The ‘Suicide Hotel’ — Extended Stay for Serial Killers
By: Tara Rose
Tags: True Crime, Murder, History, Crime, Entertainment

The ‘Suicide Hotel’ — Extended Stay for Serial Killers

The Cecil Hotel, now known as Stay on Main, has a sordid past of suicide and murder.

Robyn Beck/Getty Images

Chances are you’ve heard of this hotel. Ever watched season five of American Horror Story, aptly named ‘Hotel’? Well, this is it, THE hotel where the season took place. Strange occurrences, suicide, murder…the hotel has seen more than a dozen suicides and has been home to TWO serial killers during their respective killing sprees — Richard Ramierz, ‘The Night Stalker,’ and Jack Unterweger, ‘The Austrian Ghoul’; and not to mention one of the most bizarre incidents to occur in recent history — the disappearance and death of Elisa Lam. The surveillance video of Elisa’s last moments in the Cecil Hotel elevator went viral after its release in 2013 with over 70,000 organic Google searches. Although the hotel has a brand new name, Stay On Main, the building cannot escape its past and its location just blocks from Skid Row in downtown Los Angeles.

Believe it or not, the Cecil is considered to be one of the most haunted places on Earth — not America…but Earth! The hotel is a regular stop on the paranormal tourism circuit with many drawn to its doors by its gruesome past. The Cecil was built in 1924 by W.B. Hanner who built the hotel in homage to the Hotel Cecil in London featuring 600 rooms awaiting new arrivals. 1920's Los Angeles was a growing metropolis drawing people to the West Coast. Hanner believed people would be drawn to stay or reside at the Cecil Hotel with its “ornate marble lobby, stained-glass skylight windows, potted palms, alabaster statuary, brass, gold-tone and marble particulate.” From the beginning, the idea was to have a mix of vacation guests and long-term tenants residing in the upper floors of the hotel — an idea that has endured to this day. Hanner spared no expense on specially made everything — this hotel was going to be the jewel of the Wall Street of the West. But then, the bottom fell out and the Great Depression hit.

The first suicide took place on November 19th, 1931, when 46-year-old W.K. Norton arrived under an assumed name and killed himself with a heavy dose of poison. Each year seemed to leave its own tragic mark on the Cecil as the suicides and unexplained deaths continued. In March of 1937, Grace Maguro spent the night with a sailor at the hotel. While he slept, she crawled out the window onto the ledge and jumped to her death. In September of 1944, Dorothy Jean Purcell, all of just 19-years-old, was at the hotel with her husband. She didn’t know she was pregnant when she went into labor. Worse, after she gave birth in the bathroom by herself, she believed the baby to be dead. She threw the baby from the window without even disturbing her husband.

The year 1964 marked the brutal murder of ‘Pigeon Goldie’ Osgood, well-known in the area for feeding the local birds. She was stabbed, raped, and strangled to death in the room she rented at the Cecil Hotel. There was a suspect, but he was cleared. To this day her murder remains unsolved. It’s estimated that roughly sixteen people have committed suicide or have been murdered at the Cecil; there are many who believe this number to be far greater, perhaps one for each room. Although more than 600 deaths would not go unnoticed, right?

Photo by Charles Deluvio on Unsplash

The Night Stalker

Growing up, one of Richard Ramirez’s heroes was Jack the Ripper. Ramirez, the Night Stalker, was an amalgam of potential birth defects from nuclear testing where his mother worked, his father’s horrific temper, temporal lobe anomalies, sexual abuse from a teacher and emotional scarring from being kicked off his high school football team — Ramirez fantasized about violence, death and destruction. In his drug addled brain, a habit in which he spent upwards of $1500 a week on cocaine, funded by burglaries, he was the Monster.

When he moved from El Paso, Texas to Los Angeles, California he took immediately to the downtown area, the Cecil Hotel his anchor. His methods of killing varied, but he often used a .22 to commit murder although a sharp blade was preferred as he had more of an opportunity to connect with the life force escaping from his victim’s body. When using a knife, he often slashed his victim’s throats so deeply, he nearly decapitated them. One victim, a lawyer who criticized Ramirez, Maxine Zazzara felt the unbridled rage of the Monster inside. He tried to cut out her heart. Finding her rib cage to be too much of an obstacle, he took her eyes instead. He kept them on his bedside table at the Cecil as a memento.

In 1989, Richard Ramirez was convicted by a jury of his peers in Los Angeles on thirteen counts of murder. He was sentenced to death. After hearing his sentence, Ramirez said, “Big deal. Death always went with the territory. See you in Disneyland.”

Richard Ramirez — The Night Stalker. Courtesy of americansuburbx.com

The Austrian Ghoul

Jack Unterweger, known as the Austrian Ghoul, was another serial killer that lived for a time at the Cecil Hotel. Unterweger was somewhat of an international celebrity, leaving a trail of bodies across two continents. In 1974, Unterweger, an Austrian native, was in prison for the rape and murder of an 18-year-old girl whom he garroted with her own bra. A few years into his sentence, Unterweger began writing children’s stories and somehow, the Austrian state broadcasting company began playing them on the air. He manipulated the Austrian public in believing that he suffered a traumatic childhood trying to obtain love and affection by an absent mother and witnessing the brutal murder of his aunt. He soon began giving televised readings from inside prison and soon built up a following of the Austrian literati.

He served only fifteen years when he was released from prison in 1990 after a campaign was launched to get him released. The Austrians believed that criminals could be rehabilitated with the proper support. Jack Unterweger was about to become their poster child. The following year, a series of brutal murders began in the town of Graz, not far from Vienna — all prostitutes. The MO was oddly similar to Unterweger’s; strangulation by the victim’s own bra.

Unterweger became involved using his platform to showcase his writing talent and advocate for the safety and security of prostitutes. He thought he was being clever as he inserted himself into the investigation, reporting on the murders that he himself committed. He decided to expose the seedy underworld, which brought him to Los Angeles, a good cover, checking into the Cecil Hotel. With the murders suddenly ceased in Graz, the Austrian police were onto Unterweger with similar murders happening on the West Coast of the United States. As a student of true crime, never insert yourself into a murder investigation where the person you are looking for is YOU. It doesn’t end well.

Unterweger was ultimately extradited back to Austria where he was tried and convicted on eight counts of murder. Just hours after his conviction, he made the same intricate ligature used on his victims out of his shoelace and a string from his track suit. He hung himself in his cell.

Jack Unterweger — The Austrian Ghoul. Courtesy of criminalia.es

What drew these two men, well-known serial killers, to the Cecil Hotel? Considering the history of the hotel, does dark energy leak out onto the streets pulling in those who are susceptible to the paranormal? Guests have experienced the inexplicable desire to open their windows and jump to their deaths. Alarm clocks go off in the night without being set; at the same time — EVERY night. Drafts of cold air, phone calls with no one on the other end, guests waking up in the middle of the night feeling as if someone is choking the life out of them. There is no doubt that the Cecil is haunted. Whether by ghosts, the supernatural or just negative residual energy imprinted into the sheer fabric of the hotel by guests and tenants past, the doors of the Cecil will once again reopen after a massive renovation project. If you ever decide to stay, make sure you don’t become one of the hotel’s more permanent residents.