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Elisa Downing Biography & Facts

On February 19, 2013, the body of Canadian tourist Elisa Lam (Chinese: 藍可兒; born as Lam Ho-yi) was recovered from a large cistern atop the Stay on Main hotel in Downtown Los Angeles, where she had been a guest. She was last seen alive on January 31 and was reported missing by her parents on February 8. Her body was discovered by a hotel maintenance worker investigating complaints of flooding and low water pressure. Interest in Lam's disappearance increased on February 13 when the Los Angeles Police Department released security camera footage of her behaving erratically in a hotel elevator on the day she was last seen alive. The video went viral. While an autopsy performed on February 21 was inconclusive in determining the manner of Lam's death, the Los Angeles County Coroner's office subsequently ruled the death an accident with bipolar disorder being a significant contributing factor. Guests at the Stay on Main sued the hotel over the incident and Lam's parents filed a separate suit later that year; the latter was dismissed in 2015. Some of the early Internet interest noted what were considered to be unusual similarities between Lam's death and the 2002 horror film Dark Water. The case has since been referenced in international popular culture and been the subject of several creative works. Background Lam, the daughter of immigrants from Hong Kong, was a student at the University of British Columbia, although she was not registered at the beginning of 2013. In mid-2010, Lam began a blog named Ether Fields on Blogspot. Over the next two years, she posted pictures of models in fashionable clothing and accounts of her life, particularly her struggle with mental illness. In a January 2012 blog post, Lam lamented that a "relapse" at the start of the current school term had forced her to drop several classes, leaving her feeling "so utterly directionless and lost." She titled her post "You're always haunted by the idea you're wasting your life" after a quotation from novelist Chuck Palahniuk. She used that quote as an epigraph for her blog. Lam worried that her transcript would look suspicious with so many withdrawals and that it would result in her being unable to continue her studies and attend graduate school. A little over two years after Lam had started blogging, she announced she would be abandoning her blog for another she had started on Tumblr, "Nouvelle-Nouveau". Its content mostly consisted of fashion photos, quotes and a few posts in Lam's own words. The same Palahniuk quotation was used as an epigraph. Lam had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder and depression. She had been prescribed several medications for her mental health issues: Wellbutrin, lamotrigine, quetiapine, Dexedrine Spansule, and venlafaxine. According to her family, who reportedly kept her mental illness private, Lam had no history of suicidal ideations or attempts, although one report claimed she had previously gone missing for a brief period. Lam had a history of not taking her bipolar medications and, as a result, on several occasions suffered hallucinations that would cause her to hide under her bed for refuge; she was hospitalized at least once for one of these episodes. For her trip to California, Lam traveled alone on Amtrak and intercity buses. She visited the San Diego Zoo and posted photos taken there on social media. On January 26, she arrived in Los Angeles. After two days, she checked into the Cecil Hotel, near Downtown's Skid Row. Lam was initially assigned a shared room on the hotel's fifth floor; however, her roommates complained about what the hotel's lawyer would later describe as "certain odd behavior" and Lam was moved to a room of her own after two days. According to Amy Price, the manager of the Cecil Hotel and Stay on Main at the time of Lam's disappearance, Lam was leaving notes for her roommates that said "go home" and "go away," and would lock the door to the room and require a password for entry. A few days before her disappearance, Lam attended a live taping of Conan in Burbank, but was escorted off the premises by security due to disruptive behavior. Disappearance Lam contacted her parents in British Columbia daily while traveling up until the day she disappeared. On January 31, 2013, the day she was scheduled to check out of the Cecil and leave for Santa Cruz, her parents did not hear from her and called the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD); her family flew to Los Angeles to help with the search. Hotel staff who saw Lam that day said she was alone. Outside the hotel, Katie Orphan, manager of The Last Bookstore, was the only person who recalled seeing her that day. "She was outgoing, very lively, very friendly" while getting gifts to take home to her family, Orphan told CNN. "[She was] talking about what book she was getting and whether or not what she was getting would be too heavy for her to carry around as she traveled," Orphan added. Police searched the hotel to the extent that they legally could. They searched Lam's room and had dogs go through the building, including the rooftop, but the dogs were unsuccessful in detecting her scent. "But we didn't search every room," Sgt. Rudy Lopez said later, "we could only do that if we had probable cause" to believe a crime had been committed. On February 6, a week after Lam had last been seen, the LAPD decided more help was needed. Flyers with her image were posted in the neighborhood and online. It brought the case to the public's attention through the media. Elevator video On February 13, after another week with no sign of Lam, the LAPD released a video of the last known sighting of her taken in one of the Cecil's elevators by a video surveillance camera on January 31. In approximately two and a half minutes of footage, Lam, alone, makes unusual moves and gestures. She appears to press every button on the elevator panel, peers into the hallway, then leaves the elevator at one point while its doors remain open. When the doors fail to close after she returns, she leaves; the doors close later. The video drew worldwide interest in the case due to Lam's strange behavior, and has been extensively analyzed and discussed. It was reposted widely, including on the Chinese video-sharing site Youku, where it accumulated 3 million views and 40,000 comments in its first 10 days. Many of the commentators found it unsettling to watch. Several theories emerged to explain her actions. One was that Lam was trying to get the elevator car to move in order to escape from someone who was pursuing her. Others suggested that she might be under the influence of ecstasy or some other party drug, but none was detected in her body. When her bipolar disorder became known, the theory that she was having a psychotic episode also emerged. Other viewers argued that the video had been tampered with before being made public. Besides the obscuring of the timestamp, they claimed, parts had been slowed down and nearly a minute of footage .... Discover the Elisa Downing popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Elisa Downing books.