Original subtitles

[keyboard clacking]

[newswoman] A hotel with a notorious past is the site of another bizarre case.

It's one of the most obsessively followed true crime cases of the century.

[newswoman 2] This gruesome discovery is the latest chapter

in a dark history for the Cecil Hotel.

[siren wailing]

[man] The Cecil?

[chuckles]

You want to know about the Cecil.

Wow.

Where should I start?

[siren wailing]

[man 2] The Cecil was a very deceiving hotel.

There's a lot of beauty to it.

But it was the complete opposite of beauty.

[man 3] A lot of people can't help but wonder,

like, is the Cecil Hotel consumed by a nexus of dark energy?

We've got missing persons…

suicides…

overdoses.

[man 2] For some reason, that hotel…

had some extra bit of insanity going on within those walls.

Drug dealers.

Prostitutes.

-Rapists. -[screams]

Murderers.

The Cecil is a place where serial killers, you know, let their hair down.

Hail, Satan!

And if you didn't watch yourself, you might come flying out the window.

[man 4] Bad things keep happening there, over and over and over and over again.

[bell dings]

Why?

I would have never thought what was about to happen could happen.

[man 5] With Elisa Lam,

you're talking about a 21-year-old college student that just completely disappears.

The hotel is where we have to start.

But then the investigation took on a life of its own.

[man 6] I have spent hours and hours investigating this.

In the elevator, she's acting very strange.

[woman] What's with the hand movements?

There's more to the story than meets the eye.

I think that somebody from the LAPD was corrupt.

I believe somebody in the Cecil Hotel was involved.

You don't have to be a conspiracy theorist to say, "What the fuck?"

I think that Elisa Lam was almost like an insect caught in a trap.

The Cecil was able to lure her to come inside.

[man 4] The Cecil Hotel is this exalted space of crime…

of violence…

of spookiness…

-[elevator dings] -…that just continues to call to us.

-[uneasy music playing] -[siren wailing]

[elevator dings]

[elevator dings]

[camera shutter clicking]

[dog barking]

[horns honking]

[keyboard clacking]

[woman] Bless the internet.

The internet doesn't really have consequences.

At least on Tumblr, I hope.

People can really be themselves.

It makes more sense to write candidly here than a journal,

because you know someone's actually listening to your random thoughts.

Also, my handwriting is terrible and I type faster than I write.

Also, this is way cheaper than paying for a therapist.

Also, I get intense satisfaction when I click publish.

[keyboard clacking]

[somber violin music playing]

Stressed about university.

Somehow we're supposed to jump to some kind of maturity

right after leaving high school.

You enter a crash course into the shit hole

that is figuring out what the hell you want out of life.

Damn it, people. We're trying to figure things out.

I want to get away.

[keyboard clacking]

Travel.

[bright music playing]

Must travel this summer for sanity.

Must find job to get monies for traveling.

Must convince parents to allow me to travel on my own.

I'm freaking 21 now.

Going to be okay.

Planning, planning, planning.

San Diego, Los Angeles, Santa Cruz, and San Francisco.

The West Coast tour.

Suggestions and recommendations highly, highly appreciated and needed.

Have arrived in La-La Land.

And the rest is to be written.

[uneasy music plays]

[siren wailing]

[newsman] Elisa Lam from Vancouver, Canada is missing.

She was traveling by herself,

spent a few days in San Diego,

and then came to Los Angeles on the 28th of January.

[newswoman] The young woman planned to see more of California, say police.

[newsman 2] January 31st was the last time her family in Canada had heard from her.

[newswoman 2] It is possible that Ms. Lam is either hurt or in danger.

She has no history of any kind of behavior

that would end up like this.

[siren wailing]

[newsman] LAPD's elite robbery-homicide section is on the case.

[uneasy music plays]

[Marcia] My name's Tim Marcia.

I was a detective with the Los Angeles Police Department.

One morning,

we were told that we had picked up a missing persons case.

She was a young female from Canada,

traveling throughout California by herself.

There was a sense of panic.

There was probably about 18 detectives, uh, from robbery-homicide division,

uh, that responded.

[phone ringing]

[man] Elisa Lam's family told the police department

that she would typically call every day.

It was just routine for her to check in,

and she hadn't called, and that concerned them.

So there was a true sense of urgency.

We sat there and we discussed, "What are the possibilities?"

One, that she doesn't want to be found.

She's off the radar by choice.

Maybe she was disoriented, not being familiar with Los Angeles,

and she's lost.

Or could it be something worse than that…

where she was a victim of some type of accident

or some type of crime?

The investigators begin to exchange information with Elisa Lam's family

to figure out where she was last seen, last known to have been,

and they had learned that it was the hotel where she was staying.

[newswoman] A hotel with a notorious past is the site of another bizarre case.

[newsman] Elisa was staying here at the Cecil Hotel

in downtown Los Angeles.

It has $85-a-night rooms and mostly guests from foreign countries.

Nearly 20 robbery-homicide detectives at mid-afternoon swarmed the hotel,

presumably looking for witnesses and clues.

I was the general manager of the Cecil Hotel from 2007 to 2017,

so ten years.

It was like my kingdom. [chuckles]

It was a kingdom, you know.

I've also called it a zoo. [chuckles]

You just never knew what was gonna happen…

at any given day.

[indistinct police radio chatter]

At the time when Elisa Lam went missing, it was alarming,

but we cooperated with the police officers,

trying to help the best we can every step of the way.

I told detectives that she checked into our hotel on January 28th, 2013.

As far as I know, she was gonna be staying with us for four days.

506 was a female bunk room.

Community toilets and showers were down the hall.

Young travelers are on a budget. They just want a clean place to stay.

Elisa was supposed to check out on February 1st,

which was also the day that she was reported missing.

[Kading] The investigators went to her room…

to search for potential evidence.

But they learned that the hotel staff removed all her personal belongings.

[Price] In a hotel, when somebody doesn't physically check out

and they leave property in the room,

it's just protocol that you… you know, you bag up the belongings

and you store you 'em for 30 days.

You'd be surprised what people leave at the hotel.

We found a snake once in the hotel, in the… the bathtub.

Investigators discovered that her laptop had been left behind…

her prescription medications,

other items of value.

[Price] Her wallet, all of the clothes that she wore,

all those things were… were left behind in the room.

[Marcia] The employee that had bagged up her belongings

said that the room was in disarray, as in messy,

but not as in foul play.

There was no evidence of forced entry into the room.

There was no paraphernalia or drugs,

but I remember feeling instinctively

that this does not feel like it's gonna end well.

[rain pattering]

[sheep bleats]

-[tea kettle whistling] -[guitar tuning]

[woman] My husband Mike and I, we always wanted to go and visit America,

especially Los Angeles.

A bit of sunshine,

travel away from rainy, miserable England. [laughs]

[laughs] Yeah, actually.

[Sabina Baugh] One day, Mike said, "Why don't we go to L.A.?"

And I said, "Yeah, sure, let's go."

[keyboard clacking]

[Mike Baugh] We found this particular holiday for two weeks,

and it was fairly cheap.

There was no information on the hotel.

It just said "downtown L.A.," but it was a really good deal.

So we thought, "Why don't we do it?"

It was our first trip to America, and we were very excited for it.

[Mike Baugh] So we're driving through downtown L.A.,

going straight to the hotel.

So the taxi driver dropped us off at the hotel.

The outside looked really nice.

[Sabina Baugh] And we saw the sign that said "the Cecil Hotel."

We walked into the lobby

and we were like, "Wow."

It looked really beautiful, grand.

[Mike Baugh] Very big and very spacious,

with big pillars.

[Sabina Baugh] We got our key, so we went upstairs.

The minute you leave the lobby and go into the elevator…

[elevator dings]

…you've gone back to, like, 1986.

[uneasy music plays]

[elevator dings]

And so, when we got to the… our room…

[door creaks open]

The room was dirty. There was dust everywhere.

And the carpet was…

almost sticky.

You almost had to peel your feet as you were walking.

Not quite, but almost.

But because of the price we paid for it,

we thought, "Oh, that's okay. We will only wash and sleep here anyway."

[Mike Baugh] We thought, "Be positive. It's okay.

What… What can go wrong?" You know.

So we just dropped the stuff off, went outside to find somewhere to eat.

[Sabina Baugh] Because we were so jet-lagged and so tired, we got lost,

and we started asking people, "Oh, where's Cecil Hotel?"

And people were giving us looks.

[Mike Baugh] And the next thing we saw was a lamppost

that had a missing person's picture on it.

[Sabina Baugh] This one guy mentioned, "That girl, she's gone missing.

They're looking for her."

She stayed in Cecil Hotel, where we were staying.

And then we thought, "Are we safe and secure in the hotel?"

[siren wailing]

[indistinct police radio chatter]

[indistinct police radio chatter]

[Kading] After the discovery of Elisa's personal belongings,

investigators had no leads as to where she might have been.

So we needed first-hand accounts from witnesses at the hotel.

And it's imperative that we speak to as many people as possible.

Who did she have contact with in the hotel itself?

What employees did she have contact with?

I gave them all the information of who was staying at the hotel,

the names of everyone that has worked at our hotel.

At that time, we had about 50 employees.

[man in Spanish] I was a maintenance worker at the hotel.

I spent time with the police,

who were interviewing me and talking to me.

I told them that I never saw her.

But the receptionist, the guy at the front desk,

they say that she looked like she was a student.

She was always with a book.

[Marcia in English] We spoke to the employees

that worked the late shift on the night of her disappearance,

and they said that they had seen Elisa in an area that no guests were allowed in,

so they actually asked her to leave,

and she walked towards the bank of the elevators.

But that was the last time that anybody saw her.

Unfortunately, investigators were unable to come up with anything

that, uh, might have helped locate Elisa.

[man] I don't typically do a lot of missing persons stories.

But there was something really mysterious about this story,

um, and I felt like the Elisa Lam case

was a puzzle that maybe I could put together.

According to the police, not a lot is known about her,

except that she's one of two daughters of an immigrant family from Hong Kong.

So she's first generation.

Her parents own a… a Chinese restaurant,

and she's attending classes at the University of British Columbia.

And she was, like a lot of young people, all over social media.

Tumblr was her platform of choice

that she seemed to treat almost like a diary.

Because she was such a prolific poster,

police were able to use her social media to retrace her steps.

It was almost like she'd left these digital breadcrumbs to follow.

It was discovered that she had an itinerary, to a certain degree…

and that she had been down in San Diego.

[Dean] Elisa arrived in L.A.

Checks into the hotel.

Has a normal few days of being a tourist.

And during her trip,

we know she went to a taping of a TV show.

We know she was going out,

and she was clearly open to meeting and hanging out with strangers.

Did she have any, uh…

friendships or love interests that were developed via the internet,

where she was traveling to meet up with somebody?

And so efforts were put in to try to identify that.

[Kading] Eventually, investigators found a bookstore she had visited

on the day she went missing.

[Marcia] We went and talked to the management there,

and they actually remembered Elisa coming into the location.

[woman] She was talking about what books she was getting

and whether what she was getting would be too heavy

to carry around as she traveled or take home with her.

She was very outgoing, very lively, very friendly.

So she went to a bookstore, came back to the hotel, then vanished.

Only there's no trace of her.

[Marcia] At this point, she had been missing for approximately five days,

and we don't have anything.

My instinctive feeling was

the Cecil Hotel had something to do with her disappearance.

[siren wailing]

[Dean] There is no Elisa Lam story without the context of the Cecil Hotel.

The fact that it happened at the Cecil, that Elisa Lam disappeared at the Cecil,

makes it sort of a historic mystery,

and the Cecil is as much a character as Elisa is.

The story of the Cecil, it's a story of adventure.

It's a story of things you just can't predict.

In the beginning, it was nice. I wish I could see what it was like.

Must have been so exciting.

1919, Los Angeles is the biggest boomtown anyone's ever seen.

Everyone was pouring into Los Angeles.

[man] This mecca is booming with business and enterprise

and its legends of greatness and glamour.

[Schave] The downtown area was at the center of the explosion.

The Hotel Cecil opens at the end of 1924.

Costs a million dollars, which is a lot of money back then.

[man] Awe-inspiring and breathtaking is the Cecil Hotel.

Rising above the rooftops of Hollywood,

it is one of the most beautifully constructed hotels of its type

to be found anywhere.

She has good bones. She was done right.

[Schave] For Los Angeles, the Cecil is so… so big.

It has 700 rooms.

[woman] It's not a luxury hotel.

Some people are willing to pay a little less for a little less comfort.

It's really a travelers' hotel.

[Schave] It's down the block

from the Pacific Electric light rail station.

100,000 people a day, coming in and out of that railway station.

And the Hotel Cecil was happy to accommodate them.

It's exactly what everyone wanted to see

in the middle 1920s,

and then it all burst.

[man] Industrial America was truly the land of plenty.

Then with appalling suddenness came the beginning

of the greatest depression of all time.

Stocks collapsed, factories shut down, businesses passed out of existence.

Unemployment swept the nation like a horrible pestilence.

[Schave] It was very hard on all of downtown.

By the early 1930s, the Hotel Cecil was very much down on its heels.

And so it becomes

a hotel of older gentleman

who really want to spend as little money as possible

to stay there as long as possible.

[Price] There were so many different phases the hotel went through.

[indistinct chattering]

I was staying in the Cecil, I would say, back in, like, say, '81, '82, '83.

Even back, you know what I'm saying, like '90s.

When I had money, the Cecil, that was like… that was like the spot.

You know, that's where I used to go for, like, two, three dollars a night.

You know, you had your color TV and all that,

the carpet on the floor.

You had the big liquor market right there on the corner.

I would take me a little companion up there, a little female friend,

and we would stay up there.

And hey, we would get it on.

You know, that's… [laughs] You know it.

Believe me, there was a lot going on in the Cecil.

Drugs, robberies, prostitutes.

I mean, I was out there doing my dirt too. You know, I wasn't no angel out there.

Back in the day, that used to be a very scandalous hotel.

The way I see it is, it's like the Titanic.

When the Titanic sailed off, it was a beautiful ship.

Everybody's thinking,

"My God, this is just state-of-the-art, this gorgeous ship, unsinkable." You know?

Well, we all know what happened to the Titanic.

[camera shutters clicking]

[Marcia] Right now…

we have a 21-year-old who's lost somewhere in the city.

We knew that she was in danger.

Me, personally, as a parent of a daughter who was 19 at that time, I think…

you have a flash that there's some type of connection to your own family.

[camera shutters clicking]

Let's just pray we find her.

Everybody ready?

[Kading] The LAPD were very concerned,

so they had a press conference with the family

in an effort to try to get help from the public.

Okay, I'm gonna introduce Lieutenant Walter Teague, T-e-a-g-u-e.

He's, uh, the officer in charge up at robbery-homicide division.

His team is handling this, uh, missing case.

Uh, also with us…

Uh, they will not be speaking, but this is the family of Elisa Lam.

And, uh, I'll let, uh, Lieutenant Teague take over from here.

Good afternoon. Uh, thanks for coming.

So it's been five days, six days now.

There's been no communication at all,

and, uh, that's, uh, worried us and worried the family.

Seeking to get this photo out so we can, uh, find Elisa.

[reporter] Is there surveillance video

showing her coming and going from the hotel?

We're in the process of investigating that

and, uh, collecting anything we can in that angle.

We're continuing the investigation now, and we're looking for your help.

[reporter] Would the parents like to say anything?

[LAPD speaker] Not at this time.

[newsman] If a mother's face can tell the story, here it is.

Worry.

And from a father, somber concern.

Her parents and sister flew in from Canada to help.

They are baffled.

[Elisa Lam] Dearest Tumblr lurker, reader, stalker,

whoever is interested in the trials and tribulations of my fascinating life…

There is a wider world out there, and I have only seen a fraction of it.

I'm very excited. I'll be seeing new places

and hopefully meet some interesting and nice people.

[keyboard clacking]

I'd be fine with a stranger talking to me,

but I'm not very conscious of what I'm saying most of the time.

I take things too far and I have no filter.

It seems I always make the biggest mistakes

at the worst possible moments.

My mouth is my downfall,

and it will get me in trouble.

[siren wailing]

[Sabina Baugh] From our sunny holiday in California…

we just wanted to explore a little bit.

This weather, it's so warm and lovely.

We love walking,

and we just wanted to see as much as possible.

[Mike Baugh] So we left really early.

Got out, spent the day out.

We thought, "Ooh, it's downtown L.A., we're right in the middle of it.

How awesome!"

[Mike Baugh] But when you look at the environment of downtown,

it's the exact opposite of my expectation.

[Sabina Baugh] We were walking and we saw a lot of homeless people.

Rows and rows, and they're all outside on the street, sleeping.

And you can see they live… they live outside.

And then we found out that this area around the hotel is called Skid Row.

Skid Row has a reputation to be a dangerous place.

That was a big shock.

[man] A visitor staying at the Cecil,

you just think, "Well, I'm downtown. Let me take a walk and see what's here."

And little do you know that you're staying at Ground Zero

of one of the most dangerous and violent places

in the United States of America.

[man 2] Skid Row is a 56-block area in downtown Los Angeles.

[siren wails]

It's one of the poorest areas in the entire world,

and it's existed for over 100 years.

Currently, about 8,000 to 10,000 homeless individuals

live on Skid Row.

Let me just say, nobody was born on Skid row.

There's a lot of stories there.

I'm from New York City.

When I lost my job,

I just took to the road, and eventually I wound up here in L.A.

And, you know, I found myself living on the streets of Skid Row for 21 years.

You know, it's pretty rough.

They got all the missions, shelters, right here.

[Mungin] Almost all of our homeless services are located in this one area.

So the only place to really go if you're homeless and want assistance

is Skid Row.

And it's become a dumping ground.

After people are released from prison or jail or from a mental facility,

they are dropped off on Skid Row,

because the city wanted to make sure that these types of people

remain separated from the rest of Los Angeles.

[Schave] In the early 1970s,

the city came out with this plan.

The policy of containment.

[man] Get out of the street!

[McSorley] Containment was like an experiment of,

"Let's see if we can contain anything bad going on in the rest of the city…"

Let's go, move back. All the way back.

"…and direct it to Skid Row."

It was like they just put an artificial moat around this place.

And now the police are literally there with a barrier

stopping the homeless population from being allowed to leave.

But within this border of Skid Row, it's the Wild West.

[McSorley] Within the boundaries, it was kind of like, um, a free-for-all,

where people were allowed to sleep on the streets,

buy drugs,

sell their bodies.

[Mungin] You have a huge drug population on Skid Row.

You have a huge population of mental illness.

This is a space where people are allowed to just suffer.

And this manifests itself on the street

as crime and violence.

[McSorley] I'm a detective sergeant.

I did a couple different tours in Skid Row,

addressing just street crime.

-[siren wailing] -So that could be breaking up a bar brawl…

or arresting someone that's buck naked running down the street with a machete.

Burned in my memory is a guy holding a live pigeon.

And I'm looking at him while he put it in his mouth,

you know, rips its head off,

blood squirting all over.

People have been killed just walking down the street

and someone is raging.

[Kading] Anybody's vulnerable…

especially if you're a naive girl from some other country

who's here thinking that it's all peaches and roses.

It's…

Uh, it's misleading.

If Elisa is out at night by herself, she could easily become a victim.

Is it possible she was abducted and she's being held against her will?

So we were looking into who in the area could be a person of interest.

Someone she had met during her travels,

or somebody that she met at the hotel.

[Kading] Over at the hotel…

the investigators became aware that there was security footage.

[Price] The hotel has cameras in the lobby and the elevators,

the front of the hotel,

you know, most of the common areas.

[Marcia] When we started to look at their… [sighs] their video systems,

we find out that not all floors have video cameras,

and that there is no camera on Elisa's floor.

And the positions of these cameras weren't always in the greatest position,

or the quality of the video itself was not that great.

So now it's kind of a needle in a haystack of how we can identify her.

[Kading] There was a lot of video footage to review.

Days' worth. Hundreds of hours.

[Marcia] We decided, "We have to watch this minute for minute."

My partner and I were assigned that task.

Management gave us a little office

and we sat there, uh, for 20 hours a day,

watching video.

We focused on the night of Elisa's disappearance.

The last thing you want to do is miss something.

It was just a laborious, laborious task.

Continually watching to see who's coming, who's going, where's Elisa?

And all of a sudden…

we see her on camera.

And we both just jumped,

both wanting to hit pause on the, uh, DVR.

And he beat me because he's younger.

It was a moment of excitement because it's something to work with.

It's a piece.

But I remember… talking to my partner, saying…

"Her behavior is unusual."

So we sat there and we… we watched the video several times,

and then plotted out where she could have gone

to try to figure out if she left, when she left,

and if she left with somebody.

In reviewing all the footage

and watching the… the exiting and entrance…

we never saw her leave.

And we communicated that to our peers,

that we felt that she's still here, somewhere.

She never left the hotel.

She never left the hotel.

So…

if she never left,

then where could she be?

Or who within the hotel could be a potential suspect?

Who could have either hurt Elisa,

or has her under their control?

[siren wails]

[Cooper] I think that Elisa Lam walked into a situation

that was very different from what she expected.

You really don't know who is sharing this environment.

[Price] So many different types of people check into the Cecil on a regular basis.

I mean, it was somewhat of a flop house.

For some of our guests,

there's some despair going on.

[Cooper] Tourists probably don't realize,

but the Cecil Hotel is an alternative to apartment living

for people who don't have a deposit, can't pass a background check.

They don't want someone knowing where they are.

And so it attracts people who are fresh out of prison…

people who are on the run.

The person who's in the elevator with you might be an 85-year-old sex offender

who can't live anywhere else.

[siren wailing]

[Price] Sometimes it was scary.

We were faced with a lot of security and safety issues.

[siren wailing]

In the then years that I worked there, there were thousands of 911 calls.

[siren whooping]

Thousands.

Because, you know, you need help.

[McSorley] When I was on patrol out here, you could expect at least

-one to three calls a day at the Cecil. -[siren wailing]

[man] 10-4, 97.

[McSorley] I remember somebody trying to, um, burn down the hallways.

[siren wailing]

We would, uh, get domestic violence type of calls…

-[objects clattering] -[people yelling]

…or someone just shot up drugs and having a bad trip.

[woman yelling]

Fights would erupt. You know, assaults, stabbings.

-One of the hottest days… -[flies buzzing]

…it was in August.

And the body we found kind of looked, um, like Grimace from McDonald's.

Completely purple. Wouldn't know what race he was.

And his body like about to explode, it was so distended.

It was hell on earth, basically.

There was a circumstance where I was giving a tour

and there was a sniper in the… in the hallway.

Like, a real police sniper with a freaking… a big gun.

[police radio chatter]

The guy looks at me, "Ma'am, get in your room,

there's a person that's stabbed somebody loose inside the building.

[Cooper] There were a lot of creepy people at the Cecil.

There were women staying there

who reported believing being spied on in the shared bathrooms.

[McSorley] Then you mix in the tourist element.

That's a huge mix of people.

I could see Elisa, uh, being overwhelmed.

I don't know if she was equipped to fully function in a hotel like that.

[siren wailing]

[Kading] Since the detectives knew that there was no video footage

of Elisa leaving the Cecil…

investigators had to search throughout the entire hotel.

And you've got to try to locate her as quickly as possible

in order to protect her, you know, should she be in harm's way.

[indistinct police radio chatter]

[Marcia] We felt that she has to be in here, somewhere.

Approximately 14 of us were asked to do an intense search of the hotel.

It's a very large hotel,

and we were all anticipating a very long night.

We get one shot at this. Let's do it right.

You would have to go from room to room to room

and everything in between that.

I said, "Well, we have over 600 closets here, you know.

I mean, okay. Well, let's look at 'em all."

[Lopez in Spanish] The manager had two of us on one floor,

unlocking doors for the officers.

Closets and toilets and everything.

Until all the doors were opened, all of them,

including the basement, in the lockers that were there as well.

[McSorley in English] Looking, literally, under every crack and crevice

of where a body could be hidden, where could someone be stowed.

[siren wailing]

[Price] They started asking questions. "When does garbage go out?

Your employees, what time do they start? What doors do they come in and out of?"

And I started thinking to myself, "What?

Oh, my gosh. What, do you think she left in a dumpster?"

[dog panting]

It was decided that we would call out scent-tracking dogs.

[dog sniffing]

They will take an item such as a piece of clothing, a sock,

something that will pick up the person's scent.

[Kading] The dogs are led throughout the hotel.

Eventually…

the dog was able to locate the scent from Elisa's room.

You get that little heartbeat like, "Oh, we might be onto something."

On the fifth floor…

the dog tracked in a westbound direction

towards a big window that looks out from the hallway onto the street,

and outside the window, there is a fire escape.

[Kading] However…

that's where the scent was lost.

By that time, everybody was on overtime, probably going into a 14 to 16-hour day.

-[helicopter whirring] -A team of detectives with canines

was assigned to search the roof.

So they called in LAPD air support division.

And they had them illuminate the top of the hotel…

using their night sun.

And they searched up there for… for Elisa and/or evidence

and didn't find anything.

[police radio chatter]

[Kading] This is the big, unanswered question. Where is she?

Traditionally, the outcome after two weeks is probably it's homicide,

and the chances of finding that subject really whittle down.

[Marcia] It had gotten late in the evening.

It was close to 10:00 p.m. at night.

And it was decided that the following day, uh, we would regroup.

But the following morning, after the search,

the LAPD went on tac alert,

because a different investigation came into play.

[newsman] Tactical teams spread across nine counties in Southern California.

LAPD says they are at war tonight

with a man who is targeting law enforcement officers.

Thirty-three-year-old Christopher Dorner, said to be a cop-killer,

has said he will not stop the killing until he's dead.

Christopher Dorner was a former Los Angeles police officer.

LAPD was under attack by one of their own.

So, the next morning it was decided

that the two lead investigators with myself and my partner

would stay on the Elisa Lam case,

while everybody else,

their primary responsibility was the Dorner investigation,

which was a higher priority.

So we went from about 18 detectives down to four.

And that changed the dynamics of our investigation.

And since there was no information that was developed out of the canvas,

now we're back to square one.

[Kading] They really don't have any other answers.

So now you're hoping that the public can assist you.

[indistinct police radio chatter]

We need the public's help to put more eyes out on the street.

The last footage that we had of Elisa before her disappearance

was the footage we found of her inside the elevator.

So it was decided that we would release the video.

[indistinct police radio chatter]

We owe it to the family to find her.

We don't have the resources.

It was a no-brainer. So we put it out.

Um…

That's where the case starts to go askew.

[siren wailing]

[man] The initial version of the video comes out on LAPD's website.

As a YouTuber,

I was looking into content, and I saw the elevator video.

It's a four-minute video,

but there's so much that's going on in such a short time frame.

Everyone is just captured by it.

[Dean] The doors open and a woman walks in.

[Lordan] She's swinging one arm up, bends over casually to look at the panel,

and she's firing down the whole center row of buttons,

and then moves to the corner of the elevator.

She looks like she is relaxed.

She pokes her head out and whips her head both ways.

[Kading] And then she's retreating back and is tucked away into the corner.

[Mike Baugh] She kept looking outside the door, around the corner to her right.

[Sabina Baugh] Then she would come out of the elevator…

and she would pop up.

[Lordan] She's making these strange steps in almost this square dance motion,

Stepping back and forth in the door.

[Sabina Baugh] She'd go to the left, then you wouldn't see her.

[Dean] Then all you can see is a little bit of her arm.

[Lordan] Why is the elevator not going anywhere?

Is someone pressing a button and keeping the elevator here?

[Dean] That's when the weird stuff starts happening.

[uneasy music playing]

[Lordan] Elisa starts pressing these buttons.

You have to wonder,

"Why are you hitting all these floors like that?"

[Dean] She was running her fingers through her hair a bit.

[Kading] Her hand movements are very strange and erratic.

[Dean] She's waving her hands. It's like she's conjuring a spirit

or, like, acting something out to someone.

[McSorley] You can see the body movements… twisting and turning.

[Dean] And now she appears to be counting with her fingers.

It's just such bizarre behavior.

[Lordan] She exits to the left of the elevator,

and then, all of a sudden, she's gone.

[Dean] You think, "That's the end of it."

But you're just looking at an empty elevator.

What the hell's going on here?

[Lordan] She's literally not in the video past about the 2:30 mark.

And for some reason, that's also been released as part of this.

[Dean] One strange thing is that the whole time Elisa is in there,

the door never shuts.

And now it shuts very quickly.

[Lordan] It's one of those things that makes you scratch your head and say,

"Hmm, this is kind of weird."

[Dean] The door opens back up.

Still nothing happens.

[Lordan] It's like a mini-ghost story built into four minutes.

And the story is about a girl who gets into an elevator.

The elevator isn't working properly.

The girl starts having some type of distress and leaves,

and then, all of a sudden, the elevator goes back to normal operation.

Why?

[Dean] Is there a missing clue here that I'm not seeing?

Or is there something supernatural happening here?

[Lordan] It's hard to say there isn't something extremely dark and bizarre

that's going on there.

[Dean] And then at 3:59, the video ends.

I think most people who are seeing this video know what they're looking at.

They're looking at the last known footage of a woman who's disappeared.

And with that context in mind,

the police unwittingly, like, turned it into a mystery.

[siren wailing]

People were just dying to solve it.

[Kading] I don't think that the LAPD really recognized,

when they released that video, what they were gonna get in return.

Now to a new development in the search for a woman missing in California.

The LAPD has released bizarre surveillance footage of 21-year-old Elisa Lam.

[man] I saw the elevator footage as soon as it was released.

There was reason to be suspicious as to what happened.

And I was drawn in by the story.

[newsman] The footage is from a security camera at the Cecil Hotel,

just before she went missing.

-[man 1] Police are struggling… -[man 2] Police are getting worried.

-[man 3] …a standstill… -[man 4] What happened to Elisa?

We're hoping anyone with information comes forward.

Now the LAPD is asking for your help and fearing for the worst.

[Sobhani] We knew we had to help.

And no matter how deep it went or how difficult it might be, we knew…

we had to find her alive.

[newsman] The door closes, and she's never seen again.

[somber violin plays]

[uneasy music plays]