CA/Canada - Elisa Lam - 21 years old - Los Angeles/Vancouver - 31-Jan-2013 - #4

[kunibob]

This is getting out of hand, and given that the VFX industry is currently in a protest over the Oscars fiasco, I have to speak up on behalf of my VFX brothers and sisters.

As someone who has worked in film VFX (I can get mod verified, if that adds weight to this?), here are a few points to consider:

By the time outsourcing gets outsourced and gets even more outsourced after that, as many as a dozen or more VFX studios might touch a project. In fact, some of my ex-colleagues worked at one of the studios that did work on Dark Water. If Invisible Light Agency had anything to do with Dark Water, it’s because they bid cheaply on it, and that’s all there is to it.

There is nothing inherently fishy about the title “Invisible Light Agency” or a VFX company being in a seedy neighbourhood – both are kind of the status quo. Read up on the sorry situation of the VFX industry in California, and you'll immediately understand why these companies have to sound as dazzling as possible, have to exist as cheaply as possible, and the turnover is so ridiculously high. I can link to some articles if it will help get this point across, but I feel like this thread isn't the place for it.

Film VFX are a brutally overworked/unappreciated job, and it’s very common for workers to move onto stuff that pays better (including government work), so there’s nothing suspicious about a guy from a studio going to work for the government. Several of my past colleagues have gone on to government work (including CSIS), and one fellow even went into a private sleuthing company. People burn out and go where the money is to take a break after the breakneck pace of VFX.

It’s possible to draw links between anything you want, if you look hard enough. Heck, let’s draw links between me and Elisa: I’m only 2 degrees removed from Elisa (one of my friends was her friend). I have friends who worked at the studio where Dark Water's VFX were done. I have a friend who has been deployed to S. Korea, and other friends who live there. I posted about that cloaking technology in my own personal social networks. Does that make me a suspicious person? …see what I mean? It really worries me to see people drawing tenuous links between these things, and dragging in innocent people who almost certainly have nothing to do with it.

We all want to solve this mystery, and I can appreciate that, but I have always understood this site to be a place of logic. It frustrates me to see people zeroing in on things that aren't logically connected.

 

[houndstooth]

Yes, there is an reporter on KTSF26 who´s name has the last character "玉".
http://www.ktsf.com/en/jessie-liang/

She did a story on organic farming. Wouldn't it be par for the course in this case of odd synchronicities of one of the farms being profiled in the story to be the one EL was alleged to be thinking about getting a job at?

 

[bobmeier]

I feel like the thank you button is not enough in this case - i just wanted to state that I totally agree with kunibob!
I like these forums and many of the ideas that are being frown around here. But I signed up to collaborate in clearing up some of this case. By connecting the facts we can find & by using logic.

I really don't mean to belittle anybodys thoughts with this - but I just feel like shouting "Conspiracy!" by pointing towards an unconected number of oddities of this case doesn't help anything. Like I said yesterday, no matter what case, if you dig around long enough, you will always find coincidences. And since we are not getting much official info, all we do is dig around, so the amount of coincidences that can be found might rise a little.
But I still don't see any clear facts pointing towards a devious goverment / arms company plan to kill a depressive young woman and then stash her in a water tank. Again, I'm sorry if I offend anyone by saying this, it is not my intention!

Edit: Also, the only info I have read about is Elisa wanting to visit and possibly work on an Organic Farm. Where is the connection to Ching Hai or another Cult? Regular organic farms have nothing sinister about them. But perhaps I have missed a piece of info. If so, thank you in advance for showing me.

 

[houndstooth]

The 10th floor button goes red when pressed. Its an anomaly because all other floor buttons go green when pressed.

The 10th floor was where the SO lived. So maybe the elevator didn't just automatically stop on that floor unless you had key card access.
Keep guests from wandering out of bounds into these long term room leases
maybe? Just a thought.

 

[Qrious]

Just my 2 cents' worth maybe.

Much as some theories here may seem wild, I still believe it is better to have them posted as long as there are some connections, so that we can all assess them critically. This is to guard against people doing self-censorship before they post and then we might end up losing some really true information.

 

[houndstooth]

Maybe this gives the clue why she stayed at Cecil - to see the building where the Great Gatsby was filmed? Her FB post also mentioned doing a "pilgrimage" to places in the film, Drive.

Actually, I thought she was giving unsolicited film location advice about
Baz Luhrmann's remake of the Great Gatsby. She thought it would be
suitable because it's in the Art Deco style.

What it makes me aware of is how into Hollywood she is and the entertainment industry as a whole.

 

[fred&edna]

Over the past week or so I've seen theories that EL's death was related to...
the bible
the occult
an asian food spiritualist
the illuminati
and other random strangeness
What's left... aliens?

Speculation is fine but we really need to stick to FACTS (few as they may be).

(jmo)

 

[skyfitsheaven]

It's the same with her alleged fb. It shows a couple posts from 2007 and then nothing until 2012 or 13 I forget which.
What that seemed to me was a dormant fb that was somehow commandeered
and "dedicated" to being portrayed as "hers".

Same may be true of this tumbr account.
This whole case is weird and not at all what it seems in my opinion.

That is definitely her Facebook account. Her real life friends have posted memorial posts in which they tag that account, the one where the userpic is the photo of her on the set of the George S. show in Toronto.

The reason all her posts are from different dates and you can only see certain ones is due to Facebook privacy settings. They change frequently and will sometimes force certain posts to be public. Clearly Elisa had 90% of her posts private, including her photo albums.

The Tumblr posting, while creepy, has also been explained on the forum at length.

 

[houndstooth]

Its a big crazy puzzle, so manyyyy coincidences dont exist


not many see further then the elevator vid

We are special

Indeed. It was sort of what the "everything but the kitchen sink" poster
seemed to be alluding to. Not that many right on cue synchronicities happen like that way unless they were made to.

 

[anansie]

http://www.guanxiweb.com/GuanXiWeb/News/ViewNews?newsId=5552

Ty.

Now I can see it.

Okay I've translated it below:

According to Chinese news report, after Elisa had been missing for 19 days, her body was found. She was found naked, her body position in water was feet up head facing down, in a water tank at the Cecil Hotel. From being a missing person to a dead person, its been 3 days since her discovery, but the case is still a mystery.

The last time Elisa was seen alive was on Jan 31st. She was in the hotel elevator. Last week, LAPD publicly released the surveillance footage of Elisa in the elevator. She can be seen playfully/whimsically pressing the elevator buttons, exiting the lift a couple of times, exhibiting strange mannerisms. Her actions could be interpreted as either being under the influence of a substance, or as trying to hide from someone.

This enigmatic video became big news, and sparked an entire internet community of amateur sleuths. But no matter how many times that video has been played back or magnified by viewers, no one has been able to solve the mystery of her behaviour in the elevator. Every answer seems to lead to even more questions.

An old hotel, a young woman, a mysterious death, once again this puts the Cecil Hotel back in the spotlight. 66 years ago, a tragedy occured here that shook America. The 22 year old victim was nicknamed the "Black Dahlia". She was last seen at the Cecil Hotel. It remained an unsolved case, the perpetrator never caught, and a movie was made based on it. But reality is more dramatic. After 21 year old Elisa Lam went missing, LAPD brought search dogs into the building to look for her, but failed to find her. It wasn't until hotel guests complained about the poor water pressure, complained about how the water was practically only trickling out in drops, that a hotel worker went up to the water tanks to check. There he found Elisa's body. But by then, hotel guests had already been drinking, eating, bathing and using the water that came from the water tank where Elisa was found.

English tourist Sarah Baugh said, "The moment I turned on the tap, the water that came out was black. It took 2 seconds for the water to return to a normal colour. The taste of the water here was really strange, a bit sweet, but a very disgusting taste.

The nearly 1-storey-high water tank is not locked. Anyone can climb up it. The door from the hotel that leads to the roof is locked and fitted with an alarm. Anyone who tries to open that door will set off the alarm. LAPD thus suspect that the murderer may have something to do with the hotel staff, or maybe is still in the hotel. An elderly Mr Diaz who has been living at the hotel for 32 years said that on the night Elisa was missing, the water pipes between the 3rd and 4th floors got blocked, and there was flooding on the 4th floor. And the night before that, there was a strange, thundering sound that came from the 4th floor.

Since yesterday (22 Feb 2013), LAPD have began an autopsy of Elisa's body, hoping it will provide answers to solving the case.

LAPD PR department spokesperson Anderson Smith says, "Elisa's death is an unusual one. We will be able to find out from the toxicology reports if she was poisoned/drugged."

The toxicology report may also answer another question : why were Elisa's actions in the elevator so strange? Narcotics is one possible explanation, another possible explanation could be that Elisa was being stalked. It's a pity there are no surveillance cameras outside the elevator on the 14th floor to help us answer this question.

Anderson Smith says, "At the moment, I don't believe there are any surveillance cameras outside of the elevator on the 14th floor, but someone who was at the hotel may have taken video footage of Elisa while she was alive, or have seen or heard something that may help us solve this case. At the moment we are finding out who was at the hotel and who may have a clue about what really happened that night."

It now seems that the truth will only be revealed from the autopsy. Winters - from the Coroner's office - say it will take 6 to 8 weeks for the autopsy to be concluded. Even though the LAPD are currently keeping tight-lipped about the case, various news media have reported that a hotel insider said that the police have interrogated a staff member of the hotel, because this person has the key to Elisa's room and is thus a main suspect. What was Elisa's reason for coming to America? This may also provide another clue to solving this case.

Opinions vary widely. Elisa's family are immigrants from Hong Kong. Her parents run a restaurant in Vancouver. According to news reports, Elisa may have gone to America to look for work. A reporter interviewed a Vancouver Chinese man who frequents Vancouver's commercial district. He says people there all know Elisa's family. Elisa's aunt runs a big stall in Vancouver's Commerical District. She said that Elisa went to Los Angeles to meet a friend she met over the Internet. Therefore Elisa's internet friend is also a suspect. But the LAPD has not said anything about this, presumably so that the suspect wouldn't try to escape.

Elisa's tragedy could have started to unfold the moment she stepped foot into the Cecil Hotel. This hotel has an 86 year old history. The hotel lobby has been renovated and now looks magnificent. But the exterior of the hotel looks dated and old. Reporters discovered yesterday that it was still possible to book rooms at the hotel, and the room rates, which used to be cheap, have now risen considerably. This hotel even claims to be able to cater to guests who speak a variety of foreign languages. Nevertheless, no matter how pleasant the hotel comes across on its advertisements, it can only really attract tourists and hobos, since people from downtown LA are already savvy about the Cecil Hotel's history. Past guests of the Cecil Hotel include serial killer Richard Ramirez and the Australian, Jack Unterweger, who murdered 9 prostitutes. Many murders have been committed in this hotel. Although Elisa Lam's and the Black Dahlia's case share many similarities, most people would hope that Elisa's case will not share the same outcome.

 

[houndstooth]

<rsbm>

ITA kunibob. I had just typed the following when I read your post:

Along with thousands of others, I too found the multitude of MSM articles about the invisible light technology fascinating. (Come to think of it, I've even discussed it in another WS thread). So, if I stayed at the Cecil Hotel and was found in that tank, would y'all think my death was related to this technology and the VFX company next door?

Probably not...unless you had a fb page that was alleged to be yours where
RS was your only friend, too. He's the link.

 

[Marlon]

This is getting out of hand, and given that the VFX industry is currently in a protest over the Oscars fiasco, I have to speak up on behalf of my VFX brothers and sisters.

As someone who has worked in film VFX (I can get mod verified, if that adds weight to this?), here are a few points to consider:

By the time outsourcing gets outsourced and gets even more outsourced after that, as many as a dozen or more VFX studios might touch a project. In fact, some of my ex-colleagues worked at one of the studios that did work on Dark Water. If Invisible Light Agency had anything to do with Dark Water, it&#8217;s because they bid cheaply on it, and that&#8217;s all there is to it.

There is nothing inherently fishy about the title &#8220;Invisible Light Agency&#8221; or a VFX company being in a seedy neighbourhood &#8211; both are kind of the status quo. Read up on the sorry situation of the VFX industry in California, and you'll immediately understand why these companies have to sound as dazzling as possible, have to exist as cheaply as possible, and the turnover is so ridiculously high. I can link to some articles if it will help get this point across, but I feel like this thread isn't the place for it.

Film VFX are a brutally overworked/unappreciated job, and it&#8217;s very common for workers to move onto stuff that pays better (including government work), so there&#8217;s nothing suspicious about a guy from a studio going to work for the government. Several of my past colleagues have gone on to government work (including CSIS), and one fellow even went into a private sleuthing company. People burn out and go where the money is to take a break after the breakneck pace of VFX.

It&#8217;s possible to draw links between anything you want, if you look hard enough. Heck, let&#8217;s draw links between me and Elisa: I&#8217;m only 2 degrees removed from Elisa (one of my friends was her friend). I have friends who worked at the studio where Dark Water's VFX were done. I have a friend who has been deployed to S. Korea, and other friends who live there. I posted about that cloaking technology in my own personal social networks. Does that make me a suspicious person? &#8230;see what I mean? It really worries me to see people drawing tenuous links between these things, and dragging in innocent people who almost certainly have nothing to do with it.

We all want to solve this mystery, and I can appreciate that, but I have always understood this site to be a place of logic. It frustrates me to see people zeroing in on things that aren't logically connected.

True true true, its just guessing,. And im not saying that its fact. But imo these elisa threads are full of just guessing , and u guys debating over witch floor she was on or what color the walls had are in the majority so i dont see what the problem is.

But ok,.. Now talk yourself out of the Aleister Crowley poem about Jephtha and his daughter Seila(Elisa) written in the Cecil in london 1889

Owww and read the poem to

 

[broccoli]

Now I can see it.

Okay I've translated it below:

According to Chinese news report, after Elisa had been missing for 19 days, her body was found. She was found naked, her body position in water was feet up head facing down, in a water tank at the Cecil Hotel. From being a missing person to a dead person, its been 3 days since her discovery, but the case is still a mystery.

The last time Elisa was seen alive was on Jan 31st. She was in the hotel elevator. Last week, LAPD publicly released the surveillance footage of Elisa in the elevator. She can be seen playfully/whimsically pressing the elevator buttons, exiting the lift a couple of times, exhibiting strange mannerisms. Her actions could be interpreted as either being under the influence of a substance, or as trying to hide from someone.

This enigmatic video became big news, and sparked an entire internet community of amateur sleuths. But no matter how many times that video has been played back or magnified by viewers, no one has been able to solve the mystery of her behaviour in the elevator. Every answer seems to lead to even more questions.

An old hotel, a young woman, a mysterious death, once again this puts the Cecil Hotel back in the spotlight. 66 years ago, a tragedy occured here that shook America. The 22 year old victim was nicknamed the "Black Dahlia". She was last seen at the Cecil Hotel. It remained an unsolved case, the perpetrator never caught, and a movie was made based on it. But reality is more dramatic. After 21 year old Elisa Lam went missing, LAPD brought search dogs into the building to look for her, but failed to find her. It wasn't until hotel guests complained about the poor water pressure, complained about how the water was practically only trickling out in drops, that a hotel worker went up to the water tanks to check. There he found Elisa's body. But by then, hotel guests had already been drinking, eating, bathing and using the water that came from the water tank where Elisa was found.

English tourist Sarah Baugh said, "The moment I turned on the tap, the water that came out was black. It took 2 seconds for the water to return to a normal colour. The taste of the water here was really strange, a bit sweet, but a very disgusting taste.

The nearly 1-storey-high water tank is not locked. Anyone can climb up it. The door from the hotel that leads to the roof is locked and fitted with an alarm. Anyone who tries to open that door will set off the alarm. LAPD thus suspect that the murderer may have something to do with the hotel staff, or maybe is still in the hotel. An elderly Mr Diaz who has been living at the hotel for 32 years said that on the night Elisa was missing, the water pipes between the 3rd and 4th floors got blocked, and there was flooding on the 4th floor. And the night before that, there was a strange, thundering sound that came from the 4th floor.

Since yesterday (22 Feb 2013), LAPD have began an autopsy of Elisa's body, hoping it will provide answers to solving the case.

LAPD PR department spokesperson Anderson Smith says, "Elisa's death is an unusual one. We will be able to find out from the toxicology reports if she was poisoned/drugged."

The toxicology report may also answer another question : why were Elisa's actions in the elevator so strange? Narcotics is one possible explanation, another possible explanation could be that Elisa was being stalked. It's a pity there are no surveillance cameras outside the elevator on the 14th floor to help us answer this question.

Anderson Smith says, "At the moment, I don't believe there are any surveillance cameras outside of the elevator on the 14th floor, but someone who was at the hotel may have taken video footage of Elisa while she was alive, or have seen or heard something that may help us solve this case. At the moment we are finding out who was at the hotel and who may have a clue about what really happened that night."

It now seems that the truth will only be revealed from the autopsy. Winters - from the Coroner's office - say it will take 6 to 8 weeks for the autopsy to be concluded. Even though the LAPD are currently keeping tight-lipped about the case, various news media have reported that a hotel insider said that the police have interrogated a staff member of the hotel, because this person has the key to Elisa's room and is thus a main suspect. What was Elisa's reason for coming to America? This may also provide another clue to solving this case.

Opinions vary widely. Elisa's family are immigrants from Hong Kong. Her parents run a restaurant in Vancouver. According to news reports, Elisa may have gone to America to look for work. A reporter interviewed a Vancouver Chinese man who frequents Vancouver's commercial district. He says people there all know Elisa's family. Elisa's aunt runs a big stall in Vancouver's Commerical District. She said that Elisa went to Los Angeles to meet a friend she met over the Internet. Therefore Elisa's internet friend is also a suspect. But the LAPD has not said anything about this, presumably so that the suspect wouldn't try to escape.

Elisa's tragedy could have started to unfold the moment she stepped foot into the Cecil Hotel. This hotel has an 86 year old history. The hotel lobby has been renovated and now looks magnificent. But the exterior of the hotel looks dated and old. Reporters discovered yesterday that it was still possible to book rooms at the hotel, and the room rates, which used to be cheap, have now risen considerably. This hotel even claims to be able to cater to guests who speak a variety of foreign languages. Nevertheless, no matter how pleasant the hotel comes across on its advertisements, it can only really attract tourists and hobos, since people from downtown LA are already savvy about the Cecil Hotel's history. Past guests of the Cecil Hotel include serial killer Richard Ramirez and the Australian, Jack Unterweger, who murdered 9 prostitutes. Many murders have been committed in this hotel. Although Elisa Lam's and the Black Dahlia's case share many similarities, most people would hope that Elisa's case will not share the same outcome.

If there was flooding on the 4th floor the night Elisa disappeared, maybe that is what she is describing with her weird hand gesture in the video, and why she was roaming around the hotel.

 

[anansie]

I'm wondering if the LAPD or hotel CCTV archives have any footage prior to the video they released. It'd be good to know whether EL took the elevator up to the 14th floor from her room on the 4th floor. If all the elevator security videos leading up to the video they released don't show EL, then maybe she took the stairs (10 flights??) Or we could see who else was going up the elevator right before her video. If she took the elevator up, we could see what type of behavior she may have been exhibiting on her trip up to the 14th floor.

As for the clothes being sucked into the 4 inch pipe, I'm wondering how her flip flop/sandals could get sucked in (or how a hoodie could be removed from both arms while on a torso, along with gym shorts (or whatever she was wearing) and underwear purely from water movement and decomposition of a body.

I know right. It doesn't make sense to me either. Her gym shorts can be sucked into the pipes? The water current is able to suck the shorts, elastic fastening around her waist and all, from her waist all the way down past her ankles so it can get whirled into the water pipe? :waitasec:

And her sandals too?? Or do they have their own theory about the sandals they are not revealing? Or have they found it? Hmm... what a mystery. I don't really get this part of the police reasoning. But since they are keeping mum about most aspects of this case, I suppose we may never know unless they say so...

 

[kunibob]

Probably not...unless you had a fb page that was alleged to be yours where
RS was your only friend, too. He's the link.

He’s a link, but to what? I’ve seen people refer to the fact that there is an Asian woman in his profile photo (if he lives in S. Korea then chances are high he knows Korean women!), and to the fact that he works for the government or military, but that’s all we know. I can’t see the logic of connecting that back through Elisa through a twitter post that is similar to one many of us here on the forums made ourselves. I also can’t follow the logic connecting this guy back to a VFX company. Connecting him to the government and then the government to someone else means that pretty much anyone could be connected to anyone...that's not a precise link.

The likeliest explanation that I can think of for the (now deleted) fake facebook page is that he’s a grief tourist.

 

[skyfitsheaven]

Probably not...unless you had a fb page that was alleged to be yours where
RS was your only friend, too. He's the link.

Someone on this forum chatted with RS and he was in South Korea stationed in the Army the entire time. Someone started that profile to mess with him and with us. Look at his profile, he friends any one who has an Asian woman as a profile pic. He was in South Korea the entire time.

 

[walklikeacat]

We're finding strange coincidences because we're actually searching for them. In this day and age, it's easy to just type a few unrelated words in google and find some links betweem them.

Elisa didn't tweet about an invisibily cloak because she's involved in some shady stuff. She tweeted about it because it's an interesting story, it involves a canadian company, and mostly because she was an Harry Potter fan. Occam's razor...

I agree. Just look upon the fact that he who is responsible for autopsy in Los Angeles...did the autopsy on Michael Jackson...which made the filming of "Beat it" in...the Skid Row area. Just sayin...

 

[anansie]

If there was flooding on the 4th floor the night Elisa disappeared, maybe that is what she is describing with her weird hand gesture in the video, and why she was roaming around the hotel.

LOL... yeah maybe. I never thought of that. Who knows, right?

 

[Peace777]

I'd like to know how soon sniffing dogs were brought to the hotel, were they only lead around the rooftop? If they were only brought there after her body was found what would be the sense of that as they already found her body right? I can't see them bringing a cadaver dog after she is reported as just "missing" Weird the dog couldn't pick up some scent from her room to the elevator then to wherever she walked to after the elevator didn't work. But if the dog did find a scent leading to the roof, didn't the police check every nook and cranny of the roof including the water tank? Like she didn't just disappear into thin air. This is such a strange case. What isn't being told to the public in this case, Do the police have a suspect in mind? If so maybe he/she is being watched? I sure hope this is the case and the killer slips up soon Killer needs to be in....:jail:

 

[Marlon]

He’s a link, but to what? I’ve seen people refer to the fact that there is an Asian woman in his profile photo (if he lives in S. Korea then chances are high he knows Korean women!), and to the fact that he works for the government or military, but that’s all we know. I can’t see the logic of connecting that back through Elisa through a twitter post that is similar to one many of us here on the forums made ourselves. I also can’t follow the logic connecting this guy back to a VFX company. Connecting him to the government and then the government to someone else means that pretty much anyone could be connected to anyone...that's not a precise link.

The likeliest explanation that I can think of for the (now deleted) fake facebook page is that he’s a grief tourist.

When u say it like that yeah i understand ur doubt and logic

On another note,..this case ismso vague and big it will be legendary on the net even in a 100 years.