The body of Elisa Lam, also known by her Cantonese name, Lam Ho Yi (藍可兒; April 30, 1991–February 2013), a Canadian student at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, was recovered from a water tankatop the Cecil Hotel in Downtown Los Angeleson February 19, 2013. She had been reported missing at the beginning of the month. Maintenance workers at the hotel discovered the body when investigating guest complaints of problems with the water supply

Her disappearance had been widely reported; interest had increased five days prior to her body's discovery when the Los Angeles Police Department released video of the last time she was known to have been seen, on the day of her disappearance, by an elevator security camera. In the footage, Lam is seen exiting and re-entering the elevator, talking and gesturing in the hallway outside, and sometimes seeming to hide within the elevator, which itself appears to be malfunctioning. The video went viral on the Internet, with many viewers reporting that they found it unsettling. Explanations ranged from claims of paranormal involvement to bipolar disorder from which Lam suffered; it has also been argued that the video was altered prior to release.

The circumstances of Lam's death, once she was found, also raised questions, especially in light of the Cecil's history in relation to other notable deaths and murders. Her body was naked with most of her clothes and personal effects floating in the water near her. It took the Los Angeles County Coroner's office four months, after repeated delays, to release the autopsy report, which reports no evidence of physical trauma and states that the manner of death was accidental. Guests at the Cecil, now re-branded as 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 2005 horror film Dark Water. The case has since been referenced in international popular culture

Disappearance:

Lam contacted her parents in British Columbia every day while traveling. On January 31, 2013, the day she was scheduled to check out of the Cecil and leave for Santa Cruz, they did not hear from her and called the Los Angeles police; her family flew to Los Angeles to help with the search.

Hotel staff who saw her that day said she was alone. Outside the hotel, Katie Orphan, manager of a nearby bookstore, was the only person who recalled seeing Lam 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 canines 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.

On February 15, after another week with no sign of her, the LAPD released a video of the last known sighting of her taken in one of the Cecil's elevators by a video surveillancecamera on February 1. It drew worldwide interest in the case due to Lam's strange behavior and has been extensively analyzed and discussed.

In the clip, the camera at one of the elevator cab's rear corners looks down from the ceiling, offering a view not just of its interior but the hallway outside. It is somewhat grainy, and the timestamp at the bottom is obscured. At some points Lam's mouth is pixelized.

At the start, Lam enters, clad in a red zippered hooded sweatshirt over a gray T-shirt, with black shorts and sandals. She enters from the left and goes to the control panel, appears to select several floors and then steps back to the corner. After a few seconds during which the door fails to close, she steps up to it, leans forward so her head is through the door, looks in both directions, and then quickly steps back in, backing up to the wall and then into the corner near the control panel. The door remains open.

She walks to it again and stands in the doorway, leaning on the side. Suddenly she steps out into the hall, then to her side, back in, looking to the side, then back out. She then steps sideways again, and for a few seconds she is mostly invisible behind the wall she has her back to just outside. The door remains open.

Her right arm can be seen going up to her head, and then she turns to re-enter the cab, putting both hands on the side of the door. She then goes to the control panel, presses many more buttons, some more than once, and then returns to the wall she had come into the elevator from, putting both hands over her ears again briefly as she walks back to the section of wall she had been standing against before. The door remains open.

She turns to her right and begins rubbing her forearms together, then waves her hands out to her sides with palms flat and fingers outstretched, while bowing forward slightly and rocking gently. This can all be seen through the door, which remains open. After she backs to the wall again and walks away to the left, it finally closes.

It was reposted widely, including to the Chinese video-sharing site Youku, where it got 3 million views and 40,000 comments in its first 10 days. Many of the commenters found it unsettling to watch.

Several theories evolved to explain her actions. One was that Lam was trying to get the elevator car to move in order to escape from someone pursuing her. Others suggested that she might be under the influence of ecstasy or some other party drug. 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. Despite the obscuring of the timestamp, they claimed, parts had been slowed down, and nearly a minute of footage had been discreetly removed. This could have been done simply to protect the identity of someone who otherwise would be in the video but had little or nothing to do with the case, or to conceal evidence if Lam's disappearance and death had been the result of a criminal act.

Discovery of the Body:

During the search for Lam, guests at the hotel began complaining about low water pressure. Some later claimed their water was colored black, and had an unusual taste. On the morning of February 19, Lam's body was found in one of four 1,000-gallon (3,785 L) tanks providing water to guest rooms, a kitchen, and a coffee shop. The tank was drained and cut open since its maintenance hatch was too small to accommodate equipment needed to remove Lam's body.

On February 21, the Los Angeles coroner's office issued a finding of accidental drowning, with bipolar disorder as a significant factor. The full coroner's report, released in June, stated that Lam's body had been found naked; clothing similar to that she was wearing in the elevator video was floating in the water, coated with a "sand-like particulate". Her watch and room key were also found with her.

Lam's body was moderately decomposed and bloated. It was mostly greenish, with some marbling evident on the abdomen and skin separation evident. There was no evidence of physical trauma, sexual assault, or suicide. Toxicology tests – incomplete because not enough of her blood was preserved – showed traces consistent with prescription medication found among her belongings, plus nonprescription drugs such as Sinutab and ibuprofen. A very small quantity of alcohol (about 0.02 g%) was present, but no other recreational drugs.

Unresolved Issues:

The investigation had determined how Lam died, but did not offer an explanation as to how she got into the tank in the first place. Doors and stairs that access the hotel's roof are locked, with only staff having the passcodes and keys, and any attempt to force them would supposedly have triggered an alarm. However, the hotel's fire escapecould have allowed her to bypass those security measures, if she (or someone who might have accompanied her there) had known. A video made by a Chinese user after Lam's death and posted to the Internet showed that the hotel's roof was easily accessible via the fire escape and that two of the lids of the water tanks were open.

Apart from the question of how she got on the roof, others asked if she could have gotten into the tank by herself. All four tanks are 4-by-8-foot (1.2 by 2.4 m) cylinders propped up on concrete blocks; there is no fixed access to them and hotel workers had to use a ladder to look at the water. They are protected by heavy lids that would be difficult to replace from within. Police dogs that searched through the hotel for Lam, even on the roof, shortly after her disappearance was noted, did not find any trace of her (although they had not searched the area near the water tanks).

Theories about Lam's behavior in the elevator video did not stop with her death. Some argued that she was attempting to hide from a pursuer, perhaps someone ultimately responsible for her death, while others said she was merely frustrated with the elevator's apparent malfunction. Some proponents of the theory that she was under the influence of illicit drugs are not dissuaded by their absence from the toxicology screen, suggesting that they might have broken down during the period of time her body decomposed in the tank, or that she might have taken rare cocktails of such drugs that a normal screen would not detect.

The autopsy report and its conclusions have also been questioned. For instance, it does not say what the results of the rape kit and fingernail kit were, or even if they were processed. It also records subcutaneous pooling of blood in Lam's anal area, which some observers suggested was a sign of sexual abuse; however one pathologist has noted it could also have resulted from bloating in the course of the body's decomposition, and her rectum was also prolapsed. Even the coroner's pathologists appeared to be ambivalent about their conclusion that Lam's death was accidental.

Since her death, her Tumblr blog was updated, presumably through Tumblr's Queue option which allows posts to automatically publish themselves when the user is away. Her phone was not found either with her body or in her hotel room; it has been assumed to have been stolen at some time around her death. Whether the continued updates to her blog were facilitated by the theft of her phone, the work of a hacker, or through the Queue, is not known; nor is it known whether the updates are related to her death.