In February 2013, the body of a young woman was found floating in the water tank of a purportedly cursed hotel in Los Angeles.
The death of Elisa Lam would baffle people all over the world, with images of her strange behaviour just before her death caught on CCTV cameras.
Who was the unfortunate woman at the centre of this mystery?
Lam Ho Yi, also known as Elisa, was a 21-year-old Canadian university student who in 2013 had decided to explore the West Coast of the US on her own.
Her parents were worried about her safety, but they wished her a safe journey, not knowing they would never see her alive again.
In Los Angeles, she checked into the infamous Cecil Hotel, the site of several suicides and murders. The hotel had also hosted several serial killers and was reportedly haunted.
In the days prior to her disappearance, Lam was active on social media, updating her Tumblr regularly. So, it is known that she had visited the San Diego Zoo on Jan 28 before going to the Cecil for the night.
She was supposed to share a hostel-style room with others, but her bipolar disorder led to her being relocated to a single room.
Some people say this claim was made up by the hotel staff to make it seem Lam was mentally unsound. Anyway, she got a room to herself and she would remain there until her disappearance.
On the second night, she complained in a Tumblr post about “creepers” in the hotel. It is not certain what she meant.
Lam was last seen alive on Jan 31. She was out alone buying gifts for her family and was observed to be in a good mood. She was supposed to check out of the Cecil on that day but she was not seen alive again.
Her parents, who had been receiving constant updates and calls from their daughter, stopped hearing from her after Jan 30.
By Feb 2, worried that she had not contacted them for days, they turned to the Los Angeles police for help before flying down themselves.
They searched for her, finding her belongings untouched in her room, though her laptop and phone were missing. She seemed to have vanished into thin air.
A fortnight later, the police released footage of her from the CCTV cameras in the lift that had been taken at 2am on Feb 1.
Lam was seen pressing all the lift buttons but the doors remained open. She stepped out, looking right, then left before stepping back into the lift and hiding in the corner. Was she hiding from someone?
She stepped into the corridor again, before re-entering the lift to press all the buttons. She stepped outside again, waving her hands around in front of her for a full minute before walking away; the lift doors closed after she left.
About three days after the footage was released, hotel guests complained that the water had a strange taste and odour to it.
On Feb 19, an employee inspected the water tanks on the roof and found the naked corpse of Lam, floating face up. An autopsy found that she had drowned and said her bipolar disorder was a likely factor.
The theory was that she had had a psychotic episode, headed to the roof and into the water tank where she drowned. Her body remained undiscovered for weeks.
Her clothes, which were found floating with her, showed no evidence of an attack or sexual assault, but there was nothing indicating suicide either.
No drugs were found in her system, except for a tiny amount of alcohol and prescription medication.
Questions began to be asked about how she got up to the roof in the first place, since the door was locked and opening it should have triggered an alarm.
How did she get into the water tank? It was 3.5 metres high and there was no ladder to the access port on the top. The lid of the access port weighed about 35kg, so how did the petite Lam move it?
And, with its weight, how did she close it after she got into the tank? If she was having a psychotic episode and had climbed into the tank, why remove all her clothes?
The CCTV footage of her final hours triggered a flurry of explanations, some mundane, others less so.
Some suggested she was murdered and her body dumped into the tank. The autopsy report mentioned blood pooling in her anal canal, which could be part of the decomposition process or a sign of sexual abuse.
Her strange behaviour in the lift did not suggest she was trying to escape from someone, though it is unknown how much time had passed between the episode in the lift and her death.
One theory suggested she was high on drugs and by the time her body was found, the traces were lost.
More superstitious folk suggested she was possessed by a supernatural force, which led her to her death.
Some sceptics said the CCTV footage was edited by the hotel staff or the police to hide something, claims both sides denied.
A wild conspiracy theory suggested she was killed for posting on Tumblr on a secret Canadian military project.
Perhaps her death had a more mundane explanation, as guests later found it was possible to reach the roof through the fire escape. In addition, years before her death, a group of youths had been caught hanging out on the rooftop, suggesting it was not as inaccessible as believed.
Much remains to be explained, and it is likely the truth will never be known. - FMT
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