The mysterious case of Elisa Lam’s death is examined.
Elisa Lam was a young woman who died at the Cecil Hotel in 2013. She was found floating in a 10 foot water tank on the roof nearly 3 weeks after her disappearance. The footage above is the last footage of her taken and it’s incredibly bizarre to say the least. This is going to be an analysis of the footage, her autopsy, and my thoughts of what ultimately happened to her.
Footage
The footage starts out with Elisa rushing into the elevator, though I would not say that this pace is too abnormal. One of the things I find strange is that she leans over to press the buttons on the elevator. I’ve never seen anyone do this before and almost makes me wonder if she’s having a problem with her eyesight. You will see her lean over in this fashion a couple other times in the video and I would not rule out possible eyesight problems either physical or from a substance.
One of the odd little things I noticed is that she doesn’t have her purse on her. I don’t know about Elisa’s daily routine and it’s quite possible Elisa doesn’t carry a purse all the time. I will say if you’re someone that carries a purse, you feel completely naked without it if you’re going somewhere. This is a little bit of a red flag to me.
She presses multiple buttons on the elevator. This could either be from mania, trying to get away from someone stalking her, or a mixture of both. She continues this pattern to look to see if she’s being followed and then hides. After that she mouths something that is blurred by the footage. Not many people catch this in the footage because of its quality, but it is most definitely altered.
The rest of her face was digitized to cover the fact that her mouth had been digitized out. You can tell when she turns her head the picture magically becomes undigitized. She moves to the left of the elevator. I believe at this moment she believes she’s fully out of the view of the camera. She then begins moving her hands about in either a psychosis type of way or possible moving her hands talking to someone which I’ll get to later. Once she goes back in the elevator she holds both her hands on the walls as she walks as if she’s disoriented from a substance then repeats her hand gestures again outside. After all of this the elevator closes and continues to work normally.
There’s only one problem with this footage, it has been tampered with. Regardless of if Elisa’s face was actually pixelated, the video has been spliced into multiple parts. What’s even more concerning is that the police never addressed this. A video showing the time stamps can be found below. You can tell after Elisa leaves, about 1 min 25 secs passes until the door actually closes. A splice can be found at 2:10 of this YouTube video showing the elevator door jiggering forward.
Autopsy
The autopsy can be found here.
The autopsy’s was as ruled as drowning.
There’s a major problem with this ruling though and it’s that there was no water found in Elisa’s lungs…
A major red flag is that the initial cause of death was quickly changed… Possibly this change was attempted by an examiner that wanted to dispute a discrepancy. Either way it looks suspicious and unprofessional.
I was curious at who changed the cause of death. I decided to try to match any of the existing handwriting on the documents to the dates on the cause of death. I’m not a graphologist by any means, but I’m pretty sure the hand writing above is not of these people based on the 3’s, 6’s, and / strokes:
One thing I’m pretty sure about is that the X in “accident” is not the same person who put a X in “could not be determined”. The strokes and positioning is very different. One controlled and straight, the other quick and certain.
Hidden in a big paragraph of text under the external examination you’ll find this despite no sexual trauma being reported:
Conclusion
I don’t believe Elisa died accidentally. The roof access had an alarm on the exit that would have went off and the only other way to the top of the roof would have been a roundabout way that I don’t think Elisa mentally could have done at the time. The water tower was also 10 feet tall and impossible to get inside without a ladder. There was no ladder at the time of her disappearance. I also find it incredibly suspicious that sexual trauma was completely ruled out when she had blood coming from her anus.
I personally believe the autopsy was a sham. I think Elisa was laced with something that caused her barely able to see or think straight. This would explain why she leans over to look at the numbers in the elevator and also her distorted hand movements. Elisa possibly was talking to someone using a bluetooth piece in her ear. This would rationalize the hand gestures she does in the video which would make sense if she had been laced and fearful for her life.
In the last moments of Elisa on the elevator camera she looks as if she starts praying or pleading for her life. Once she’s off camera I imagine she was abducted to be raped and somehow killed in a matter to avoid obvious autopsy fraud. Possibly she was overdosed or depraved of oxygen. She was later put into the water tank with the top flipped open to stage a suicide. Due to the rest of her autopsy I don’t think she ever drowned. The fact that her death was ruled drowning with no water in her lungs is criminal in my opinion.
At least 16 different murders/suicides have happened at the Cecil Hotel. The video footage has most definitely been tampered with. The autopsy looks to be fraudulent. The oddity of this case and the fact that the scenario of Elisa’s death is not probable as an accident or even as a homicide without extensive misconduct from multiple parties, leads me to believe the Cecil Hotel is some sort of modern day Murder Castle.
inlecebra 