Check Out the Hotel at the Center of Netflix’s Upcoming ‘Crime Scene’ Docuseries

Things started to look up for the Cecil in 2003 as the then-owners began a revitalization of the property, restoring the lobby and other common areas to their original grandeur. The place subsequently sold in 2007 to developer Fred Cordova, who set about transforming it into downtown L.A.’s “premier budget lodging establishment.” Things were going according to plan, with tourists once again checking in and troublemakers looking elsewhere to perform their dark deeds. 

The city soon stopped the renovations, though, citing a moratorium on residential hotel conversions enacted to preserve low-income housing. Lawsuits followed and the Cecil wound up stuck in a half-renovated, half-dilapidated purgatory for years. As a 2008 Los Angeles Times article detailed, “Fresh Monet, Picasso and Kandinsky posters hang on the vivid yellow, red and blue walls next to the elevators on each floor.  But around the corner, reality hits: The rooms are small, bugs scamper across the floors and in the dim hallways, one sometimes encounters guests who have been using drugs or alcohol.”

Despite the weird state of limbo, the Lanting Hotel Group, which managed the property at the time, was largely successful in their attempts to keep the Cecil on the up and up. As president William Lanting tweeted in March 2009, “We’ve gone almost a month without a visit from the coroner at The Hotel Cecil. Just five more days. (Keeping fingers crossed.)”

In 2011, a portion of the hotel was rebranded as Stay on Main, a hostel offering 138 private and shared rooms at an average of $49 a night.

Considering the place’s sordid past, the rebranding attempt was no surprise.

The Cecil’s history is so steeped in tales of murder, suicide and crime, in fact, that reading about the many cases tied to it almost becomes a banal and tedious task. Notorious murderer Richard Ramirez, himself the subject of the new Netflix series “Night Stalker: The Hunt for a Serial Killer,” lived in one of the hotel’s 14th-floor rooms for a time, as did Austrian journalist Jack Unterweger, who moved into the Cecil in 1991 and killed three prostitutes during his tenure there. But Elisa Lam’s death stands out as the most confounding to touch the hotel. Berlinger told Variety, “The fact that Elisa disappeared in a location that has a multi-decade history of crimes is what made her case fascinating to me.”

Traveling by herself, the Vancouver college student checked into a shared room at the Cecil on January 27, 2013, likely lured there by the affordable rooms and central downtown location. As journalist Steve Erickson noted in Los Angeles magazine, “If you aren’t at the Cecil to hide, or to look for the city you’ve occupied but never known, you’re probably a foreign traveler stranded by expectations, inconsolable for a glimpse of Hollywood or the beach that the travel guide promised is only ‘minutes away.’  The Cecil hasn’t been minutes away from anything worth being minutes away from for decades.”

Lam, who suffered from bipolar disorder, checked in with her family regularly during her stay, until January 31 that is, the day she disappeared. By that point she had been moved to a single room – #412 on the hotel’s fourth floor – after her roommates, strangers whom the hostel paired her with, complained of her erratic behavior. Elisa’s parents promptly reported her missing and detectives assigned to the case found something strange when reviewing the hotel’s security footage.

On the night of her disappearance, Elisa was captured by a camera in one of the Cecil’s elevators, seemingly both petrified and playful, pushing buttons haphazardly, hiding in a corner, peeking out the doors, jumping into an empty hallway and speaking animatedly to someone real or imagined outside of frame. The footage is haunting, strange and defies explanation. When police released it, hoping for clues as to the young woman’s whereabouts,  it immediately went viral.

Then on February 19, almost three weeks after Elisa went missing, guests began to complain about the hotel’s water – not only did it have a strange smell and taste, but the pressure was inordinately low. Santiago Lopez, who worked in maintenance at the property, checked the rooftop water towers. In one, he discovered Elisa’s nude body floating. Her clothes were also later found inside the same tank.

Though it has long been rumored that the lid of the vessel was closed when Santiago arrived on the roof, per LAist’s detailing of court documents from a wrongful death suit Elisa’s parents filed against the Cecil, that is not the case. According to the website, Lopez stated that the tank’s hatch was open when he discovered Lam’s body.

The coroner ruled Elisa’s death an accidental drowning, listing her bipolar disorder as a contributing factor. Questions abound, though – and internet sleuths have been trying to come up with answers ever since. Why did the elevator doors never close, for instance, in the almost four minutes of surveillance footage? How did Elisa get onto the roof when, by all accounts, accessing it requires an employee key? And how did she manage to lift the water tank’s heavy door to gain access to the inside? Many believe Elisa was murdered. Others contend she died as a result of some supernatural cause. Medium writer Josh Dean and at least one Redditor have compiled a much more benign theory of the circumstances of January 31, 2013, though. Whatever the case may be, Joe Berlinger hopes to provide answers with “Crime Scene: The Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel.” He’s not the first to be inspired by the property or the case, though.

Producer Ryan Murphy based the “Hotel” season of his anthology series “American Horror Story” on Elisa’s death and the Cecil, though no filming actually took place there. But several productions have made use of the lodging over the years.

Detective Tony Baretta (Robert Blake) is kidnapped from the Cecil in the season one episode of “Baretta” titled “The Half-Million Dollar Baby,” which aired in 1975. Though the entrance looked much different at the time.

A taxi driver named Lawson (James Sutorius) kills a prostitute (Juno Dawson) there in the season five episode of “Kojak” titled “A Strange Kind of Love,” which aired in 1977.

“Castle” location managers really seem to like the place as it has appeared no less than three times on the ABC series! In 2009, it popped up as the supposed New York Building where Dr. Cameron Talbot (Reed Diamond) lived in season two’s “When the Bough Breaks.”

The episode does a great job of showcasing the beauty of the hotel’s lobby post-2003 renovation.

Richard Castle (Nathan Fillion) and Kate Beckett (Stana Katic) also investigate a hit and run outside of the Cecil in season two’s “Kill the Messenger.”

And in the season three episode “Nikki Heat,” the property portrays the Beaumont Hotel where Kevin Ryan (Seamus Dever) and Javier Esposito (Jon Huertas) look into the murder of a high-end matchmaker.

Jax Teller (Charlie Hunnam) tracks down his baby son at the site, which masks as the Europa hotel, in the 2010 season three episode of “Sons of Anarchy” titled “Bainne.

And earlier this month, the new Discovery+ service debuted “Ghost Adventures: Cecil Hotel,” a two hour special dedicated to unearthing supernatural activities at the property.

Regardless of what Joe Berlinger manages to uncover in ‘Crime Scene,’ the Cecil is set for some major changes in the near future thanks to Matthew M. Baron of Simon Baron Development, who signed a 99-year ground lease on the property in 2016 and has been setting out to transform it into a boutique hotel/residential building with a gym, rooftop pool and lounge. The project is going to be a complete revamp. Baron told the Los Angeles Times, “We are gutting the entire building. We are going to redevelop it from the doorway to the roof and everything in between.” That the roof is being included in the redo is a smart move considering the haunting events that took place there on January 31, 2013.

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: The Cecil Hotel, from Netflix’s upcoming “Crime Scene: The Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel,” is located at 640 S. Main St. in downtown Los Angeles.

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