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Speaker 4: You are now listening to True Murder, the most shocking
Speaker 4: killers in true crime history and the authors that have
Speaker 4: written about them. Gasey, Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker DTK. Every
Speaker 4: week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and
Speaker 4: infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with Your
Speaker 4: host journalist and author Dan Zufanski.
Speaker 5: Good Evening. Vancouver's student Elisa Lamb was last heard from
Speaker 5: on January thirty first, twenty thirteen, after she checked into
Speaker 5: downtown LA's Cecil Hotel, a six hundred room building with
Speaker 5: a nine decade history of scandal and tragedy. The next day,
Speaker 5: Elisa vanished. A search of the hotel yielded nothing. More
Speaker 5: than a week later, complaints my guests of foul smelling
Speaker 5: tap water led to a grim discovery, Elisa's nude body
Speaker 5: floating in a rooftop water tank in an area extremely
Speaker 5: difficult to access without setting off alarms. The only clue
Speaker 5: was a disturbing surveillance video of Elisa uploaded to YouTube
Speaker 5: in hopes of public assistance. As the eerie elevator video
Speaker 5: went viral, so did the questions of its tens of
Speaker 5: millions of viewers. Was Elisa's death caused by murder, suicide
Speaker 5: or paranormal activity, was it connected to the Cecil Hotel,
Speaker 5: and in that video, what accounted for Elisa's strange behavior.
Speaker 5: With the help of web sluthe and investigators from around
Speaker 5: the world, journalist Jake Anderson set out to cover the
Speaker 5: facts behind the death that had become a macabre Internet
Speaker 5: meme as well as a magnet for conspiracy theorists. In
Speaker 5: pouring through Elisa's revealing online journals and social media posts,
Speaker 5: Anderson realized he shared more in common with the young
Speaker 5: woman than he imagined. His search for justice and truth
Speaker 5: became a personal journey, a dangerous descent into one of
Speaker 5: America's quiet epidemics. Along the way, he exposed a botch
Speaker 5: investigation and previously unreported disclosures from inside sources who suggest
Speaker 5: there may have been a corporate conspiracy and a police
Speaker 5: cover up. Anderson chronicles eye opening discoveries about who Elisa
Speaker 5: Lamb really was and what or whom she was running from,
Speaker 5: and presents shocking new evidence that may reopen one of
Speaker 5: the most chilling and obsessively followed true crime cases of
Speaker 5: the century. The book they were featuring this evening is
Speaker 5: Gone at Midnight, The mysterious death of Alisa Lamb with
Speaker 5: my special guest journalists and author and filmmaker Jake Anderson.
Speaker 5: Welcome to the program, and thank you very much for
Speaker 5: Greener's interview. Jake Anderson, Well.
Speaker 6: Thank you so much. Dan. I appreciate you having the answer,
Speaker 6: and I appreciate your interest in the case and in
Speaker 6: my book.
Speaker 5: Thank you very much. It's a very, very vast, fascinating case,
Speaker 5: and it really deals with a lot of things that
Speaker 5: are very modern. A lot of the cases now we're
Speaker 5: dealing with forty fifty year old technology, forensic techniques, and
Speaker 5: this sheds the light on a whole new world in
Speaker 5: true crime investigation. Let's talk about Elisa Lamb January thirty first.
Speaker 5: This occurs January thirty first, twenty thirteen. But tell us
Speaker 5: about a little bit about Alisa before we talk about
Speaker 5: this incredible crime that was perpetrated upon her. Tell us
Speaker 5: about her relationship with her parents. Where was she living
Speaker 5: we mentioned in the introduction of Vancouver. Tell us a
Speaker 5: little bit about Alisa and what she's doing in Los Angeles.
Speaker 6: Right, So, a Lisa was a Canadian Chinese Canadian young woman.
Speaker 6: She's twenty one years old and she had been going
Speaker 6: to school at the University of British Columbia and she
Speaker 6: lived in Vancouver. And the aspect of Alisa she was,
Speaker 6: you know, a blogger and a very just interesting, smart
Speaker 6: young woman, good writer. And the aspect of the case
Speaker 6: that really kind of first drew me in was Alisa
Speaker 6: struggled pretty ethically with depression and bipolar disorder, and those
Speaker 6: are illnesses that have run in my family.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 6: It, you know, took the life of my aunt and
Speaker 6: threatened a life of several close friends of mine, and
Speaker 6: I had struggled with variations as well, So I was
Speaker 6: drawn to that psychological aspect of the case and her
Speaker 6: struggle with it, which she documented very bravely on her blogs.
Speaker 6: And I was also interested in the sociology of the case.
Speaker 6: Elisa was, like I said, she's just an interesting young woman,
Speaker 6: and I don't think she ever imagined herself getting caught
Speaker 6: up in just such a strange zeitgeist type true crime
Speaker 6: case that would be obsessively followed by millions of people.
Speaker 6: And so it's she has a few posts that are
Speaker 6: kind of early imprescient about you know, her life. But
Speaker 6: I think that what really kind of drew me to
Speaker 6: writing about her was just her open and honest description
Speaker 6: of her own battles with mental illness, which is, you know,
Speaker 6: an important an important thing in life in general. Right now,
Speaker 6: I would say, and she did pretty pretty bravely, and
Speaker 6: it's just it's unfortunate that she didn't get a chance
Speaker 6: to kind of get a second act in her life.
Speaker 6: And I think her battle with mental illness is pretty
Speaker 6: significant in this But as I will state, you know,
Speaker 6: as I state in the book, and we'll stay here,
Speaker 6: you know, I don't believe mental illness and style play
Speaker 6: or mutually exclusive in this in this case. And but
Speaker 6: that's you know, to kind of similarly answer kind of
Speaker 6: the first question, that that's that's who at least said
Speaker 6: Lamb was in a nutshell, a very complicated young woman
Speaker 6: who is battling something, and that that battle is what
Speaker 6: drew me to the case in the first place. And
Speaker 6: then you know, I went down new directions at that point.
Speaker 5: You talk about all the writing and how Canada she was,
Speaker 5: and she wanted to share her experiences, her depressive state
Speaker 5: and talk about the things that were important to her
Speaker 5: in that state, and that's how you write that. You've
Speaker 5: got to know her and a very intimate relationship in
Speaker 5: terms of the way she wrote and how much she
Speaker 5: did share what was disturbing her and concerning her in
Speaker 5: her life. Let's talk about the tour, the California tour.
Speaker 5: She's from Vancouver, she's a student, she's twenty one. What
Speaker 5: she doing in Los Angeles? And tell us a little
Speaker 5: bit about this Cecil Hotel as you write, a six
Speaker 5: hundred room building with a nine decade history of scandal
Speaker 5: and tragedy. Tell us about this vacation, why she's at
Speaker 5: the Cecil Hotel, and a little bit about the hotel itself.
Speaker 6: So yeah, Lisa was I think trying to turn a
Speaker 6: corner in her life where I think she wanted to.
Speaker 6: She'd spent a lot of her life online. She kind
Speaker 6: of used tungblr and other social media networks as a
Speaker 6: way to kind of kind of not only communicate with
Speaker 6: other people about her problems. That she liked that community online,
Speaker 6: and I think probably was easier for her as a
Speaker 6: person with anxiety and depression to communicate with people online.
Speaker 6: I think her so called West Coast Tour, what she
Speaker 6: called it, I think that was an attempt by her
Speaker 6: to kind of break out of her comfort zone and
Speaker 6: try and turn a corner and just try and start
Speaker 6: like a new chapter. And so she planned this kind
Speaker 6: of trip where she was going to start in San
Speaker 6: Diego and move up through Los Angeles to Santa Cruz
Speaker 6: and it's you know, obviously it ended in Los Angeles.
Speaker 6: The question of why she settled on the Suscle Hotel
Speaker 6: is is definitely it's an unanswered one. People have theories
Speaker 6: is to you know, everything from just economical pragmatism. It
Speaker 6: is probably one of the cheaper hotels in downtown Los Angeles.
Speaker 6: So maybe she learned about the history of the Suscle
Speaker 6: Hotel or maybe was withdrawn to that to even some
Speaker 6: people who go down the paranormal route out and something
Speaker 6: was calling to her. Probably not the angle I would
Speaker 6: choose to go down when trying to explain this, but regardless, yes,
Speaker 6: once she was there, I feel like she got caught
Speaker 6: up in a nexus there. And you know, to be clear,
Speaker 6: like I'm not saying one hundred percent that you know,
Speaker 6: criminal homicide was committed against her, but I my perspective
Speaker 6: on that did change as I went into this, and
Speaker 6: I'll get more into that in a second. As far
Speaker 6: as the history at the Special hotel. Yeah, it's unbelievable
Speaker 6: as history, and it was already in notorious place even
Speaker 6: before the Elisa Lamb case, and I document it pretty
Speaker 6: extensively in the book. There were aspects of it that
Speaker 6: I was having trouble operating because there's really not most
Speaker 6: of the information online is basically regurgitated from all all
Speaker 6: of this from one post. It's just there's very little
Speaker 6: independent corroboration that has gone on online as well the
Speaker 6: exact people who died and what happened to them. And
Speaker 6: so I went in and did a little bit of
Speaker 6: background trying to corroborate for sure what happened to certain people. Unfortunately,
Speaker 6: the records on that stuff are very very limited, and
Speaker 6: it's very difficult to confirm this stuff beyond just newspaper
Speaker 6: headlines from that time. But they started the curse, what
Speaker 6: I call the curse of this subtle kind of started
Speaker 6: in the thirties the hotel, around the time the hotel
Speaker 6: first started, and as the hotel got as the whole
Speaker 6: downtown Los Angeles area got kind of just marooned in
Speaker 6: the Great Depression, we start to see a string of
Speaker 6: just very grizzly suicides that would take place there, and
Speaker 6: it would range from people slashing their own throats to
Speaker 6: poisoning themselves, to the most frequent of people jumping out
Speaker 6: the windows of the hotel. And in fact, this continued
Speaker 6: for so long and so consistently that locals there would
Speaker 6: start to call the hotel the suicide hotel because so
Speaker 6: many people were doing it. Dozens and dozens and dozens
Speaker 6: of people, really grizzly stories. One woman unexpectedly gave birth
Speaker 6: while she was in the room, in her room, and
Speaker 6: without waking up her partner, she dropped the child out
Speaker 6: of the window, and just very very grizzly, horrible stuff
Speaker 6: that I'm tempted to not even talk about publicly because
Speaker 6: it's disturbing and can be traumatizing for people. But it's
Speaker 6: just it's part of the history. And so and then
Speaker 6: of course we get into the murder of Pidgey Good
Speaker 6: Osgood pigeon lady, the pigeon lady Osgood, sorry messing up
Speaker 6: her name here, And she was strangled and murdered in
Speaker 6: her room at the Cecil Hotel, and her murderer was
Speaker 6: never found, and so, and you know, this is just
Speaker 6: a small cross sampling of just the horrible things that
Speaker 6: have gone on. And this is all before even the
Speaker 6: eighties started. And when the eighties started, we enter a
Speaker 6: whole new phase of the subsal Hotel when two different
Speaker 6: serial killers took residence there. The first was Richard Rumirez,
Speaker 6: the Knightstalker, and then and you know, most people know
Speaker 6: about him, still very shaking stuff. The second, which I
Speaker 6: read a book about and I almost feel like it's
Speaker 6: more interesting, almost, is Jack Unterbegger from the Austrian Ghoul
Speaker 6: they call him. And this guy is just probably the
Speaker 6: only serial killer in history that had used literature to
Speaker 6: trick people into getting letting him out of prisons that
Speaker 6: he could continue his murderous flee. It's really just a
Speaker 6: fascinating story behind Unterberger. So that's two different serial killers,
Speaker 6: and then more horrible stuff just continue up into the
Speaker 6: turn of the century, and then we get to release
Speaker 6: his case. So it's just this incredible history. And I
Speaker 6: try not to delve too far into spooky stuff, but
Speaker 6: you know, at a certain point one has to ask
Speaker 6: whether there's just some kind of just I don't know,
Speaker 6: residual trauma that is just lingering in that place that
Speaker 6: affects people. And I went and stayed there by myself
Speaker 6: a couple times, and I definitely just didn't feel myself
Speaker 6: and had pretty profound experiences there. But the short answer,
Speaker 6: I guess to your original question was I don't know
Speaker 6: why Alisa stayed there. She's not very clear, and once
Speaker 6: she got to La, she really stopped blogging and her
Speaker 6: social media post just kind of cut off around him.
Speaker 6: So it's very hard. There's pretty much no answer to
Speaker 6: right now as to why she decided to stay there.
Speaker 5: Well, let's get to the crime that captivated everyone's imagination.
Speaker 5: Of course, it's the video that really did the trick
Speaker 5: in terms of this case, but also just the description
Speaker 5: of the crime itself. You write that Elisa was last
Speaker 5: seen January th first, twenty thirteen. She's been at the
Speaker 5: hotel a few days. She's scheduled to be in the hotel.
Speaker 5: I think you say three or four days. She was
Speaker 5: talking to her parents every day during her tour of California.
Speaker 5: That you write, what happens She's supposed to be out
Speaker 5: of the hotel on February first. I believe what happens
Speaker 5: and tell us about this video and how this video
Speaker 5: happened to get onto YouTube.
Speaker 6: Yeah, that's a good question, actually, and it's a question
Speaker 6: and not a lot of people have considered. And I
Speaker 6: really tried to find an answer as to how this
Speaker 6: video got onto the internet in the first place. But first, yeah,
Speaker 6: he so, yeah. She disappeared, by all reports of which
Speaker 6: they're little, around midnight January thirty first, And I do
Speaker 6: believe she was experiencing a mixed episode, which in bipolar
Speaker 6: steak is basically kind of a mix between hypomania and depression. However,
Speaker 6: and that's because she she had gone off two of
Speaker 6: her mens, at least according to the corner. Of course,
Speaker 6: I'll tell you later why. I think it's hard to
Speaker 6: trust a lot of stuff that the coroner says. But
Speaker 6: for whatever reason she uh there were reports that she
Speaker 6: was acting bizarre, and I heard it's we've heard that
Speaker 6: from beyond just the women who apparently stayed with her
Speaker 6: for a couple of nights and then asked to be
Speaker 6: moved her to be moved out of the room because
Speaker 6: she was acting bizarre.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 6: I found a man who had spoken with her, who
Speaker 6: hadn't been interviewed yet, and he said she was acting
Speaker 6: bizarre too.
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Speaker 6: But like I say, just because someone has mental illness,
Speaker 6: that does not mean that her death was necessarily an accident.
Speaker 6: And in fact, studies routinely show that, you know, particularly
Speaker 6: women with mental illness, are far more susceptible to sexual predators.
Speaker 6: So what happened that night, of course, is still kind
Speaker 6: of a mystery. I did turn up some information. It
Speaker 6: makes me think that this was not just an accident,
Speaker 6: which has now become kind of a sort of commonly
Speaker 6: held of these now. But let's see what you want
Speaker 6: me to answer. What happened? What she was that night?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 5: Well, no, the thing is where where we're at is
Speaker 5: that she disappears. So the parents of course from Rancouger
Speaker 5: to Los Angeles for the search, and then what does
Speaker 5: the police do, what's the response to this six hundred
Speaker 5: room hotel. What does the police do and what do
Speaker 5: they bring into the system.
Speaker 6: Okay, thank you, thanks for getting me back on track there. Okay,
Speaker 6: so yeah, they ran some searches there. They ran two
Speaker 6: searches of both including the roofs, and one of them
Speaker 6: involved a canine unit. Canine units are pretty reliable. The
Speaker 6: canine units did not pick up are sent on the roof.
Speaker 6: The police then kind of conscripted the public a little
Speaker 6: bit in the help for the in the search. And
Speaker 6: then about a week later, they released this very cryptic
Speaker 6: surveillance tape, probably one of the most cryptic surveillance videos
Speaker 6: that's ever been on the internet, and it, you know,
Speaker 6: went viral. And my confusion with this tape has always
Speaker 6: been why it was released and why the nature in
Speaker 6: which was released. I don't understand that the surveillance tape
Speaker 6: doesn't really show who it is, Like it's so pixelated
Speaker 6: and blurry that it's not good for identification purposes, and
Speaker 6: since there's no one else in it, it's not good
Speaker 6: for identifying any suspects either, So I'm not sure why
Speaker 6: it was released. All it did was stigmatize her and
Speaker 6: make everyone say that she looked crazy. And furthermore, the
Speaker 6: police didn't even release it publicly for some reason. They
Speaker 6: gave it to this journalist named Dennis Ramiro, who released
Speaker 6: it on his YouTube channel, and Ramiro has steadfastly refused
Speaker 6: to discuss how he came into possession of it. I mean,
Speaker 6: I was pretty much begging him to talk to me.
Speaker 6: I mean, he's a journalist. I thought journalists were supposed
Speaker 6: to be about transparency, right, He just, for whatever reason,
Speaker 6: did not want to get into that. And I think
Speaker 6: that tape is very problematic for a number of reasons.
Speaker 6: I think it really kind of poisoned the people's minds
Speaker 6: and stigmatized her, and so that's one of the reasons
Speaker 6: I wanted to write the books to try and give
Speaker 6: a portrait of her that counteracts that that narrative about
Speaker 6: a week later. I'm kind of compressing times here, But
Speaker 6: eventually they did finally find her body, and he made
Speaker 6: that worker they found her, okay, so they said they
Speaker 6: were there were people reporting uh dark water basically sorry,
Speaker 6: people who were staying at the hotel tenants there a
Speaker 6: long term residence. They were starting to find you know,
Speaker 6: dark water and their showers and their uh water they
Speaker 6: used to drink and brush their teeth with red sediment,
Speaker 6: strange black sediment. And so finally the management dispatched the
Speaker 6: maintenance worker, Santiago Lopez, who went to the roof and
Speaker 6: finally checked the water cistern and there he found body
Speaker 6: floating face up, and that face up aspect is important,
Speaker 6: and so that's when they found her floating in the
Speaker 6: water tank, naked with her clothes in the tank with
Speaker 6: her UH. Santiago claims that the lid was open, which
Speaker 6: I think is very significant. Obviously, if the lead was out,
Speaker 6: If the lid is open, it's much more easy to
Speaker 6: imagine that she climbed in herself. It was closed, definitely
Speaker 6: points a little bit more towards foul play. Santiago testified
Speaker 6: in a civil deposition regarding that, and what I believe
Speaker 6: is that he may have perjured himself. And the reason
Speaker 6: I think that is because I hired someone to help
Speaker 6: me try and find this guy because he had kind
Speaker 6: of gone off the radar, and I didn't find him,
Speaker 6: but we did find his half brother who basically said
Speaker 6: that Santiago had been paid money to leave the country
Speaker 6: with his family and then it had happened pretty abruptly. Yeah,
Speaker 6: he's and he said that he didn't even know Santiago
Speaker 6: had left of a sudden, he just found out. And
Speaker 6: so obviously this is limited information and this needs to
Speaker 6: be corroborated. But you know, part of this is because
Speaker 6: all three sources of information about the case, the family,
Speaker 6: the hotel, and the police have all been talking about it.
Speaker 6: It's it's harder to get information out of this. But
Speaker 6: I do think that we have to figure out whether
Speaker 6: that sid was closed or open. And another point on that,
Speaker 6: real quick is that I did manage to speak to
Speaker 6: one of the first responders who is now chief of
Speaker 6: police in Wisconsin. This is definitely a worthwhile or a
Speaker 6: reliable source. He was one of the first people on
Speaker 6: the scenes. He says the lid was closed. Now, is
Speaker 6: it possible that Santiago found the body with the lid
Speaker 6: open and then closed it while he waited for the
Speaker 6: police to come. It's possible. But if you're me and
Speaker 6: if I'm working and I discover a dead body in
Speaker 6: a water tank, I'm not touching anything I'm leaving it
Speaker 6: how everything is, and I'm immediately and going Italian of
Speaker 6: the management the pipeline is. Who he reported to first
Speaker 6: is also an interesting thing I and we'll get into
Speaker 6: this in a minute, but I do have reason to
Speaker 6: think that the hotel itself had definitely had an incentive
Speaker 6: to delay the discovery of this body, because if this
Speaker 6: body is in the water tank and the lid is open, especially,
Speaker 6: I don't know how a canine unit is not going
Speaker 6: to pick up on that set. So there's just all
Speaker 6: kinds of anomalies there. But regardless, it's a grizzly, horrific
Speaker 6: tragedy and there's just a lot a lot of anomalies
Speaker 6: associated there, not the least of which is the fact
Speaker 6: that our body is floating the face up. Most corners
Speaker 6: agree that in generally still water, it's far far more
Speaker 6: likely that a body, a person that has died from drowning,
Speaker 6: they're going to be face down. And that's one that's
Speaker 6: just one little detail of the autopsy that we can
Speaker 6: get into.
Speaker 5: Let's talk about that autopsy, because police make a determination
Speaker 5: from what the coroner determines. You say they did some tests,
Speaker 5: but then they did further test, But what does the
Speaker 5: coroner find in terms of cause of death, in terms
Speaker 5: of toxology reports, in terms of what drugs may or
Speaker 5: may not You mentioned antidepressant drugs, but what drugs did
Speaker 5: they test for to be in her system?
Speaker 6: Right? So it's pretty limited, and I ended up getting
Speaker 6: to speak to the corny Corny, the deputy corner, and
Speaker 6: he basically set flat out they only test for a
Speaker 6: few drugs, and anything past that the family has to
Speaker 6: pay for. What they did test for is the antidepressants
Speaker 6: and the mede she takes for her psychiatric illness. She
Speaker 6: was missing her bipolar medage, she was missing her mood stabilizer.
Speaker 6: She did have one of her antidepressants in there, so
Speaker 6: the conditions were right for her to be having maybe
Speaker 6: mixed episode. But as far as the autopsy itself, they
Speaker 6: did not find any evidence of foul play in terms
Speaker 6: of like bruises or lacerations on her that would be
Speaker 6: immediately indicative of foul play. They did find some some
Speaker 6: strange like injury to her amus that they tried to
Speaker 6: explain as like the decomposition process of forcing forcing things
Speaker 6: to happen in a way that's grizzly independent corner I
Speaker 6: talked to you said that that definitely should have been
Speaker 6: looked further into, and that, in fact, he does not
Speaker 6: even think that, you know, there's really no reason why
Speaker 6: they concluded that it was a dwelling, according to an
Speaker 6: independent corner I talked to, And uh, you know, this
Speaker 6: is all kind of not gonna pretend that this isn't controversial,
Speaker 6: Like we don't we don't know for sure, you know,
Speaker 6: people are people have different as of opinion, basically is
Speaker 6: what I'm saying. But the independent corner I talked to
Speaker 6: you said that it does not look like she d
Speaker 6: Basically there was very little evidence, a very little water
Speaker 6: in her lungs at all, and no water in her stomach,
Speaker 6: and they didn't do other tests that they should have
Speaker 6: done to find out if she had drowned. And obviously
Speaker 6: the question of whether she drowned is very important because
Speaker 6: if she didn't drown, she must die before she was
Speaker 6: put in the water tank. But the I mean, the
Speaker 6: autopsy is just problematic for a few different reasons. But
Speaker 6: what they did basically say is they believed by they
Speaker 6: believe bipolar disorder was a contributing factor to her death.
Speaker 6: The LAPD psychologists I spoke to said that the detectives
Speaker 6: didn't once consult him or his team about bipolar at all.
Speaker 6: So it kind of seems like to me that using
Speaker 6: surveillance tape and the medical reality that she had that illness,
Speaker 6: I feel like they just kind of use that it's
Speaker 6: just an easy way to explain to death because they
Speaker 6: were overwhelmed that week because of Chris dorn or manhunt,
Speaker 6: and I just think in general, they just you know,
Speaker 6: didn't have the resources at the time to look more
Speaker 6: into it, and they just did not gather the kind
Speaker 6: of evidence it needed to be gathered to prove anything.
Speaker 6: They also didn't process the rape kit. Apparently they gathered
Speaker 6: if the necessary forensic evidence for a rape kit, but
Speaker 6: they did not process it, so we therefore cannot explain
Speaker 6: this injury to her to her region. So yeah, the
Speaker 6: autopsy is just yet another reason why there's just some
Speaker 6: problems with this with this case in terms of what
Speaker 6: the officials are saying.
Speaker 5: Now, we'll have to say for the audience that the
Speaker 5: police really don't have any well, they don't have any eyewitnesses.
Speaker 5: They have these people that you've never able to contact.
Speaker 5: There was never an official interview. But there was two women,
Speaker 5: as you mentioned, that came forward and said we shared
Speaker 5: a room whether if she was acting strangely, we requested
Speaker 5: another room from her. So that was people that had
Speaker 5: seen her. Now, the really the most contentious thing is,
Speaker 5: and we put this in the introduction as well, is
Speaker 5: that how could somebody get up on the roof if
Speaker 5: there's an alarm? But you said, there's four ways to
Speaker 5: get up on that roof, and of course you investigate that.
Speaker 5: And this is important too because when we talked about
Speaker 5: Santiego Lopez and the strange behavior coincidences, he's the person
Speaker 5: that could open that lid. He's the person who would
Speaker 5: have access to that roof. Tell us a little bit
Speaker 5: more about the issue itself of access to that roof
Speaker 5: and your investigation on how likely it was for the
Speaker 5: police theory that she committed suicide and got into that
Speaker 5: water cistern. Tell us about that, right.
Speaker 6: So, yeah, the access in the roof, well there basically
Speaker 6: there's an alarm that should have gone off, so she
Speaker 6: had used the main entrance door. There's also a fire
Speaker 6: escape she could have used. Some recent evidence that came
Speaker 6: out suggests that her DNA evidence trails off at the
Speaker 6: fire escape, which would further lend credence to the idea
Speaker 6: that she took the main entrance. How she got up
Speaker 6: there is still a mystery, and the police have never
Speaker 6: answered that. There seems to be no DNA evidence forensic
Speaker 6: from the canine units and the other investigation showing that
Speaker 6: they haven't answered basically how she got up there. Now
Speaker 6: I think that I personally think that an employee probably
Speaker 6: let her up there. I've spoken with other tenants there
Speaker 6: who say that people regularly drank beer up on the roof.
Speaker 6: It was not difficult to get up there, contrary to popularity,
Speaker 6: and that the deputy corner I spoke to said that
Speaker 6: when he actually at one point he just kind of
Speaker 6: point blank asked the detective one of them, you know,
Speaker 6: what do you think happened? And basically the detective said
Speaker 6: that they think, you know, either a security guard or
Speaker 6: selling there gave her access to the roof, which would
Speaker 6: explain why the alarm didn't go off, It would explain
Speaker 6: why there was no DNA evidence of her touching a door,
Speaker 6: and it would also explain you know, I mean, yeah,
Speaker 6: I would just explain how she got out there. But
Speaker 6: we don't have any hard evidence of that, and because
Speaker 6: they've been able to it seems to kind of lock
Speaker 6: down every possible witness that you would talk to. It's
Speaker 6: very difficult to say exactly what happened, But if I
Speaker 6: were to stake a guest right now, I would say
Speaker 6: that someone led her up there, perhaps a security guard
Speaker 6: who maybe said he wanted to show her the roof
Speaker 6: or something like that. I have found a number of
Speaker 6: eyewitnesses who directly testified to predatory employees that have worked
Speaker 6: at the Cecil Hotel for decades. In one case, this
Speaker 6: young woman who did not want to go on the
Speaker 6: record because she heared being addicted, basically said that an
Speaker 6: employee there would use the master key to break into
Speaker 6: her room and assault her. And this is not the
Speaker 6: first story I've heard like that, and more recent comments
Speaker 6: by people saying, you know, yeah, that security guard was,
Speaker 6: you know, really creeping on my girlfriend and stuff like that.
Speaker 6: So it would explain why she was able to get
Speaker 6: up there. Maybe she then ended up hiding. You know,
Speaker 6: it's you know, it's still a big mystery what happened
Speaker 6: up there, and I hope we're able to get to
Speaker 6: the heart of that. At some point it's going to
Speaker 6: take I mean, basically, what I hoped to do is
Speaker 6: just kind of kick the door open a little bit
Speaker 6: more and hopefully, you know, we're going to be able
Speaker 6: to get to the bottom of this, because you know,
Speaker 6: if this young woman was just preyed upon at this hotel,
Speaker 6: it's pretty doubly tragic that then they're blaming her mental
Speaker 6: illness on her own death. So I would say, at
Speaker 6: this point, my belief is that someone let her up
Speaker 6: on that roof. I don't see any other way she
Speaker 6: would get up there.
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Speaker 5: have you mentioned in the book the the web Tricia
Speaker 5: Griffith reorganizes purchases the website and you talk about the
Speaker 5: amateur sleuths in the world that were fascinated with this case,
Speaker 5: and you talk about the numbers a million views in
Speaker 5: a month. You tell us a little bit about the
Speaker 5: response of this case, the kind of numbers that some
Speaker 5: of these sites experienced. Tell us a little bit more
Speaker 5: about this phenomena.
Speaker 6: Sure, yeah, I mean it's it's definitely one of the
Speaker 6: aspects of it. Like I said earlier, that drew me
Speaker 6: to be interested in the case because you know, it's
Speaker 6: kind of an overused metaphor, but it kind of became
Speaker 6: like a glor Shack test, Like everyone you would look
Speaker 6: at this case would find some special meaning in it
Speaker 6: that matched up with their worldview, and so you would
Speaker 6: have people that believe there was some spiritual paranormal narrative
Speaker 6: going on. You would have people that were gung ho
Speaker 6: on the homicide narratives, and then you would have people
Speaker 6: that say, you know, this was just an accident and
Speaker 6: a tragedy involving mental illness. And it goes even beyond that.
Speaker 6: There's some of the most bizarre conspiracy theories I've ever
Speaker 6: heard came from this case. And so I definitely think
Speaker 6: that this case kind of tapped into a little bit
Speaker 6: of a widespread social pathology that we're seeing come out
Speaker 6: with the advent of the Internet. But yes, the web
Speaker 6: slue aspect of it is very interesting because there's really
Speaker 6: responsible web flutes a lot of the people like Ifitt
Speaker 6: Tricia Grivith works with and I was lucky enough to
Speaker 6: get to interview her for this, and she's been very
Speaker 6: kind and supporter. John Lorden from brain Scratch, I think
Speaker 6: there's a really responsible job analyzing cases and destigmatizing certain aspects.
Speaker 6: But any I would talk with people, I mean, I
Speaker 6: don't even really want to call sometimes people web Flues
Speaker 6: because I really just some of the conspiracy theories I
Speaker 6: was hearing were just sell unhinged that I almost feel
Speaker 6: like it's kind of if he's the purpose of a
Speaker 6: kind of more decentralized criminal justice pursuit, which is what
Speaker 6: we're trying to establish as a whole. We're trying to,
Speaker 6: you know, earn enough respect from the police that they're
Speaker 6: at least willing to kind of hand out age old
Speaker 6: cold cases and just kind of let web Flues see
Speaker 6: what they can do with it. There's web Flues that
Speaker 6: is straight up solved cases, and the more responsible ones,
Speaker 6: I would say deserve that chance, especially when you have
Speaker 6: police departments that simply don't have the money, your resources
Speaker 6: to look at all these cases. So that aspect of
Speaker 6: it I think is very important, and I you know,
Speaker 6: spend a considerable considerable amount of time in the book
Speaker 6: discussing kind of the ramifications of this because I would,
Speaker 6: you know, just speak to so many people who you know,
Speaker 6: just believe things about the case that are just really
Speaker 6: just not worthy of putting a lot of attention into,
Speaker 6: and it ended up just kind of stigmatizing the case
Speaker 6: so much that you couldn't even really discuss any theory
Speaker 6: on it because people would just say, out of hand, oh,
Speaker 6: you're just exploiting this young woman or something like that.
Speaker 6: And that was an aspect of the case I was
Speaker 6: very sensitive about from the beginning. He's wanting to, you know,
Speaker 6: do her justice and paint a portrait of her that
Speaker 6: is more realistic and humanizing instead of just like a
Speaker 6: horror meme.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 6: But the legacy of this case will live on for
Speaker 6: a while, I think in terms of just the kind
Speaker 6: psychology that captured snapshot of this century where people are
Speaker 6: really just wand diving into these Internet conspiracy communities and
Speaker 6: not doing a lot of their own independent research and cooperation,
Speaker 6: and that's counterbalanced by people that are just really devoting
Speaker 6: their life to the opposite of that, which is just
Speaker 6: really fact checking things and trying to do real investigative
Speaker 6: journalism through the Internet, and so we kind of see
Speaker 6: that battle playing out in the book, but also just
Speaker 6: in real life right now.
Speaker 5: What are some of the other avenues that you explored.
Speaker 5: You tried to talk to hotel personnel as we talked
Speaker 5: about there was a pattern of having sex offenders in
Speaker 5: the six hundred room building. You said there was sex
Speaker 5: offenders outside the hotel within blocks, and sex offenders that
Speaker 5: were in the hotel itself. In this aspect of the
Speaker 5: unknown because of the rape kit not being pro you
Speaker 5: mentioned that one of the drugs that was not tested
Speaker 5: for that you thought might be a good idea to
Speaker 5: be tested for. Was what tell us what that drug
Speaker 5: was and why you thought it should be have been
Speaker 5: tested for.
Speaker 6: Well, I definitely think they should have tested for date
Speaker 6: rate drugs like Rufie's. That I mean, I think that
Speaker 6: should go without saying. When a young woman is found
Speaker 6: naked and dead in a dark tank on a roof,
Speaker 6: I can't understand why you wouldn't not only process a
Speaker 6: rate kit, but treated as a suspicious death and run
Speaker 6: and test for the kind of measitor used to incapacitate women.
Speaker 6: I personally would have liked to see a test for
Speaker 6: drugs like ambient and you know, a drug that can
Speaker 6: make you sleepwalk, to see if maybe she was just
Speaker 6: kind of in a lucid state when she when she
Speaker 6: entered the tank. But you know, at the very least
Speaker 6: I think they should have tested for for date rate drugs,
Speaker 6: and they don't. Really. Another thing is like because she
Speaker 6: was in the water so long, And this is why
Speaker 6: it's so critical that if someone did let her on
Speaker 6: the roof, it's doubly suspicious that no one spoke up
Speaker 6: about that, because if they had gotten to the body earlier,
Speaker 6: they'd found it in the tank earlier, it would have
Speaker 6: been easier for the test for certain drugs. Some drugs
Speaker 6: don't stay in the system very long, and when you're
Speaker 6: in the water, that stuff can just kind of disappear.
Speaker 6: And so it's unfortunately, it was just very limited. The
Speaker 6: corner said that blood quantitation is very limited. They were
Speaker 6: just limited in what they could do, at least according
Speaker 6: to their reports. Now, as I stay in the book,
Speaker 6: one of the main corners it was at the time
Speaker 6: being sued for falsifying an autopsy in another case. So
Speaker 6: I'm not sure, you know, I'm not sure how much
Speaker 6: of the autopsy you can trust, really, but yeah, I
Speaker 6: would have like to see a more Given that it
Speaker 6: took them about six months to release the full toxicology
Speaker 6: or autopsy, which is pretty unprecedented cases they usually released
Speaker 6: that stuff much quicker, you would think that they would
Speaker 6: have done a little bit more due diligence on testing
Speaker 6: some of these things. And I think that, well, you know,
Speaker 6: there's I go a little bit more into depth on
Speaker 6: why I think that autopsy is so flawed in it
Speaker 6: in the book. It gets a little wonky in parts,
Speaker 6: So I'm not sure it would be great for radio
Speaker 6: right now. But I basically think that this case should
Speaker 6: be reopened by the California Attorney General. And remember I
Speaker 6: went into this case thinking I was about sixty forty,
Speaker 6: that it had been an accident, and I was going
Speaker 6: in it to write about the psychology, the mental illness,
Speaker 6: and the sociology. I was not expecting to end up
Speaker 6: finding evidence that made me think that this really had
Speaker 6: been the cover up. Wasn't expecting to talk to a
Speaker 6: bouncer on the same street who told me he had
Speaker 6: spoken with an off duty cop that said they found
Speaker 6: some of her belongings in a dumpster. I wasn't expecting
Speaker 6: to find a whistleblower, an LAPD insider who had retired
Speaker 6: and who had spoken first hand with private investigators who said, yeah,
Speaker 6: this case was completely screwed from the game, and that
Speaker 6: the LAPD and the Cescil Hotel corporate executives were meeting
Speaker 6: together in very strange circumstances. I wasn't expecting to find
Speaker 6: out that the Cecil Hotel finalized AE hundred million dollar
Speaker 6: real estate deal with the biggest real estate firm in
Speaker 6: the world, CEDDRE only days after they finally discovered the body,
Speaker 6: getting them a pretty clear incentive for delaying the discovery
Speaker 6: of the body. There's just all kinds of very strange
Speaker 6: anomalies associated with this, and I'm very clear when it's
Speaker 6: circumstantial and when things need to be corroborated. And I'm
Speaker 6: not saying that I've cracked the case. I'm just saying,
Speaker 6: from a very rational standpoint, even if you want to
Speaker 6: adhere very strongly the Aukham's razor, I personally prefer hi
Speaker 6: On's dictum, which is the theory that truth usually has
Speaker 6: a number of different sources and symptoms that are all
Speaker 6: converging into ones. There's not necessarily one cause to something
Speaker 6: to a truth that there's converging truths. And I think
Speaker 6: here that this is not an open and shutcase. I
Speaker 6: really strongly believe there is something very, very Even if
Speaker 6: her death was an accident, I still feel like they
Speaker 6: concealed it and they I don't know who else would
Speaker 6: have been pained, the guy who found the body and
Speaker 6: maybe perjured himself to move his family out of the
Speaker 6: country besides that hotel. There's just there's major smoke here,
Speaker 6: and it really, you know, without the family being involved,
Speaker 6: it's next to impossible that it's going to happen. But
Speaker 6: you know, maybe we can get some people talking about
Speaker 6: this case again in its full context.
Speaker 5: It's interesting too, when you talk about this business deal
Speaker 5: that obviously does not want to have a murder involved
Speaker 5: at a hotel and the ensuing publicity, given that this
Speaker 5: hotel already has a notorious reputation. And it's interesting too
Speaker 5: a normal open investigation, where you would have things not
Speaker 5: concluded and people would be swarted from investigating by saying,
Speaker 5: look that this is an open investigation, we can't tell
Speaker 5: you anything. This is much much better in terms of
Speaker 5: suppression and saying this is a suicide case is closed.
Speaker 5: Coroners concluded we have no other evidence. You also talk
Speaker 5: about a civil case launched by Elisa's parents, and at
Speaker 5: first you thought you hoped that this would reveal it
Speaker 5: would be forced to reveal valuable information that you weren't
Speaker 5: getting from anywhere else. Happened with the civil case, right, Yeah, this.
Speaker 6: Is a lot of us really believe that this is
Speaker 6: probably the best chance we were going to have to
Speaker 6: see new police notes, new files from the investigation presented
Speaker 6: in a civil deposition against the Cecil Hotel for wrongful death.
Speaker 6: And I was actually like, I you know, took a
Speaker 6: train to La to attend it, and yeah, you know,
Speaker 6: we were all very disappointed when the judge kind of
Speaker 6: just just throughout the case, like it's not like we
Speaker 6: got twelve jurors and they concluded that the hotel was
Speaker 6: not at fault. Even if that had happened, we would
Speaker 6: have got to see a trial, We've gotten to see
Speaker 6: new evidence, and new questions would have been answered. The
Speaker 6: judge just threw the case out from the beginning, and
Speaker 6: no one really knows why. I mean, whether whether the
Speaker 6: case would have succeeded or not. I can't imagine that
Speaker 6: there was wasn't enough there to at least here the case.
Speaker 6: So I'm frankly a little a little suspicious of that,
Speaker 6: and a little suspicious of the judge for reasons I
Speaker 6: don't want to go into because it's I don't want
Speaker 6: to get into a rumor mill situation. But I do
Speaker 6: think that civil case, that civil case was heartbreaking and
Speaker 6: the unfortunately the family, you know, did not get any
Speaker 6: compensation there. And one interesting moment in the civil trial
Speaker 6: was when the lawyer said this, you know, this was
Speaker 6: not a case of haunting. This was not a case
Speaker 6: of murder. This was just an accident, And a lot
Speaker 6: of people took that to mean, oh, well, that's the
Speaker 6: family saying that this was this was an accident. But
Speaker 6: I think it's very clear when you have a case
Speaker 6: where they're trying to prove wrongful death in the hotel,
Speaker 6: they pretty much have to say it was an accident.
Speaker 6: They can't say it was a murder because in the
Speaker 6: in the hotel is not at fault. So it was
Speaker 6: very clear that they were going to be arguing that
Speaker 6: this was an accident from the beginning. I do not
Speaker 6: blame the family at all and not pursuing it further.
Speaker 6: They've been traumatized. I can't even imagine trauma they've gone
Speaker 6: through with not only obviously the horrific death, but then
Speaker 6: also just this thing being publicly litigated for years online.
Speaker 6: It's just the worst nightmare I can imagine. So I
Speaker 6: don't blame them at all for not wanting to be
Speaker 6: involved in this at all anymore. But that doesn't necessarily
Speaker 6: mean that the LAPD has to just literally shut off
Speaker 6: every flow of information and just refuse to answer questions.
Speaker 6: I mean, I had detectives blocking me on Twitter for
Speaker 6: just asking the basic question. I had another detective block
Speaker 6: my email. I'm not a content I'm not a combative dude.
Speaker 6: I'm not a disrespectful guy. I don't throw people like
Speaker 6: I just asked respectful question and just try and get
Speaker 6: a little bit of info, even on peripheral parts of
Speaker 6: the case. They will not talk about anything period, right.
Speaker 5: Yeah, And it's interesting too. It seemed to have some
Speaker 5: hope too, because the lead detective in this was Wally Tanell.
Speaker 5: His son had been murdered. He decided to live in
Speaker 5: South LA. Figured I'm not going to move out of
Speaker 5: this area, and this kid was shot in the head,
Speaker 5: so you think he would at least be a guy
Speaker 5: that would be open to the possibility it was a
Speaker 5: murder and be more vigilant than say an officer that
Speaker 5: didn't have this happen. And yet the official position from
Speaker 5: the police is that this was a drowning. You know
Speaker 5: what was very interesting too, is that go ahead.
Speaker 6: Oh, I was just going to make a couple of
Speaker 6: points there. One yea Wally Tonille has an interesting backstory.
Speaker 6: He was part of the Crash Division in LAPD, which
Speaker 6: was one of the most notoriously corrupt and barbaric police
Speaker 6: units in LAPD history that got tied up in the
Speaker 6: rampart scandal. I was interested in his backstory and I
Speaker 6: really wanted to interview. But yeah, I think a point
Speaker 6: to consider is that they may have found some evidence,
Speaker 6: but you have to bring a case to a prosecutor
Speaker 6: for foul play. You have to have a preponderance of evidence,
Speaker 6: and if you don't have it, you don't bring the case.
Speaker 6: There's many, many times when a case isn't even brought
Speaker 6: to a prosecutor to even consider charges because they just
Speaker 6: might have fifty percent evidence or even more, but they
Speaker 6: just don't have enough to charge anything. So I think
Speaker 6: it could be simply a case where they didn't have
Speaker 6: the evidence. They were very distracted by the Chris Dorner manhunt.
Speaker 6: And this is also a final point I'll make about
Speaker 6: the laped and you can take what you want from it,
Speaker 6: but it was revealed that at that time they were
Speaker 6: systematically under reporting violent crimes for a clean year, they
Speaker 6: were fudging the numbers, make less murders, less violent crimes
Speaker 6: in the city.
Speaker 5: Wow.
Speaker 6: So maybe they just did not want to work on
Speaker 6: a murder case because they didn't want that to be
Speaker 6: in their numbers.
Speaker 5: You talk about a police officer that was oh well, again,
Speaker 5: we talked about Chris Dorner. You talk about the police
Speaker 5: being preoccupied with that. He was threatening to kill forty
Speaker 5: police officers, so he could see that natural distraction and
Speaker 5: priority for the cops that week for sure. Certainly, what
Speaker 5: was interesting is that when this video was first released,
Speaker 5: and you did get another video that you write about
Speaker 5: that had slightly different version of the elevator video for
Speaker 5: our audience and people that may watch this, the video
Speaker 5: in that that was not the entire video. It seemed
Speaker 5: there was people talked about it being edited for some reason.
Speaker 5: And also you say there was never any other footage.
Speaker 5: Certainly there must have been some other surveillance footage from
Speaker 5: some mother camera, and yet nothing else was released, was
Speaker 5: there now?
Speaker 6: Now the only thing they released is the one that
Speaker 6: makes her look mentally ill. That's the only one they released. Yeah,
Speaker 6: the time time code issue is a big one and
Speaker 6: it's definitely been the birth of a lot of conspiracy theories.
Speaker 6: I'll just make two points. I'll make a point and
Speaker 6: I'll make a counterpoint. So the time code definitely cuts,
Speaker 6: there's no doubt about it. There's a point in the video.
Speaker 6: I believe it's two forty three or three forty three,
Speaker 6: but I may be wrong on that, But there's a
Speaker 6: point at which she leaves the screen, and so the
Speaker 6: time code is pretty muddled. You can't see exactly what
Speaker 6: it says, but you can clearly tell where the microseconds are,
Speaker 6: the second star and the minute hand is. You can
Speaker 6: tell that based on just how things are moving. And
Speaker 6: there's a point in the video where the minute hand changes.
Speaker 6: She leaves the screen and nothing is moving, and then
Speaker 6: seven seconds later in a hand changes again. So there
Speaker 6: was definitely a time code cut. Now. The counterpoint now
Speaker 6: is that is at the point where someone entered the
Speaker 6: screen and they wanted to slice that out of there. Positively.
Speaker 6: The counterpoint is that there are surveillance systems that are
Speaker 6: based on motion generation, so it may simply be that
Speaker 6: it cuts because there was no movement in the screen.
Speaker 6: That's yet one of the many questions it would be
Speaker 6: lovely to have answered and would be very easy for
Speaker 6: them to do, be very easy for them to spell
Speaker 6: that conspiracy. The is she literally a two sentence statement
Speaker 6: on that and it could have done it four years
Speaker 6: ago and that would have been the end of it,
Speaker 6: But because they haven't spoken about it. Yeah, it's the
Speaker 6: perfect place to cut because there's no movement. And I
Speaker 6: used to do video editing, and that's the perfect place
Speaker 6: because if you cut between two different frames in which
Speaker 6: nothing's moving, it doesn't look like anything changes. And it's
Speaker 6: right when she left the elevator, so if someone was
Speaker 6: coming by at that moment, it would have been the
Speaker 6: perfect time to do it. Now, does that mean that's
Speaker 6: what happened now? Not necessarily, but it's it's definitely one
Speaker 6: of those aspects of the case that is very eerie
Speaker 6: and boy, I mean, if I had the resources for it,
Speaker 6: I would I would have brought it to a professional
Speaker 6: digital analyst and really drill down into that, and I
Speaker 6: still hope to do that someday.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 5: Incredible, What again, what is your idea or your how
Speaker 5: you dispel the notion that this woman in this state?
Speaker 5: It clearly shows from the video that she was in
Speaker 5: some kind of manic state of some sort, whatever you
Speaker 5: term it. That she got through again, maybe the alarm
Speaker 5: wasn't on on the roof, maybe somebody gave her access,
Speaker 5: but physically able to do go through the fire escape,
Speaker 5: get up to the cistern, lift up this lid. Is
Speaker 5: there any way that you determined that this was even
Speaker 5: really feasible for her to do this under any circumstances?
Speaker 6: Right at first, that was one of the questions that
Speaker 6: I think really spoke to people, is was this even
Speaker 6: physically possible? So, first of all, she is definitely acting
Speaker 6: a little peculiar in the elevator tapes. However, I will
Speaker 6: admit that if you took a random sample of me
Speaker 6: when I don't think I'm being watched, and I'm preoccupy
Speaker 6: something and maybe nervous about something, I wouldn't necessarily look,
Speaker 6: I mean, I might be doing some strange things too,
Speaker 6: I don't necessarily think her behavior is that strange. She
Speaker 6: is certainly exhibiting symptoms of psychomotor agitation, which is a
Speaker 6: symptom of bipolar disorder. I interviewed two different body language
Speaker 6: analysts for the book, and they both conclude that her
Speaker 6: cognitive busonans is changing, that she's her mood is changing,
Speaker 6: and that she's thinking about something someone, whether that's someone with,
Speaker 6: someone who's currently in the hotel, or just when she
Speaker 6: had a crush on was thinking about. Uh. The body
Speaker 6: language analysis is interesting as far as weather. She could
Speaker 6: have gotten to the roof, She could have climbed the
Speaker 6: fire escape. I think that's less likely simply because she
Speaker 6: didn't have her glasses on, and that just seems very
Speaker 6: I mean, I just can't imagine her climbing that. More importantly,
Speaker 6: the roof's let's assume that she went up there alone.
Speaker 6: The roof is dark, very dark, and it's unlikely someone
Speaker 6: told her there was a water tank up there. Why
Speaker 6: would why would someone tell her that unless they planned,
Speaker 6: unless they wanted her to unless they wanted her to
Speaker 6: go there and planned to meet her there. They're not
Speaker 6: going to say, hey, yeah, check out the water tank
Speaker 6: on the roof layer. That's interesting. Now, if she went
Speaker 6: up there, she had no idea what she was looking for.
Speaker 6: I find it strange that she was just stumbled upon
Speaker 6: these weird tanks, decided to climb it, the arduous task
Speaker 6: getting up there, and then she decided to want go skinny,
Speaker 6: dip in and take her clothes into the tank with her,
Speaker 6: and then close the tank over her head. Look, I mean,
Speaker 6: these are just I'm really trying to give credence to
Speaker 6: both sides. And I stayed very clearly in the book
Speaker 6: this could have been an accident, and people who are
Speaker 6: in manic states do do very strange things that seem impossible.
Speaker 6: That and it's one of the aspects of the illness
Speaker 6: that that many people have talked about, and it's worth considering.
Speaker 6: But each new detail I would find would just complicate
Speaker 6: it a little bit more, making me think, my god,
Speaker 6: I just I just don't understand. I don't you know,
Speaker 6: sometimes people in manic states will have kind of like
Speaker 6: hyper sexual episodes, so maybe that would explain her taking
Speaker 6: her clothes off. I don't know why she would have
Speaker 6: taken them in the tank with her. Sure, but yeah,
Speaker 6: it's it's it's The mystery remains on that, And I'll
Speaker 6: just say again that I think that there are two
Speaker 6: different truths that have possible here. I do think she
Speaker 6: was experiencing a mixed episode of some kind. I also
Speaker 6: think it put her in a position where she would
Speaker 6: have a very vulnerable and opportunity target for a sexual
Speaker 6: predator in the hotel. So I think it's possible that
Speaker 6: both of those things can be true at the same time.
Speaker 5: Just before I let you go as well, I know
Speaker 5: you have to go. The one fascinating aspect of this,
Speaker 5: to add to this incredible mystery, is that there was
Speaker 5: reports you sent a video of Latin or very strange
Speaker 5: bizarre graffiti up on that roof, which is.
Speaker 6: Yeah, someone fact checked out. I just reported what someone
Speaker 6: else had reported, which if there was a phrase in
Speaker 6: Latin on the roof on the tank that said it
Speaker 6: turns out she was a feword And it turns out
Speaker 6: that on that same day, Elisa reblogged a quote about
Speaker 6: that word about why men use that work. So it's
Speaker 6: kind of little mysterious, you know, the synchronicities, and that
Speaker 6: the whole other kind of part of the book, or
Speaker 6: the synchronosities that go in this case. For example, the
Speaker 6: fact that she's reblogged a photo of a body falling
Speaker 6: from a building the day she died was actually one
Speaker 6: of her last posts. And meanwhile, you have this hotel
Speaker 6: where there's so many people that have jumped out the buildings.
Speaker 6: And I talked to a woman who stayed there who
Speaker 6: said that she turned out she stayed there the same
Speaker 6: week Elisa did and didn't know about that until after.
Speaker 6: And she said that she had an experience where as
Speaker 6: soon as she entered her room, she felt this compulsion
Speaker 6: to go to the window and she's just start thinking
Speaker 6: about what it would be like to jump out of it.
Speaker 6: So there's just these strange things that seem to go
Speaker 6: on inside this building. But as far as back to
Speaker 6: the main point here, I keep going on topic, But
Speaker 6: as far as this quote on the roof, yeah, I mean,
Speaker 6: I definitely think it's synchronistic at least that she's talking
Speaker 6: about this kind of weird posts on the roof doesn't
Speaker 6: mean that she was up there and saw it and
Speaker 6: then decided to rewog something about the word it's possible.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it really is very interesting. The Santiago Lopez and
Speaker 5: the open lid, and he is the person that goes
Speaker 5: because the manager tells him to go up there. And
Speaker 5: then the canine unit and the police had been on
Speaker 5: that roof twice and didn't see a lid open on
Speaker 5: the cistern, So right, got a wonder And then if
Speaker 5: he's moved, him and his family has moved. Yeah, it's
Speaker 5: it's a very very interesting thing to consider.
Speaker 6: They didn't. They didn't get a cent uh. And perhaps
Speaker 6: it's because the body wasn't yet in the tank that
Speaker 6: it was put there later they were concealing it try
Speaker 6: and keep the news of another dead body in the
Speaker 6: hotel from coming out until after they had signed this
Speaker 6: real estate deal. This is just a theory. It's based
Speaker 6: on publicly available reports. But I'm telling you there's not
Speaker 6: one interview about this case with any of the major
Speaker 6: employees besides what they have testified to in the civil deposition.
Speaker 6: None of the sectors have talked about it. None of
Speaker 6: the women who are in the hotel have been interviewed
Speaker 6: about it. There's something very very strange about the coverage
Speaker 6: of this case, and I cannot conclude based on what
Speaker 6: I found. I cannot conclude anything else but that something
Speaker 6: is being covered up.
Speaker 5: I want to thank you very much, Jake Anderson for
Speaker 5: talking about Gone at Midnight, the mysterious death of Alisa Lamb.
Speaker 5: It's been an absolute pleasure. Is there a Facebook page
Speaker 5: or a website that they might go to for further information.
Speaker 6: You could get and it's just you know, google Gone
Speaker 6: at Midnight. You can check me out on Twitter if
Speaker 6: you want. Over the Moon SF, I have a website
Speaker 6: that I'm kind of revamping into a crime side. It's
Speaker 6: called The Ghost Diaries and started as kind of like
Speaker 6: a looking into strange, weird theories. I'm turning it more
Speaker 6: into true crime. But yeah, for now, I mean, if
Speaker 6: people are interested in the book, you can just google
Speaker 6: Gone at Midnight. And Dan, I really appreciate you having
Speaker 6: me on. It means a lot to me.
Speaker 5: Thank you very much. It's been a pleasure.
Speaker 6: Good night, Good answer,