Here's What We Know About the Dark Past of the Cecil Hotel
Netflix's new true crime series explores the missing persons case of Elisa Lam, whose body was found in a water tank atop the Cecil Hotel in downtown Los Angeles where she was staying. Internet sleuths offered several implausible reasons for her death, including murder, but the series ultimately finds otherwise.
Built in 1924, the Cecil Hotel itself has long cultivated a mystique, the site at which two serial murderers, Richard Ramirez and Jack Unterwerger, stayed during their murder sprees. Elizabeth Short, the 'Black Dahlia,' was alleged to have stayed at the hotel before she was murdered in a nearby park.
The Cecil Hotel, at one point renamed Stay on Main, was sold to a real estate developer in 2014 (roughly a year after Elisa Lam's death) and officially closed in 2017 for extensive renovations. (That same year, the hotel became a historical-cultural monument in an unanimous vote.)
In 2019, Marmol Radziner, a Los Angeles-based interior design firm, announced its plans for the Cecil Hotel's renovation, which will include 299 hotel rooms and 264 affordable units. The roof, the place where Lam's body was found, is intended to be converted into an amenity space for hotel guests. As of 2021, the hotel remains closed for ongoing renovations.
The Cecil's past would go on to inspire Season 5 of the Ryan Murphy-produced FX series, American Horror Story, and become the site of a 2021 Ghost Adventures episode.
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