Cecil Hotel

Author: Jewls Krueger

The Cecil Hotel is a 15 story, historic Beaux-Arts hotel in downtown Los Angeles that has been the site of dozens of deaths, suicides, unsolved murders, and mysterious disappearances since it opened in 1924. Two of the most notorious serial killers in American history are believed to have used the hotel as a base of operations during their killing sprees. It is best known today for the 2013 death of Canadian college student Elisa Lam, whose body was found floating in a rooftop water tank almost three weeks after she went missing.

The History of the Cecil Hotel

The Cecil Hotel was built in 1924 by hoteliers William Banks Hanner, Charles L. Dix, and Robert H. Schops as a destination for business travelers and tourists visiting downtown Los Angeles. When it opened on December 20, 1924, its Beaux-Arts lobby featured a marble staircase, stained glass windows, and alabaster statues. It was one of the most prestigious hotels in the city.

Within five years, the Great Depression struck and downtown Los Angeles began a long decline. The Cecil's original clientele of business travelers gradually gave way to permanent residents and transient guests. As the surrounding neighborhood eroded into the area now known as Skid Row, one of the largest homeless encampments in the United States, the Cecil became a magnet for crime, drug activity, and mental illness. By the late 20th century, longtime residents had given the building the grim nickname "The Suicide."

In February 2017, the Los Angeles City Council designated the Cecil a Historic-Cultural Monument, protecting its exterior as a landmark of early 20th century American hotel architecture.

Cecil Hotel's Dark Past

Over the years the hotel has seen more than a dozen suicides of various guests. At least a half dozen of these deaths came during the Great Depression, and the tradition of using the hotel's upper floors as a jumping off point continued for decades. On October 12, 1954, resident Helen Gurnee jumped from a seventh floor window and landed on the hotel marquee. In 1962, Julia Frances Moore jumped from an eighth floor window and landed on the pavement. On December 20, 1975, a 23 year old woman who had checked in under the name "Alison Lowell" a few days earlier jumped from the 12th floor. Her real identity has never been established.

In 1964, a longtime Cecil resident named "Pigeon Goldie" Osgood was found brutally murdered in her room. Osgood was a retired telephone operator who was well known and well liked in the neighborhood for spending her afternoons feeding the birds in nearby Pershing Square. On June 4, 1964, hotel staff discovered her body in her ransacked room. She had been raped, stabbed, and beaten to death, and the Los Angeles Dodgers baseball cap she was known to always wear and a paper bag of feed had been left with her body. A local man named Jacques B. Ehlinger was arrested a short time later after being seen walking through the neighborhood in bloodstained clothes, but he was later cleared. Her murder remains unsolved.

Sometime in 1984 and 1985, serial killer Richard Ramirez, known as "The Night Stalker," reportedly rented a $14 a night top floor room at the Cecil for a period of several weeks. Multiple published accounts and documentaries have described Ramirez returning to the hotel in the middle of the night covered in blood, undressing outside in the back alley, and walking through the lobby to his room in his bloodstained underwear without being challenged by hotel staff. Ramirez went on to be convicted of 13 murders and dozens of other crimes across California, and died in prison in 2013.

Six years later, in 1991, Austrian serial killer and journalist Jack Unterweger reportedly stayed at the Cecil while touring Los Angeles as a foreign correspondent. According to multiple accounts, Unterweger, who had a history of strangling sex workers with their own bras, specifically chose the Cecil because he had been fascinated by the Richard Ramirez connection. During his stay, Unterweger is believed to have killed at least three sex workers in the surrounding downtown neighborhood.

Elisa Lam at the Cecil Hotel

The most famous and mysterious case to come from within the Cecil Hotel happened more recently, when in 2013 Canadian student Elisa Lam seemed to disappear into thin air from the hotel. The 21 year old University of British Columbia student had checked into the Cecil on January 26, 2013 during a solo trip through California, and was originally placed in a shared hostel style room before complaints of "odd behavior" from her roommates prompted staff to move her into a private room. She was last seen alive by hotel staff on January 31, 2013.

She was last seen by hotel security cameras in an elevator acting as if she was being followed by someone. Although she was reported missing by her family soon thereafter, there was no sign of Elisa for more than 2 weeks. After other guests complained of poor tasting water coming from the tap, a maintenance worker went to check on the water tanks on the roof of the hotel and discovered Elisa's naked body inside a tank on February 19, 2013.

Although there has been wild speculation as to whether Elisa was murdered, investigators have concluded that Elisa had suffered a manic episode related to her diagnosed bipolar disorder. Her autopsy showed that all four of her prescribed medications for bipolar disorder were present in her system, but at unusually low levels, and that neither alcohol nor illicit drugs were involved. There were no signs of physical trauma or sexual assault. On June 20, 2013, the Los Angeles County Coroner's Office officially ruled her death an accidental drowning, with bipolar disorder listed as a significant contributing condition.

Visiting the Cecil Hotel

The Cecil Hotel was rebranded as the "Stay on Main" in 2011 and continued to operate as a budget hotel until 2017, when it closed for extensive renovations. In 2019, the Los Angeles City Council allocated $45 million to convert the property into permanent supportive housing for very low income and unhoused residents. It reopened on December 13, 2021 as the Hotel Cecil Apartments, operated by the Skid Row Housing Trust, with 601 single room occupancy units.

The building has struggled to fill those units in the years since, and a 2023 Los Angeles Times investigation documented reports of black mold, vermin infestations, and other unsanitary conditions inside the building. In March 2024, ground lessee Simon Baron Development listed the remaining 91 years of the Cecil's ground lease for sale.

The Cecil Hotel is located in downtown Los Angeles on the southeast side of Main Street between Sixth and Seventh Streets. It is now permanent supportive housing, and lobby, common areas, and residential floors are not open to the public. Please be respectful of the current residents, staff, and neighbors during any visit, stay on public sidewalks along Main Street, and do not attempt to enter the building or take photographs of any residents. Remember that this location remains, first and foremost, someone's home.