After disappearing from her room within the Los Angeles lodge in February 2013, the 21-year-old’s physique was discovered two weeks later drowned inside a water tank on the roof of the lodge.
Practically a decade and dozens of conspiracy theories later, Lam’s case stays unsolved.
The Cecil Lodge’s infamous previous
The Cecil Lodge’s darkish previous earned it a spot on Los Angeles excursions lengthy earlier than a girl’s physique was discovered inside its rooftop water tank.
“It is the place the place serial killers keep,” Hollywood tour information Richard Schave informed CNN in 2013.
Schave and his spouse Kim Cooper made it their job to compile particulars on those that have killed or been killed whereas staying on the Cecil.
The killers
Essentially the most well-known on their listing are serial killers Richard Ramirez and Jack Unterweger.
In 1985, Ramirez, referred to as the “Nightstalker,” was dwelling on the Cecil’s prime flooring in a $14 an evening room, Cooper mentioned.
The Cecil, stuffed then with tons of of transients dwelling within the low-cost rooms, was a superb place for Ramirez to go unnoticed as he killed 13 girls, Schave mentioned. He was “simply dumping his bloody garments within the Dumpster on the finish of his night and going within the again entrance.”
Jack Unterweger labored as a journalist masking Los Angeles crime for an Austrian journal in 1991 when he moved into the Cecil.
“We imagine he was dwelling on the Cecil in homage to Ramirez,” Schave mentioned.
He’s blamed for killing three prostitutes in Los Angeles whereas a visitor on the Cecil.
The killed
In the course of the Nineteen Fifties and Nineteen Sixties, the Cecil had a repute as a spot the place folks would kill themselves by leaping out upper-floor home windows, Cooper mentioned. “It is simply what folks do when they’re on the finish of their rope,” she mentioned.
Helen Gurnee, in her 50s, leapt from a seventh-floor window, touchdown on the Cecil Lodge marquee on October 22, 1954, Cooper mentioned.
Julia Moore jumped from her eighth-floor room window on February 11, 1962, she mentioned. Moore left behind a bus ticket from St Louis, 59 cents and an Illinois checking account e book exhibiting a steadiness of $1,800.
Pauline Otton, 27, jumped from a ninth-floor window after an argument along with her estranged husband on October 12, 1962, Cooper mentioned. Otton landed on George Gianinni, 65, who was strolling on the sidewalk 90 ft beneath. Each have been killed immediately.
Not everybody on Cooper’s listing dedicated suicide.
“Pigeon Goldie” Osgood, a retired phone operator, was discovered useless in her ransacked room on June 4, 1964, Cooper mentioned. Osgood, identified for safeguarding and feeding the pigeons at close by Pershing Sq., was stabbed, strangled and raped. The crime has not been solved.
Not an extraordinary lodge
Schave and Cooper have theories about why the Cecil’s previous has been so sordid.
It was constructed within the Nineteen Twenties as a lodge “for businessmen to come back into city and spend an evening or two,” Cooper mentioned.
Nevertheless it was quickly upstaged by nicer lodges in a greater a part of city, she mentioned. When the Nice Melancholy hit within the Thirties, it turned extra of a transient lodge. Ultimately, it transitioned right into a single room occupancy enterprise, referred to as an SRO. Lengthy-term tenants rented particular person rooms and shared bogs with neighboring residents.
“This was only a place the place individuals who have been actually down on their luck have been going,” Schave mentioned. “These lodges are stuffed with people who find themselves on the fringe of being built-in in society.”
In the course of the Seventies, ’80s and ’90s, tons of of people that have been “down on their luck” known as the Cecil residence, he mentioned. “They have been all hustling to make ends meet.”
“It is not like that anymore, after all,” Cooper mentioned.
New house owners transformed three of the flooring again to lodge rooms round 2007, however a lot of the constructing stays SRO, Schave mentioned.
