Elisa Lam Didn’t Die of Tuberculosis, Despite the Reddit Rumors

Crime Scene: The Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel examines one of the internet’s most buzzed about crimes of the last decade. The Netflix docuseries, which comes from director Joe Berlinger, unpacks the chilling disappearance of Elisa Lam, a young Canadian tourist who set off on a trip to Los Angeles and was last seen in a strange elevator video that shows her final moments in the hotel.

While Lam’s body was eventually found in a water tank on top of the hotel, conspiracy theorists have spun their own tales about what could have happened to her and what led up to her tragic death.

“The Elisa Lam case is so fascinating, especially because it’s tied up with the history of the Cecil, it’s damn near impossible to make a docuseries about it that isn’t going to be entertaining on some level,” Decider’s Joel Keller writes in his Crime Scene: The Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel review. But what Berlinger manages to do in the first episode of Crime Scene: The Vanishing At The Cecil Hotel is set up both the mystery surrounding Lam’s disappearance and give people who don’t already know about the Cecil more than enough information about the hotel and neighborhood’s reputation to make the story even creepier.”

While countless theories cropped up after Lam’s death, one of the stranger ones is that she was connected to tuberculosis, and that the disease was linked to her mysterious death.

Here’s everything you need to know about the Elisa Lam tuberculosis theory.

WHAT IS THE ELISA LAM TUBERCULOSIS THEORY?

One Reddit theory links Lam to the tuberculosis outbreak in Los Angeles that popped up in 2013, right around the time of her death. Online detectives suggest that she was a test subject for a new type of TB medication who was experiencing adverse side effects. Others assume that Lam could have been a human biological weapon, sent to L.A. to spread the disease, while some wonder if she was silenced for knowing too much about the outbreak and the disease.

DID ELISA LAM HAVE TUBERCULOSIS?

While plenty of Reddit theories insist there’s a connection between Lam and the fatal disease, her official autopsy suggests otherwise. At the time of her death, Lam did not have tuberculosis. Her autopsy determined that she died of accidental drowning.

IS THERE AN ELISA LAM TB TEST?

While it seems like it could be just another internet theory, there really is a tuberculosis test that bears an uncanny resemblance to Lam’s name. The LAM-ELISA test, which stands for Lipoarabinomannan (LAM) Enzyme-Linked Immunosorbent Assay (ELISA), is used to detect the disease.

Stream Crime Scene: The Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel on Netflix