What Happened to Elisa Lam at the Cecil Hotel? Here Are 4 Main Theories

The docuseries points the needle towards this theory while also looking into the suspicious evidence and strange coincidences surrounding the case. Lam's body was moderately decomposed when hotel worker Santiago Lopez discovered her body in the water tank. However, the medical examiner was able to gather some information during her autopsy. Lam's body was naked, which led to suspicions of assault. However, the autopsy revealed no trauma signs on her body, which would have been very likely if someone carried her up the fire escape ladder and put her inside the water tank. She might have taken her clothes off in an attempt to float up or because of a physical reaction from her body.

Officials discovered a critical finding in the toxicology report: Lam appeared to have been undertaking her bipolar medication. Experts believe that Lam likely stopped taking her medication, which could account for her mannerisms in the lift video. Before Lam went missing, she also exhibited odd behaviour during a TV show taping and with her hostel roommates.

So how did Lam get to the water tank? While the emergency exit to the rooftop would trigger an alarm, Lam could have taken the fire escape ladder and climbed to the water tank. According to the former hotel manager, the tank was not locked.

The Cecil Hotel has been a hotspot of death, marked by a history of overdoses, murders, and suicides. Some speculate that dark spirits (including that of Richard Ramirez, who was alive at the time of Lam's death) kept the lift open and had her climb into the water tank. Others connected how Lam pressed the buttons with a Korean lift game. According to this outlandish theory, Lam died because she opened up a portal to another dimension.

One conspiracy theory especially has a disturbing eugenic undertone to it. Some people said that Lam was supposedly a biological weapon (or an agent from some terrorist group) sent to Los Angeles to infect the homeless population. After her death, there was a tuberculosis breakout among the homeless in Los Angeles, many of whom resided on Skid Row near the Cecil. Here's where things get weird: the test for the infection was called the LAM ELISA (Lipoarabinomannan Enzyme-Linked Immunosorbent Assay) test. The University of British Columbia, where Lam took classes, also had a reputable tuberculosis research centre. Some web sleuths inferred that she was taken out because she knew too much or planned to expose whoever sent her to California.