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Robyn Beck / AFP - Getty Images
A worker stands on a water tank on the roof of the Cecil Hotel in Los Angeles, where visitor Elisa Lam was found dead, adding to its grim history.
The mysterious death of a Canadian tourist whose body was found in a Los Angeles water tank is the latest chapter in the bizarre history of a landmark hotel where two notorious serial killers have bedded down.
Once a faded single-room occupancy, the Cecil hotel was sold and renovated in 2007 and is now marketed as a "European-style" budget hotel with flat-screen TVs and a marble lobby.
But the unexplained death of 21-year-old Elisa Lam -- who vanished Jan. 31 and was found this week in a cistern that supplies drinking water to the hotel -- is focusing attention on other dark stories that have unfolded within the hotel's walls.
Heinz-Peter Bader / Reuters file
Jack Unterweger, seen here on the first day of his trial, stayed at the Cecil Hotel during a swing through Los Angeles, during which three prostitutes were killed.
Kim Cooper of Esotouric, a tour company, has included the Cecil on a bus tour called "Hotel Horrors" since 2007 but says its history doesn't strike her as particularly eerie considering its size and location.
"You have 700 rooms in constant business since 1927 at what was mainly a transient hotel," she said. "You have two unsavory people who stayed there, one murder in 1964 and a number of jumpers. But considering it's 80-plus years of history, I wouldn't say it's some sort of portal for weirdness."
Austrian serial killer Jack Unterweger stayed at the Cecil in 1991 after he was dispatched to L.A. by an Austrian magazine that wanted him to report on American crime, according to a 2007 book about him, "The Vienna Woods Killer."
At the time, Unterweger was a celebrated figure in his homeland. Convicted in 1976 of killing a hooker, choking her with her bra, he launched a writing career from his jail cell and was held up as a model of prisoner rehabilitation when he was released after 15 years.
During his three-week stay at the Cecil, three prostitutes were killed in Los Angeles; in each case, their bra was turned into a noose. Unterweger was questioned about the slayings and denied them, the book says.
He was never charged in the U.S. but back in Austria he was actually tried for the L.A. slayings — along with eight other local killings. He hanged himself in his prison cell after being found guilty on nine murder counts, according to the Los Angeles Times.
It's unknown why Unterweger chose the Cecil for his stay, but six years earlier it had been linked to another infamous murderer -- Richard Ramirez, dubbed the Night Stalker for a terrifying series of stabbings, shootings and beatings.
Ramirez, who is on California's death row after being convicted of 13 counts of murder, lived at the 700-room hotel for several weeks, the Los Angeles Times reported when he was arrested in 1985. Fellow residents recalled loud music and marijuana smoke coming from his 14th floor room.
LAPD via Reuters
Elisa Lam of Vancouver disappeared while staying at the Hotel Cecil, where her body was later found in the water tank.
Unterweger and Ramirez didn't commit any murders at the Cecil, but it has been a crime scene.
In 1964, a kind-hearted woman, known as "Pigeon Goldie" because she fed the birds in nearby Pershing Square, was found raped, stabbed and strangled in her ransacked room.
Police suspected a serial killer could be the culprit because another middle-aged woman had been murdered the same way in a nearby hotel, but no one was ever charged.
Less unusual are a handful of suicides that have occurred through the years. A 30-year-old woman who took a bus from St. Louis to L.A., and had only 50 cents in her purse, leaped from an eighth-floor window in 1962, the L.A. Times reported.
Just nine months later, another young woman leaped or fell from the ninth-floor after an argument with her estranged husband -- and killed an elderly man walking on the street below, the newspaper said.
Cooper's next "Hotel Horrors" tour group will stop by the Cecil next week. She said they don't normally make a big deal out of recent crimes but will mention Lam's death, which has not yet been ruled foul play or accidental.
"It would seem almost disrespectful not to include it," she said.
We reached out to hotel management to find out what they know about the Cecil of years past but didn't hear back from them.
The body of missing 21-year-old Canadian tourist Elisa Lam was discovered in a water tank atop the Cecil Hotel in Los Angeles. NBCNews.com's Dara Brown reports.
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Should bottle the water and sell it ...
" Solyent Spring Water ".
I'm waiting for the coroners report for cause of death. Video of her showed her acting strange in the elevator. Did she try to hide from someone in the tank, or was she put there? I know she was small but if she was put there how did they climb the ladder with her? Too many questions not enough information yet.
In the movie Soylent Green, Soylent Red was to be the next big thing. Liked Charlton Heston as the cop almost as good as his part in Ben Hur.
Yeah, but Soylent green were "People, Soylent green are people", according to Charilton Heston.
"Water, it keeps a corpse afloat through times of decay."
The news article describes this as a "transient hotel".........ummmm, hotels are all temporary ,or transient places to stay.....where did the writer attend journalism school ?
Liam~ It's an antique term: Iin the past, "transient" hotels were hourly/daily rooms only...transient being a polite word for the street hooker's "workplace", a "flop house" for overcome alcoholics, or a place to use drugs (primarily heroin at the time). The entire surrounding area is at least 100 years old and had slid from a bustiling downtown hotel row (1910 to approximately 1950s) to "the old part of town" with it's collection of down-at-the-heels diners, fleabag hotels, "lounges" and "retirement" hotels (which were warehouses for the aged poor). Just sayin'.
I am thoroughly disgusted that anybody would write an article like this.A young woman was found murdered at that flophouse.It is located in skid row. She was a young tourist from Canada who had no way of knowing what a dive this was.The Cecil should be closed down and sued for their false advertising.I am appalled and disgusted that the LAPD have not been on the news along with their city manager espousing their outrage over this crime.They should be outraged at the way this flophouse advertises itself on the internet.I want them and the media to shine a bad light on this establishment so that no other tourist has this happen to them.She did not deserve this and it makes me want to cry.
cleaning lady, a couple of points:
The real failings of this article are its sensationalism, dredging up old, completely unrelated crimes, and its failure to provide any new information regarding the death of Elisa Lam.
Are you serious? . . . "shine a bad light" on the beautiful, posh downtown Los Angeles Hotel Cecil?!? Where guests come for the elegance, but stay for the water?!? . . . it's an OUTRAGE!!
Any legitimate "tourist" worth their salt would do their homework and not book a room at a 2-star hotel on any city's Skid Row -- especially Los Angeles. Was she just trying to save a few bucks or was she taking a "walk on the wild side"? Or was she just poor with a lust for travel. Not much information is given about her.
Many tourists would not know of the seedy parts of town. This hotel was advertised possessing European elegance and amenities. It, too, as a first time visitor, have ended up in "seedy" parts of a city, through misrepresentation from a travel agency, advertisements, etc. No one can truly know, unless they are well acquainted, as a resident, what a place is like. I have been in nice hotels in bad parts of town and bad hotels in nice parts of town..
It's Obama's fault!
naw he has an alibi from that upstanding member of society and pillar of morality....Tiger.
Very sad. A true dump.
Hotel California
Hmmm..was that a horror movie in past or a song?
It's HOLLYWOOD.
She come in for a date wwith his killer, the murder know the hotel, security sistem, etc, chech facebook, twiter, phone records and workers from the hotel...
ok Kojack, we''ll get right on that. God bless Ms. Lam. May she rest in peace.
Ban Flophouses.
ban "ban"
Ramirez, who is on California's death row after being convicted of 13 counts of murder, lived at the 700-room hotel for several weeks, the Los Angeles Times reported when he was arrested in 1985
that is what I find appalling...20 years on death row for 13 murders...that POS should have been fertilizer a long long time ago
Would you like the Ramirez suite? Comes with free weed, and several hammers. Water tasted kinda funny for a few days but bleach can fix anything.....
Maybe they should put in a pool.
baco78 - ????????
I'm drinking bottled water while staying at hotels from now on.
RIP Elisa.
Condolences to her family and friends.
Why would the water even be accessible without a key?. Shouldn't the drinking water be safeguarded somehow? It's like anyone could go and throw stuff in the tank. WTF!
Bates Motel?
Any tourist even considering a visit, let alone an overnight stay, stay away from downtown L.A.. It has always been a dangerous area and in recent years is a deep cesspool of human scum. So many incredible areas of S. California to visit and see but Los Angeles is not one of them.
Leapt of fell............? ..right.
Leaving that alone. can you imagine the poor schmuck just walking down the sidewalk,..... minding his own business and....splat..... hes met by a woman doing a really bad bird imitation....
It looks like evil has returned to the Hyperion Hotel after Angel Investigations moved out.
All you comedians who find humor in the violent death of a young woman should experience a few minutes of the terror she must have felt before her death. Reading these type of comments every day regarding similar tragedies sickens me almost as much as the manner in which this young woman was allegedly murdered and dumped. When will we all begin to recognize what a disgusting and insensitive society of ass bags we are living among? Shut up you ignorant slobs.
Too bad L&O is no longer on. I can see it now, "Ripped from the headlines"... The show opens with no or little water pressure. Either a hotel employee checks to see why there is no water OR a couple goes to the roof for a little hanky-panky and - bam - they find a dead body in the water tank. "Damn, no wonder we don't have water." Queue the L&O theme and opening credits.
Think I'll just say condolences to the family.
It's not a flophouse it's actually a pretty nice hotel, the neighborhood may not be Beverly Hills but it's not as scarey as some I've stayed in. Washington DC is where the scarey hoods are I stayed at a DaysInn on New York Ave that had bullet proof glass protecting the desk clerk and armed guards prowling the building and parking lot. The Cecil is actually pretty nice, or was last summer. At the time I didn't know the history of the place, but I'd stay there again, it's a beautiful Building the staff is nice and the price is right.
Actually I think the water tank is the reserve tank for the fire system, not dirinking water, but I dunno for sure
I see a Stephen King novel coming.
Dark Water II