a 21-year-old Canadian student was recovered from a water tank atop the Cecil Hotel
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 the bipolar disorder Lam suffered from; it has been argued that the video itself has been tampered with.
The circumstances of Lam's death, when 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
she arrived in Los Angeles.She was initially assigned a shared room on the hotel's fifth floor; however, after her roommates complained about what the hotel's lawyer would later describe as "certain odd behavior", she was moved to a room of her own after two days.
Lam also had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder and depression
While the search for Lam was raising the case's media profile, guests at the hotel began complaining to management about low water pressure in their rooms. Some also claimed their water was oddly colored, and had a slightly unusual smell. Employees began investigating.
On the morning of February 19, an employee went to the roof, where four 1,000-gallon (3.78 m3) water tanks provided water pumped from the city's supply, for the guest rooms and the kitchen and coffee shop downstairs. In one of them he found Lam's body, floating face up a foot below the water surface. Police responded, and by noon that day the hotel had drained the tank so firefighters could cut it open and remove the body, since the opening of the tank was too small to accommodate the necessary equipment.
After being removed from the tank, Lam's body was taken to the county coroner's office to be autopsied. Two pathologists, Jason Tovar and Yulai Wang, spent four hours that afternoon dissecting it and examining her internal organs. On February 21, the coroner's office reported that they had found her death to be an accidental drowning, with bipolar disorder as a significant factor.
Their full report was released four months later, in June, after being postponed several times.They reported that her body had been found naked in the tank, about half to three-quarters full, with the clothes she appeared to have been wearing in the elevator video floating in the water alongside her, coated with a "sand-like particulate". Along with them were her watch and room key.
Lam's body was moderately decomposed, bloated and mostly greenish, with some marbling evident on the abdomen and skin separation evident. Tovar and Wang found no evidence of physical trauma or sexual assault, although they had a rape and fingernail kit done. They found no evidence to suggest that Lam had committed suicide
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 escape could have allowed her to bypass those security measures, if she (or someone who might have accompanied her there) had known.
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, it was recalled (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 club 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 and fingernail kits 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.
