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Netflix is continuing its true crime boom with Crime Scene: The Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel, a new documentary that investigates the mysterious death of Elisa Lam, a young tourist who died at the Cecil Hotel in 2013. Crime Scene explores the notorious Cecil Hotel where Elisa Lam vanished, unpacking its troubling history and Lam’s tragic death there.
The new doc, which comes from director Joe Berlinger (The Ted Bundy Tapes), marks the first season in a new series that travels to different locations and unravels the crimes that took place there. For nearly 100 years, the Cecil Hotel has stood out as an infamous landmark in L.A., and Crime Scene is ready to explore the legacy of the hotel in the context of one of its more recent crimes.
Curious about the Cecil Hotel? Wondering who Elisa Lam is, what her connect to the Cecil Hotel is, and when the Elisa Lam Netflix doc premieres? Here’s everything you need to know about the Elisa Lam Cecil Hotel Netflix documentary.

WHO IS ELISA LAM?

Elisa Lam was a Canadian college student studying at the University of British Columbia. While Lam lived in Vancouver, she had gone on a trip to visit Los Angeles in 2013, per People. Lam, who was 21 years old, had planned to stay at a hostel while she explored the city. But only a day after she checked into the hotel, Lam disappeared.

WHICH HOTEL DID ELISA LAM STAY IN?

Lam chose the Cecil Hotel for her trip, where she was set to stay for four nights as part of a “west coast tour,” according to a 2015 Medium article. “It was built in 1928 hence the Art Deco theme. So yes it IS classy but then since it’s LA it went on crack. Fairly certain this is where Baz Luhrman needs to film the Great Gatsby,” she wrote on Tumblr at the time. The Cecil Hotel, which is located near Skid Row in L.A., has an ominous reputation and is even nicknamed “Hotel Death” because of its complicated past. “Throughout its history, the Hotel Cecil has always had a dark persona,” one person shares in the trailer for the Netflix doc, while another insists that the hotel was “hiding something.”

ELISA LAM DEATH: WHAT HAPPENED TO ELISA LAM?

While Lam checked into her hotel Jan. 31, 2013, she vanished just one day after. She was last seen in the lobby of the Cecil Hotel, but when footage was released that captured her last moments in the hotel’s elevator, the case blew up. The recording, which was released by the LAPD in hopes of finding a lead to help solve Lam’s disappearance, shows the young woman stepping into an elevator shortly after midnight, wearing a red hoodie and black shorts.
Lam presses the button and steps back, but when the doors don’t close after a while, she peers out of the car and into the hallway, then jumps into the corner as if to hide. Lam then steps in and out of the car and pushes more buttons, then begins to wave her arms around. “Anyone watching for the first time, seeing this behavior with no sound, would assume she’s talking to someone. But no one appears,” Josh Dean writes in Medium.
Lam eventually exits and walks down the hall, while the elevator doors finally close without her. Lam was never seen again, and internet detectives suspected she was either under the influence or interacting with someone who isn’t seen in the footage. Eventually, the truth emerged about what had happened to Lam, although it didn’t clear up much of the mystery surrounding the elevator video.

Her body was found on Feb. 19 in one of the Cecil Hotel’s water tanks on the roof of the building. Lam was found near the bottom of the tank nude, with the clothes she’d been wearing in the video nearby. There were no signs of trauma on her body, and it was unclear how Lam got into the tank, but her death was ruled an accidental drowning.