I Know What Happened to Elisa Lam

The biggest mystery of the Cecil Hotel is solved

Elisa Lam was a Vancouver college student who died under mysterious circumstances in Los Angeles in 2013

This article is a departure from my normal series dedicated to the Manson Family such as this article, this one, this and also this most recent one. Don’t worry: I’ll be back to writing about the Family in no time, but I wanted to take a step away to write about the Elisa Lam case.

Like so many others in the true crime community, I was fascinated with the story of Elisa Lam. To sum up Elisa’s story:

In January 2013, she traveled from Vancouver, BC to California on a personal vacation. The daughter of immigrants to Canada from Hong Kong, Elisa was a college student on break from the University of British Columbia and avid social media poster at sites including Tumblr, who wanted to explore the West Coast. Many of her Tumblr posts were about fashion, pop culture, and dealing with her diagnosis of a bipolar disorder. Elisa was taking four prescription medications for her bipolar disorder including Effexor, Lamictal, Seroquel and Wellbutrin. She frequently complained in her posts about having to take these medications, and about the periods when she felt nothing.

“Having depression seems to mean that you’ve lost the ability to even help someone else in trouble. I don’t want to end up bitter and resentful and angry at everyone.” — Elisa Lam’s Tumblr account…