The Cecil Hotel and his curse inspired the Hotel cycle of American Horror Story, and just last January they were honored in a tribute on the Ghost Adventures show. Discovery Channel. It was only a matter of time before a true crime documentary tackled this. Netflix. Crime Scene: The Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel premiered last Friday on the platform and immediately went to No. 1 on the Top 10 on American Netflix.
The hotel in the area Skid Row of Los Angeles It is notorious for all the dark events that have taken place in its rooms since it was built, the most recent being the death of Elisa Lam which you will see below. The Cecil Hotel is currently closed for renovation, but is expected to reopen its doors in 2021.
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The Elisa Lam case
Lam, 21, traveled to Los Angeles from British Columbia, Canada, and booked a room at the Cecil Hotel. After her disappearance in January 2013, authorities were informed that the young woman had been diagnosed with depression and bipolar disorder. After failing to make any progress in the first weeks of their investigation, they decided to release the now-famous video showing a distraught Lam behaving erratically in the hotel elevator, giving the impression that she was perhaps trying to hide from someone.
After complaints from Cecil's guests about low water pressure and the strange taste of the tap water in their rooms, Lam's body was found in the hotel's water tank. Despite various theories put forward by «internet detectives,» her death was attributed to accidental drowning.
Crime Scene handles Lam's death irresponsibly, wasting three episodes misleading the audience and giving internet detectives free rein to develop their theories about her tragic death, only to finally provide the necessary explanations in the fourth episode.
The Black Dahlia's visit
Her murder Black Dahlia in 1947, of the aspiring actress Elizabeth Short, It was so horrific that it sparked frenzy not only in the media, but also among the authorities who were searching for her killer nationwide. The fact that he was never found has given rise to theories even today.
Some of the reports that followed Short's death placed the actress at the Cecil Hotel a few days before her death.
Multiple suicides
The suicides that have occurred at the hotel were briefly mentioned in the introduction to Crime Scene, but the series chose to focus on the death of Elisa Lam.
Starting in 1934, a sergeant took his own life in his room, while in 1937 a marine did the same by jumping from the roof. During the 1950s, there were many suicides at the Cecil involving people falling from the hotel windows, including 50-year-old Helen Gurnee in 1954. She was followed by 50-year-old actress Julia Moore and 27-year-old Pauline Otton in 1962. Otton's fall caused the death of 65-year-old George Gianni, who was walking in front of the building when she fell.
“Pigeon” Goldie Osgood
Before retiring, Goldie Osgood worked as a telephone operator. It was a profession that many women in 1900s America pursued, either to support their families after the Great Depression or to claim their independence from men. We don't know how Osgood ended up as a tenant at the Cecil Hotel, although it's not hard to imagine that her small pension would not have been enough to buy a house.
She lived alone in the hotel, but she was not lonely. She was popular among the Cecil community and the neighborhood, and every day she would walk to the nearby square wearing her LA Dodgers baseball cap to feed the pigeons. That's why the locals, who loved her dearly, called her ’Pigeon“ Goldie.
In 1964, Osgood was found strangled, stabbed, and sexually assaulted in her hotel room. Her case was never solved.
The child killer of the Cecil Hotel
19-year-old Dorothy Jean Purcell gave birth to her son unintentionally at the hotel and, as it is rumored that she did not even know she was pregnant, she threw the newborn out of the window thinking that he had not survived the birth. The young woman was arrested and then admitted to a psychiatric hospital.
Richard Ramirez's stay
Richard “Night Stalker” Ramirez just had his own true crime documentary on Netflix, but he could also fit into Crime Scene. Before his arrest in August 1985, serial killer Ramirez stayed at the Cecil for $14 a night. After murdering one of his victims, Ramirez would return to the hotel, throw his bloodstained clothes in the dumpster behind the Cecil, and go up to his room naked.
The residence of the second consecutive murderer
Austrian Jack Unterweger is estimated to have killed around twelve women, mainly prostitutes, in both Austria and the United States between 1990 and 1991.
His activities in the US began after he traveled to Los Angeles to write about prostitution and crime in the area for an Austrian magazine. Three of his victims in California were found strangled with their bras, as had been the case with his victims in Austria. He chose to stay at the Cecil Hotel in Los Angeles, which some believe was a tribute to Ramirez.
Unterweger was later arrested in Miami and committed suicide in 1994 in an Austrian prison. He was found guilty of nine murders.
