The Bizarre Death Of Elisa Lam

**The Bizarre Death Of Elisa Lam** is a video made by Ryan Bergara and Brent Bennett, uploaded onto YouTube on March 18, 2016. It was the third episode of the first season of BuzzFeed Unsolved: True Crime, and the third episode overall. You can find it here.

## Notable Events

This episode was one of the only episodes where Brent Bennett co-hosted. It was also the first episode where the co-hosts traveled to the event's location.

## Background

On January 26, 2013, twenty-one-year-old Elisa Lam, a Canadian tourist, checked into the Stay On Main Hotel, previously known as the Cecil Hotel, in Los Angeles, California. On February 19, her naked body was discovered in a four-by-eight-foot water tank on the roof of the hotel.

The hotel manager's statement read that Elisa had originally checked into a hostel-style shared room, but was moved to a private room due to complaints from roommates of odd behavior. While Elisa was diagnosed with bipolar disorder, she apparently took four different medications.

While much of her stay is unknown, the last time she was seen was February 1 on elevator surveillance footage. The footage showed Elisa getting into the elevator and pressing buttons―one is assumed to be the "door open" button, as the elevator doors do not automatically close through the footage. The footage shows Elisa stepping in and out, looking around for oncoming guests, hiding in the corner, waving her arms, and gesturing as if talking to someone.

It is unknown how Elisa got to the roof. According to the hotel, she would have either had to go out a window and climb up the fire escape or go through a locked and alarm-set rooftop door. After reaching the roof, she would have had to climb up a ten-foot ladder, open the twenty-pound lid, get into the tank, and close the lid behind her. It is also unknown whether her clothes were taken off in the tank or whether they were taken off beforehand and simply left in the tank.

Hotel guests complained that water pressure was low and that the tap "tasted funny," leading staff to look into the water tanks for the source of the issue. One couple reported after her death that the water would come out black before normalizing, and that it had a bad taste, but that they had thought that this behavior was normal in Los Angeles.

Ryan and Brent explore the Stay on Main Hotel and try the tap water, which, according to Brent, "tastes clean."

Authorities ultimately ruled Elisa's death as an accidental drowning. The Lam family filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the hotel, but it was eventually dismissed. Elisa's Tumblr and Blogspot still remain, although her Tumblr is only accessible by mobile. Elisa was buried in Forest Lawn Memorial Park, in Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada.

## Theories

* Elisa was drunk or on hallucinogens.
	+ This explains her odd behavior in the elevator and possibly with her roommates. However, her toxicology results "did not show acute drug or alcohol intoxication," according to her autopsy.
* Elisa was murdered and died "as a result of drowning," as her autopsy reports.
	+ Despite that, Elisa did not have any evidence of trauma.
* Elisa committed suicide.
* Elisa communicated with, and was possibly led to kill herself, by ghosts.
	+ Her odd behavior and gestures in the elevator could be explained by talking to a ghost. Some Internet users believe she is communicating with the ghost of serial killer Richard Ramirez, who stayed in the Cecil Hotel from 1984 to 1985.

## Quotes

* Brent: "Are you gonna drink the water?"
	+ Ryan: "No, I'm not gonna drink the water. No, don't drink that―come on, man."
	+ Brent: "Cheers!"
	+ Ryan: "You're a savage."
	+ Brent (after drinking the tap water): "Tastes clean."
	+ Ryan: "I mean, it has been three years... it tastes just like water, but it's too much for me to bear."
* Ryan: "Another popular theory, and you're not gonna like this, but I have to say it, is a ghost."
* Ryan: "I'm gonna serve you up a fresh truth pancake right now, let's see how you like it."
	+ Brent: "I do like pancakes."

## Trivia

* This is one of the few episodes where Brent is the co-host rather than Shane.
* This is one of the few episodes that was part of the BuzzFeed IRL series instead of having its own show separate from BuzzFeed Multiplayer.