Numerous incidents of deaths and violence have occurred at Cecil Hotel in Los Angeles. [lower-alpha 1] Originally opened as a middle-class hotel on December 20, 1924, in Downtown Los Angeles, it eventually became a budget hotel, hostel, and rooming house. Its reputation is due to at least 16 sudden or unexplained deaths that have occurred in or around the hotel. [2]
In 2011, the hotel's name was changed to "Stay on Main" in an effort to distance the establishment from its past. [3]
Date | Accused | Accused age | Victim | Victim(s) Age | Type | Method | Details |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
November 19, 1931 | W.K Norton | 46 | Possible suicide | Ingested poison | Manhattan Beach resident W. K. Norton was found dead in his room after ingesting poison capsules. A week prior, he had checked into the Cecil under the name "James Willys" from Chicago. [4] | ||
September 1932 | Benjamin Dodich | 25 | Suicide | Gunshot to the head | A maid found Dodich dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head. He did not leave a suicide note. [4] | ||
July 26, 1934 | Sgt. Louis D. Borden | 53 | Suicide | Slit throat | In late July, former Army Medical Corps Sgt. Borden was found dead in his room at the Cecil. He had slashed his throat with a razor. Borden left several notes, one of which cited poor health as the reason for his suicide. [4] | ||
March 1937 | Grace E. Magro | 25 | Death | Fell from building | Magro fell from a ninth-story window. Her fall was broken by telephone wires which were wrapped around her body. She later died at the now-demolished Georgia Street Receiving Hospital. Police were unable to determine whether Magro's death was the result of an accident or suicide. [4] | ||
May 1939 | Erwin C. Neblett | 39 | Possible suicide | Ingested poison | Navy officer Neblett was found dead in his room after ingesting poison. [4] | ||
January 1940 | Dorothy Seger | 45 | Suicide | Ingested poison | Teacher Seger, who registered under the pseudonym Evelyn Brent, [5] ingested poison on Jan 10, 1940 while staying at the Cecil and was reported by the Los Angeles Times to be "near death". Beforehand, Seger sent her relatives a note indicating she was going to end her life. [5] Dorothy eventually succumbed to the effects of the poisoning and died at General Hospital on Jan 12, 1940. [4] [5] | ||
September 1944 | Dorothy Jean Purcell | 19 | Purcell's un-named newborn son | Newborn | Murder (acquitted due to insanity) | Newborn discarded from window | Purcell was sharing a room at the Cecil with her boyfriend, shoe salesman Ben Levine, 38. Purcell, who had apparently been unaware that she was pregnant, went into labour. She later testified that she did not want to disrupt the sleeping Levine, so she went to the bathroom where she gave birth to a baby boy. Thinking the baby was dead, she threw him out of the window, and he landed on the roof of an adjacent building. Purcell was charged with murder. Three psychiatrists testified that she was "mentally confused" at the time of the incident. In January 1945, she was found not guilty by reason of insanity. [4] |
November 1947 | Robert Smith | 35 | Suicide | Fell from building | Smith died after jumping from one of the Cecil's seventh-floor windows. [4] | ||
October 22, 1954 | Helen Gurnee | 55 | Suicide | Fell from building | Gurnee, a San Francisco stationery firm employee, jumped from the window of her seventh-floor room and landed on top of Cecil's marquee. One week prior, she had registered at the hotel under the name "Margaret Brown." [4] | ||
February 11, 1962 | Julia Frances Moore | 50 | Suicide | Fell from building | Moore jumped from the window of her eighth-floor room and landed in a second-story interior light well. She did not leave a suicide note. Among her possessions were a bus ticket from St. Louis, 59 cents in change, and an Illinois bank book showing a balance of $1,800. [4] | ||
October 12, 1962 | Pauline Otton George Gianinni | 27 65 | Suicide | Fell from building | Otton jumped from the window of her ninth-floor room after an argument with her estranged husband Dewey. He had left the room prior to Otton's suicide. Otton landed on a pedestrian, Gianinni, killing them both instantly. As there were no witnesses, police initially thought Otton and Gianinni committed suicide together. However, it was soon determined that Gianinni had his hands in his pockets at the time of his death, and he was still wearing shoes. Had he jumped, his shoes would have likely fallen off during the fall or upon impact, and his hands would not have been in his pockets. [4] | ||
June 4, 1964 | Jacques B. Ehlinger | 29 | "Pigeon Goldie" Osgood | 65 | Murder (acquitted) | Stabbed, beaten, and raped | A hotel worker discovered Osgood, a retired telephone operator, dead in her room. She had been raped, stabbed, and beaten, and her room was ransacked. Osgood was well known around the area, and had earned her nickname because she fed birds in nearby Pershing Square. Near her body was the Los Angeles Dodgers cap she always wore and a paper sack full of birdseed. Hours after her murder, Ehlinger was seen walking through Pershing Square in bloodstained clothing. He was arrested and charged with Osgood's murder, but was later cleared of the crime. Her murder remains unsolved. [4] |
December 20, 1975 | "Alison Lowell” | Approx. 23 | Death | Fell from building | A still-unidentified woman jumped from her twelfth-floor window onto the Cecil's second-floor roof. She had registered at the hotel on December 16 under the name "Alison Lowell", and was staying in room 327. [6] [7] | ||
September 1, 1992 | N/A | Approx. 20-30 | Death | Fell from building | The body of an African-American man was found in the alley behind the Cecil. Police said he had either fallen, jumped, or been pushed from the hotel's 15th floor. The 20-to-30-year-old male has never been identified. [8] [9] | ||
February 19, 2013 | Elisa Lam | 21 | Death | Accidental Drowning | The naked [10] body of Lam, a Canadian student, was found inside one of the water supply tanks on the hotel roof. She had gone missing almost three weeks earlier, on January 31, 2013. Her decomposing body was discovered by a maintenance worker in one of the rooftop water tanks after guests had complained about low water pressure and water that "tasted funny." [11] Video surveillance footage taken from inside an elevator shortly before her disappearance showed her acting strangely, pressing multiple elevator buttons, hiding in the corner of the elevator, and waving her arms erratically, causing widespread speculation about the cause of her death. [12] After the elevator video was released, many theories arose about Lam's death. She was reported to have had bipolar disorder, for which she was prescribed various medications, which could have contributed to her death as well as her strange behavior in the elevator. [13] Authorities later ruled Lam's death as an accidental drowning. | ||
June 13, 2015 | N/A | 28 | Death | Suspected to have fallen from the building | The body of a 28-year-old man was found outside the hotel. Some conjectured he may have committed suicide by jumping from the hotel, although a spokesperson for the county coroner informed the Los Angeles Times that the cause of death had not been determined. [14] The man remains unidentified. | ||
Michael M. Baden is an American physician and board-certified forensic pathologist known for his work investigating high-profile deaths and as the host of HBO's Autopsy. Baden was the chief medical examiner of the City of New York from 1978 to 1979. He was also chairman of the House Select Committee on Assassinations' Forensic Pathology Panel that investigated the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Baden's independent autopsy findings are often in conflict with the local authorities' opinions; as such, many consider him to be a headline-seeking physician as opposed to a legitimate source of information.
The Cerro Gordo Mines are a collection of abandoned mines located in Cerro Gordo in the Inyo Mountains, Inyo County, near Lone Pine, California. Mining operations spanned 1866 to 1957, producing high grade silver, lead, zinc ore, and more rarely gold ore and copper ore. Some ore was smelted on site, but larger capacity smelters were eventually constructed along the shore of nearby Owens Lake.
Kazuyoshi Miura was a Japanese businessman who was accused of being involved in the killing of his wife, Kazumi Miura. The prolonged legal battle, lasting decades, ended when he presumably committed suicide in October 2008.
The following are reportedly haunted locations in California, in the United States. This list is sorted by county.
The Cecil Hotel is an affordable housing complex in Downtown Los Angeles. It opened on December 20, 1924, as a luxury hotel, but declined during the Great Depression and subsequent decades. In 2011, the hotel was renamed the Stay On Main. The 14-floor hotel has 700 guest rooms and a checkered history, with many suicides and accidental or unnatural deaths occurring there. Renovations started in 2017 were halted by the COVID-19 pandemic, resulting in the hotel's temporary closure. On December 13, 2021, the Cecil Hotel was reinaugurated as an affordable housing complex.
Gregory James Kading is an American author and former Los Angeles Police Department detective best known for working on a multi law-enforcement task force that investigated the murders of rappers Tupac Shakur and Biggie Smalls in the mid-2000s. Many credit Kading and his LAPD task force for the 2023 arrest of Duane ‘Keefe D’ Davis for the September 1996 murder of Tupac.
On February 19, 2013, the body of Canadian tourist Elisa Lam 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.
The Last Bookstore is an independent bookstore located at 453 S Spring Street, Downtown Los Angeles. Conde Nast Traveler called it California’s largest new and used bookstore.
Josh Dean is an American journalist and author, most recently of the non-fiction book The Taking of K-129: How the CIA Used Howard Hughes to Steal a Russian Sub in the Most Daring Covert Operation in History, which was published on September 5, 2017, by Penguin's Dutton imprint.
Followed is a 2018 American supernatural horror film written by Todd Klick and directed by Antoine Le, in his feature directorial debut. The film is told almost entirely through a single screencast, in which a sequence of vlogs being watched on a website chronicle the events of the plot. It stars Matthew Solomon as DropTheMike, a controversial vlogger and social media celebrity, who is haunted by strange forces when he takes his weekly vlog to a reputedly cursed hotel in order to gain more subscribers. It stars John Savage, Sam Valentine, Tim Drier, Caitlin Grace and Kelsey Griswold, and is produced by Viscape Arts in association with Branded Pictures Entertainment.
The death of Chan Yin-lam occurred during the 2019 Hong Kong protests, and gave rise to speculations by protesters about its cause. Lam was a 15-year-old student who died on or shortly after 19 September 2019. Her naked corpse was found floating in the sea near Yau Tong, Hong Kong, on 22 September 2019. Following a preliminary autopsy, police asserted that no foul play was suspected and that Chan had killed herself, while there were allegations that she was murdered by Hong Kong authorities in connection with her participation in the 2019 Hong Kong protests. The coroner's inquest concluded with the jury unanimously returning an open verdict, after Magistrate Ko Wai-hung ruled out both homicide and suicide as possible causes due to insufficient evidence to support this.
Crime Scene: The Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel is the first season of the Crime Scene docuseries. Released in 2021 and directed by Joe Berlinger, it chronicles the death of Elisa Lam at the Cecil Hotel. It features Viveca Chow, Judy Ho and Artemis Snow and premiered on February 10, 2021 on Netflix.