I think Fei’s question is worthy of consideration. I’m not sure we should so quickly discount the elevator as a means of transporting the body to the rooftop until we’ve explored it further.
From:
Websleuths Crime Sleuthing Community - View Single Post - CA/Canada - Elisa Lam - 21 years old - Los Angeles/Vancouver - 31-Jan-2013 - #3
The loft/attic was made 2 stories high for a reason. From the Chinese investigators’ observations, the second story was locked. We don’t know whether or not the top of the elevator cage or the full cage becomes accessible from that upper loft.
There are articles on the web wrt forcing open elevator doors. Some of them indicate more modern S&R or firefighting methods (i.e. using air bags), and others indicate that doors can be manually forced open. Where doors are forced open, there are references to resulting “interlock” damage being easily repaired.
In the following scenario I’ve avoided including Floor 14 due to the confusion with there being and not being a Floor 13
. So, if only the top of the elevator cage was accessible from the upper loft, and a body was on i.e. Floor 10 and the elevator was stopped by someone at Floor 9, is it possible that someone, with or without elevator knowledge, could hold the elevator at Floor 9 while a person on Floor 10 manually forced the doors open to place the body on the top of the elevator cage? OR, if the full elevator cage is accessible from the upper loft, there isn’t even a need to have such an elaborate scenario of holding the elevator, forcing doors.
WRT the surveillance camera in the elevator, someone with access to the controls could have temporarily disabled it, or there might be an indication elsewhere on tape of someone disguising themselves in order to cover the camera.
We did note what appeared to be black plastic bags in the recovery photos, and the Chinese investigators noted black plastic bags inside the lower loft. Granted, unlikely they would be the same bags, considering wind conditions and length of time between a body going into the water tank vs when the body was discovered.
IMO, given dogs not tracking onto the rooftop, the difficulties we’ve discussed wrt carrying a body to that location, etc .. this possible scenario merits further consideration.
