Things don’t get much stranger than the unsolved death of Canadian tourist Elisa Lam who was found dead at the Cecil Hotel in L.A. back in 2013. The new Netflix docuseries “Crime Scene: The Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel” will delve into the mystery.
“As a true crime documentarian, I was fascinated in 2013 when the elevator video of Elisa Lam went viral and legions of amateur detectives used the internet to try to solve the mystery of what happened to her,” Barlinger said. “So, when journalist Josh Dean, who is also a producer on the project, brought us his research into this case, we realized there was as an opportunity to do something different by not just telling the story of Elisa’s disappearance, but to create a series that explores a particular location’s role in encouraging or abetting crime — or the perception thereof.”
Lam checked in to the hotel on January 26, 2013, and was last seen by a Cecil Hotel staff member on January 31st. The mystery began when Lam failed to show up for check-out in early February. Customers of the hotel soon began to complain of dark, foul-tasting water. On February 19th Lam’s body was found floating in the hotel’s rooftop water tank. The hotel’s CC TV footage of Lam acting peculiar just before her death only adds to the mystery.
The four-episode series will also explore the dark history of the Cecil Hotel which served as shelter for several well-known serial killers including Richard Ramirez, know as the “Night Stalker.”
Tune in to Netflix for the premiere of “Crime Scene: The Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel” on February 10, 2021.