The Misery Machine - The Mysterious Death of Elisa Lam | The Cecil Hotel Controversies | The Real Dark Water

Episode Date: June 22, 2020

This week, Drewby and Yergy discuss the tragic death of Elisa Lam, a Canadian student at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, and the mysterious circumstances surrounding her death. The body of Elisa Lam was recovered from a water tank atop the Cecil Hotel in Downtown Los Angeles on February 19, 2013. She had been reported missing at the beginning of the month. A maintenance worker at the hotel discovered the body when investigating guest complaints of problems with the water supply. The person who found her soon left the country due to mysterious circumstances. Her disappearance had been widely reported; interest had increased five days prior to her body's discovery when the Los Angeles Police Department released video of the last time she was known to have been seen, on the day of her disappearance, by an elevator security camera. In the footage, Lam is seen exiting and re-entering the elevator, talking and gesturing in the hallway outside, and sometimes seeming to hide within the elevator, which itself appears to be malfunctioning. The video went viral on the Internet, with many viewers reporting that they found it unsettling. Explanations ranged from claims of paranormal involvement to bipolar disorder, from which Lam suffered; it has also been argued that the video was altered prior to release. The circumstances of Lam's death, once she was found, also raised questions, especially in light of the Cecil's history in relation to other notable deaths and murders. Her body was naked with most of her clothes and personal effects floating in the water near her. It took the Los Angeles County Coroner's office four months, after repeated delays, to release the autopsy report, which reports no evidence of physical trauma and states that the manner of death was accidental. Guests at the Cecil, now re-branded as Stay on Main, sued the hotel over the incident, and Lam's parents filed a separate suit later that year; the latter was dismissed in 2015. Some of the early Internet interest noted what were considered to be unusual similarities between Lam's death and the 2005 horror film Dark Water. The case has since been referenced in international popular culture. LordanARTS BrainScratch YouTube Page: https://www.youtube.com/user/GeekenDorx Twist YouTube Conspiracy Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ckLZsNdkRY&t Elevator Footage: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZJCADL83X0 Join Our Facebook Group to Request a Topic: https://t.co/DeSZIIMgXs?amp=1 Support Our Patreon For More Unreleased Content: https://www.patreon.com/themiserymachine PayPal: https://www.paypal.me/themiserymachine Instagram: miserymachinepodcast Twitter: misery_podcast #podcast #documentary #truecrime

I'm Yergy and I'm Drewby And this week we did another mystery Much to Yergy's dismay Yergy doesn't like mystery She gets frustrated But I really liked this one I don't mind them It's just setting boundaries in your head

Beforehand that you're not going to Reach an end to the case so to speak I know some people love that I get all Pepe Silva Pepe Sylvia This is the Elisa Lam case And there's a lot to this case but we're hopefully going to get most of the basic knowledge.

We're probably not going to go down any rabbit holes of any specific conspiracy theories. There's plenty of podcasts and YouTube channels that are doing that already. I left a link in the description of a specific YouTube channel that did all the really weird coincidences that don't really add up that are crazy with this case. But we're not going to go into that. Yeah, we should say ahead of time. If you're here for the paranormal stuff, we're leaving that out because this would have turned into probably a two-hour. episode. Yeah, we're just stating the facts with this one. Yeah. So if you're listening on YouTube, please hit like and subscribe. We're almost at 500 subscribers. This is going up really fast. I can't

believe it. So thank you to everyone that's helped. Hitting like and subscribe goes a long way. Same thing with hitting the bell notification. That all helps the YouTube algorithm and really helps us. So if you want to see us go further, that little bit very much helps. We have new patrons. Yes, we have new patrons. So over the past two weeks, we got some new patrons. I'm really excited about that. So thank you again to Karen, who joined us the week before. And this week we have Ashley and we have Voo. And I actually have to say sorry to poor Voo. She gave us a really cool case that I wanted to do. I got all the notes ready for it, got all the artwork done for YouTube. And then last podcast on the left went and dropped a multi-part episode specifically on lobotomies. Voo went and suggested

Walter Freeman, who was the doctor that basically went around America, lobotomizing everybody and teaching different institutions to do that in the early 1900s-ish. Yeah, when we saw that they dropped it, we couldn't even continue with the episode. There was been no way within the first like 30 minutes of their episode. I'm like, we can't keep up with this. And even when we beat another podcast or other big YouTube channel to the punch, like we did three X murders before Lazy Masquerade. I didn't know about Lazy Masquerade, but when Lazy Mascarade did it, even though they only did a five-minute segment or so on it, we had a bunch of people coming and tear us up. But anyways, what we- It's nice to get views, but sometimes it's not positive. Right. We want listeners, not just people clicking and then clicking out, you know what I mean? But we'll probably do that eventually, but I just want to give it some space. I mean, if last podcast did this much work, have it. I don't want to look like we're like chasing their tail or anything like that. Yeah, just trying to get sympathy views. Yeah, we don't. Definitely weren't, and I should correct. He wasn't running around the early 1900s. It was more mid-1900s.

Yeah. Look at this. We're not even prepared. But anyway, all right. So with that out of the way, this is the Elisa Lam case. Elisa Lam, also known by her Cantonese name, Lam Ho Yee, was a Canadian student at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. Her body was recovered from a water tank atop the Cecil Hotel in downtown Los Angeles on February 19, 2013. She had been reported missing at the beginning of the month. Maintenance workers at the hotel discovered the body when investigating guest complaints of problems with the water supply. Her disappearance had been widely reported. Interest had increased five days prior to her body's discovery when the Los Angeles Police Department released a video of the last time she was known to have been seen on the day of her disappearance by an elevator security camera. In the footage, Lamb is seen exiting and re-entering the elevator, talking and gesturing in the heart. hallway outside and sometimes seeming to hide within the elevator, which itself appears to be

malfunctioning. The video went viral on the internet, with many viewers reporting that they found it unsettling. Explanations range from claims of paranormal involvement to bipolar disorder from which Lamb suffered. And it had also been argued that the video was altered prior to the release. The circumstances of Lamb's death once she was found also raised questions, especially in light of the Cecil's history in relation to other notable deaths and murders. Her body was naked with most of her clothes and personal effects floating in the water near her. It took the Los Angeles County Coroner's office four months after repeated delays to release the autopsy report, which reports no evidence of physical trauma and states that the manner of death was accidental. Guests at the Cecil now

rebranded as Stay on Maine sued the hotel over the incident and Lamb's parents filed a separate suit later that year. The latter was dismissed in 2015. Some of the early internet interest noted what were considered to be unusual similarities between Lamb's death and the 2005 horror film Dark Water. So it should be noted, we're not going to go through everything, but Richard Ramirez lived here for a period of time. So did Jack Unterveger. There was also several suicides there, most of them by jumping off the top of the building, though there were some where it wasn't clear if it was suicide or not. It's an infamous hotel.

It's on Skid Row. A lot of the rooms there are tenement housing. Is it on Skid Row or is it like... It was basically it borders Skidwreck. Yeah, I didn't think it was exactly on, but it's close enough that you could get there with an easy walk, from what I understand. It was one of the last known place is Elizabeth Short, also known as the Black Dahlia was seen alive, having a drink at the bar.

Yeah, though that's been disputed, but yes, that is tied to the Black Dahlia murder case. So Lam was a college student and she wasn't registered the beginning of 2013. I think she wanted to take a semester off and travel a little bit. She went to California, which I believe was her first time in the U.S., and she went by herself, and she had several places that she wanted to see. And this is where she stayed because it's cheap. There's hostel rooms and things like that, and hostels are pretty cheap to stay in. And I believe she was looking to go to Santa Cruz after this.

However, she never completed her stay. For her trip to California, she traveled alone on Amtrak and inner city buses. She visited the San Diego Zoo and posted photos taken there on social media. On January 26, she arrived in Los Angeles, and after two days, she checked into the Cecil Hotel. Lamb was initially assigned a share room on the hotel's fifth floor. However, her roommates complained about what the hotel's lawyer would later describe as, quote, certain odd behavior. And she was moved to a room of her own after two days.

I want to say this now before I forget, these people that said she was acting odd, they have never been identified. They've never been interviewed or interrogated. Nobody knows if they exist. And ever since this has happened, people have been trying to find out who these people were and hope they come forward and give some information on this because this can't really be verified. This is just what the hotel claims.

Nobody testified in court over that. So some of the information that I heard in some videos that I watched on YouTube stated that she was acting oddly. I believe it was the day before the day of her death at a bookstore. She ended up buying all these books that were way too heavy for her to carry back and then approached a complete stranger to talk about a bunch of albums that she had and asked what his album preferences were. So it just seemed kind of out of the way that someone would be so forthcoming. And I wouldn't say pushy, but just very open and willing to share things. Yeah, at first... Open and bold with a complete stranger.

Yeah, at first the man interviewed said that he found her charming and pleasant, but then realized just with how open she was, it was kind of off-putting. And should be noted that Elisa Lam had bipolar disorder, and that's not an uncommon thing that you see with bipolar disorder, especially if it's untreated. But we'll get to more of that later. We'll get to her treatment later. But yeah, I would have to assume that if she's acting oddly,

and these people at the hotel did exist. I'm sure it was something probably of that nature. If she was on some sort of high. Yeah, if she was manic, that she'd be probably overstepping her boundaries, is what I would say. I'd say that's probably accurate. So built as a business hotel in the 1920s, the Cecil fell in hard times during the Great Depression of the 1930s and never recaptured its original market as downtown decayed around it in the late 20th century. Several of Los Angeles's more notable murders have happened at or have connections to the hotel. So in 1964, Goldie Oskud, the Pigeon Lady of Pershing Square, was raped and murdered in her room at the Cecil, which was a crime that's never been solved.

After recent renovations, it has tried to market itself as a boutique hotel, but the reputation still lingers. Lamb had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder and depression. She had been prescribed for medications, Welbutrin, Lamictal, Syracille, and Affector. This isn't uncommon for somebody with bipolar. usually what happens you'll get an antidepressant and you'll also get a mood stabilizer to go with it, which is why you might hear people who are just being treated with an antidepressant tend to still suffer a lot of issues with bipolar disorder. It's because the presence of a mood stabilizer is very crucial for most people with bipolar disorder,

especially those with rapid cycling bipolar disorder. Again, I'm not a psychiatrist or a psychologist. This is just what I know from studying this in college. So just tape out of a grain of salt. So she was on four different medications. According to her family, who supposedly kept her history of mental illness a secret, Lamb had no history of suicidal ideations or attempts, although one report claimed she had previously gone missing for a brief period,

and I tried to look into what that meant, and I couldn't find much about it. You also get pretty fucking high off Syracquil or so, I'm told. I don't know. Well, Butchen, I think, is a terrible drug. A lot of people have a lot of success with it for me. It felt like it killed my soul. It's the best thing I can say. When I was on Wellbutrin, it turned me into a zombie.

After stopping it, I felt that way for a while, months. Yeah, and then we had the situation of, I mean, I've been off of it for about three years now. And it's gotten better. I'd say it's gotten considerably better over the past year. But I'd have moments where my brain would just sort of, I don't know really how to explain it, but short circuit or blank out. Or I'd just kind of lose time for a moment and just didn't know where I, was or couldn't really communicate what I was trying to get across. It's very strange.

You know, it's kind of funny that after I had stopped well, Butrin, I started exhibiting symptoms of Lyme disease not that long afterwards, which I mean I did test positive for, but it's just funny, the brain fog is very common Lyme disease and how you're describing what you suffered is exactly like what I suffered during the worst stages of my Lyme disease. So it's just interesting the overlap there. And I just wondered if the, for me, if I, was having effects from both angles and just blamed it on the Lyme disease. You probably were. In mid-2010, Lamb began a blog named Ether Fields on BlogSpot.

Over the next two years, she posted pictures of models and fashionable clothing and accounts of her life, particularly her struggle with mental illness. In a January 2012 blog post, Lam lamented that a, quote, relapse at the start of the current school term had forced her to drop several classes. This left her feeling, quote, so utterly directionless. lost. She titled her post, quote, you're always haunted by the idea you're wasting your life after a quotation from novelist Chuck Pollinuck. She used that quote, I never know how to say his name, right? Please don't send me on fire. I say Palinock, but. Yeah, I just never know if you

say the you or whatever. She used that quote as an epigraph for her blog. Lam worried that her transcript would look suspicious with so many withdrawals that result in her unable to be able to continue her studies and attend graduate school. A little over two years after Lamb had started blogging, she announced that she would be abandoning her blog for another she had started on Tumblr called Nouvelle Nouveau. Its content mostly consisted of found fashion photos and quotes and a few posts in Lamb's own words. The same Pollinuck quote was used as an epigraph. Lam contacted her parents in British Columbia every day while traveling. On January 31st, 2013, the day she was scheduled to check out of the Cecil and leave for Santa Cruz,

they did not hear from her and called the Los Angeles Police Department. Her family flew to Los Angeles to help with the search. That seems, I don't know, if you don't hear from someone one day, it seems a little bit overboard. I mean, they were right. They were definitely right. There was something wrong, but I don't think that at least my family would care. Well, everybody's family is different, obviously. But also, I would say, I'm assuming that they were told by her that she would call every day

and check in with them. I heard information, though, that she hadn't heard for them in several days because she had lost her phone. There was that, but also despite losing her phone, she was still posting to Instagram and to other social media the entire time. Yeah, I think she had some sort of laptop or iPad or some sort of device. Oh, yes, that would make sense. But supposedly she lost her phone while in San Diego. And some people use that as a factor that there was some gigantic conspiracy. And it's not that I don't entertain the idea of a conspiracy.

We'll get to that later because you might think that I feel that way more than you think. But I don't think the phone is a factor. No, I really think it was just lost or stolen. It's L.A. There's petty thievery everywhere. So I just think she lost it. And especially if she wasn't medicated at the time, she easily could have lost her phone. Yeah.

So this next part, this is kind of what I was getting into earlier. But hotel staff who saw land that day said she was alone outside of the hotel. hotel, Katie Orphan, the manager of a nearby bookstore, was the only person who recalled seeing her that day. She was very outgoing, very lively, very friendly. While getting gifts to take home to her family, Orphan told CNN, she was talking about what book she was getting and whether or not what she was getting would be too heavy for her to carry around when she traveled, according to orphan. At that same time, that is when she also saw that man. Who said he was creeped out by her. Yeah, basically he was creeped out. So please search the hotel

to the extent that they legally could. They searched Lamb's room and had dogs go through the building, including the rooftop, but the canines were unsuccessful in detecting her scent. That's not exactly true. I've read on multiple sources that they did get a hit on one of the windows. However, it's not a big of a factor as you think it is because a window in a hotel, especially at the end of the hall, I believe the same hall that her room was on. I'm almost pretty positive.

That's what it was. There's conflicting information about this. I've spent hours watching. a lot of stuff and reading a lot of stuff for this. But a window at the end of the hall at a hotel is quite frequented. People just randomly walk up and just stand there and they might put their hand on the window. So it's so easy to get a scent off on a window. So just because the dog got a hit on the window doesn't mean that she opened that window or climbed out of it. Not to mention windows and hotels are usually tough to open. And one thing that they didn't kind of specify as well in any of the

research that I did is if these were just sent dogs or cadaver dogs. Right. So they have dogs for finding live people. They have dogs for finding dead people. The dog is specifically trained for that one thing, just like you have drug dogs and stuff like that. A drug dog could not find a person. They have to be specifically trained and they're used for that purpose. Thank you for bringing that up. I forgot about that. But yeah, they've never, the LAPD has never said what kind of dogs they were using. I'm assuming since they got a hit on the window, they were using live ones, but who knows if they brought in the, I almost said dead dogs. The dead person finding dogs. The cadaver dogs. Thank you. Yeah, they didn't check every room either because they felt they didn't have probable cause to do so. Which I will note, this hotel has 600 rooms. It is a very large hotel. That is pretty big. It spans over three separate buildings. Okay. So at that point, you're starting to get into people's personal space. and stuff like that, and that would be difficult to sell because then there could be lawsuits.

On February 6 a week after Lamb had last been seen, the LAPD decided more help was needed. Flyers with her image were posted on the neighborhood and online. It brought the case to the public's attention through the media. And I should note that the Christopher Dorner fiasco was going on at this time, or around this time. So why don't we talk a little bit about that? because maybe some of our listeners are not familiar with Mr. Dornner. So I'm not going to go too much into it. Do a quick Wikipedia search.

I know you probably know of this dude. You probably see him in memes all the time as the only good cop and stuff like that. That's what I see. This Christopher Dorner was a black officer on the LAPD who was reporting several instances of police brutality and corruption. And he was fired in response. of that he declared war on the LAPD. He had like a hit list. He wrote a whole Facebook manifesto.

And he tried to kill them and their families. And it basically, after this huge manhunt, they weren't able to find him for a long period of time. They found him in a cabin. They ended up shooting other people who they thought were Dorner when it wasn't even close to being Dorner. He was in a cabin and they lit it on fire with him inside of it. There's some controversy around his death as well.

but this was going on at the time and this was an all hands on deck thing for the LAPD and already having this happen was causing a lot of problems with LAPD. Not only were all their officers basically targets, it was also looking bad to the public that, hey, you have one man declaring war on you and you can't find him or take care of him

or brought to light the issues of police brutality and corruption. So this Lamb case, this was not something the LAPD had the want, the time, nor the resources to deal with. So keep this in mind as we go through this. I think it was February 13th was when they killed Dorner, or that's his alleged kill date. So on February 15th, after another week of no sign of lamb,

the LAPD released a video of the last known sighting of her taken in one of the Cecil's elevators by a video surveillance camera on February 1st. The video drew worldwide interest in the case due to a lamb's strange behavior, and has been extensively analyzed and discussed. It very much looks like it has been doctored and there has been footage cut from it.

And there has been people on the inside who have anonymously said what was cut from it and it was the presence of another person. But that's all I've read and that's of course alleged. So in the clip, the camera at one of the elevator's cabs, rear corners looks down from the ceiling, offering a view not just of its interior, but the hallway outside of it as well.

It's somewhat grainy and the timestamp at the bottom is obscured. Some people think it was completely altered altogether. Yeah. At some points, Lamb's mouth is pixelated. There's some portions of it where you're not sure if she's smiling or not. So it's hard to tell if she's scared or if she's playing. And I've seen multiple different body language experts on YouTube allege the opposite. Some allege that she was playing around, even to the point.

point that she was aroused and about to meet somebody that she seemed like she was very excited and nervous like somebody would giddy and about to meet somebody. Other people said that she was scared and acting this way out of fear. So it's hard to say if you watch it, you may think she's hiding from somebody. Some people watch it and say, oh, this is supernatural. And some people watch this and say, oh, this is a manic episode. So at the start, Lamb enters, clad in a red zippered hooded sweatshirt over a gray t-shirt with black shorts and sandals. She enters from the left and goes to the control panel, appearing to select several floors and then steps back to the corner. After a few seconds during which the door fails to close, she steps into it, leans forward so her head is

through the door, looks in both directions and then quickly steps back in, backing up into the wall and then into the corner near the control panel. The door remains open. She walks to it again and stands in the doorway leaning on the side. Suddenly she steps out into the hall, then to her side, back in, looking from side to side, and then back out. She then steps sideways again, and for a few seconds she is mostly invisible behind the wall. She has her back to one just the outside, and the door remains open. Her right arm can be seen going up to her head, and then she turns to re-enter the cab, putting both hands on the side of the door. She then goes to the control panel, presses many more buttons, some more than once, and returns to the wall. She had come into the elevator,

from putting both hands over her ears briefly as she walks back to the section of the wall she'd been standing against before the door remains open she then turns to her right begins rubbing her forearms together then waves her hands out to her sides with palms flat and fingers outstretched while bowing forward slightly and rocking gently this can all be seen through the door which remains open after she backs the wall again and walks away to the left it finally closes however if you watch the door closing you'll see that it goes from fully open to all of a sudden like a quarter shut. There's a jump point where it looks like something had been cut. There was a guy I was watching who said he had been there.

And there's some malfunction with the door, or not a malfunction, but a feature, so to speak. That for people who are moving in there because they have some long-term tenants, the doors will stay open for two minutes after a certain number of button presses. I don't understand the exact mechanism. What I mean to get across is that it's not uncommon. for the doors to stay there that long. That is intentional. It also was noted from the same gentleman that stayed there when she was out the door looking down the hallway, acting all weird and flailing her arms. That wall has a mirror. Yeah, she was doing that in a mirror. Thank you for

reminding me of that. I don't want to speculate. I think anybody can go ahead and pull this video up. It's not hard to find. You can find it on Wikipedia. You can find it on YouTube. You could see it a few different ways. You could see where she could be acting crazy, but she could, she could be acting playful, that if it is true that they cut someone out of this video, it could be that she ran ahead of them, jumped in the elevator, was hiding, and was going to scare them. I can see that happening too. It's also alleged that the videotape was slightly slowed down to make her seem like she was intoxicated. I don't know.

I've seen many different ones. Take a look and see what you think, but it's quite controversial that they chose to release this because this is the only thing they released. They didn't release anything from any other cameras. They didn't release her taking the elevator at any other time during her stay. They only just have this one thing that they released publicly. That in itself is kind of weird. But after this long and them ruling it a suicide due to bipolar disorder,

that's actually on the autopsy report is bipolar disorder is one of the reasons why she died. I would just want to say that now because I know I'm going to forget it later. We had mentioned the autopsy earlier. But yeah. Very strange, this was the only thing that they chose to release. So the video was reposted widely, including to the Chinese video sharing site Yuku, where it got over 3 million views and 40,000 comments in its first 10 days. Many of the commenters found it unsettling to watch. Several theories evolved to explain her actions.

One was that lamb was trying to get the elevator car to move in order to escape somebody pursuing her. Others suggested it might be under the influence of ecstasy or some party drug, but none was detected in her body. When her bipolar disorder became known, the theory was that she was having a psychotic episode. Other viewers argued that the video had been tampered with before being made public. Besides the obscuring of the timestamp, we forgot to mention that, they claim parts had been slowed down and nearly a minute of footage had been discreetly removed. And I believe the footage removed. This could have been done simply to protect the identity of someone who otherwise would be in the video,

but had little nothing to do with the case, or to conceal evidence if Lamb's disappearance in death had been the result of a criminal act. During the search for Lamb, guests at the hotel began complaining about low water pressure. Some later claimed the water was colored black and had an unusual taste. By the way, this was happening, like a week after she had disappeared. Like, this has been going on for a little bit. On the morning of February 19th, Lamb's body was found in one of the four 1,000 gallon tanks providing water to guest rooms, a kitchen, and a local coffee shop.

The tank was drained and cut open since its maintenance hatch was too small to accommodate equipment needed to remove Lamb's body. On February 21st, the Los Angeles coroner's office issued a finding of accidental drowning with bipolar disorder as a significant factor. The full coroner's report released in June stated that Lamb's body had been found naked. Clothing similar to that she was wearing in the elevator was floating in the water, coated with a sand-like particulate. Her watch and room key were also found with her. The sand-like particulate is a red herring, in my opinion. I think it's just sediment from the tanks.

Yeah, if you have any sort of water filter or anything like that, if you have hard water, you'll find stuff like that all the time. Yeah, it was a metal tank, so it's just sediment. Yeah, so that doesn't mean anything to me personally. No, Lamb's body was moderately decomposed and bloated. Please don't get upset with us for saying bloated. Yes, because we said bloated corpse before because that's what happens when you're so upset. When you drown, you're out to sea for a while. But apparently, you know, this is too far and true crime.

Anyways. Anyways, I digress. It was mostly greenish with some marbling evident on the abdomen and skin separation evidence. There was no evidence of physical trauma, sexual assault, or suicide. However, in some of the information that we watched online in YouTube videos, it seemed like there was some sort of blood collecting in her anus. Yeah, there was some trauma there I had read. However, sometimes when, not sometimes, all the time, when you die,

you know, blood and different fluids collect in different parts of your body that are an orifice. So that could be just that. That could be that. But I thought I read that they reported trauma to the anus. Oh, you might have seen something different than I did. Yeah, I don't quote me on that. When I started looking into this case, I realized just how much there was. And so to try to do this justice, I went through a lot of stuff.

And there's a lot of conflicting things, just like most things we've been covering lately. But there's a lot with this. Yes. So I thought I read that there was trauma to the anus. Not 100% on that. So forgive me if I'm wrong. But toxicology test incomplete because not enough of her blood was preserved, showed traces consistent with prescription medication found among her belongings plus non-prescription drugs such as a cyanutab and ibuprofen. A very small quantity of alcohol was present, but no other recreational drugs.

So another thing, a lot of the internet detectives, and I say that with quotations, web sleuths, if you will, took offense to you, not really offense to you, but take issue with is that she didn't have much blood. If you drown, it's all going to be into the water. That's what was getting into the water supply. Yeah, because you bleed out. You don't need to have an open wound to bleed out if you're dead, especially if you're in water. If you're dead, even just left to decompose over a few days, you'll start melting. through furniture, through your floor. It gets pretty gruesome. So, yeah, there's not going to be any blood left. That's going to be into the water supply, along with a lot of other body fluids and fats and just other yucky stuff. So I read something else about the toxicology that she had taken at least one antidepressant

that day, her second antidepressant and mood stabilizer recently, but not that day. She had not taken her antipsychotic, which I had. I believe is Syracquil. Essentially, she was taking things to bring her up and nothing that was designed to balance her out. So take that as what you will. I'll go into that later. They did say that she had a normal amount in her bloodstream of her medicine, so that supposedly she wasn't coming off it or going off too high.

But did they say that for all four of them? Yes. Okay. She may have missed them, but they were still at a normal level. So with some people, even if they're at a normal level, just missing it for a day, can have even psychosomatic effects if the person buys into it too heavily. I mean, again, like some people will come in here and say the science doesn't add up to that as far as blood toxicology is concerned. But do they really know if she didn't have enough blood in her system and her body for, was it two weeks she was in there, is now getting tampered with essentially because she's now bloated. decomposing and water's going through you. Are they going to even have enough of a sample? They may not. That's the thing. It's like how do you really, really know? It's hard to say, and I don't think the LAPD was forthcoming about that. They ruled her death a suicide when it could easily have

been ruled as inconclusive. Ruling something inconclusive on an autopsy report is not a huge deal. It happens all the time. It's not going to get anyone's ass kick. It feels like there was some pressure on the court, in my opinion, some pressure on the coroner to rule this of suicide. But I don't know because I just don't see how this couldn't be marked as inconclusive and why bipolar disorder had to be one listed. And if she did get on the roof, why not jump instead? We'll get into that, though. Yeah, there's a lot more about the drugs that are coming up.

I see in my notes that I want to talk about, but we'll wait until we get there. But to be clear, some people were thinking she was on ecstasy or some shit. No recreational drugs were found. Now, again, with the blood toxicology doesn't mean they weren't there, but according to the blood sample, there was nothing. The investigation had determined how Lamb died but did not offer an explanation as to how she got into the tank in the first place. Doors and stairs that accessed the hotel's roof are locked with only staff having the pass codes

and keys and any attempt to force them would supposedly, supposedly, this hasn't been proven. I have read accounts that people have gone in there with the attempt to try to trigger that alarm. Their claim was that they got stuff open and nothing was triggered. I don't know this for certain. These are just accounts I've read. The hotel claims that it would have triggered an alarm. However, the hotel's fire escape could have allowed her to bypass those security measures. If she or someone who might have accompanied her there had known.

A video made by a Chinese user after Lamb's death and then posted to the internet showed that the hotel's roof was easily accessible via the fire escape, that two of the lids of the water tanks were open. I do believe one of the guys that we were watching on YouTube, specifically the one that talked about taking that elevator got into the fire escape too. Yeah, I believe he said that too. This is a guy I were thinking of he has like 18 hours worth of this stuff. But I should mention the tanks on the water lid.

So there was a maintenance man who discovered her. I believe he was a Mexican immigrant, either that or he was a dual citizen or had family in Mexico. I'm not sure. But he was, he'd been working at the Cecil Hotel, I believe for three years. He found her, gave an official statement that the lids were open when. he found her. Then fucked off to Mexico, basically.

Well, we'll get to that. However, the LAPD stated when they came after the report that the lids were closed, they found the lids closed. But this guy says the lids were open. After this had happened, he quit his job and up and moved to Mexico. I don't want to say he was never heard from again. He moved his whole family there too. But his brother or half-brother spoke to somebody about it, saying that he won't exactly talk

about it and that he believes that he was paid a bunch of money to do this. I don't know how that relates here, but that is a thing. The LAPD claims that the tank was closed and he claims the tank was open. So it depends on what you believe. Because if you believe the tank was closed, you could theoretically get a 20 pound lid on top of the thing while floating in the water. But I just have a hard time believing that she did that. So I believe she was placed there. Yeah, I believe she was placed there as well. I believe she was as well. If you want to believe the suicide thing and believe that she drowned in there and then somebody found this close the lid to try to cover it up or they thought it would look better or did so in a moment of haste can entertain that too. I,

believe that she ended up there by some means other than her own. And there's some other reasons for this too. The clothes being off is not an issue to me because paradoxical undressing tends to happen in cases like this. Usually hypothermia can happen with drowning. However, a forensic doctor, I believe it was, said that there was no evidence of drowning with her. Is dry drowning possible? Yes, it is usually that's only common with children could she have dry drowned it is possible but they saw no evidence of your standard case of drowning that that's not how she died what did they say asphyxia i believe they said exfixia yeah i think that's what i read like jesus i'm not sure and i wouldn't be able to find this easily because the cause of death was listed as drowning oh with

bipolar disorder another thing people think too is maybe she odied and that the cocktail of drugs she had in her system leached out into the water. Some illicit drugs don't stay in your system for very long either. No. So some, there is, it is theorized to some account that maybe she OD'd. The hotel didn't really want to take the heat for that due to the fact that they were under contract to sell the hotel to a huge firm in New York. Yes. And that they dumped the body into the tank to hide it. But this is weird because you would know that that would fuck with the water supply. So to think that somebody in upper management would okay that seems suicidal. There's like a lot of different theories. Like I don't even want to go into like the paranormal ones because those are just way out there. Yeah, I don't even want to touch it. But I will say it's very sad that a lot of people have come to her parents who just want to be left alone and are pushing all these paranormal ideas. They've taken off to Hong Kong. They want nothing to do with this anymore. Yeah, I don't blame them. After the cases were dismissed, they left Canada. They didn't want to be there anymore. And who could blame them? No. They didn't really do any interviews or anything like that. They had all the opportunities. to get money or any sort of cash grab from appearances or the like, but they did not want that. They just wanted justice in court and they did not get it. So I really feel for her family, apart from the question of how she got on the roof.

Others asked if she could have gotten to the tank by herself, as we just mentioned. So all four tanks are four by eight foot and they're propped up on concrete blocks. There is no fixed access to them and hotel workers had to use a ladder to look at the water. They are protected by heavy lids that have been difficult to replace within. Police dogs that searched through the hotel for Lamb, even on the roof shortly after disappearance was noted, did not find any trace of her, although they had not searched the area near the water tanks. Theories about Lamb's behavior in the elevator video did not stop with her death, some argue that she was attempting to hide from pursuer, perhaps someone ultimately responsible for her death, while others said she was merely frustrated with the elevator's apparent malfunction. Some proponents of the theory that she was under the influence of illicit drugs, as Georgi mentioned, are not dissuaded by the absence of them from the toxicology screen, suggests, seeing that they might have broken down to the period of time, that her body decomposed in the

tank, or that she might have taken rare cocktails of such drugs that a normal screen would not detect, and that is true. A normal screen doesn't pick up certain designer drugs or things of that nature and over decomposition. The toxicology could, not would, but could be ruined. This next bit I want to read, because it's kind of something we touched on before. I knew I had it in the note somewhere, and we have the anus stuff. Okay. Did you have the word it that crudely? I'm sorry.

We have the anus stuff. We have the anal reports. So the autopsy report and its conclusions have also been questions. For instance, it does not say whether the results of the rape kit and the fingernail kit were or even if they were even processed. So what I've read is that there was no rape kit done. Right. I read that too. So it also records subcutaneous pooling of the blood in Lamb's anal area.

which some observers suggested was a sign of sexual abuse. However, one pathologist has noted it could have been resulted from the bloating in the course of the body's decomposition, which is what I feel. Her rectum had also prolapse, which is also something that does happen when you bloat. Yes, that's true. Like a lot of things come out. If you've actually seen a bloated body, which I've seen many of in a lot of my studies, it's not just your rectum that comes out.

You can have a vaginal prolapse. Everything can come out that way. Your eyes start to come out. Your tongue does as well. So this is not odd to me. I don't think that there's any sign of sexual assault with this whatsoever. Even the coroner's pathologist appeared to be ambivalent about their conclusions that Lamb's death was accidental. Since her death, her Tumblr blog was updated, presumably through Tumblr's Q option,

which allows posts to automatically publish themselves when the user is away. Her phone was not found either with her body or in the hotel room. It has been assumed to have been stolen at some time around her death. She had spoken to her family for a while, mentioned her phone was missing days prior. so I wouldn't really say some time around her death because that makes it seem recent. I don't believe the two are related. Whether the continued updates to her blog were facilitated by the theft of her phone or the work of a hacker or through the queue, it's not known, nor is it known whether the updates are related

to her death. In September, Lamb's parents filed a wrongful death suit, claiming the hotel failed to, quote, inspect and seek out hazards in the hotel that presented an unreasonable risk of danger to Lamb and other hotel guests, and seeking unspecified damage is in burial costs. The hotel argued it could not have reasonably foreseen that Lamb might have entered the water tanks and that since it remained unknown how Lamb got into the water tank, no liability could be assigned for failing to prevent that. In 2015, sadly, the suit was dismissed.

And I also learned as well, the judge was speaking publicly about how he was going to rule on this before any of the arguments had been made. Yes, thank you for bringing that up. He publicly stated how he was going to rule before he heard any presentation of arguments. I have never heard of anything like that ever, ever, ever. And that's very, very weird. You'd wonder how somebody in the know is saying that he was bought, or let's theorize that he was bought or whatever. Somebody being paid off would be that sloppy, but them's the facts, I guess. I feel like there's so much that we missed. This literally could be a series. The thing about

it was, is I wanted to get us a case together that was a little bit different than what we were normally doing and was interesting. I had heard about the case when it was happening, got some notes together. But then when we start to look into it further, because we like to listen to something to accompany notes that we have, I had no idea the amount of internet sleuthing and theories that we'd come across. It was absolutely insane. I know you wanted to touch a little bit about the negativity of web sleuthing. I think in a future episode will go on about that, but we're approaching quite a bit of time. What I will say is that if you are still interested in this case, I would look up Lord A.N. Arts, A.T.S. YouTube. He has several videos and he's been the leading YouTuber to cover this since this happened,

I believe. He has so many hours, like 20 hours worth of footage and breakdown and going through theories. He's worked with authors who have done very, very extensive work who have had contact with certain informants, people of the LAPD, forensic pathologists, things of that nature. It goes way more into depth, stuff that I don't have enough to talk about, like how this was portrayed in the media, for example. If you want to do the deep dive, that is the place to go,

in my opinion. There was another video that I found as well. If you just YouTube or Google search, Elisa Lam conspiracy theories, there was a video that I watched that had all these ridiculous coincidences that went on with the case that can get a little paranormal. I said I don't

want to touch on that because I want to kind of keep this more factual. But, some of the coincidences in there are pretty interesting. So if you like something a little spooky, definitely go ahead and look into that as well, because there's some weird shit. I think that if we didn't have as much information as we did, we probably would go into those coincidences because those seem right up my alley, not that I think this was paranormal, but I just like things like that.

And maybe we can link some of this in like the show notes too. Yeah, for sure. So it's easier for people to find. So we won't go too deeply into any of the media. Again, you can look into this online. There's so much. And we've gone for a while already. I wanted to keep this brief, but even keeping this brief, it's just so much.

But I really want to go to stay at the Cecil Hotel now, stay on Maine, because it was the hotel that American Horror Story Hotel is based on. Oh, yes, that is true. So that is why I would like to go visit it. Which season is that? God, I don't know. Is it five? I'm not sure. It's four or five.

I only saw the first one. It's one of my favorite seasons. Just to get my Tate Langdon costume down for Halloween. So final thoughts on what you think happened to her? I think she was murdered and placed after the fact into the tank. I believe that as well. And again, I could go on about mental health for a while. But to sum up her death because of her bipolar is doing not just her a disservice,

but people with mental health issues in general, because having bipolar disorder does not make you suicidal. Okay. Her being manic or appearing as manic does not mean she's about to commit suicide. However, people do seek out and target people like this. These people can, especially when they're having a manic episode, can stick out like a sore thumb. And those people are- Especially where she was being so forward with everybody.

Right. And so those people are frequently targeted for sexual assault and the like. I want to go off the theory. We watched a video of a young Asian woman who was a behavior expert. She was one who said she was sexually excited. Yeah, that she was meeting somebody. It really seemed like she was about to meet somebody. Let's just say she was having some sort of hookup there, was having a manic episode.

Sometimes when you have a manic episode, you can be a little bit, you know, feisty. You're very pleasure-seeking and heathistic. So let's just say that theory is true. Maybe she's having some sort of hookup while she's in town, and that person kills her. Yeah. You did mention that they didn't test for some drugs. What if someone gave her GHB or Roofies or something of that nature? Yeah, they don't test for Roofies.

In a general screen, Rufies won't come up. Neither will special K or GHB. Anything like that won't come up. And I don't know this from personal experience, but I was reading an account of somebody who lives in the L.A. area and that this area is a pretty rough part of town. Apparently, even standing in front of the building to smoke can be pretty unsafe. And while the door from the 14th,

to the roof should have been locked. It most likely wasn't. And in addition to the 14th floor door, there was roof access from every floor via a fire escape that ran alongside the building. The roof was not as an off-limit places people think. It seems that long-term residents and hotel employees use the roof as a place to smoke. So I think the hotel wanted to over-represent that. I tell you what, if I lived there and was a resident, I would find my way to the roof.

Yeah, I mean, I would too. I would find some way to do that just because that's fun. It is fun. It is fun. It's not hard to get on roofs of buildings. Have I ever been on a hotel roof? I don't believe I've ever tried. But in a place like this...

I would definitely try. Well, yeah. But just in general, I think it would probably be pretty easy. So I guess we're in agreement so she was murdered and stuff there. Yes. So some people think, was it a hotel employee did this? Maintenance Man, have something to do with it. And I'm not really sold on that.

Some people really think that this was some sort of ordeal perpetrated by people and the staff. And while that's possible, I just don't think it's likely to be them compared to just some random person. Well. Considering how frequently people were in and out of there. There were reports that long-term residents there got raped by hotel employees who would go in with Master Keys. Oh, that is true. I did read that. That's true. I forgot all about that. So let's just go off the theater. it was a hotel employee who has a master key.

I really highly doubt all 600 of these rooms are rented. You know, what if they were just like moving her to like an unrented part of the hotel? The hotel's huge and the police didn't end up there with dogs. It's possible. And this is like a low level employee that has a master key that's not going to care if she ends up in the water supply because it's not really any skin off their back. Yeah, because it had no other place to put it. I mean, you would think a logical person would know putting it there.

The body would be discovered. Like, I'm not thinking this is upper management that has skin in the game. Now, with that said, you would think there's no reports of people missing regularly, but something could have easily gone wrong and she could have been killed one way or another. Or maybe this was the person they targeted because they knew she was from another country or they thought she was more foreign than she actually was. People like to target foreigners, especially if they think they don't speak English that well, because there's little of ways to report it.

And if your family is in another country, it's that much harder to like get through the red tape and all that stuff compared to if a national was found dead or sexually assaulted or anything of that like. So all those things could be factors. But yeah, we're definitely going to go ahead and link all of the source information that we used for this. So you can kind of look into this more. If we went on and covered everything like we want to, this would be going on to maybe a five part episode. and that's just too much. And I also want to say that barring the transition after the intro, we have been sitting and talking here for about an hour.

It's probably going to be a little bit less after we cut it, but we've been talking straight without any breaks. We usually take at least a couple breaks here and there. We spread this throughout a couple days. And it's getting a little stifling in the closet here. Yeah, we'll say that. We had to close the door to keep kite now and it's getting hot in here. It's motivated me personally, but it is starting.

to get uncomfortable. But anyways. That's all I have for today. It's all I have too. Thank you again to our patrons. We've got a few new. So thank you to Marky, Holly, Rowan, Eddie, Karen, Ashley and Voo. We love you. Yes, we love you. Thank you so much for being our patrons. And if you want to be our patron where you can get secret episodes, snaps and postcards, and a bunch of other goodies, get access to our Discord. You can go to patreon.com slash the misery machine. Or if you don't like it. PayPal.m.m.m.m. Message us will work something out. Also, again, if you're listening on YouTube, please like and subscribe. We're almost at 500 subscribers. This is happening so quickly, and we're so happy that you're coming along for the ride this early. All the support means so

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