Thinking Sideways: Elisa Lam

describe it? Good call than you know. We had her on the show for a reason because I'm a I'm a human thesaurus. I like I like Enigma better. Enigma is pretty good. It's pretty freaking a good one. Yeah. Well, let's let's hop right in, shall we. All right, Well, this story is a listeners suggestion, and we've gotten a lot of suggestions for folks and appreciate everybody's sending those in.

I know we haven't gotten to many of them. We're working through room as we can, but we definitely appreciate them. So big thanks to Jonathan who sent us this one on Facebook. He uh, it's a weird story and it's really creepy, but I couldn't help myself. Well, and it's one of those ones. As much as you hate to say it is, like it's really popular right now, it is. It's a really popular mystery. I hear it's super popular

in China. Yeah. Well, what we're gonna talk about everybody, and and probably the majority of you are already familiar with the story, is the death of Alyssa Lamb. Yeah, yep, alright, so let's just go ahead and we'll we'll start here, which Alyssa was one years old. She was Canadian. She was from Vancouver, British Columbia, and she was on vacation

in California. She'd been traveling by herself. She had gone to l A. I don't remember what stop, what city she stopped in first, but she made her way to l A and then eventually she was going to make her way on down to Santa Cruz, which is kind of a nice vacation, you know, just hit kind of all the big spots in California. It's like a great trip to me. While she was in l A, Alyssa stayed at the Hotel Cecil, which is a low rent hotel which is on the edge of the area that's

known as skid Row. That's kind of near it. I don't know, yeah, it's it's near it. I wouldn't say it's in skid Row. And for anybody who doesn't know what skid Row is, it's basically the part of town where you're down and out. Yeah. Although, yeah, you know, if you go on Google street View and actually look at the at the street, at the hotel is on, it's and and and zoom around a little bit. I love driving around in Google street View. Yeah, it's actually

not bad. It's downtown l A. It's like, you know, skid rows a few blocks of way, but you know, it was it was a pretty decent neighborhood. Yeah, it seemed okay. Well, while she was on her trip, she had been great about contacting her parents, you know, via email and phone every day. On January thirty one, Alyssa didn't contact her parents, which was weird, and they never heard from her again. Obviously they were concerned. They raised alarm. They called the authorities. They got ahold of the l

A Police who got involved. The police went to the hotel, they questioned the staff. They brought in dogs to check everything out because she obviously wasn't in her room. They found nothing. They brought in dogs. This is like right after the report of disappearance when they it was a couple of days later that they actually came to the hotel and brought dogs in. But yeah, and I've some of the accounts that I've read to say that the reason that the l A Police got right on this

is because she's technically from another country. So that's really bad press when you have someone who's visiting your city from another country disappearing. So they kind of tried to pull out all the stops. They really did what they could, but they didn't come up with anything. Nothing was found. Yeah. Interesting, Like I said, that nobody ever heard from her again. The hotel staff said they had seen her, but didn't really know when the last time they had seen her.

So she's gone a couple of days are a day or so later, they released some footage which we will link to on our website, and it's footage of her in the elevator of the hotel, and it's creepy. It's very creepy footage. She walks into the elevator, she pushes a bunch of buttons, she kind of stands in back.

She peeks out, she hides in the elevator. What the what it's really reminiscent of to me is that, you know, you kind of hear it described or you read a description of it or whatever, and you think, well, that's not that weird. You know, she's pushing some buttons, she's like kind of hiding. But when you watch it, it's kind of like, um, those really cheesy like activity where like people are doing human things, but not in in like a really contrived human way, Like it's not a

human controlling them. That's exactly right, and it's really creepy. Yeah. Her her movements are very erratically, really jerky. Yeah. I first thought that when I first saw the video, and I and you know, it's for my first time, I thought she was goofing around. Yeah, and then you start watching you realize she's not playing around. Something else is happening. At about the two minute mark, she walks out of

the elevator. She's barely visible in the camera and she makes some kind of straight hand gestures for about thirty seconds to a minute. And that's the part that really like got me. The way she moves her limbs during that time is like I don't. Yeah, well, you know, Actually, to me, what it looks like is that there's somebody standing outside the elevator to the right of the elevator, and she's talking to that person and gesturing to him in like a really uncomfortable way. And then I could

see some of that. But what what was weird to me is the way she was moving her arms in her hands, almost in a rhythmic fashion. At one point I kind of wondered if she was dancing. It had been talked about that she had been going to clubs and stuff, so maybe she was doing some dance. She had seen it. It almost had that feel to it. Obviously, that's not's what she was doing, right, because of everything else, and when you put it all into context, that's not it.

But it's it's really strange. Here's the strangest part. The whole time that she's doing this, she's pushed the button, she's hiding, she's poking her head out, she jumps out of the elevator, she's waving arms. Room never closed, which is why I suspect there was somebody standing outside and holding down the call button. Oh you think so, well, yeah, it makes sense. I mean, what else would cousin to stay open elevators malfunction all the time. This elevator actually

worked pretty well. I mean once she got out of it and whoever was holding down the call button let it go. Then the elevator took off and did this thing and it worked just fine. That's true because the rest of the footage just showed the elevator going to the other floors exactly, and you see her before the door is closed. She just walks away. I hate it.

I hate I'm like, I'm getting like likes like just thinking about it because it's just you know again, it's just it looks like one of those cheesy things like if somebody was just like, hey, watching this video, I'd be like, wow, this is a horrible horror movie. Like

I'm impressed with the low budget horror movie. Yeah, it totally looks like one of those like parallenal activity sort of things that Blair Witch projects something and then you put it in context of like this is a real girl having doing these things for real that she died because reepy, that's exactly it. That's this is the last that footage is the last recording of her alive, which

is just it's uncomfortable. And this is where it gets even more uncomfortable for this story, which is for two weeks, residents at the hotel had noticed bad water pressure, that the water was quote unquote black, smelled funny, and had an odd sweet taste to it on the nine February, which is I'm sorry, I feel like we have to do a sidebar here because of like, hey, this water is black, better drink it to see what it tastes like. Yeah,

I don't understand why nobody complained. That's I think they did. In the early accounts. They there were people they did interviews or they were like we watched complaints. You know that it started out tasting kind of funny and you're like, oh, maybe it's nothing, and then like it smelled a little funny, and then it got like a gross color and it got really bad, and that people were kind of lodging complaints. Yeah. One of the one of the things about it is

about l A is the water. They're it really tastes like crap, it's gross. And so if you've got people like coming in from out of town, their tourist and they're saying, hey, the water tastes like crap, you're gonna go hey, you know, dude, welcome. So maybe that was it. Maybe. But the nineteenth of February they finally give in and the hotel sends a maintenance worker up to the roof to inspect the water tanks that are on the roof.

And they have four large water tanks up there. They are four ft across and eight foot tall, so they're they're pretty big. Um. And when he got up there trying to figure out what was causing the problem, he found the naked body of Alyssa in one of the tanks. Yeah. Um, so he cleared it out and got everything cleaned up. That's absolutely not the exact opposite. This is where the story really hit the news is you know, they had to send the fire department up there to cut open

the tank and get her out. There was all this stuff about was there, you know, bad biological particles in the water, which turns out all the chlorine was basically eliminating. Um. But here's here's the really weird thing. If you guys have seen and if anybody, if you want to go look at the photos, they're all over the internet. If you look at the photos of the roof, of the hotel cecil. It's not easy to get to those water tanks. You've you've got to kind of go up this embankments

the wrong word. But there's a rise where the tanks are, and then there's no ladders on the tanks. Plus to get up there, you would have to go through an alarmed door that's locked, and then unless fire unless you want up the fire escape. I'm not sure if the alarm would go off if you got on the fire escape or not. All right, well, it sounded like you had to do both. I I can never get it straight. Whereas you had to go through this alarm door and then go up a separate piece of fire escape to

get up there. I can never quite get clarity. I don't think some mean, if you look at the roof, there's that little boxy sort of house looking thing there next to the tanks, and there appears to be a door on that something. I'm assuming the stairwell goes all the way up to the top and there's a doorway out, But that's the one that's got the Often places like that we'll have in order to see you have a ladder that you have to go up to like a door the basically like a gate, and then you go

through the gate and there's that last little staircase. But the gate is alarmed often, and then that last door isn't alarmed. That That's just that was my understanding of it in my mind, that there was a and here's something. Here's the thing. The hotel is obviously not going to put out diagrams of how to get up onto their roof because they don't want to out there. Yeah, exactly.

It appears to me, I've got some pictures of the hotel and there's numerous fire escapes on it, and it doesn't look like they're gated off from the roofs much to me, like you could actually climb right up there, like like from the street. Uh No, typically fire for that reason, room, Yeah, yeah, for that reason. I mean they don't. They always have the extendable ladders, but obviously to prevent bombs from climbing up your fire escape and

breaking windows and everything. But yeah, but it appears that she could have climbed up the fire escape and up there without being detected. Okay, so she could, but still getting into the tank different, right, because the tanks are like on a platform, right, and then there's no ladder on the tanks, and then the lids of the tanks are like crazy heavy. Right. No, No, there's like there's an access the once she was in was there was a sixteen in access. Yeah, square slider, flip open hatch.

But we're going to get into the hatch a little bit more. But here's here's a couple of other things that I want to talk about before we we get too far into that is that when they got her body out, it showed no obvious signs of trauma. And that's that's you know, not including postmortem trauma from bouncing around in a water tank. And then there's the fact that the autopsy and the toxicology reports showed that she

wasn't under the influence of drugs. She evidently wasn't. It doesn't sound like dead before she got in there, because no harm seems to have been done to her prior to her entering the water tank, and her lives were filled with water, So and and did you find that for sure? Because I could never see anything. And then and I've seen some stuff that said it was there water in her lungs, and they there was water in their lungs and so that led some people to say

she drowned. But at the same time, the corridor said cause of death is unknown, which means it water can get into her longs just from being in the water for a couple and that was that was the thing that well, here's the here's the official cause of death. The official cause of death is though they initially thought it was foul play, they changed it to accidental drowning with mental illness playing a significant role. There are so

many questions, Oh, I know, and that's exactly right. There's a ton of questions and I had when I started researching this. I don't normally do this normally. I just kind of worked my way through it and log everything. I read this story two or three times and wrote down about a dozen or two questions that I needed answered. And that's what we're gonna go through. We're gonna go

through my questions this time. That's interesting because for me, when I read this story the first time, I was like, oh, yeah, I know she was on drugs. And then I was like, no, no toxicality. And I was like, okay, well, yeah, she was mentally ill. And then I like, but I couldn't let it go I guess you know, so I I just kept reading it, and the more I read, the more questions I had. It wasn't It was not one of those cases where I find out more information and

I'm satisfied. I just have more questions and yeah it's and there's there's just so many stinking questions. Yeah it's it's It's one of those frustrating things like the woman in Norway who was murdered, you know, the other way. I mean, yeah, I want to get away from the Internet and actually just go to Norway and look at the police files. You know, you say with this, if

we could go look at the l An report. Yeah, there's one big question I have, which is which is like, you know, the rumor of rocketing around the internet is that her clothes were never found. But I don't know what that's true because and we're gonna get into that again. These are things that I've gone through, and I've got my list and we're gonna we're gonna check it twice

and we're just gonna go through all of these. So the first question that I wanted to know was based on this whole story and everything about the hotel and all the reports that we've heard is why did she stay at the hotel El Cecil. Yeah, good question. Yeah, because, yeah, there's so many natural places to stay in l A. Closer, so much closer to all the cool tourist attractions. Also cheaper, right,

they're cheaper places than the equivalent. Yeah, yes, but it's not I mean, you know, it's not like it's the cheapest. It's also not like it's the nicest of the price point. You know. Obviously she wasn't familiar with l A. She just she got downtown l A. I'll be right in the heart of things. But l A is a city unlike most cities. Yeah, here's the thing is that when you read some of the stuff on the hotel's website, they build themselves as a European style hotel. That's great

for travelers on a budget. Have you noticed something about those guys by the way they changed their name who the Hotel Cecil. If you go out, if you do a google on Hotel Cecil Los Angeles and Lincoln, come up, says hotel Cecil dot com. You click on that, and if you look at the U R L it says stay on Maine dot com. And you look at the logo there, it says stay on me in hotel. It's got the same addresss a hotel CC, but it says

it's stay on Maine dot com. Yeah. Interesting. Yeah, Apparently apparently they're tired of being, you know, branded as you know, the place where people get murdered and stuff like that. Well, and I'm glad you bring that up, because that hotel has quite a checkered pass a little bit, alright, So let's run through this. Uh So, the hotel was built in the nineteen twenties and it was gonna be this big, opulent, beautiful hotel and it was immediately outdone by other hotels.

Plus the neighborhood it was in fell into hard times and the people that were that we're staying there weren't the nicest group. There were robberies, there were murders, There were people who were This I believe was from the forties to somewhere in the sixties of seventies. It was notorious for people to go to and jump out the

window and commit suicide. Is there, I guess I wonder, well we're talking about this, is there any record of her being kind of like a ghost hunter, like interested in any kind of like weirdness, because this seems like the kind of place you would go and stay if you were interested in like places that had kind of sorted past things that I could pick up from her

tumbler page. I didn't get that impression, because she did have a tumbler website that she updated constantly while she was on vacation and put up a lot of stuff, but I never saw anything. There's one famous example of a woman by the name of Pauline I believe is what her name is. She evidently decided that she had had enough and was gonna was gonna end her own life and jumped out the window on October twelve, n two. Unfortunately, she landed on George Gianni killed them both. Uh. This

is one of many suicides that are notorious. There's all these people. A woman I can't remember her name now got into a fight with her husband. They obviously had drinking issues. She threw herself out the window. The hotel itself was this is the best part. Also had some

really famous people stay at it. More likely infamous is probably the better word to use, because there's Richard Ramirez, who was known as the night Stalker who raped and killed thirteen women in and Jack Underwerker I believe it's how you pronounce his name. Yes, in one stayed there as well. He also killed three prostitutes. So yeah, we we've got some really great people staying here. You know you, did you ever stop to think that maybe at least

a land what's a serial killer? I don't think that's it worked that way. Well, okay, so we've got all these bad vibes to say, energy, bad energy from the hotel. Well, one of the theories that I got was that the hotel is haunted by evil spirits. Well, it's actually more like the movie dark Water. If you've ever seen the movie Dark Water, this is a movie where a little girl drowns in the water tank on the top of the building and then it infects the room directly underneath it.

It's a super creepy movie. And isn't the hotel in that called the Cecilia Hotel? I think there's a cha Yeah, I think it's yeah, it's a character's the daughter in the movie named Cecilia. But still yeah, yeah, so it's it's a it's a coincidence. I I logged this under coincidence, But creepy, creepy coincidence. Yeah, so we've got that creepy fact. Yeah. Fun and games here, ladies and gentlemen. So here's the next question. Why didn't they find her in the initial search?

I mean, you've got dogs, Yeah, why can't you find this girl? And it's only a couple of days. It's only a couple of days, So why couldn't you find your trail, especially up in the roof. I can understand it, like in the lobby, in the in the corridors of the hotel, and there's lots of other people walking around on the roof. But you know, one possible theory is that they the search took place when it would have

been a couple of days later. So I think on the thirty feet maybe, or the first of the I'm guessing February one, because that's when they released the photo or the footage from her being in the elevator. Yeah, so I mean, who knows, Maybe her body was not yet in the in the water tank at that time. Maybe, but at that time it was really cold and windy out. Which the way a dog's nose works is it follows what they call a scent cone. So you leave a trail of scent and it it spreads out behind you.

But if it's really windy, gets blown away, the scent is harder to pick up. Yeah, I can see that. And so that that's the reasoning that I've seen from a lot of site. There a lot of places that say why they didn't track her. They were on the roof, The police dogs were on the roof the first time they looked for her, and they didn't find her path, which again leads to some questions of well did she walk when she carried? What's the deal? But again, I I don't know. Maybe you hadn't made her to the

roof by that point in time. Yeah, you could be right, she might have been hold up somewhere else. But that's weird. I'm just gonna say that right now. Okay, Well, she's not in the water tank. That's weird that she's not in a room and she's somewhere else and then somebody brings her back and the courses her stuffs her into the water tank. That it's a lot of work and

very unusual. No, I don't I don't get it. I mean, I mean, and and wrestling somebody into a water tank and a roof would be a tricky thing to do, especially when it's a sixteen inch hole and you're pushing them through and trying not to and you managed to do it with about banging them up. Well exactly because she wasn't all marked up. She would have. She would have been supermarked, SuperM at least somewhat marked up. So I, I don't know that that's weird. The next question, what

is up with the elevator footage? Like? What what is going on there? Is? Is what I'm saying, because it's just like we said before, it's so weird and I it's so creepy to watch her movements and the way she's acting when she's in there, and this is not nice. And I will say this up front, ladies and gentlemen. This was my first initial reaction when I fall saw the footage when it first broke. This is before any of the reports came back. I think, I think you

might think I think I showed it to you. Actually, yeah, well I thought, and I think I told you it's like, well, she's on trunks, that girl's high. That's told me what's going on. I think that was Actually, yeah, I think that's the exactly, maybe was having a manic episode. Two. Yeah, it's but it's just it's so weird. And and then when we got the toxicology report back to say there's there's nothing in her system. There's no drugs, no alcohol, nothing that they can detect in her system. Was so

obviously not high on drugs, but maybe having a manic episode. Yeah. No, I know you Joe and I had had briefly talked about this is I still don't understand why the elevator doors never closed. Yeah, and you you had a theory on that, Yeah, I mean I I suspect that there was probably somebody standing outside in the corridors, out of view of the camera, who was holding down the call button, which would cause the doors to remain open. Uh. Yeah.

And you see when she when she pops out of the elevate, comes out of the elevator, and she's sort of talking and gesticulating to the right side of the right side of the elevator. It looks like she's talking to a person. And interestingly enough, you never see that person. You never so much as reaches his hand end around to hold that door shut. Instead, he uses the button to do it, which believes me to believe he was, if this person existed, was aware of the existence of

that security camera. Yeah. And also, you know, interestingly, also there's no other security camera footage anywhere in that hotel. Apparently they only had security footage in the elevator and nowhere else, which is kind of strange. You would think if they would have more than one security camera, you were sure, Yeah, but apparently most places do. Yeah. I stayed in there where ever, you know, fifty ft or

whatever in the ceiling. Yeah, I saw. You had another whiff of an internet rumors um quote from some guy who had worked there as a security guard. He said that that most of the security cameras just didn't work, and and he had a lot of Yeah, he had some other scathing things to say about about security in the place. But anyway, so you know, it makes me wonder if there wasn't somebody else out there, well, because

what else would have made those doors stay open? Well, And here's the thing I wondered about is when you watch her get into the elevator the first time time, and she bends over and she looks at the buttons and she punches a bunch of bunch of buttons at once. So I wonder if she hit the door button to open the doors, which would delay them from closing, and then she walks out of the elevator, and then she walks back in and she does it again. It's you know,

but they stay open for much longer than you expect. Well, yeah, then you wouldn't. It wouldn't be from just pushing that. But you know the way those elevators, they're like open door elevator buttons work as you hold them down. You don't just like push them, and they like open for a set amount of time. You got to hold them down,

at least in my experience with elevators, hold it. And I guess it's possible that she could have hit like the emergency button, you know, that would Here's the other thing is whenever you see the photos of her, she's wearing glasses. Yeah, she has no glasses on when she's in the elevator, which and this became kind of a sticking point for me because when you watch the footage, she clearly bends over and gets her face really close to that panel, like she's having a hard time seeing.

So I almost wondered if when she was outside of the elevator and she's waving her hands. I almost wonder if she can't really see where she is and she's in a weird method trying to feel around. I gotta be honest with you, all the pictures I've seen of her, yeah, she's wearing glasses, but they don't look like they're like particularly thick. It's not like she's literally bat blind like she You know, I could be wrong because you can't technically tell, but it's not like she's got giant eyes

or like bottle cap lenses. They just look like like a small prescription or like a you know, medium prescription. You know, she would be able to find a wall. Oh yeah, and again I don't I don't know. These are just I've got to wonder if maybe that's what's going on. Here's the next one, and I know we've we've already briefly talked about this is how did she

get on that roof? Okay, well, you guys have both said that it looks like it's possible that she could have got there via the fire escape the door itself from the inside of the hotel. Like I said before, was alarmed, and there was no record of the alarm having been set or set off, which means that theoretically, either she didn't go through that door or somebody with access went through the door ahead of time or with her. Um.

I mean, it's it's it's weird overall. I know we've talked about you know, it's a it's a small opening to the water tank. Right. So there's there's a couple of theories that I've come across, and I think some of these are just kind of Acam's razor conjecture theories. If if that makes sense, it's well, I guess it's got to be this. The first one is that it

was employee air. This theory runs that she didn't set off the alarm because some hotel employee had gone through the door at some point before her and didn't rearm it. Now this is this is this is assuming that you arm and disarm it at the door and not somewhere else. So it felt like a keypad where you wave through and let you through and then you go back out. Maybe they it is that in the doors didn't shut

all the way right. Yeah, I guess this is like one of those instances where people in California, I hate to generalize, but like to smoke, and people in the service industry particular, like you know, go up and have a cigarette, go up on the roof, have a cigarette. A lot of places, especially in a kind of place where like your security cameras maybe don't work. You just unplugged the alarm, yeah, and unlocked the door, right, the door is still probably locked. Unlocked the door walk out,

you know, maybe you have it. Maybe it's night and you have it like propped open because there's no way to unlock it from the outside. Who knows, and she sneaks out while you're out there for all we know. You know that. But I think it's it's likely that it's one of those ones that you can just disconnect it. It's unlikely to me that it's so high tech that it's it's probably not some crazy Yeah, it's probably a

key lock. Yeah. Well yeah, and it's like obviously it can be a magnetic key, because they would have a record of who opened that door. Yeah, that's a very

good point, thank you. I hadn't even thought about that. Well, that's saying that their system recognizes that, and it just doesn't recognize a fallout in general to being swiped but you know, this theory, if we run with it, is saying that, Okay, somebody went through and left the door open and then realize their mistake and came back later and either a just shut the door or be went up there, found a pile of clothes on the roof, couldn't find anybody, took them, shut the door and chucked them,

so they didn't get in trouble. I you know, I doubt that though, because I mean I think that if you went out there the door, the doorway to the roof, the access door is on the opposite side. There's like a structure on the top there, and the water tanks are on one side of it, and the doorway to the roof is on the other to the far side of that. I would think that if you went up there to close that door, just wanted to smoke a cigarette whatever, you probably wouldn't go looking for any you know,

look searching the roof. You probably would just lock the door and go back to your well. But what I'm saying is that if this person goes back says, oops, crud, I left this opener I found, Oh I didn't lock it when I go we just make sure nobody's up here before I shut the door on them and lock them up. That's entirely possible. If they found clothes, I don't.

I don't know if they take them, but well, you know, if if you're on if you're not on good terms with your employer, and you don't want to get in trouble, you might just sweep something under the rug. I think that. So, is it confirmed that they did not find your clothes? Well, that's that's something I can't get a handle. I I don't have an answer for that. Uh, and we'll go ahead and we'll we'll we'll just talk about that right now.

She's found naked in the water tank. I don't find any official reports that say that they found her close. I've been on some forums where they've really hashed through a lot of this story, and people on those forums are saying that they found her clothes in the water tank, but it's never I can never get it corroborated with an official report of any kind, which I'm not I'm not poo pooing forums at all, But unfortunately, if I can't track down an official source, I can't say that

that's really what happened. Sure, and I guess you know, we're talking that it may have been so wendy that dogs could not pick up ascent on the roof. Right. So if she, let's just say, for instance, if she was like I'm going to go for a swim, because she wasn't in her right mind, and took all her clothes off and left them on top of the water tower and go into the water tower, her clothes could have ostensibly blown away. Somebody could have found him in

the street. You know, she was having a manic episode. You could have torn her clothes up and just flung him over the side of the roof tip yeah, or or it's possible. Um. And this actually kind of runs into our next theory is if the water system is so stopped up, the clothes drifted into the clothes might have been sucked into the system because if you see her in the footage, she looks like she's wearing basically some basketball shorts a hoodie and made it for a skirt.

Oh well, I mean, whether it's shorts or a skirt, it's not a lot of material. So these things could have easily been pulled into the system. Maybe not the flip flops, but again, I have no idea what has happened to her clothing? They yeah, they found him in the tank. That would support the idea that she climbed in for she fell in, climbed in whatever, was trying to pull herself back out. And I don't know if you guys, have you guys ever gone swimming fully clothed? Yeah? No,

you know how hard it is? Yeah, it's really hard. Yeah. And it's like, so she's trying to pull herself up and out of the water and through that hole again and realizing her clothes are really weighing her down, so she might have like taken them off, and maybe she was desperately trying to get back up and out of

that hole. Well, and that that would make sense, But again I don't know, I have no idea where closed are um, So let's uh the whole thing with her clothes though, and and what happened to him do still lead to the second theory that I've got here or another theory which is from the same forum that I found the information about her um her clothes being in

the water tank. These same places I've also found theories that said that she met with foul play from either an employee or a resident of the building who was

in with the employees and knew how things work. Because the thing to remember is that there are people who permanently live in that hotel because they rent rooms by the week, and so it's these people get their weekly I don't know, Medicaid or whatever support check it might be, and it's very cheap to live there, so I'm just gonna live in this one room and they stay there.

So it could be that somebody who lived their long term, which means they would know the ins and outs of the hotel, could have been the one that lured who are up to the roof and knew how to get through the door, get up there without setting the alarm off. And then this is where things get a little hinky, is then coerced her into the tank and then they hauled their clothes away somehow. Yeah, so somehow co coerced

or tricked or something like that. Yeah, I mean, this is this is the thing is that if there's a second person, I don't understand how they talked her into getting into the water tank. Yeah. I don't get that either. I mean it could have been it could have been one of those things where you know, Hey, we're not supposed to be up here. Hey, somebody's coming. We better hide quick down that hatch. There's a you guys have watched the newer Sherlock series, right, I have not. I

hear it's good. So there's a whole episode it's called The Lady in Pink, about a serial killer who gets his victims to take a poison capsule themselves and kill themselves. So I mean, you know, granted that's a TV show and it's based on Sherlock. You know, especially if this girl is not totally in her right mind or under your rest of some kind, or if she's running right,

maybe she thinks that's a great place to hide. You know, she doesn't realize that it's a water tank and that she's not going to be able to get back out. She may not realize if it's dark, she might not realize how far down the water is, and you might hang herself, you know. I mean, think about it. And I think Joe started this is that you get into a body of water, You get into a pool, and like a swimming pool, and the water is only three inches above the level, or the top is above the water.

It's not too hard to pull yourself out. You double that distance, and that's six inches from the water to the platform. That's a little bit of harder now think about it. It's a foot or two above your head. Yeah. And also you know that if you have room to work with, what you can sort of like lever yourself up and splay your elbows out and everything like that. You know, she had this little tiny opening. Well, and

let's think about the fact she's about my size. Actually, she was a little taller and a little skinnier than I am. Yeah, she's a hundred pounds. Yeah, so that's two inches taller than I am. And we don't need to talk about how much that I am. I know I'm not. I know it's shocking, but you know, I am not in horrible shape, but I'm not in great shape. I couldn't pull myself out of something like that with

just my upper body strength, no way. And looking at her and looking at pictures of her, even I think in like a life or death situation, there's only so much your body can do. I don't know that even if the water was if she could get an armhold or you know, like any kind of anything like that, just using body s dring. Yeah, it would be very hard.

And the whole problem with this, this theory too, is that if that had been the way she went, she found herself trapped in here in the water and she couldn't get out, they would have found damage to her fingers. She would have spent the rest of her the rest of her life before she drowned, clawing at the sides of the tank. That's true. Additionally, I guess you think of if they were doing a search like two days after,

like you could easily survive in there for two days. Well, it depends it was really cold, So that means the water is cold. How cold? Um, I'm gonna guess if they were, I'm going to guess fifty degrees. Yeah, it gets l a in January, does get kind of chilling. I don't Yeah, so I don't know. Fifty degrees maybe a little less with wind chill in the Have you ever spent an extended about a period extended period of time and water and and now that's how it starts

to just suck at your body. I guess that's true. Yeah, hypothermia. What actually said? Yeah, well it's and I think I know where you're going with this devon is that you hear these stories of people who are in the ocean for days and freezing cold water and they somehow survive. But a lot of those people have something to hang onto to float, so they don't have to put out the energy to keep their head above water. Well, humans do float for the most part, for the most part.

But yeah, I mean, you know, I guess, I think, I kind of think. Ostensibly, I guess two days later, she could have still been alive. It's possible, but hard people. Yeah, But you know, the thing is, and here's the other hard part, and this is this is what's damning for the Los Angeles police, is they were on the rough and I've heard reports that one of them looked and

looked in the water tank and shut the lid. Really, I didn't see anything, now that I think it's the chief of the Los Angeles Police said, Listen, it's an eight foot deep tank with a sixteen inch hole. If it's full of water and there's a body on the bottom, it's very hard to see that. So I cannot fault anybody for not seeing that. If that, if she was there at that time, I would say that if anything, if anything, you've got to give the guy credit for

actually going out there and looking at the tank. I wouldn't have Yeah, well, those tanks are hard to get up into, right you here not a place you know? Actually, I mean something has been made of that that they're like, you know, eight ten ft tall there? And and how how did she get up there? Yeah, there's some talk about how hard it was for the firefighters get up there to get well here, Well, yeah, I don't want to get your body out, but actually it's in terms

of getting up there, it wouldn't be that hard. Let me show you. Let me show you a picture of the tanks on the roof that we've seen these photos. Do you see that? Do you see the guard rail next to the tank? That is true, next to one of the sets of tanks. That is the tank she's in. But you have to wonder what the distance between those. It doesn't look like it's like right next to it. Um couple. It's plausible that she could have stood on the rail, leaned over and got off up, swung herself up.

I I will, I will agree with Joe. It's that she could have gotten herself up there. That Yeah, I was, I was not going to disagree with that. Yeah, I would say the distance from the top of that rail to the top of the tank is three or four ft at the most. Yeah. Well, let's let's move on, because there's there's more murder. Yes, I believe it or not, there are more murder theories. And this is where it gets a little farther fetched. Okay. So, like we said,

she's a very small woman. But again, those photos we looked at, it's not impossible to carry a body up into one of those tanks. Extremely difficult to do. So I say that because I don't put a lot of stock in our the next couple of murder theories. But I'm not going to say this absolutely impossible, but it's a reach. Okay. So the next one we've got is that there is a serial killer in Los Angeles right now and that Alyssa was the first victim. Here's where

this is coming from. About a month after she died, another young woman college one college age was found dead, and then a month later, another woman in her early twenties was found dead. The only thing that links these women is the fact that they were found drowned or on the beach near water. Water is the only thing that's the linking connection. But people have said that that's a link and that somebody's going around and well, of course they couldn't recreate the water tank because that's a

pretty random thing. But now that this dude is just out there drowning women, the circumstances of each of these deaths are so different. And now in the case in the case of these other two women, where they obviously murdered or they just don't Yeah, no, it was one of them was a prostitute and it was obvious that she was murdered, and the other one, this woman washed up, and then I couldn't find a whole lot of information

on or after the fact. But if you wash up on the beach, generally you're not a swimmer who you know, couldn't make it back to shore. It's not usually the case. So I'm going to go out on a limb. I think that there is a serial killer. I think we can say positively that he's an aquarious Okay, okay, bad joke. Yeah, that I should be a that eliminates like, uh, you know, twelve people. So there you go, yeah, there you go.

All right. The next theory, which this one goes even farther afield is that two weeks before Elyssa disappeared, she tweeted a link about a Canadian firm that had gotten funding from the Pentagon to pursue research for the U.

S Military uh in cloaking devices. That tweet has gotten people to say that somehow she knew too much about this program, and the cloaking device was real, and the person that she was talking to in the elevator was wearing said cloaking device and either she could see them and the camera couldn't, or she couldn't see them but knew they were there, and they're the one that is

responsible for her. Okay, So in the defense of this, this is Harry Potter, sure, But in the defense of this, it does look like talking to evade someone in the beginning, and then she's talking to someone you know, you were saying, it kind of looked like she was just like playing around, But she was playing around in a way that people

don't play around alone. You know, like you don't hide and jump out if you think you're alone, you hide and jump out at your friend who's walking down the hall after you, or you know you are trying to evade someone. So you stand in the very corner of an elevator, so when they walk past, it looks like

in there, you know. So in the defense of this, I'm not willing to say, oh, it's an invisibility cloak, but I am willing to say that the theory of somebody being there, which is, but that's that's totally separate from this invisibility I don't know, I kind of like invisibility cloak. Yeah, it's a great idea. You're a huge fan of Harry Pott. Yeah, here's here's the thing. She tweeted a link to an article. She tweeted a link

to an article. So okay, So she apparently she was the only person in the world who saw this our to call. Yeah, that's absolute hard part. And and there's there's and I'm not going to go through a bout there. There are other theories that a particular person killed her. I found this again again on a lot of forum boards. Everybody talked about a particular person, and they all used a assigned code name for this guy. But I could

never find out who it was. And I can never again find anything substantial other than these people batting around saying this guy. They if I understood it was this guy was a resident of the hotel. But no name, no sores, no nothing. So I can't I can't follow down that path because I just I can't support it.

You would expect that. I'm sure the l a p D took a good hard look at term residents know for uh is for a national the correct word to use, uh, you know, loses their life in a hotel in your city. You are going to put everybody in the rack and get every detail, especially an attractive young woman, attractive young woman that is getting national publicity, international, international, thank you,

before we get into what is the official version of everything. Uh, there's a couple of things or one other thing that I want to go through that still in my mind kind of stands out one or two. Actually, one is I saw a timeline of her trip, and people had figured out, uh, you know, when she had been in the prior city, when she had gotten to l A her last side by the hotel staff, and then and when she was in the elevator. And there's a day

difference between the date stamp. Evidently between the last day she was seen and the date stamp in the elevator footage. There's a difference of a day, so on the thirty feet of January she doesn't call her parents, and then the footage is from February one of her in the elevator, So there's the full day there that we don't know what's happened to her. Well on February one, and it could have been one of the more it could have been one in the morning, it could have been eleven

o'clock at night. Um, I mean, I know, Joe, you said you found some stuff about her having been seen in the area. Yeah, the last and you know, but somebody people she was reported to have been seen in the bookstore a few blocks away from the hotel. It's called the Last Bookstore. But I don't have any it's not a confirmed thing, so don't anybody go writing any books about it or anything like that. So the date

is unsure. This place, by the way, is a little side is called the Last Bookstore, So do google on what Last Bookstore, Los Angeles and look at some of the pictures because it's a it's a trippy places. Admit. You showed me the photos. Yeah, it's very cool and uh and I went to their website. Also because according to this report, she was spotted at the bookstore hanging out. She was apparently talking a lot and and sort of

accosting some of the customers and annoying people. Yeah, gal erratic um, and which supports the theory that she was having a manic episode. She was also reportedly buying books

and records. I looked at their website and this web this bookstore does indeed sell records, remember those things, vinyl and all that stuff, very apparently buying books, And when you think about it, you know that also supports the theory of a manic episode, because what sensible person when they're traveling would buy heavy, heavy stuff and especially things like records, you know, yeah and oh um. But anyway,

this is the report that I heard. Yeah, So that that's the thing, is that the timeline there's big gaps in it, which weirds me out. And like I said before, I still cannot find anything official that says was there water in her lungs when she died. She was in a water tank for a couple of weeks, so honestly, there's water in her lungs when they pulled her out of the tank. But I haven't seen anything that says, well,

it's obviously she died from drowning. Other than the official cause and and the ladies and gentleman, like I said before, the official cause was accidental drowning with mental illness playing a leading factory. Here's the piece of the puzzle that we've held back, and this is probably the worst piece of the puzzle, and this is for her, which is that she was severely bipolar. If not severely, she was

severe is probably the wrong word. She's bipolar, which if you've really if you go and you read her blog that she had on tumbler, she talks about her depression and she writes about it, and it really you can tell that this woman has fallen into some pretty dark times at points, which makes me think that she's going to have equally as manic highs. Her Instagram on like forums online, it's been one of those things that people like really like to talk about along with her Tumbler.

You know, she only died a year ago, so Tumbler is still active, by the way, it's not active, but it's still up. So her Instagram was last updated um a year and a couple of weeks ago, so it wasn't like close to her death. It was, you know, like a month before her death. But her very last one is like this picture off of a rooftop and she's captioned it because it stops for no one. Time is constant and I must move with it. So I feel like could be trying to be profound or could be.

But you know, I've kind of looked through these such a creepy thing to admit about myself, right that I've looked through this dead girl's Instagram. But like a lot of her stuff are like it's really depressive, it's really down, and you know, I think that it's probably true that

if she gets that down, she probably gets crazy up. Yeah, and this is this is something that makes me really wonder about her family, is that they had to have been aware of a condition, Oh absolutely, And why they would let her take off solo on a trip like this, Yeah, is a little mysterious to well, but Joe, It's it's not uncommon for folks that are in her situation. Medication is typically the standard answer. Yeah, maybe she stopped taking her I was gonna say that, how often have you

heard stories of, well, they stopped taking their meds? And it could have been that she was having a time because some of the stuff she put up, she was going out, she was having fun. She might have thought, well, I'm just having fun and I shouldn't take my meds while I'm drinking, So I'm not going to take my meds. And again this is not this is not to say anything against Alissa. This is just me making a theory.

But it may have been. It could be that she just decided to for whatever reason, to skip a dose and skip another dose and then she went on downline. But I still I don't And this is the thing about the whole the story is, I don't understand what would prompt someone to decide to go skinny dipping in

a water tank on the rooftop in the winter. And the whole thing is that she didn't go up there obviously with the intentive going skinny dipping, because she undoubtedly was not even aware that the existence of these tanks. Yeah well, yeah, well we don't know where clothes are, so we don't know she took a towel, yeah, you know.

And that's the other thing is obvious. Her clothes must have been there, because I can't imagine the l a p D just saying, oh, you know, here she's found nude or closure nowhere to be found up case close because yeah, yeah, I mean so I'm thinking her clothes had to be had to have been found. Well, I don't know it. Yeah, that's the only way to find out is to you know, look at the case file. The alp d're willing to just obviously share with us.

They don't like us. We have a checkered past with them. Yeah. Well here's uh that's really those are the theories and those are the facts we have. I do also have one other random bit that the Internet has had a field day with, as they tend to, which is that after her body was found, there was an outbreak of TV or tuberculosis in that area, and it was a evidently a very strong strain that was resistant to a lot of the drugs that are known to treat TV,

so they were testing for it. The test is called lamb alyssa, oh, which everybody went crazy on and said that there was some conspiracy theory. Okay, well I'm gonna put that to bed because I know that anybody that's listening to this is gonna go and look at some of the stuff and they're gonna come across that and wonder. Uh. It's a very simple answer. The part of the test uses that that looks for TV uses antibodies and a color change to identify the substance that is being tested,

and that is alyssa. Uh. The other part is a microbacterium specific component that is part of basillity's cell wall, and that's the LAMB. This is the most technical we have ever been on the show. This is the most technical. And I skipped a bunch of big words. I know, I'm watched it. Thank you. Joe are like resident pronunciator. He is, He's He's our version of Mikey. That's one I'm not so sure about. That is all the information

now that we've gone through the TV link. That's all the all of the facts and all the details that I've been able to wrangle up on the story of a list alam And I mean, it's a sad story no matter whether we figure it out. I know you love to figure this story out, Joe and answer the mystery. But regardless, it's a it's a sad story, and it's it's just even if we knew the answer, I have a feeling that all the other circumstances in it would still make it stand out. Is is kind of a creeper,

well a little bit, you know. And I think the other thing about this is that it's really recent. Yeah, it's so new, and we're so close to it. You know. We've got these other cases that are, you know, fifty sixty years old, and they have questions on them, but there are more facts and they always come out, you know, a couple of years after the fact, or and there's no video footage. The video footage is probably what makes

this one stand out the most. Yeah, I think there's just a lot of weird stuff, and I think I'm sad to say that. I don't think that we'll ever have a good answer. Yeah, I don't. I don't think it will ever be solved either. I think the I do think there's highly possible there was another person involved.

They might not necessarily a murdered her, but if they did, probably the best way to find that person, if they're if they're living in the hotel is to question the hotel staff and just ask to any of your long term residents, have you noticed that some of them have change their behavior a little bit and started buying a lot of bottled water and bring it in the room. Yeah.

So I guess my my thing with this whole whole thing is that like I have I have, I have a female friend who you guys have met, who she travels the world alone all the time. Um. And one of the things that she talks about there are a lot of people who do this, they just travel alone. Um. But you make friends on the road, And I think that it's unlikely to me that Alyssa had was truly

always alone in this situation. You know, if you're you're traveling friends, you have a friends somebody, you know, you find a friend who's traveling somebody who's staying at this like horrible hotel with you, you know that you can like make fun of or whatever you find companionship as

as human things you want to do. So, you know, I think it whether it was just like a friend, they were just like playing around in the elevator and we like have horribly misinterpreted it because she ended up dead a couple hours later, or you know, it was something sinister. Who knows, But I do agree Joe. I know it's super rare occurrence, but Joe and I agree there there had to have been somebody else involved it

was the elevator incident. It certainly appears it was somebody else. Yeah. Yeah, And again, the interesting thing for me is like that person that that person, well might be this might just be sheer coincidence, but that person seemed to be aware of the existence of that security camera in the elevator. Yeah, that was weird. Yeah, sure, that's otherwise. I mean, if you want to hold an elevator, do you stand there holding the button or do you just put your hand

on the door and hold the doorback. That's the easy That's the easy way to do it, isn't it. Yeah, I guess unless you were like messing with the person inside, right, Like she went in and pushed a button, and you wanted to mess with her, so you just, like he stood and held the button, make a little hidden from her, so she would like jump out to see what's going on, and you would go and she would go, oh my gosh,

that's so funny. Right, and then you would sit there and talk with your hands like moving a little bit, and then you guys would walk up together. Right, but let's stay open for a really long time. Yeah, it's a four minutive video whatever it is. I mean the version that's on YouTube is four minutes long, and if it's if that's been sped up a little bit, then it's six minutes ramus, whatever it is, it's an extended

amount of time. So I don't know this. This is what I'm I'm doing my normal fallback of I don't want to make a decision because I can't see someone and this is in their rational mind getting into a water tank. But I don't know that she was in that state of mind. I guess even in like a it's not like, um, somebody who's bipolar is like has a break with reality though, right, I mean, like you have your manneq and your depressive states, but it's not

like you have totally disassociated. But it's a good idea to crawl in this. I've I've I've known people who are bipolar, and when they're up, they're making bad decisions. You could equate it to a friend who drinks too much and is having a good time and says this is gonna be an awesome idea and does something that is the worst idea in the world, but they are not thinking outside of that narrow tunnel vision of this is gonna be red and then when they get there.

Oh no. But again, as Joe said, if that were the case her hands, you know there there should have been some trauma to her hands well, and that that actually blames me back to one terrible fact that I did read, which may be why we don't know this. Have you ever heard of the phrase d gloving? Oh gosh, this is when a body and water this in begins to release and her she was degloved. The skin on her arms and her hands had pulled away on its own. So there may have been damaged to the skin that

we don't know about. Yeah, and I'm sorry for grossing out Devon and anybody else at the very end of this show, you know, making everybody uncomfortable, and I really apologized for that. But that was another fact that that we need to consider. For me, it's just that term you could say, like her hands started to decompose off her body. That's not so upsetting to me. It's the fact that you call it de gloving that's just disgusting. Then unfortunately, that's the that's the medical I know, and

I just can't. Yeah, So okay, my theory is that she befriended a guy who unfortunately happened to be a serial killer, and he took her up to there. He took her out there, they climbed to the top of the tank to look at the stars and the incredible view. And then he like smothered it with a pillow, and which is why there's no signs of, you know, any sort of marks on her body. So smother it with a pillow. And then she thought he was bringing the pillow up to sit on, you know, but he brought

it up to murder her with. Uh. And then he stripped her naked, throws her clothes over the side of the building, knowing that her body won't be found for a long time and the clothes will be long gone by that time, and then just plunk short of the tank and jumps to the ground and goes on his way. Yeah, I do lean towards the official version that she probably put herself in the tank. Yeah, it's it's inexplicable. That's why that perfect way to say it. And I really

appreciate that joke because that's the word I could. It's inexplicable, And I'm I'm behind that theory. But that's the that's the most I can be behind any theory. Yeah, I mean it's possible, but it's it's a it's a little hard to believe it was Harry Potter. Oh, the invisibility cloak. Yeah. Yeah, she was kind of a nerd again, the stuff you find out about people when you stalk there, you know, whatever,

profiles after they've died. But like, you know, she would tweet pictures of like the Arthur Conan Doyle's room and like it was closed. So she was super upset because she just wanted to go see like the sherlock room. And you're just kind of a nerds to the bookstore, you know, why why couldn't it be Harry Potter. Harry Potter hits nerds, he does. It's true. Yeah, this is this is the whole new series of books in the

Harry Potter Harry Potters on Nerds. Yeah. Well, ladies and gentlemen, all the links a bunch of the links for this particular episode. This particular story will be on the website as usual. Website is Thinking Sideways podcast dot com. If you want to tell us something that you think about the show, you're welcome to comment on it. Directly on the website, or you can go ahead and send us an email. That email address is Thinking Sideways Podcast at gmail dot com. Don't forget to find us and like

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always available right there. Uh, that having been said, really appreciate all of the listeners send us story ideas. I know we've gotten some feedback and some some great comments and compliments, and thank you everybody for that. And we will try and work our way through the stories that you're sending us while we're looking at all the other ones that keep peaking our interests. And also, if you are the murderer, we want to hear from you, so send us a name now and just tell us what

really happened. Actually, no, I don't want that person. I'm not interested yourself. Thanks everybody, we'll talk to you later. Bye everybody, Bye,