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October 31, 2015 9:03 AM   Subscribe

Despite the press conference, the case was fairly low profile. It received more attention back in Canada than it did in Los Angeles, where the suspicious disappearance of a young woman — though not exactly common — wasn’t a rarity either. And with no news to report as the days went on, coverage of her disappearance basically ceased. That was, until February 13, when the LAPD summoned the public’s help again. This time, the department released a video. They wouldn’t confirm it at the time, but the video was taken by the Cecil Hotel’s elevator security camera in the early hours of February 1. It was, it turns out, the last known footage of Lam. And it was so strange, so creepy, so inexplicable that the release turned the case inside out.
posted by Rustic Etruscan (46 comments total) 35 users marked this as a favorite
 
I'm sorry that the young woman died but I don't see anything mysterious about her death. The body being in a water tank is pretty off putting but with no signs of struggle and a video showing the Ms. Lam acting strangely it seems the simplest explanation is that she killed herself. I'd never go near the Cecil if I could avoid it but I don't think it's some master criminal's lair. It's likely that there's one or two or many thrill killers in skid row but I don't see why any of them would bother to execute such an elaborate clean kill.
posted by rdr at 9:33 AM on October 31, 2015 [2 favorites]


A different kind of horror story.
I often think of the song lyric (and her story evokes it): "The world was never meant for one as beautiful as you."
posted by NorthernLite at 9:34 AM on October 31, 2015 [2 favorites]


rdr, that's also what the article concludes. It's good, and worth a read!
posted by Rustic Etruscan at 9:35 AM on October 31, 2015 [7 favorites]


rdr: It's a particularly convoluted and unpleasant and difficult way to kill oneself, in the presence of much simpler alternatives, is I think one of the main reasons that doesn't sit right with people. Put another way: the water tank is a very sensible body-disposal location. It's an entirely unreasonable method of suicide.
posted by Navelgazer at 9:49 AM on October 31, 2015 [6 favorites]


That was engrossing. About a third of the way in I figured it was fiction, what with it being Halloween: it dawned on me toward the end that it was fact. It's a fascinating story, but that poor woman.

The reddit megapost with evidence and links mentioned in the OP is here.
posted by postcommunism at 9:49 AM on October 31, 2015 [3 favorites]


It's an entirely unreasonable method of suicide.

But if you're having a paranoid delusion it might seem like a perfectly reasonable place to hide.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 9:52 AM on October 31, 2015 [30 favorites]


The Kim Cooper quoted in the article is mefi's own scram.
posted by brujita at 9:53 AM on October 31, 2015 [5 favorites]


Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish: that's my best guess too.
posted by Navelgazer at 9:54 AM on October 31, 2015 [1 favorite]


It's an entirely unreasonable method of suicide.

Assuming that Elisa was having a psychotic episode, I don't think you can say anything is unreasonable. We don't know how her mind was working then, or not working.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 9:55 AM on October 31, 2015 [3 favorites]


I watched the video and now I feel horrible for her.
posted by postcommunism at 10:19 AM on October 31, 2015 [2 favorites]


The (fictional) Tanis podcast from The Blacktapes Podcast people went into this case a little, which I actually thought was kind of in poor taste. It just strikes me as insensitive and too soon to make Elisa Lam a source of creepypasta.
posted by yasaman at 10:23 AM on October 31, 2015 [6 favorites]


I saw that video for the first time a few weeks ago (it was part of a listicle), and it creeped me out to no end. I still get the chills just thinking about it. Interesting that if you speed it up to real-time it seems less spooky.

I don't want to watch it again though (in any way/shape/form) because she was a real person, with real friends and family, and she doesn't deserve to be fodder for amateur internet sleuths or people who just want to use the video as cheap Halloween-type thrills. Mental illness is a terrible affliction. Her death is a great loss for her and her loved ones.

But thanks for posting: it is a well-written article and it does a decent job of painting her - to the extent possible, given such limited information - as a three-dimensional human being. It is better to watch the video in the context of this sort of article than in the type in which I encountered it.
posted by Halo in reverse at 10:25 AM on October 31, 2015 [12 favorites]


I couldn't bring myself to watch the video. It's a very sad story but I felt there was something off about the article. Who knows what she meant to the people who actually knew her, and are mourning her as a recent bereavement; there's something crass, in the face of that, about all these strangers turning her into a symbol of their own fixations and problems and this writer going on at length about what she means to him. I understand how it feels to be moved by the story of someone you don't really know, and to see yourself in them, but still. If this had been my relative or friend, I would loathe seeing her death turned into a Halloween special with the title "American Horror Story". I was glad that the LAPD refused to give the writer further details out of concern for the privacy of the family, and I didn't sympathise with his disappointment about that.
posted by Aravis76 at 10:33 AM on October 31, 2015 [20 favorites]


This was a good read for me. I think I in some way mirrored the mental journey of the journalist as my experience was at first a fascination of what seems like a fantastic and horrific piece of Gothic fiction and in the end an embarrassment that I had allowed myself to be entertained by such tragic events.
posted by cx at 10:47 AM on October 31, 2015 [1 favorite]


Aravis76

I knew her, we went to the same high school. We weren't friends but I am friends with many people who were. What happened was tragic and for many it's still an open wound and articles like this don't help anyone except people who want some kind of spooky story.

I cannot watch the video, I got halfway through the piece because it felt so utterly exploitative. Ugly. The writer is an ambulance chaser. They seem so gleeful to talk about the conspiracy angle of this, about how they got swept up in it, it becomes their story.

"Every time I tell the story, I have my doubts. But lacking even a shred of alternative proof, it’s the best possible answer."

"But many of the questions I still have are probably answerable."

"Stearns wrote. “Unfortunately, Detective Tennelle and I are not in a position to assist you. We are not able to provide any additional information as it would violate the privacy of Elisa and her family.”

"what happens when police departments stonewall you is that you start to get frustrated, and that frustration very easily leads to suspicion"

And that was that. Further pleas were ignored."

Disgusting, absolutely disgusting. Further pleas, further pleas. I didn't think this would affect me so much and it's too early in the morning for me to feel such immense anger at someone I hope to never meet. Let this rest, please, her family has been through too much and all this conspiracy theories are keeping an open wound open. Let it scab over, let it heal, let it become a scar.
posted by Neronomius at 10:54 AM on October 31, 2015 [52 favorites]


Nero, I read your comment before I read the fpp links, and I'm glad I did. I'm going to give this a miss and not contribute to their page views. My sympathies to her friends and family.
posted by SecretAgentSockpuppet at 11:15 AM on October 31, 2015 [2 favorites]


Having personally experienced the low-end of the spectrum of medicine-induced psychosis I am 100% not surprised at the final assessment of the case. One time I ended up with too much Adderal in my system (a result of traveling halfway round the world and fucking up my dosing schedule) and it was not pretty. I was totally convinced that the company I was working for, the same company for which I was traveling to Asia, was involved in an insidious campaign to defraud thousands of people. I stayed up in my hotel room until 6AM watching YouTube videos that one of my coworkers had been posting, certain that I was uncovering his nefarious plans.

The height of my delusion came early that morning, right around 5:30 or so, when I looked up and was ABSOLUTELY POSITIVE that some hulking monster gangster hitman was lurking outside my Marriott hotel room in Hong Kong ready to bust in and murder me for uncovering the conspiracy.

When I was in the throes of this paranoid fantasy everything I did and thought seemed perfectly reasonable, even smart. Like I was outwitting a dangerous foe. It wasn't until the next day, after the drugs finally dissipated and I was able to get some food and rest, that I realized how unreasonable I had been.

My episode was minor, caused by a relatively minor overdose of prescribed medicine, and didn't do any permanent damage. I was lucky, it could have been worse. It was tragically worse for Elisa Lam.

Before this happened to me I didn't really get what people were talking about when they described "psychotic breaks". It seemed so unreal. Until you've experienced it for yourself, it will always be easier to assume something else is going on.
posted by Doleful Creature at 11:21 AM on October 31, 2015 [32 favorites]


If you can, you guys should read the piece--it's pretty good, and digs into both how exploitative and useless internet "mysteries" like this are, but also how they can bring clarity to people who have experienced similar things when the "spooky" bs is washed away and the story is laid out as a real human tragedy rather than supernatural reddit fodder.
posted by Potomac Avenue at 11:30 AM on October 31, 2015 [9 favorites]


In many ways I think this article is addressed to the curious and crackpotty parts of all of our brains which love conspiracies and titillation more than sad truths. We definitely need more people saying out loud in connection to situations like this, where the simplest explanation seems complicated by some missing evidence or strange circumstances: "Stop. Stop theorizing about a missing plane you have no connection to. Stop assuming every official video is edited. You're not in a John Grisham novel. Life is sad and obvious and cruel, and the people affected by this disaster already know it, so your intellectual play time is not helpful."
posted by Potomac Avenue at 11:36 AM on October 31, 2015 [7 favorites]


I think my issue is that, although the writer tries to distance himself from the theorisers and reddit detectives, he ultimately comes across as someone who thinks the most interesting person in the story is himself; as Nero's quotes show, a lot of the story is taken up with his emotions and shifting attitudes (including his frustration with the detectives for not giving him more detail about this young woman's death) - even at the end, it's all about a lesson he's learned. There is very little acknowledgment of the grief of the family, who are mentioned only as nuisances getting in the way of him finding out the facts. And it's just grossly insensitive. The story, for example, includes a full copy of the autopsy report in pdf. What justification could there possibly be for publishing that, except that he's thinking more of his own 'journey' through the story than, you know, the people who didn't need to go on any journey to understand that this was a real person?
posted by Aravis76 at 11:50 AM on October 31, 2015 [14 favorites]


I am going to go out on a limb and make the guess that the author put the article together the way he precisely to hook the conspiracy crowd. Sensationalize and hype- only to have the story end in an all too human and mundane cause of death. If the story had started out there, many would be turned off. Instead, it's approached from the angle of getting the Internet sleuths on board- while also showing the reader precisely why this type of sleuthing so often goes poorly.
posted by [insert clever name here] at 11:50 AM on October 31, 2015 [3 favorites]


Yeah, I'm sorry I (for once) RTFA. That writer is a selfish jerk. Her family never spoke in public after her disappearance which means they clearly did not want to talk to random strangers about their daughter and he still tried to contact them? Selfish. And throughout the whole article, there were way too many "I want" statements from people who had no connection to the family whatsoever. Too many people trying to insert themselves in the story. Twisted. Reminds me of that post a while back about the woman who lost a child and was approached by some stranger who had her kid's face tattooed on her arm. WTAF. Creepy and predatory. And I know people like the writer love to hate the police these days but the police aren't stonewalling if they are trying to protect the family's privacy and respect their wishes and you are just being a prying asshole.

You can't simultaneously claim to write about how bad exploitative journalism is while writing an exploitative story and harassing grieving family members. I mean, I guess you can, but you'll come off as an ass.
posted by Beti at 11:56 AM on October 31, 2015 [3 favorites]


There are two things that really bother me about the 'she killed herself' theory.

How in the world did she get herself into the water tank? In the unlikely event that she knew about it and someone had told her how to get there, it would be a very unusually competent person who could, in the midst of a psychotic break, translate that abstract knowledge into actions which negotiated previously unexplored doors and hallways, climbed an old and rickety-looking ladder with 200 ft. of exposure before she even got to the tank, and then had to figure out how to get up on and into the tank itself -- and I think the exposure of the ladder and the rooftop itself raise grave difficulties for the view asserted by the psychiatrist that she was only looking for a corner to scrunch herself down into and hide, and that this quest led her randomly to the tank, which was an ideal refuge, so that's why she ended up there.

And why did the LAPD edit the elevator tape before releasing it a year later? The fact that they removed the time stamp shows that the editing was deliberate and that they were trying to conceal it, but why?

This is pure speculation, but I'd guess the reason was that there was someone else on the tape, someone identifiable, and whom the LAPD did identify, but then dropped the ball on because of the huge distraction of the Chris Dorner affair (mentioned in the article), and when they tried to pick it up again later the person had disappeared, or more probably and worse, had killed again, and the department wished to avoid being accused of responsibility for the subsequent murder.
posted by jamjam at 11:57 AM on October 31, 2015 [3 favorites]


Is this posted as a Hallowe'en treat? I now feel bad for having contributed to traffic that may be encouraging this "investigator".
posted by bonobothegreat at 12:34 PM on October 31, 2015 [1 favorite]


-> clever name

Yeah, it was absolutely written for the conspiracy angle. And that's what made me so angry and what has made some other people here disgusted. Writing an article all dressed up on a fancy website with all those clinically chosen pictures gives fuel to the conspiracy theorists which I think is morally distasteful. These are people who do not care at all about her humanity, they care about all the loose ends that play on in their head, jamjam has done a great job of showing how easy it is to doubt certain elements of a tragedy.

I don't want to go into a debate about how someone acts when they've having a psychotic break except to say to please not treat it like a movie or book. It's so easy, not to mention fun, to play detective and the internet makes it so easy to dehumanize others. The writer did not care about anyone in this story except themselves, going onto reddit's conspiracy board shows the same thing. It's scary, sometimes, that now when someone dies there are people who will cling to it and pick it apart for years and you can see it all happen right on the internet, practically in real time. And someone on medium was paid money for this and wow, does it look sleek. I'm sorry, maybe I should check out of this thread and off the internet for today.
posted by Neronomius at 12:35 PM on October 31, 2015 [2 favorites]


The author of the peice ends up sick at himself, so he might agree with Neronomius to some extent. I read the article as condemning the mystery/conspiracy fascination though.

But I went to high school with someone who became internationally famous as a murder victim, so I can also understand the outrage about people finding the story titillating.
posted by zennie at 1:45 PM on October 31, 2015 [3 favorites]


Isn't the story here "Serious Safety Violation Still Found at Skid Row Hotel Months After Tragic Death"?

That ladder shouldn't have been accessible in that way; it's ridiculous that it still is after someone died.
posted by Monday, stony Monday at 1:47 PM on October 31, 2015 [3 favorites]


Jamjam, psychosis makes you delusional, but it doesn't make you clumsy or stupid. In fact it can do the opposite: intensely motivated by paranoid terror, augmented by the overconfidence of mania, a psychotic episode can produce behavior that seems almost superhuman.
posted by milk white peacock at 2:16 PM on October 31, 2015 [4 favorites]


I get very angry about the internet's "woooo conspiracy theory stalker killer" interpretation of the security video. I have some of the same mental health issues as Elisa Lam and have been on all of the same medications mentioned in her case, and that is what I look like when I'm unmedicated and in a manic/mixed state. I don't blame everyone for being fascinated with the mysterious circumstances of her death, and I'm fascinated too, but she just looks to me like someone in obvious mental distress and that video makes me feel very sad.
posted by thetortoise at 2:20 PM on October 31, 2015 [11 favorites]


Lam was nude when she was found. Her clothes were in the tank. One police hypothesis is that she climbed in the tank while off her meds (to swim?) but the water level dropped as people in the hotel used water, then she couldn't get out. The police also think that it would have been near-impossible for someone to have put her body into the tank without leaving any traces (fingerprints, DNA, whatever).
posted by CCBC at 2:31 PM on October 31, 2015


This voyeurism hits home with me.

I've a tale of two murder cases. I became interested in the West Memphis murders case in the early 2000s and kept after it for about 10 years. I wrote a peer-reviewed forensic linguistic article about it and compiled a 150,000 word website. (And appeared in the documentary "West of Memphis.")

The primary aspect that drew me into the case was the fact that the police had made available (reluctantly through FOIA) virtually all of the original police investigation documents (thousands of pages). In this case it was not a matter of rumor versus investigation.

The headiness of being able to do so much original research into that case led me into looking into the JonBenet Ramsey case and I undertook an analysis of the ransom note. Here, I ran up against the opposite situation. Very little of the actual evidence was available and rumors filled up the "internet" investigation. Furthermore, from the little research I had done to that point, I began to letters from internet nuts. Unprofessionalism was rewarded over professionalism.

Maybe enough time has passed. I think I'll dig up the extensive notes and analysis I made of the ransom note and what can be said from a forensic linguistic standpoint.
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 2:38 PM on October 31, 2015 [1 favorite]


I lived in LA when this story broke, and I've hated its coverage from the very start. It's a tragedy that doesn't get treated like one because people want to have fun looking at it as a spooky ghost story, or something. It's like the fact that she died is just another creepy part of the story, disconnected from what actually happened. This story already pops up in cheap listicles about "the creepiest videos" or "the creepiest unsolved murders," and it makes me sad and angry every time I see it presented like that - which, incidentally, is the only way I ever see it presented.

Making up a conspiracy theory about it is just a new low.
posted by teponaztli at 2:46 PM on October 31, 2015 [5 favorites]


I didn't mind the story at first, but I was bothered by the author's entitlement regarding his 'right' to know the details of the case. I can't believe he talks about detectives "stonewalling" him with a straight face. Dude, you're a dilettante, step off. Good on the cops for not sharing private details of a murder investigation with every drive-by wannabe internet investigator who rubbernecks their way into it. It's not a fucking ARG.
posted by Solon and Thanks at 2:49 PM on October 31, 2015 [17 favorites]


The way the story has been treated by the media reminds me a lot of the case of Joyce Vincent, the woman who was found in her London apartment years after she died. In both cases, people became preoccupied with the ghoulish aspects of the story and attached a lot of freefloating meaning about human isolation and disconnection in the modern world, but those versions of the story do a disservice to the actual people involved. Joyce Vincent and Elisa Lam were both creative, active young women of color, people who were reportedly much loved by their families and communities, but who were, as far as we know, isolated shortly before their death for clear reasons (domestic abuse in one case; mental illness and travel in the other). Actually, it reminds me of how the case of Kitty Genovese (also a minority, and about whose death the initial details that stuck in the public's mind were inaccurate) was treated too. People like this author want to see themselves in these tragic stories of young women who died. And I get the impulse and the voyeurism-- I read true crime and see myself in these stories too-- but it can't be said enough that these were actual, complicated human beings, not narrative devices, and the people who loved them are still around and can see it when we use this as entertainment.
posted by thetortoise at 3:03 PM on October 31, 2015 [4 favorites]


eh. that was pretty exploitative.
posted by andrewcooke at 4:34 PM on October 31, 2015


I'm sorry I read this, I feel like an unwitting voyeur and an accomplice to her parents' pain. RIP Elisa. You deserved more than to become the internet's latest conspiracy.
posted by Jubey at 4:48 PM on October 31, 2015 [5 favorites]


I'm glad somebody posted what happened to her at the top of the thread. I started reading this the other day and it upset me so much I had to stop before I got very far.
posted by interplanetjanet at 6:39 PM on October 31, 2015


I am absolutely disgusted that the author posted the autopsy report online. No respect whatsoever.

RIP Elisa. My heart goes out to her family.
posted by Salamander at 6:42 PM on October 31, 2015 [1 favorite]


Isn't the story here "Serious Safety Violation Still Found at Skid Row Hotel Months After Tragic Death"?

What? No. The story is not about the ladder. Have you read any of the comments in this thread about why the story is problematic?

TLDR, good-faith edition: Elisa Lam is an actual person who died tragically, quite probably as a direct or indirect result of mental illness. She has surviving loved ones who actively mourn her. That her story has turned in to tragedy porn for conspiracy theorists and armchair sleuths is incredibly disrespectful of her and those who grieve her.

TLDR, stating-the-obvious edition: It has fuck-all to do with the ladder.
posted by mudpuppie at 8:23 PM on October 31, 2015 [1 favorite]


Someone very close to me has bipolar disorder, and I was there to see what mania did to him. I witnessed his psychotic break--no, that's not accurate, I was an unwilling participant in his psychotic break.

I have seen some Internet sleuths interpret her behavior in that video. I've seen claims about what could have motivated her and what couldn't possibly have motivated her. What she could have done and what she couldn't have. I see these sleuths--these ignorant strangers--and I am hit somewhere far too sensitive and deep.

My loved one came back. The medication is working, and he ended up okay. But there for the grace of God...

.
posted by meese at 8:54 PM on October 31, 2015 [1 favorite]


What I mean is that there is a less problematic story in the events: A person died, and a contributory factor was the fact that a dangerous roof access wasn't locked. Months later, the roof access is still that way. The voyeurism is still bad, but the lack of safety is of actual public interest.
posted by Monday, stony Monday at 7:19 AM on November 1, 2015 [3 favorites]


Like jamjam above, I'm also disturbed by the "she killed herself" theory. I don't read much into her hand gestures since I find myself occasionally doing hand movements similar to what she is seen doing in the video when I'm bored and waiting for something. In addition to the points jamjam raises, I'd also point out the fact that she is not wearing her glasses. If she can't see the elevator buttons clearly enough, I can't imagine that she'd be able to navigate herself through an unknown hotel to find the one window that leads to a ladder that leads to the roof and find herself into one of the water tanks and all of this at night. I do think the LAPD didn't do its job on this case.
posted by SA456 at 7:54 AM on November 1, 2015


This article frustrated me greatly, as articles that need more editing often do. The journo makes the classic (rookie) mistake of thinking they have to Hunter Thompson the piece - that their feelings about a story are as important as the story itself. From the moment he showed up at the hotel itself, the self-inserts really started to ramp up. I mean no one cares if you felt guilty, or intrigued, or fascinated or whatever about the story you're reporting on. You're getting in the way of the shot. Get out of the way and let the story speak.

But even more frustrating than this was the fact that the actual, material matter of the story is pretty straightforward, buried waaaay down in the story: the opinion of an actual psychiatrist reviewing the video, and the response from detectives. Unfortunately, to get there, you have to shovel through a whole lot of speculative bullshit - not as "but what if?" conjecture but, even worse, something the reporter felt was interesting to report about. Like that was the actual angle here: What Did Reddit Say? There's only one answer to that, which is Who Gives A Shit? One of his major contacts for this piece was a 16-year-old kid who comments on /r/unsolvedmysteries. AYFKM?

Long story short, this is a very, very sad but relatively clear-cut story of a troubled young woman who met an untimely end. That the reporter padded up this story with "isn't it fascinating what conspiracy theories the internet can come up with?", buried the actual facts of the matter far down the column, and repeatedly made his feelings about the story the story itself is just sloppy. It's typical of a relatively new writer, though, so the editors should have really stepped in here and talked to this guy.

.
posted by Aya Hirano on the Astral Plane at 7:59 AM on November 1, 2015 [6 favorites]


And "I felt bad about being such a voyeur"? Don't shunt that off on your readers, dude. I can't stand it when journalists try to convince the reader they're really good people despite the lengths they went to report. If it had to be done (and it didn't), don't make excuses for yourself. If it didn't have to be done (and again, it didn't), then don't do it.
posted by Aya Hirano on the Astral Plane at 8:10 AM on November 1, 2015


This write-up is mostly overblown pants. I've treated a lot of people with psychosis. People saying she couldn't have accomplished complex tasks are confusing psychosis with delirium. Get too agitated from psychosis, where anxiety ascends to fantastic levels, and you can veer into the state known as catatonia, which can be both retarded or excited (and can oscillate rapidly between these poles early in a bipolar episode). Some of her repetitive posturing and motoric stereotypy in the video looks classically excited. Also, taking off your clothing is a classic catatonia behavior. Also I note from the tox report she had both Effexor and Wellbutrin in her blood, which for someone prone to bipolar increases the risk of mania, and if not stopped during a manic episode can act like fuel. She also had a relatively high serum dose of Lamictal, but I've not seen good results or data for Lamictal in controlling or aborting active mania. It's usually better at other stages of the illness.
posted by meehawl at 5:04 PM on November 1, 2015 [4 favorites]


My thought was that the LAPD edited the tape to remove someone that they had cleared from the investigation - and did not want to throw this (innocent) person's image to the Internet Detective Squad (vis the Boston Marathon Bombing false suspects).
posted by Mid at 7:02 AM on November 2, 2015 [4 favorites]


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