(laughing) (yelling) - alright, let's fix the camera. so today we're drivingto the stay on main hotel or as it was formallyknown, the cecil hotel, as part of an ongoingseries where i tell this guy true crime stories andtoday, we have the privilege of actually going there because it's in la and this place happensto be the site of one
of the most bizarremysteries i've ever read. alright, so we're in our hotel room now, i guess it's time to tell this story - [brent] in a giantred chair that's shaped like a hand. (laughs) - [ryan] so on january 26th,2013, twenty-one year old canadian tourist elisa lam checked into the cecil hotel in downtown los angeles.
on february 19th, eighteendays from the last time she was seen, elisa lam's body was found naked and floating in a fourfoot by eight foot water tank on the roof of the cecilhotel where she was staying. - [brent] this sounds horrible. - [ryan] you want toknow what it was that led to her discovery? - [brent] uh... - [ryan] it was hotelguests complaining about
the low water pressure from the hotel. - [brent] nice. - [ryan] one couple afterthe fact reported that the water would come outblack before normalizing and that it had a bad taste,but didn't complain at the time because they thoughtthat was normal for la. - are you gonna drink the water? - no i'm not gonna drink the water. no, don't drink that, come on man.
- cheers. - [ryan] you're a savage. - tastes clean. - i mean, it has been three years. it tastes just like water butit's too much for me to bear. i can't. plus, there's like this weirdfucking water pipe thing going on up here. another interesting pieceof info is from a statement
from the hotel manager,and apparently when elisa checked into the hotel, she was originally in a hostel-style shared room, but later was moved to her own privateroom due to complaints from her roommates of odd behavior. it turns out the lasttime she was seen was actually on surveillancefootage from the hotel elevator. i'm gonna show you the key points of it. - [brent] show me there's footage?
- [ryan] yeah, what you'reabout to see is, i don't know. - [brent] i don't wantto see, is there dead? i don't want to see anything. - [ryan] no, no, no, no, it's weird. i'll tell you that, it's weird. all right, so this isthe surveillance footage from the elevator. this is the last time she was seen. so that's her.
- [brent] but why is she... it like looks like she'shiding, i'm not sure what. - [ryan] it looks likesomeone was chasing her. but i feel like you wouldn'tget out of the elevator if someone was chasing you. i mean, she appears to bemoving her hands in like a really weird, inhuman way. - [brent] how has theelevator doors not closed yet? - [ryan] i have no idea.
it almost looks likeshe's talking to somebody right now, right? does it not look likeshe's talking to somebody directly in front of her? - [brent] yeah. i mean, not directly in frontof her, down the hall, but. i mean there's no one infront of her so, yeah, okay. - [ryan] that's the video. - [brent] point one, that'sstrange, i'll give you that.
- [ryan] that's super strange, right? - [brent] but that doesn'treally give us any information. - [ryan] i mean, it givesyou some theories though. one of which was she wason hallucinogens or drunk, and while elisa was in factbipolar, and reportedly took four different medicationsfor that disorder, this theory that she wason hallucinogens or drunk was quickly rebuked by the fact that her toxicology test resultscame back with nothing
in her system that could havecontributed to her death. - [brent] yea, but, if she'sbipolar, just right there, that could explain why she was doing that. - [ryan] it's possible. - [ryan] another theory wasthat she was actually murdered, but the autopsy showed no visible signs of trauma on her body. so if evidence suggeststhat it wasn't foul play and that it wasn't drugs,many wonder what could
have led elisa to actuallyclimb in the tank herself and that's a good questionbecause nobody knows even how she got up there. i mean, in fact, to get tothe roof, elisa would have to either a, climb up the fire escape, and there is three at the hotel, but you'd have to goout a window to do that. - [brent] mm-hmm. - [ryan] b, go through alocked rooftop door that would
set off an alarm if opened andno alarm was heard that day. - [brent] mm. - [ryan] once she even got upthere, which, at this point, after seeing that video, ithink it's highly unlikely she was able to do thatbut okay, fair enough, she got up there somehow, she would have to get on the tank platform,climb up a ten foot ladder, open a twenty poundlid, get into the tank, and somehow close thefucking lid after she got
in and then you like also gotto remember she was naked, so that means she either tookher clothes off before or-- - [brent] were the clothes never found? - [ryan] the clothes werefound in the tank, so she must have taken theclothes off in the tank. - [brent] or they were thrown in. - [ryan] or they werethrown in, exactly, yeah. this whole scenario to me is fishy. - [brent] yeah, definitely fishy.
- [ryan] for her to havedone that all herself. another popular theory,and you're not gonna like this but i haveto say it, is a ghost. if you look at the video,it appears as if elisa's talking to someone rightoutside the elevator, which has led some onthe internet to believe that she is talking tothe ghost of serial killer richard ramirez who wasconvicted of thirteen murders and stayed in the cecilhotel from 1984 to 1985.
it's also worth noting thatramirez was a known satanist. - [brent] absolutely not. - [ryan] so you're saying youdon't even think there's even a little bit of apossibility that this place is a little hauntedand it can drive people to do some crazy shit. - [brent] to me, it'sbasically like saying so you don't believe there'seven a little possibility that the spaghetti monsterdid this, you know--
- [ryan] there's no recordedhistory of a spaghetti monster. i don't know where you're getting that. - [brent] show me the scientificjournal in which they've posted all these ghost studies. - [ryan] there is footage ofthings moving on their own. - [brent] footage is not science. - [ryan] well there's no one that's like, "i'm gonna be a ghost scientist". - [brent] why not?
- [ryan] because that's a weird-- - [brent] there's footage. - [ryan] just think of thattitle on a business card, that's weird. i'm a ghost scientist. - [ryan] and that's reallyjust the tip of the iceberg for the cecil. it also played home toaustrian serial killer jack unterweger in 1991,
was the site of anunsolved murder in 1964, and was also, according tosome, one of the last places the black dahlia was seen alive. and, to pile it on even more,there have been numerous accounts of people who havejumped to their death from the roof of the cecil to thepoint where longtime residents refer to the hotel as the suicide. - [brent] if anything, thatgoes against the ghost theory because there's already recordedhistory of it being easy
for people to get uponto the roof, therefore, it must have been easy forher to get up onto the roof. - [ryan] lemme check to seeif it's actually the roof or if it's just jumping. - [ryan] oh, okay, nowyou're changing your story because it doesn't fit. your designed ghost story package. you see, you can't just-- - [ryan] i'm gonna check.
- [brent] change the facts in order to-- - [ryan] i'm gonna serveyou up a fresh truth pancake right now. we'll see how you like it, hold on. - [brent] i do like pancakes. - [ryan] jumped to theirdeaths from the building. never says the roof. - [brent] hmm. - [ryan] authoritiesultimately ruled elisa's death
was accidental drowning. - [brent] i'm just feelingbad for the family who's, people are brick, like-- - [ryan] and that's exactlywhat my next point was gonna be. - [ryan] is like, lost in allthe madness is the family. - [brent] yes. - [ryan] who also actuallyfiled a wrongful death lawsuit against the hotel - [brent] good.
- [ryan] which was eventually dismissed. - [brent] what? - [ryan] but, like i said before, the real tragedy is to the family.
