Cecil Hotel: What you need to know about the hotel in the Netflix crime show

Last updated Feb 15, 2021

“Crime Scene: The Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel,” which premiered today, is a four-part docuseries about the strange death of Canadian university student and hotel visitor Elisa Lam.

After vanishing from her space in the Los Angeles hotel in February 2013, the 21-year-old’s body was discovered 2 weeks later on drowned inside a water tank on the roofing system of the hotel.

Almost a years and lots of conspiracy theories later on, Lam’s case stays unsolved.

The program’s Oscar-nominated director, Joe Berlinger, nevertheless, definitely had sufficient product to work with for his brand-new series offered the hotel’s grim history.

2 infamous serial killers lived there

The Cecil Hotel’s dark previous made it an area on Los Angeles trips long prior to a female’s body was discovered inside its roof water tank.

“It’s the place where serial killers stay,” Hollywood tourist guide Richard Schave informed CNN in 2013.

The most well-known are serial killers Richard Ramirez and Jack Unterweger.

In 1985, Ramirez, called the “Nightstalker,” was residing on the Cecil’s leading flooring in a $14 a night space.

The Cecil, filled then with numerous transients residing in the low-cost spaces, was an excellent location for Ramirez to go undetected as he eliminated 13 females.

Jack Unterweger worked as a reporter covering Los Angeles criminal activity for an Austrian publication in 1991 when he moved into the Cecil.

He is blamed for eliminating 3 woman of the streets in Los Angeles while a visitor at the Cecil.

Numerous visitors leapt to their death

Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, a number of visitors eliminated themselves by leaping out upper-floor windows.

Amongst them was a 27-year-old female who leapt from a ninth-floor window after an argument with her separated hubby in 1962.

She arrived on a guy who was strolling on the walkway 90 feet listed below. Both were eliminated immediately.

A theory about the hotel’s sordid past

In a 2013 CNN piece, Schave and his partner, Kim Cooper, used some theories why the Cecil’s past has actually been so sordid.

It was integrated in the 1920s as a hotel “for businessmen to come into town and spend a night or two,” Cooper stated.

However it was quickly upstaged by better hotels in a bulk of town, she stated.

When the Great Anxiety struck in the 1930s, it ended up being more of a short-term hotel. Ultimately, it transitioned into a single space tenancy organization, called an SRO. Long-lasting occupants leased private spaces and shared restrooms with surrounding locals.

“This was just a place where people who were really down on their luck were going,” Schave stated. “These hotels are filled with people who are at the edge of being integrated in society.”

A variation of this piece initially appeared on CNN in 2013.

Jobber Wiki author Frank Long contributed to this report.

Cecil Hotel: What you need to know about the hotel in the Netflix crime show - CNN entertainment