Elisa Lam -- Conjecture on Her Death From a Hotel Manager's Perspective

By: Shane Lambert

Time of writing: December 9th, 2020

The mystery of Elisa Lam is perhaps one of the most talked-about mysteries of the last decade. The young woman from Vancouver went to southern California, she did touristy things while there, and she ended up dead in the rooftop water tank of a dodgy hotel.

I've read about this mystery in online forums over the years and I'd like to offer my take on what might have happened. This is conjecture -- meaning I am trying to stay reasonable but I will note that we're also dealing with some unknowns. I think my perspective might be helpful because a hotel is central to Elisa Lam's death, I am a former hotel manager, I've actually been to the hotel that she was last seen in, and I align my opinion with anyone out there who thinks hotel staff should be looked at in this case.

I stayed at the Cecil Hotel property twice, most recently in 2011. I remember renting a private room that had a shared bathroom. I also remember the hotel as being right on the cusp of wealth and poverty. To the west were the downtown skyscrapers of Los Angeles while Skid Row, literally, was somewhere not far from the hotel's east. This area, to the east, was one I avoided.

I find it quite intriguing how Elisa Lam's accommodation at the hotel played a significant role in this enigma. Initially, she was assigned to a dormitory room, where numerous guests share a communal area.

She ended up in a private room and there is something to note there. Broadly, those that comment on this case note what her dormmates called odd behavior on Lam's part. This has been taken to mean that she wasn't mentally well -- and that might have been the case. However, what should not be missed is something a lot of hotel staff might tell you. It's here where I think experience working in a hotel is important to have for the case.

When someone behaves oddly in a hotel in a way that affronts others, the hotel staff generally want the person to be removed from the property. That is true to my experience and I have worked thousands of hotel shifts both in entry-level positions and in management. 

It's quite disheartening for the staff when they witness guests misbehaving at the hotel and then being rewarded for it. It has become a common practice for managers to pacify disgruntled guests by offering them upgrades or refunds. However, this approach tends to frustrate the hardworking staff who perceive it as a reward for inappropriate behavior. It's simply unfair, from this perspective, that individuals who exhibit poor conduct are granted special treatment and benefits.

However, it is unfortunate that some managers prioritize their own interests over fairness. Their primary concern lies in avoiding negative reviews or complaints from guests that could reach higher levels of authority. Consequently, managers often choose to appease problematic guests.

In the case of Elisa Lam, her peculiar behavior in the dorm room and the subsequent room change during her stay suggest that she may have been a difficult guest. It is possible that her disruptive conduct earned her a more comfortable room, possibly even at no additional cost. Such preferential treatment, based on her offensive behavior, might have attracted unwanted attention from a member of staff that saw that as unjust.

The last glimpse we have of Elisa at the Cecil Hotel is the notorious elevator video—well, the last glimpse of her when she was still breathing. In this video, Elisa's actions seem rather peculiar. She hops into the elevator, frantically presses buttons, appears to be plagued by the fear of being pursued, repeatedly steps out and back in, and bizarrely flails her arms about without any apparent cause. Some speculate that this peculiar behavior may be attributed to her being under the influence of drugs. However, for the sake of argument, let's entertain the notion that her actions were indeed rational.

Assuming she's acting reasonably, it's plausible that she's seeking refuge in the elevator corner and cautiously peering outside to evade a potential pursuer. Those who dismiss this possibility in favor of more imaginative theories mustn't overlook the glaring truth: this young woman tragically loses her life. It therefore shouldn't be considered far-fetched to consider the existence of an adversary in her final known moments.

It's worth noting that the elevator stubbornly refuses to budge, no matter how many times the buttons are pressed. Perhaps, against all reason, she held onto the belief that the elevator functioned based on some sort of sensor system that simply hadn't been activated. Perhaps she clung to the hope that stepping out and back in would revive its functionality. If so then her behavior could be understood as rational, not drug influenced. She's dealing with cause and effect in a way that a healthy person might: she thinks she needs to trigger the elevator doors with her movements.

Basically, with regard to some of her behaviors in the elevator, I align my opinion with people who think she is trying to get the elevator to operate. I also think she is worried about someone that is genuinely pursuing her.

There are questions surrounding the elevator: specifically, why didn't it change floors? 

During my extensive experience in the hospitality industry, I have encountered various instances where elevator control was utilized to restrict its movement. This feature proved invaluable in situations where items were accidentally dropped down the elevator shaft, during maintenance operations, or even when housekeeping needed a lot of time to unload supplies. The ability to lock an elevator's movement to a specific floor is a common enough feature of hotel operations. This feature could be available to individuals at all levels of a hotel.

When it comes to housekeeping, I will elaborate on how a locked-in elevator helps. Housekeepers often have housekeeping carts. They often take them into the elevators and then they can offload the supplies that are meant for that floor for the day. During this offloading process, they don't want the elevator to change floors with their carts inside and so they lock the elevator into position for a few minutes. This can be done with a simple key that looks like the kind of key one uses on a kryptonite bike lock. If the Cecil Hotel elevator was the kind of elevator that could be locked into a floor, then anyone that had access to that could be questioned on the matter. This function of the elevator needs to be questioned in this case.

The videos of Elisa Lam are viral videos. Yet, the existence of the camera in the elevator could be a clue that's been overlooked. Imagine the following scenario.

A hotel staff member doesn't like Elisa Lam. He (or, I guess, she) thinks she is kind of snotty and is mad that her behavior at the hotel, which he regards as obnoxious, led to her getting a free upgrade (which is an assumption on my part).

This staff member has access to what's called an In-house Rooming List. This is simply a report of all rooms that are occupied at any time in a hotel. Anyone who works at a hotel can have a legitimate reason to access this report. All hotels will have this report in their software, even if it goes by another name. With this report, a staff member would know if Elisa Lam was isolated or, at least, not totally surrounded by other guests. A staff member that didn't like Elisa could use this report to plan an attack.

As part of that, he could trap her. Some of the rooms in this hotel were private but still shared a bathroom. I know because that's the type of room I stayed in when I stayed at this property. If you knew where Elisa was, like a staff member would, then you could lay in wait for her. If her bathroom wasn't ensuite, it would just be a matter of time before she would have to exit her room.

The camera in the elevator is very important in my view, not just because of the video it captured. The camera itself is something that hotel staff would know about. If someone who worked at the hotel was harassing Elisa with plans to harm her, then the elevator would be off-limits to him: he would know that the camera was there. If she went to the elevator and it was locked so it couldn't change floors then, it's just a waiting game for her to come to the stairs. Maybe this person could count on other guests not entering the picture because of familiarity with the In-House Rooming List.

Those stairs are important too. Doors that led up to the rooftop were locked. This is where those that think that Elisa Lam was mental and drowned herself on the rooftop have something to explain: how does she get through locked doors? You have to say something convenient like maybe they were left unlocked.

Of course, the hotel staff would surely have keys to unlock doors. That's convenient to say for my theory -- and pretty straightforward. I've been on hotel rooftops before. I've had keys to off-limit areas of a hotel on my keychains. I've had master keys that opened all hotel-room doors.

When I look at this case as a former hotel employee, I'm seeing a guest that the hotel staff didn't really like. She ends up dead in an area that only building/hotel staff could get to. In between times, she ends up in an elevator that won't change floors -- perhaps due to hotel staff action and she's acting like she's being chased. Why doesn't her pursuer chase her into the elevator? Simple. He knows the camera is there. There's that rooming list to think of too and the fact that it could opportune a staff member to corner Elisa -- someone who I think would have been sharing a bathroom exterior to her room.

There are many questions with this case, the least of which have to do with whether Elisa Lam was crazy or not. There's the question of the elevator: could it be locked into place? Did someone manage reservations so as to isolate Elisa in a part of the hotel? Who could lock the elevator into place if, in fact, that was possible? Who among these people also could access the rooftop? Also, is that person the same one who moved reservations around in the software (if that happened) for seemingly no good reason except maybe to isolate a woman who ended up dead? Did this person have an opinion on her being a problem guest that got a free upgrade? Did this person's username print out an In-house Rooming List at a non-standard time?

There are many questions in this case and no good answers. However, I am not a fan of the people who think that Elisa ended up dead at her own hand because she was mentally gone. That's way too fanciful.

What I would really look at with this case is the reservation management in the time frame leading up to the elevator video. Let's say, for example, that Elisa Lam was in Room 415 (this room number could be arbitrary). If someone was due to arrive in Room 414 but was moved to Room 515 then the reservation log would have that information for all hotel software programs I have used. It would be logging actions by username. I'd look at whether someone might have moved some arrivals around to keep Elisa Lam isolated or as isolated as possible. That would be very interesting indeed and far more rational than the She's-coocoo-for-coco-puffs contingent.