex offenders or stay home. Creeps don't care about your pro feminists and dependent views. Creeps just wanna be creeps. So be smart. Number two, I don't think Richard Ramirez, aka the night stocker, understood modern Satanism.

I think he just wanted to impress the Christian devil and press his version of Satan, and if hell is somehow real, I have no doubt he's complaining about the heat to his old buddy Lucifer right now. Number three, I still don't believe in ghosts, but when the Cecil reopens as stay on main, I'm gonna stay the fuck out, right?

Cause that place puts the creep in creepy. Number four, as it turns out, mental illness can strike anyone not just unattractive people who naturally look a little crazy anyway, which makes life feel a little more fair, actually. You know, it just wouldn't be right to only have ugly people, also be mentally unstable.

They already have it hard enough. Studies prove people are kinder to someone with a pretty pretty face. Number 5. If you're going to throw yourself out of a window at least have the decency to look below and make sure you're not going to fucking land on anyone and curse their family with a legacy of awkward conversations. How did your dad die again? He was murdered by a suicide. He killed himself. No, someone killed herself. They killed him. What? Never mind. Time, suck. Top five takeaways. Well, there it is. There it is. The Elise Lam murder mystery in the books. So I'm not

sure I'm going to let Kyle listen to it, but I feel like my son picked a good time suck. Now I guess I'll have to see what my daughter chooses. I'm sure it'll be interesting. Sure, Mama will pick something interesting. The topics you guys sending are so good, anything she picks will be great. Next week's topic is already picked out, but I'm not gonna tell you what it is.

Now what I am gonna tell you is there's gonna be a special episode. I don't have, I'm not gonna have guests on my podcast very often. I prefer to fly solo for this podcast, but gonna make gonna make an exception next Monday, the hosts of a podcast I like called Crime and Sports are gonna be a long for the time suck journey. And I picked a topic I know they're gonna enjoy that they're gonna just fucking kill. I also, and we're doing some stand-up shows and Tempe at the improv this Thursday and Friday with those co-hosts of Crime and Sports, Jimmy Wiseman and James Petrugalo. And I got Cleveland coming up next weekend, East to Weekend, I'll be Hilarities, Sam

Fran coming up along with Atlanta this summer, Omaha, many, many more cities. Go to Timesuckpodcast.com, click on Stand-Up Tour and more, also go to Timesuckpodcast.com to see picks and links corresponding to today's show. If you heard me hesitate earlier, it's because I was just debating whether or not to sing, oh my, ha, somewhere in middle America, getting right to the heart of matters. It's the heart that matters more. Counting crows, guys. A lot of people don't like them, but you know what? Fuck it. I do like them. Like counting crows, the risk of losing half my podcast audience. I like John Mayer sometimes. I do. I like his guitar licks and I think he has a soothing voice. All right, I said it. I said it. I lost your respect.

But it's the truth. And anyway, go to Timesackpodcast.com for everything I just said. And while you're there, donate to the show if you feel so inclined. You can click on that little Amazon button if you want to help the show why you shop. And you can click the shop button to get that first edition Timesack teacher made out of 400% wild possum scrotum. Have a great week. Keep on sucking. second.