Netflix series explores mysterious death of Elisa Lam, after CCTV footage of Canadian student’s last sighting went viral
- Crime Scene: The Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel focuses on the death of Lam, found naked in a water tank on the Los Angeles hotel’s rooftop in 2013
- The 21-year-old’s death triggered numerous conspiracy theories online after footage of her acting strangely in the lift of the hotel was released by police
On February 19, 2013, the naked and bloated body of Canadian Elisa Lam was recovered from a water tank on the rooftop of the Cecil Hotel in downtown Los Angeles, three weeks after the 21-year-old was reported missing. The daughter of immigrants from Hong Kong, and a student of the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Lam was travelling alone on a trip down America’s west coast.
A coroner ruled her death an accidental drowning “with bipolar disorder as a significant factor”. But the case did not end there.
What sparked a media frenzy, and theories about her death, was bizarre CCTV footage of her last sighting in the hotel’s lift, captured on February 1, that was released by the Los Angeles Police Department.
“The young Chinese woman enters the lift of her Los Angeles hotel, before pressing every button. When the doors fail to close, she peers nervously out and down the hallway, before retreating again to hide in a corner of the lift. The bizarre behaviour, captured on CCTV footage … represents the last confirmed sighting of 21-year-old Vancouver student Elisa Lam,” wrote the SCMP’s Vancouver correspondent Ian Young, when Lam’s disappearance was being investigated.
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Canadian Elisa Lam elevator security camera video
“In the 2-1/2-minute video, Lam, wearing shorts and a red hooded sweatshirt, acts in a manner that appears alternately fearful and confused. She hides, goes in and out of the open lift and waves her hands about. At one stage, she appears to be talking and gesturing to a second person, perhaps outside the view of the elevator’s camera,” Young wrote.