The Hotel Cecil in downtown Los Angeles has had no less than 16 unnatural deaths, from suicides to murders and everything in between. Listen in to the history of this decidedly creepy hotel.
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Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of I Heart Radio. Hey, you're welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Barton. There's Charles Chuck Bryant over there. Yea, hear it Haunted Hotel and this is stuff you should know. Yeah we can. Can we do a couple of quick announcements? Yeah? Sure, without singing that announcement song. Did we have an announcement song ever? Know? Not us? But it's like summer Camp? Okay, you never did that? No, yeah, well I'm not gonna sing it now. Then I kind of want to hear it now. No, no, no, no no, was it like announcements announcements? It's announcements time. It's sort of almost Yeah, that's close enough. Trigger warning for this one first announcement because there's some grizzly stuff in here. Uh, I guess that's all we need to say. And then also we've been remissing that we haven't mentioned the fact that there's a stuff you should know board Game out. Yeah, it's it's not grizzly at all. No, it's it's very family friendly. In fact, it's one of the highest honors that's ever been bestowed upon us. And stuff you should know Chuck because out of the blue, out of nowhere, about a year and a half ago, maybe yeah, Trivial Pursuit. The makers of Trivial Pursuit got in touch with us and said, we want to do a stuff you should know trivial pursuit game, and they did. It wasn't a practical joke. The fine people it has Bro, who I gotta say. I mean, we've worked with a lot of outside companies for various projects, and boy, Hasbro is about as tight and buttoned up and awesome as any company we've ever worked with, right, but also like super friendly, super fun, super narmazing and not in like that creepy everybody's trying to be nice way like they're all just like a genuinely pleasant group to work with. But yes they are super buttoned up as well, very rare games games. They all seem like they make games for a living, which would mean you that you have a pretty cool job. And developing the game with him was fun and the questions are based on real stuff you should know episodes and it is not just Trivial Pursuit. It is co branded, so it is not Do not expect to get the Trivial pursuit game with the little pieces of pie. No, no, I just want They said, we want to make up a brand new game for it, and they did. They they made up a game. And this is the stuff you should know. Trivial pursuit game. That's right, and you can get it wherever you get games. I recommend your local little indie toy gaming store if they have it, but otherwise we would love the sport. You got a weirdo in your town who dresses up in wizard clothes and goes to work, go buy your game there. Yeah, great Christmas gift by the way, Yeah for sure. Also, why why just stop there? It's great for dad's, grads, moms, proms, everything. I think it's like twenty bucks, right, yeah, it's like it's really really reasonably priced. If you ask me, twenty dollars. You got two twenties in your wallet. You could buy a book and the game at we did, We did the TV show, We did, uh a book, we do a podcast. Don't forget our YouTube series. Sure you can. And now now Chuck and now the game. It's amazing, and now the hotel cecil. Yes, onto the show. Um, so I'm glad you did that little trigger warning, because there is some grizzly stuff in here, but there's also I think some like fact settings, some facts straightening that, um, you know, we should do from the outset. Because one of the things that people who get into the Elisa Lamb story, which we'll talk about in a little bit, um quickly find that they are all manner of internet urban legends and myths and conspiracy theories surrounding it, and none of those seemed to be true, um, and which is pretty annoying. Actually, yeah, it is very annoying. It's just so internet e too, you know what I mean? Yeah, I mean this, This goes on a lot these days, but it seems like this one, maybe more so than even others, because the bizarre nature of one part of this story. And uh, I don't know, I found myself slightly annoyed. I I am too, in the exact same way that I'm annoyed by people who believe that the couple from the Conjuring were like, you know, legit in real life, you know what I mean. But at the same time, it goes even further than that. I think I ran across a couple of articles that I really think struck home. What's genuinely annoying and even disrespect full about that is that like Alisa Lamb died because she had serious mental illness. I had been diagnosed and she wasn't managing properly with the medications that she was on, and that happens a lot, and she died because of it. And so to say that she was you know, possessed by evil spirits um or that there were you know, ghosts at the Cecil, or even though she was murdered by an unknown suspect, it's really really um well, it really disrespects the reality of the situation, which is you know, sad enough as it is. But at the same time, checked, there's one more thing I have to caveat all this with. It's understandable the impulse to to bring in you know, restless spirits and you know, you know, the just conspiracy theories. It's understandable in this particular situation because of the setting. Yeah uh, and I guess you know, the first part of the show will be about the setting, which is the hotel Cecil in downtown Los Angeles, which is not open right now. Um it may be open in the future. I think they were doing a. Uh. This thing was open in the nineteen twenties during the height of the depression, and it's a very large hotel, nineteen flour or seven hundred rooms. And in the nineteen twenties it was sort of like a UM, a big deal for downtown Los Angeles. It was near a major rail station and it was kind of just what l A needed and it was kind of Nancy schmancy for the time. UM. And over the years, you know, we'll talk a little bit about the downfall. But at the time of Elisa Lambs Stay, they had carved out three floors and built a separate lobby entrance to try and UH in an effort to rebrand this hotel as something called Stay on Maine. UH, and that they had three kind of floors that were a little bit redone cosmetically, UH, a little bit of a nicer lobby that was, you know, sort of away from UM. You know, some of the situations that work at a detail here in a second, But they did all share a common elevator and UM at least Lamb was staying in the State on Maine, Stay on Main section State on Main. But that's just to point out the fact that the hotel was gonna eventually supposedly undergo a massive renovation and that it was all sort of put on hold because of COVID. And I think now it's just being sat on with some of the long term tenants that are protected to stay there. Yeah, I think it's like thirty but there's like you said, seven rooms, but you said it um that the Cecil Hotel UM, which is very much down at the heels now UM started life in a much different way where it was meant to be like a pretty nice hotel designed for middle class travelers to l A and that situation next to the rail station was a big draw for it. It was it was definitely a feather in its cap um and I saw it's in the Bozard style. UM. It's not incredibly pretty from the outside, but the inside lobby is still pretty neat looking. Lots of torrazzo tile and uh columns, and there's fake um Roman statutory and a big clock and like the at the over the check in desk, it's really pretty and I really like, you know, nineteen twenties original UM original style still, although it's just kind of got this drab air that's kind of fallen over it over the years. Yeah, and that is in large part because, um, like you said, there are a lot of unknowned people there today a lot back then. The area called skid Row of downtown Los Angeles is kind of right there. I used to drive through that area sometimes when I lived in l A, when we would go downtown to eat sushi or if we you know, back then when I lived there, downtown was not as much of a destination unless you were going to Staples Center or something. But it's made a real resurgence since I've left and kind of trying to build downtown back up. Um, but skid Row is still uh an issue. And there you know, like you said that that there are people there that work with unhomed folks that are really trying their best two take care of them. And the fact that that hotel is right there just sort of looming large is a bit of a thumb in the eye. Yeah. And I get the impression that skid the area that's now skid Row in Los Angeles had had, at least since the eighties, kind of had a an unusual reputation. It wasn't always you know, for people down on their luck or anything like that. But um, you know, it was a little more low rent than other parts of Los Angeles, like there were there was just a mishmash of all sorts of different people. It seemed like really alive. UM. And the SESA was kind of built at the outskirts of that between what would become skid Row and then one of the nicest parts of l A at the time, Bunker Hill. UM. And everything was hunky dory for the Cecil when it first opened in either seven depending on who you ask, I could not confirm one way or the other because both dates have kind of taken off so much. UM. But when the stock market crashed, that area that was just kind of colorful and a little bit low rent that it quickly became uh skid Row as we understand it, beginning around the Great Depression. UH. And not only UM did the proximity to skid Row kind of like lower the Cecil star rating. UM. When the tenants started the hotel guests started to dry up, they had to lower their rights and start catering to um people who are people have less means, and so the hotel just kind of stopped taking care of itself little by little starting around the Great Depression and continuing on through World War Two. Yeah, and you know it kind of became a last resort kind of destination for people with addiction problems, um, people in the in the sex working industry, and you know it got that reputation and pretty soon got a reputation for all kinds of bad things happening there. Um. There have been no less than fifteen or sixteen um what's classified I guess as an unnatural death at the Cecil. Many people took their own lives there, Um, quite a few. I mean, if you read down the laundry list, it's like quite a few people in ingested poison. Quite a few people jumped or maybe we're pushed out windows. Uh. There have been some murders by gun. There have been murders by strangulation. There have been sexual assaults. Uh. This one sad case of a woman who gave birth to a baby and was um suffering from some sort of mental illness. Evidently thought her baby was was born not alive, and went to throw the baby out the window. And it turns out the baby was a I've been then died. She was found um not guilty. I think temporary insanity was the plea there and just weird kind of tragic awful things happening over the years, time and time again at the hotel cecil Yeah. Like another UM frequently referred to incident was where a woman named Pauline oughten Um she jumped from I think like the ninth or tenth floor to take her own life and um landed on a guy who was a passerby who happened to just be walking unluckily beneath the cecil at that moment on the sidewalk and was struck by Pauline. Uh, and they were both killed and UM like that that doesn't usually happen very often. Like that's a pretty remarkable thing, and I know that that. Like the most I could find was I think eighteen incidents, but it seems like those are just ones that have been documented. There seems to be quite a bit more. UM. There was a Netflix UM series I think of four part series on this recently and they interviewed UM a woman who had spent ten years managing the cecil Um and she said that her name is Amy Price. She said that under her ten year tenure, at least eighty people died, that she knows of, and you can kind of imagine like like you know, you could find newspaper right ups from like the twenties and thirties and fourties when somebody jumps out of window, and definitely when somebody jumps out of window and lands on a hapless pedestrian, like, it's definitely going to be documented to make news. But if somebody on skid row overdoses and dies in this hotel, you know, is that going to be documented. So it's possible that there are a lot more people who have died at the cecil Um Under from unnatural causes UM over the years than than just those seventeen or eighteen Did you watch all of that documentary? No, I haven't seen it actually, Okay, yeah, you know, I feel terrible because um the director was is the great Joe Burlinger, who actually had on movie Crush Um and one of my favorite episodes where we kind of just talked about documentary filmmaking. He's a legend. He did the Paradise Law series, he did that documentary on Metallica when they're all in therapy. Yeah, uh yeah, I mean, he's just he's just sort of the a legend in the genre. And he's had the Ted Bundy tapes recently. That's like, yeah, he did that. And then he directed the movie version with what's his face Zack Fron with who I said, Ryan Gosling? Oh close, another super handsome hunk. Uh. And that was a good movie. But this wasn't so great. I didn't love it. It felt kind of over long and a little salacious, and like, yeah, that's the impression I had from reading about it. Yeah, so I was disappointed. But Joe was a great filmmaker and a good guy. So I feel kind of bad. I think that's a fair caveat a great filmmaker and a good guy can still make a hunko poop? What unko poop? That was all right? Uh, but maybe let's take a break and I'll email Joe and tell him I'm sorry. I had a time, all right, and we'll be right back. So uh, okay, we're we're so we're. The Cecil hotel starts to get a pretty pretty not a great reputation even around town. I read a article on ksey et dot org, which I guess is a PBS station in so Cow, and they said that local residents started to refer to the Um the Cecil as the suicide. That was the name of the hotel for people around there. Um, and it just it just kind of like it just kept going like every time, you know, maybe a couple of years of pass without some high profile death in the hotel, and then it would happen again, and and it would just reaffirm everybody's ideas that there was that place just wasn't quite right, there was something wrong with it, almost like it was a magnet for that kind of tragedy. You know. Yeah, I mean I think most major cities have had at least one of these hotels that just sort of is inexpensive, maybe in the wrong part of town, and has the reputation sometimes for luring activities and checking in and not checking out. Uh. And this was l A's and l A for sure had more than one. Um it did not help their reputation in the nineteen eighties when Richard Ramirez a k a. The night Stalker and one of the more sensational serial killers in American history. Uh, he stayed there for a while and um lived there and apparently brought body parts back to the Cecil hotel. Said Cecil like I'm British uh Cecil Hotel from some of his victims to Ingest there, Uh and that's certainly like super creepy. Ingest. I hadn't come across that he eat that victim's eyeballs. I think, so wow, we and other he wasn't like I don't think he was Dahmer level, but he was known to eat some body parts. He has a there's a great documentary on his his case too. It's super disturbing. Yeah, that's on Netflix as well. I think, um, if I'm not mistaken, But um, one thing I hadn't realized before that I ran across when I was researching some of his stuff was how he was caught. It's just absolutely triumphant. It was a mob of people in the neighborhood in East l A. He he was spotted. He saw himself on the front page of the newspaper and just instinctively started running trying to car jack aman hit her was seen hitting her an older man. UM basically ran over and helped the help. The woman pulled Richard Ramirez out of his car, and Um, the woman whose car was husband came over and started beating him. Uh. And he tried to get away, and just an increasingly large mob chased him and would beat him, and he'd get away some more, and they chase him down and catch him again, and they finally pinned him down and waited for the cops to come. That's how he was the best. Yeah, caveat that. I'm not down with a mob justice, but a group of people finding a serial killer on the street and like subduing him. Way okay with that now, I totally am in this particular instance, like I'm all fine with that that kind of justice for sure. Yeah. It was and about a badge of honor for East l A. Because the the entire city of Los Angeles was I mean, it was a scary situation there. Yeah, I can imagine that's where cheech Marin was born, according to that one song of it. That's right. So the Ninth Stalker he was not the only serial killer that checked in there. He actually inspired just a few years after he was convicted in I think, uh, I think like in ninety two, maybe ninety three, there was another serial killer named Jack Unterweger, who was Austrian um who had already been convicted I think when he was like nineteen or early twenties of killing a woman by strangling her with her own braw um and went to prison. He was very, very smart, very charming. He used this to basically get early parole. He convinced the public that he was actually reformed and apparently was held up as like a great example of how, you know, the the prison system could rehabilitate someone, and it was just a complete false fabrication. He was basically posed as a true crime journal list like he reinvented himself as that went to l a and other parts. He went to Europe, traveled through Europe a little bit too, but also ended up in l a Um to do research on his true crime novels. Went along on ride along with the l A. P. D Um and ended up using that to scout Um victims. He killed three sex workers and the whole time he was staying at the Cecil hotel. And they think probably as an homage to Um, to Richard Ramirez or at least a connection to him, you know. Yeah, so that I mean at this point, like the reputation for the hotel, it's not the kind of thing that is gonna appear online. You know. Fifteen years ago, when young people like a Lisa lam Are searching for an inexpensive place to stay. Uh, And sadly that's exactly what happened. Was a Canadian traveler, she was twenty years old, was on her way kind of up the West coast, traveling by herself. Her parents were a little unnerved by her traveling by herself, so she was you know, asked to check in every day what she was doing. Uh. And at the time, it was you know, they had kind of dorm style rooms, kind of youth hostile style rooms where you had bunk beds in a shared bathroom and so you could stay there. It was a travelers hotel. And if you uh, you know, I hate to say it, but if you if you didn't know much about l a, you may end up at the hotel Cecil because you could stay there for like seventy five bucks a night or something like that. Yeah, from what I could tell, Stay On Maine did a really good job of making their you know, using their website to their advantage and making it seem like this is a really hip happening spot. And I mean in some ways they were. They were kind of like just a little ahead of their time because apparently the area around skid Row in downtown l A is like the hippiest spot to live in now again. Um, But at the time it was still really really um skid rowe basically yum. And it could be it could be you know, it could be dangerous. Yeah, and I think it still is. But I think it's just becoming more and more gentrified and it's becoming I guess, less dangerous in that sense. Um. But at the time when Alisa Lamb showed up in two thousand and thirteen, it was, you know, it was it was a dangerous place to be. But um, this particular spot was just full of you know, especially European kids on basically budget holidays, uh, staying in l A basically in hostiles. And I know originally she was put into a room with a couple of other girls that I think we're traveling together, but she was traveling alone. So it was very hostile. Um. And not hostile with an eight Well yeah, there's an E, but it's in a different place than you'd expect. Um, youth hostily. It was very youth hostily, like she was put in a room with other people at first. Yeah, l A didn't have a lot of that. I remember there was a youth hostile in Venice that for some reason, and I always wanted to stay there. When I lived in l A. I was like, I didn't go down stay in the hostel one night because the beach was so the beach was really far when you lived on the east side and you kind of never went over there much unless someone came to town and wanted to go to the beach. That makes sense, sure, so, and you know I was broke back then, so it could have been like a little staycation. Did you ever do it? Yeah, It's one of the things you think about late night and then you wake up the next day and you're like, yeah, you blew all your money on taco balance day. Oh man, I missed Taco Bell, do you? I don't, Uh. I mean I didn't need it that much, but like I haven't had it in years. I've had too much, I think was my problem. Okay, what's that the deal? By the way, side note, speaking of weird late night foods, um, we had a guy on our front door camera the other day come in the middle of the night and leave a package and we're like, what is this. We went out the next day and it was a bag full of crystals. Wow. And I think it was creepy delivery, like a door dash or something. Crystals. I thought you meant like amethysts or no, no, no, I mean tiny square sliders. He had the wrong I think so either that or your daughter is has mastered the telephone by now. It was really weird. And the course, the first thing I did was I feel terrible that someone's late night mun cheese didn't get satisfied. Did you eat him the next morning? Just says you don't like crystals, or it was it because it was sitting there overnight. Both. I never was into crystal for some reason. Man, I like crystals. It was the thing I just was. I don't know why. I think I was just a waffle house guy. I don't I'm fine with waffle house. To the big problem with crystals, Chuck, I'll tell you is there fries or probably the worst fries of any fast, the most bland somehow, if you just bit into raw potato, it would be less bland and tasteless than if you ate a crystal spry. Yeah. And if you're from the other places in the country, you might white Castle sort of an analog to Crystal. Yeah, anyway, this is not an episode of The Doughboys. This is stuff you should know. And back to Alisa Lamb. She was supposed to be there for about I think four days and check out on February one, and did not get in touch with their parents like she had been doing each day. Um, she had been seen shopping for books at a nearby bookstore and then bought some books. And this is one of the things in the documentary. Like you know, they didn't really have any footage of her with any other people inside the hotel before her disappearance. Well, she was also reported to be constantly by herself too by people who saw her. Yeah, I mean she was traveling alone, so that that makes sense. But um, she she did get handed off. There were two gentlemen that handed off a kind of the largest largish box to her on camera in front of the hotel. And of course the internet sluice or like, who are these guys? What was in the box? And apparently in the box were these books that she got because she had spoken with the book read um seller about like the size of them, and boy, I don't even know if I can carry these and I think had them delivered to the hotel or whatever. So kind of nothing to see here, and another example of how annoying this case can be with people online speculating like wrong stuff. Yeah, I can be a little annoying for sure. But yes, so she was. She was alone, traveling alone. I think she had started out in San Diego, or at least her last stop had been San Diego. Her next stop was going to be Santa Cruz. Um. And Yeah, her parents have been like, okay, you need to call this every single day um and she had been pretty faithfully until that February one came and went with no call, and I believe they pretty much immediately contacted the hotel and the l a p D and said, hey, you know, our daughter hasn't checked in. Can you see what's going on. I don't know if they did it on February first or not, but in pretty short order, the l a p D determined that she she was just gone, she wasn't she was nowhere to be found, and that there was some suspiciousness going on for sure. Yeah, I mean they did a thorough inspection. They went to her room. Uh, they had found that the hotel had gathered all her stuff and bagged it and was holding it in storage, which was UM regular protocol when someone UM doesn't check out and just leave stuff. Nothing shady going on there. They checked around the hotel, uh, in the alleyways and sidewalks, They checked up on the roof. They didn't find anything, and UH, things got really strange. And I guess we should take another ad break here. But things got really strange when the hotel sent them footage from inside the elevator of the still hotel. And we'll get to that right after this, all right, Chuck, So Alsa Lamb is now known to be missing. She left her stuff behind at the Cecil Hotel, and she didn't check out, She didn't call her parents as she usually did, UM, and she's officially a missing person. UM. Within a couple of days, I think maybe February six, the police held a press conference and explained what was going on to the public. UM and UH basically asked for everybody's help and and if anyone had any info, you know, where did she go? Where is she? How she doing? Is she okay? UM? And I guess I don't. I didn't see anything about any getting any crazy leads or anything. Like at um it doesn't seem to have really kind of captured the public's interest at first. And I saw there's this guy named Josh Dean who's written written several articles on on the Elisa Lamb disappearance, and um, I believe one of the one of the ones that he wrote kind of pinpoints why there wasn't a huge public interest in the first like week or even two of her case. Um, it was because Christopher Dorner had gone on his rampage against the l A p D, basically declared war on the l A p D and was killed. And I think the Mountains of San Bernardino in a standoff like right when Elisa Lamb went missing. So not only were was the public's attention on this, especially in l A, the l A p d S attention was definitely on that as well. Um So Elisa Lamb was kind of like this faint little chirp in this huge mailstrom at the time, faint chirp in a mailstrom. It's the US that could come up with on shorts. Amazing, Are you kidding me? You just made that up? Yeah? Yeah, I did you like it? Yeah? But I just have a feeling that next time I meant your house, it's gonna be like that's gonna be carved into your desk or something. It's on a T shirt and right, did you put you make Momo wear that T shirt every Day's right? Uh? Yeah. And you know the other big reason was until this footage actually came out of the elevator. Uh car, then you know that's when, Um, that's when the public's attention really caught hold. Yeah. I mean, there's no way around it. It's it's a very sort of unsettling. And I remember when this happened, before any of the facts of the case we're kind of out. I remember looking at this video and it is very unsettling, and it does appear to be very creepy, and that a young woman gets on an elevator, um, very kind of casually presses all the center buttons on all the floors. I think they determined she was on the fourteenth floor and sort of pressed all the floors on the way down. Uh. Elevator doesn't do anything. The doors don't shut. She moves to the back corner and sort of standing there, she goes and she's she looks outside of the elevator both ways a couple of times in the hallway and then kind of retreats back quickly. Um. At one point she steps out into the hallway and appears to be gesturing towards somebody, or she's at least making hand gestures to the right down the hallway. Yeah, they're unusual hand gestures. They're not like the normal hand gestures you might make. They're not at all subtle or casual or almost even like um, like you know, you might not even realize you're using your hands when you're talking sometimes, Like these are are more gesticulations than your gestures, you know what I mean? Yeah, And you know, there's there's no doubt. And eventually she kind of leaves around to the left and exits to the left, and the door stays open for a while, but for it shuts. Um. But there there's no getting around the fact that having known nothing and knowing that this person disappeared, this young woman, and then you see this, it seems very suspicious. Um, I don't think creepy. I think it looks I don't even even think it looks that creepy. It looks to me like that she is trying to get away from someone and is afraid someone has followed her, or is gesturing at a person who she feels threatened by. It's what it looks like to me. I know other people online there talk about other worldly spirits, and she's kind like you said earlier, she's conjuring spirits with her hands, Like I just, uh, that never occurred to me. It just looked like she might be in some kind of peril and was trying to get away from someone. Right. Um, but that's creepy in and of itself, you know, Yeah, I just mean not creepy and like a supernatural like what's going on here? Way now? I think the thing that really when it really turns creepy to me is when she turns around and hides in the corner of the elevator her like she's she's hiding. And then the second part that's that's genuinely creepy is when she like leans out and like looks both ways and then kind of jumps back into the elevator. It's just I mean, it's really hard not to kind of put yourself in her shoes, and she's clearly frightened at that time. To see somebody frightened like that, Uh, it's that's creepy, and you're and you're waiting on someone to enter the elevator, but that never happens. Um And with the internet sleuthing, you couldn't really make out the time code very well. And so all the people online are like, well, why can't you make out the time code and the time stamps, like what would degrade that? And not the rest of it? And and then they think they're right, and then they think they decoded it and there's almost a full minute missing, and the hotel cecil edited out a portion clearly, and before they send it to the cops, and and they interviewed the woman and that you're talking about the manager, and she was like, no, of course we didn't edit anything out, like we were horrified by this disappearance, and just send him everything we had, right. Plus I'm sure also that most of the employees that stay on main know exactly how to edit video out before handing things over to the cops. Anyway, that's true. That is a good point, actually, but I don't buy it. I think it was it is what it was, which was a person in an elevator who had some uh was having some mental issues, and you know, we'll get to that in a second. UM. And I think you know, it's sort of like the easiest explanation of the video, at least to me, seems to be the most accurate. Um that that's what I buy. That's how I buy it too. UM. That was so that video was released on February and now all of a sudden, the public is taking notice. Um, she becomes an Internet meme, like almost overnight, Um, with people like watching and analyzing that video, like you were saying, and yet they still can't find No one has any idea where she hasn't been two weeks now since she went missing. This videos out there, that whole the entire internet is on the case now. And UM, it wasn't until a couple of days I think two days after the video came out. Chuck that. Um. One of the guys, one of the custodians of the Cecil Hotel of stay on me and I should say, Um, I was asked to go check on the water supply on the roof because the Cecil Hotel used uh, gravity fed water. They had four one thousand gallon tanks on the top of the roof. Uh and when you open the tap, the water would come pouring down from those tanks into your room and out the faucet, and some of the tenants don't I don't know if it was just the hotel or some long term tenants, but they were complaining that the water pressure had suddenly gotten really low and that um, the water that was coming out had a strange odor and taste and weird kind of color to it. And so they dispatched the custodian to the roof UM and he went and checked, and I think as he was approaching the main water tank, I think tank number one, he noticed that the hatch was open, and uh, in very short order, made the grizzly discovery of Alicia Lam's body. Yeah, he was. He was kind of like the super He was a maintenance guy. His name is Santiago Lopez and he's in the documentary to UM. I don't think he saw the hatch because the hatches on top of the tank, but he went to go and he said it was a routine thing if there was any kind of water issue, was to climb the ladder to the tanks and go look and see what was going on because there's probably a clog or something. And uh, he saw her body, um, naked about a foot below the water, just sort of suspended there. And you know, when they interviewed this guy in the documentary, it's really sad. You know, he was sort of at the center of a lot of the US with interviews and he uh, he was speaking through it, um, I guess, not through a translator but through US subtitles, but he was clearly, you know, still very upset about this and it it it scarred him to see this woman floating in the tank and he knew immediately who it was and called down to the hotel manager who we've been talking about and said, you know, she's she's up here in the tank, and uh, you know, the cops came. They found her clothes, which were determined to be the same clothes she was wearing in the elevator video. Um, kind of at the bottom of the tank they had sunk. And you know, immediately the new mystery is not what's going on in this video, although you know that played apart because they were still trying to figure that out as far as foul play goes, but was how she made it in here and and why she made it in there? Yeah, because she she she it was like, the hatch is not easy to get in or out of. They had to like cut her out of the They did cut a hole in the bottom of the tank so they could access it, right, They couldn't just pull her back out of that hatch. So that's kind of weird in and of itself. She's also nude. UM. That also kind of added to the mystery of the whole thing. Um. And then also the you know the coroner, uh when when he made his his toxicology report available, he basically said it was he wasn't able to make any conclusive, um find any conclusive results because there wasn't enough blood to take a sample from. You know, she just kind of permeated the water and that her blood had uh, and it wasn't you just couldn't like take a water sample and be like, oh, yeah, there's no you know, there's no drugs in here anything like that. So all of that combined really kind of um just just took that mystery. Um. You know that people have been primed to start thinking about with that video and then just blew it through the roof. You know, I mean, the the the water being you know, going to are people's taps in the hotel, and you know, Lisa Land basically being a part of that water really kind of solidified her legendary status or the legendary status of her mystery. I think in people's imagination, anybody who comes across that case can't help, but like let the mind wander in that respect. Oh for sure. I mean the idea of drinking water and bathing in water with a decomposing body. I mean the body had was in a pretty pretty rough state of decomposition at that point. Uh. They did do obviously in the autopsy, they didn't find any signs of foul play. There were no obviously no uh like obvious wounds, There were no internal wounds, there was no strangulation. Um. They they pretty much said, this doesn't look like foul play at all. Um. The one one of the mysteries was how she got up there, because you, um, if you want to go just through the regular staircase to the rooftop, and this is not a rooftop that you you know, doesn't have like a rooftop hangout area or what. Although people you know, there was plenty of graffiti and beer bottles and drug needles, and some people would make their way up there. But UH, if you go through the regular door, it's one of the alarm doors which would trigger downstairs and all throughout the lobby. UM that never came on and you have to have a key to disable it. But there is a fire escape entry with the ladder basically for the last like for the last story, it's a little precarious, but she could have just simply gone out the window to the fire escape and climbed up the ladder and then up the ladder to the tanks. It's not you know, it's a little UM. It would be a little bit of a scary trip up that ladder, I think. But considering what happened, she she clearly was was not in a good place mentally. So I think that's completely believable that journalist Josh Dean Um went and I think two thousand fifteen to see this himself. He had gotten obsessed with the case, so he went and kind of investigated it in person, and UM he quickly found that open window was still open, UH, and the fire escape was easily accessible and UM in the UH. I think one of his articles is called American Horror Story, which is a reference to UM. What I think the Hotel season of American Horror Story was based on or inspired by Elsa Lamb's disappearance. Um. But there's a picture that he took of that ladder leading from the fire escape on the fifth or fourteenth floor up to the roof, and all you see is up, like you just see the ladder and then above it is sky. But after reading about it, your imagination just thinks of like the fifteen stories behind you, like as you're you know, as you're looking up this ladder. It's one of the most unsettling pictures I've ever seen. If you read the text, uh, you know that surround it. Um. But he said, by his judgment, an average person could easily make it up that ladder, especially if you don't look down. He said, if you're carrying a body or another person, you could not do it. He said, it just would be too difficult. And you know, it's one of those straight up vertical ladders on the side of the building. Yeah, but if you were in a manic state, as a lot of people believe Alsa Lamb was, um, you could probably make it up that ladder pretty quickly. You wouldn't even necessarily consider looking down and all of a sudden, you'd be on the roof, and after you were on the roof, it would be a fairly easy proposition to get into one of those tanks, especially I think she weighed about a hundred and fifteen pounds and was about five ft four inches, so it was possible for her to get into one of those tanks through that hatch. But um, either she was too scared to come out conceivably, or she couldn't get out when she wanted to get out and tired of treading water because the water would have been about eight feet deep and drowned after a while. Yeah, I mean they did. I think the police dogs did pick up her scent near that window, so that seems to be what happened. And uh, you know, this is one of those cases where the more I read, like all I could feel was despair about this poor woman having what looked to be some sort of medication related manic episode, maybe scared, maybe thinking someone was following her and trying to get away and and going at great links, going to great links to maybe hide somewhere like inside of a water tank. Um, I don't know, like why her clothes were off or why her clothes ended up in the tank. I'm not saying any of this makes sense, but it is something that could happen. And all I can think about is what an awful place that she must have been for something like this to have happened. Yeah, and I mean to kind of back up the mental break UM theory, which is what I buy. That's that's that's where I put my stock. UM. She remember, I said she was originally put in a room with a couple of other girls she didn't know at the stay on Maine. They complained about her behaving strangely, so she was moved to her own private room. UM. Apparently she went to a taping of the Conan O'Brien show and was escorted out because she was behaving strangely. And then UM detectives also found she was on four different medications for bipolar one disorder and depression, and UM the l a p D based on the the the prescription dates on the bottles, and then the number of pills that were left and the instructions on the bottles, UM the l A p D were able to determine that she hadn't been following UM the dosage recommendations or taking her pills or medications. So if you put all of that together, and then also that, um, people taking their clothes off as part of a psychotic episode happens. It's been documented. Um you like, there's no there's no pieces missing on the table, like she could have gone out on that fire escape, gone up the ladder, like there's nothing that is well yeah, but then there's this really big thing that remains unexplained, like it explains absolutely everything, and then suddenly it kind of makes all the other stuff like government mind control or ghosts or whatever seemed just kind of gross. You know, totally agree. I believe her parents brought a lawsuit against the hotel that was eventually dismissed. If I'm not mistaken, and um, it just remains a very very sad situation in a sad case. And and it is very annoying when you get online and everyone thinks that they're spirits being conjured and in all this wacky stuff. It's just not the case, not the case. Indeed, you got anything else? I got nothing else. Well that's it for the Cecil Hotel and Na Lisa lamb r I p uh And since I said our, I p that means it's time for a listener mail. I'm gonna call this follow up to Y two k. Uh. And this is something that we actually had in our notes that we I guess just kind of failed to bring up, right, Yeah, I mean you had it in your notes as well. Yeah, yeah, the problem. Um, and we got a lot of emails about this, and and we're not gonna fully probably explain to everyone's satisfaction how it works. But um, hey, guys, just got done listening to the Y to K podcasts, which brought back an interesting range of memories of living through that time. In case you weren't aware, there's something called the Unix y two K problem that still exists but is slowly being fixed by smart people behind the scenes. The majority of computers in the world run Unix based operating systems, not Windows or mac os, and unless these systems are patched at three fourteen on January nineteen uh, their clocks will roll over to think it's midnight January first, nineteen seventy. Yes. Uh. The cause is basically the same. In the early versions of the OS only had so much memory allocated to time representations, but more modern versions now have this fixed and hence computers aren't susceptible once they're updated or upgraded, although not all systems can be easily updated. Uh. And that is from a bunch of people, but specifically from PhD Allen Chalker. That's great, Thanks Alan and everybody who wrote in. I was like, oh me, and I'm meant to include that. But apparently unix um represents time as the number of seconds from the epoch date, which is some date in nineteen seventy and then eventually it's going to have more seconds than it can represent in the number of digits, so it will just roll back over, like he was saying, which it's pretty neat unix pretty cool. But also I'm glad to hear that they're smart people working on that because we got seventeen years. Man, you guys, take it easy, take a weekend, you know, sure, go go send in your house and social distance from everybody. That's right. Well, we also got a lot of emails just from people that some people whose parents helped rewrite code or we're heading up projects rewriting code, and it was it was pretty cool. We got a lot of a lot of emails about that. When he struck a chord Yeah, it was a good idea, Chuck um. Well, if you want to get in touch with us, like Alan and everybody else did, you can send us an email send it off to stuff podcast at iHeart radio dot com. 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