On the 13th of February 2013, the Los Angeles Police Department released a video to the public in the hope to get answers on a case that they were working on. Perhaps what they didn't know at the time was that this video would go globally viral and become the topic of debate for many years to come.
The video was of a woman named Alisa Lamb, who at this point had been missing for a fortnight, and it showed her frantic final moments before disappearing. Elisa was button bashing a hotel elevator and appeared to be both talking and hiding from a character that never actually appeared in the CCTV video.
Some corners of the internet rushed to claim that Alisa was clearly fleeing an attacker with many users turning their attention to tracking down the person responsible. Others claimed that this was a clear sign of paranormal activity with many believing that Alisa was possessed by a demon. And this speculation only intensified when it became public knowledge that the lift was in the Cecil Hotel, the same one used by Richard Ramirez, the Nightstalker during his murderous reign.
Others confidently claimed that Alisa was playing an urban legend known as the elevator game, a ritual from Korea and Japan where someone uses a specific sequence inside an elevator to access another dimension. and others claimed that it was a clear sign that Alisa had been taking substances and was actually having a bad trip.
And then officially all of those theories would be deemed to be wrong because days later, just under 3 weeks on from her disappearance, Alisa is found within the hotel grounds, feet from an area that had already been searched by police with sniffer dogs. And to some surprise, this wasn't the end of the speculation. In fact, this was the beginning of a new conversation.
How on earth did Alisa Lamb gain access to an area that wasn't accessible to general hotel occupants without setting off any warning alarms? How did a small petite woman like Alisa scale a water tank, lift a heavy lid, and close it behind her as initially believed? Why was the elevator CCTV footage edited? And who was responsible for this? And why were her clothes removed with her cell phone never actually being found? Many people feel like all of this pointed to an attacker being with Alisa at the time of her death rather than a
woman being on her own acting off her own accord. Today we're going to dive into the story and speak about some of the unanswered questions around one of the strangest cases that we have ever covered on this channel. The disappearance and then death of Alisa Lamb. Before we get into this story, I just want to say that we will be discussing the untimely passing of Alisa Lamb as well as some other very tragic stories from Hotel Ceson.
And as a result of that, we will also have to go through some elements around mental health and mental health struggles. And if you're struggling with anything right now, there will be resources links in the description that will be able to help. Just remember, you're not alone. And please always do seek that help if you're able to.
And while we have crucial footage of Alyssa that can't be explained, we never profess to have all the answers and we will only be referring to publicly available information in the telling of this story. As always, get in the comments if you have some theories on what happened to Alyssa, and we will get involved in those as soon as this video goes live.
Right, before we get into the checkered history of the hotel, the strange events that were caught on camera, and the subsequent theories of what actually happened to Alyssa, Joey, why don't you tell me a little bit more about her? So, Alisa Lamb was born in Vancouver, Canada in 1991.
Her parents had actually immigrated to Canada from Hong Kong, and she also had a younger sister called Sarah. I would say that Alisa had somewhat of a sheltered upbringing. and her parents were very old school, very traditional. They actually worked running a Chinese restaurant in Vancouver. And this restaurant was a place that occasionally both Alisa and her younger sister Sarah used to help out at. Alisa wasn't loud.
In fact, she was actually the opposite. She was definitely somewhat of a recluse, but definitely someone that people felt had a very warm presence. Alisa was into reading. She liked photography. She loved to post on the internet. And if you ask those around her, especially the people that went to school and high school with her, they all said that Alisa was kind, she was caring, she was thoughtful, she was warm, and she would always be the sort of person to give encouragement to others.
A former classmate of hers was actually quoted as describing Alisa as one of the most friendly people that you could meet. And that's why so many people were shocked in the aftermath to hear that for many years, Alisa had actually been struggling mentally. She had really struggled with anxiety as well as the pressures of her education.
And it's actually quite strange to me because upon researching this, I actually feel like so many of Alisa's problems were in her own head, especially when she wrote about the feeling of immense social rejection because that's not how others around her actually saw it. I think most people felt that she was quiet yet sociable.
And it actually makes me really sad because we've just done an episode on a man called Elliot Roger. Now, Elliot also suffered with what he felt was social rejection, didn't he? Right. But it made him angry at the world. It made him massively judgmental of people around him, even people that he had never met. And all in all, it just made him a really bad, horrible person.
And in the case of Alisa Lamb, it didn't do that at all. People around her felt that she was warm. They felt that she was a nice person. And I personally always find that a really hard thing to read and learn about people that do have these immense mental struggles inside. Yet they give off the impression as someone who maybe isn't struggling and probably would be the first person to be there for those that are struggling.
In her younger years of school, Elisa had done crosscountry running and she was really good at it. However, she found that a lot of the people around her were transitioning over to volleyball as high school went on. And again, like this is one of these things. Listen, I was rubbish at football in school. I went to a school where so many of the kids that were in my school year were lads frommies playing for Chelsea, Fulham, Brenford, teams like that.
I never got anywhere near the football team because of that. But at the same time, it wasn't something that made me struggle. the fact that I was nowhere near as good at football as half of the year to be honest with you. And this is something that Alisa really really struggled with because she went from being a standout athlete basically at cross country running to transitioning over to volleyball, not getting picked, not feeling like she was anywhere near as good.
And I think that it would be fair to say that you could describe Alisa as somewhat delicate when it came to these matters. After graduating high school, she enrolled at the University of British Columbia. She started full of optimism and hope. But just weeks into the term, she suffered a severe mental health breakdown.
She didn't want to get out of bed, and she described lying in her room for days on end hating herself. It worsened when she would go online and see so many of her school friends now, in her opinion, accomplishing things, cracking on with their lives. And this was something that she felt that she was unable to do.
She was diagnosed around this time with bipolar and put on quite a lot of medication for it. But this was also something that she found massive struggles with because it really affected her daily routine. That in turn then made going to class even more difficult. So eventually she stops taking the medication and this leads to an even more intense breakdown where Alisa is checked into a psychiatric hospital.
Now I've tried to look into the exact specific event around her breakdown and what triggered the point in which she was checked into the psychiatric hospital, but apparently there are privacy laws which stopped that being put out there in the inquest and actually delved into. But what is known is that she was suffering from multiple conditions when she was checked in.
And one of these things that she was suffering from was visual hallucinations, which is something that I think is massively important for us to remember as this case goes on. And another thing that I think is massively important for us to know was that it was noted that Alisa's sister actually said that when she was having these episodes when she was hallucinating, she would often squeeze into tight spaces, for example, underneath her bed as she felt like this was her way of getting refuge from these hallucinations that she was having. And when she gets out of
hospital, she doesn't go back to uni. She actually goes back and stays at her parents while she recovers from her latest mental health breakdown. And at this time, Alisa is trying really hard to crack on with her life. She's trying really hard to overcome the struggles that she's having.
She does from time to time go and help out in her mom and dad's restaurant, but it is all just getting a bit much for her. And you can see this from some of the stuff that she was posting online because she was consistently uploading to the internet at the same time as basically being confined to her own bedroom because of the problems that she was having.
Her posts online did really range. She would often document the mental health struggles that she was having. At the same time, in other moments, she would sound somewhat confident but also fairly manic. These are some of the things that she was posting. I am bipolar. It means I am crazy or have the capacity to be crazy.
I have to take four pills a day to prevent myself from being a psychological danger to myself and society. I spent about 2 days in bed and hated myself. I still do. It's the cycle, right? You feel good, you do stuff, you get overwhelmed, you crash out, you hate yourself, you feel better, repeat. I think that little by little, I'll be able to solve my problems and survive.
Then the tone does actually start to shift a little and you can see that she starts to grow in confidence a bit more. I'm going to change my name and to do something dramatic and multi-yllable because I plan on doing things in my life and making a name for myself. I've decided I'm going to see the world or at least the West Coast. I need to get out of Vancouver.
I need to prove to myself that I can survive outside of this bedroom. I am going to be an adventurer. Now, when Alisa spoke about going to see the West Coast, this wasn't delusion. It wasn't internet talk. This was actually something that she had been planning because at the time, Alisa's feeling like somewhat of a burden to her family.
She had described not wanting to be known as the sick girl who can't leave her bedroom. And much like she had probably tried to do originally when she had stopped her medication which led to her hospitalization, she was actually trying to prove her diagnosis wrong. And she felt that by going out into the world and by being sufficient, able to stand on her own two feet, so to speak, she felt like this would go towards that.
Not only that, Alisa is spending a lot of time on the internet, so she's getting a lot of fear of missing out where she's seeing what everyone else is doing. She picked the West Coast in particular because it was geographically accessible, affordable via ground transit, and perfectly matched her artistic pop culture-driven interests.
And Alisa's family didn't agree with this planned trip at all. They were really, really worried about it. They had worried that maybe during her trip she would decide it was a good idea to come off her medication again. And we know what happened the last time that she had done that. And they probably just felt that she was in too fragile state of mind, in too much of a vulnerable place at that time to be able to do that trip.
But at the same time, Alisa was an adult. And I think that this episode that she had had in her life had somewhat sparked a change in her character. And I do think that in families where your parents have been somewhat protective at times either for wrong or for right and you hadn't really got out there into the world so much, this was always a passage of right, I think they call it, which someone wants to go out and spread their wings a little bit.
And as much as they were cautious about it, they weren't sure whether or not this could be the making of Alisa, whether this could give her what she needed to be able to push on in life. And therefore eventually and reluctantly they do in fact agree but they do it under sort of strict conditions. And this was that she had her route and exactly what she was going to do, where she was going to stay completely mapped out and that she checked in with her family multiple times every single day over the phone.
Now there's a strange contradicting element to this, right? You know, I told you how she felt like she was socially rejected and didn't have many friends and things like that. You know, she actually had a going away party which loads of friends attended. >> Did they? So, how many people rocked up? Do you know? >> I'm not too sure how many people.
But again, do you not think that that gives a bit of weight to my theory that a lot of these anxieties and problems that Alisa maybe had could well have actually just been in her head really? >> Yeah. Well, this is the thing like I think sometimes people are self-deprecating, aren't they? Where they're sort of going, I haven't got any friends. I feel incredibly lonely.
When they do, in fact, have lots of people that care about them. I mean, her family obviously very clearly cared about her as well. So yeah, maybe she's just not seeing those friends as true friends. I don't know. >> And if only she had have realized how many people did care about her would go on to be massively concerned for her, then maybe it would given her or would have given her some of the comfort that maybe at that time she needed in that vulnerable state.
And on the 22nd of January 2013, she leaves her home in Canada. She's got all of her possessions with her and she's actually got a month's worth of medication on her. She boards a train that goes into America and within a day or so she's in San Diego, California. She's checking in with her parents. She's enjoying herself and acting like a typical tourist would really seeing the sites, taking pictures, and soaking up the culture.
She then heads into LA. On January the 26th, 2013, she arrives in downtown LA and she books to stay at the Stay on Main Hotel, which is actually the Hotel Cesil. It's just been rebranded because there is such a bad reputation, I would say, that comes with that hotel. So Josh, why don't you tell me a little bit more about the Hotel Seesaw and why it has this infamous reputation? So before we do, let's just go back to Elisa's sort of first few hours at the hotel because I want to discuss that before giving you the full context of why this
hotel is so quite frankly terrifying, Joe. So basically, she's chosen this hotel rather than it being for its opulence or his expense, she's choosing it because one, it's a very cheap night stay, and two, it's very accessible for the rest of LA. It's downtown. and it's right in the middle of the city, so it's easy to get around.
So Joey and I are spending a huge amount of time on our phones right now. And that's because every night we would sit down, watch a documentary, often about the cases that we're covering on this channel. This video started off with a Netflix documentary, which we had to cover. When we're doing that, sometimes we've got a bit of a short attention span, get a little bit bored.
So what we often end up doing is getting involved in a little bit of a scroll hole, don't we? >> A little bit is probably an understatement. I end up in that scroll hole for hours sometimes. >> And you shouldn't do because that's not very good for you. But what is good for you is making a little bit of cash. And you can do just that by sitting at home and accessing your phone with this channel sponsor, Free Cash.
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She's actually in a dorm room, and that dorm was meant to be only for other female guests. And Alisa ends up paying $35 per night just to say that, which I would say is definitely one of the cheapest hotels you could possibly stay in the entirety of LA. Now, as Joey said, Alisa was a bit of a blogger and she used the internet to track her progress throughout her trip.
And I mentioned that intentionally because she didn't mention any knowledge of Hotel Seesaw or anything to do with what had happened there in the past. So, she clearly wasn't that aware, as far as we're aware, >> uh, of the quite frankly morbid history of the hotel. >> Well, let's be honest, mate. If you were a solo traveler, even myself as a big strong man, how many people describe me? Um, you know, up for debate.
Even myself, I'd be too scared to stay there. I'm not afraid to admit that. Would you like a a lonesome trip to Hotel Cecil? I would be terrified of it. But what I'm even more terrified about is the fact that I could be staying in a hotel, maybe not have done my research, and maybe not have known it.
You said it very clearly. It was rebranded stay on Maine. So, she wouldn't necessarily have even been able to look this up even if she wanted to. >> I own I've actually watched documentaries about this case and about the hotel in general. And so many people that not only stayed there, Josh, people that worked there didn't know that the stay on Maine was the Hotel Cecil.
And the Hotel Seesaw was a pretty scary place if history is anything to go by. >> So, shall I go through a few of the main reasons why this hotel has become one of the most infamous hotel residences in the entire world? >> I would love you to. So, before I do that, let me give you a little potted history of the hotel.
itself because in 1924 this grand massive hotel sprung up from the LA sort of downtown area and it was one of the biggest buildings in that um vicinity because there was a restriction at the time on how tall you could build buildings there. This was 14 stories tall. So again, it sort of sprung up all over the LA skyline and you could see it for quite a a good distance at the time.
Now, Joey, it cost $1 million to construct this hotel. >> And this was in the year, sorry, >> 1924. >> Bloody hell. >> How much do you reckon that's worth now? >> Oh, 10. >> Nearly $20 million. So, what we're saying is this wasn't a cheap building to create. And they meant that with the way that they designed it. So, basically, there was double high ceilings in the lobby.
There was marble everywhere. There was a lot of expense that had gone into it. And it was sort of set out to be quite an expensive, exciting place to stay. It would definitely wasn't what we now see it as a budget hotel. So, you certainly wouldn't have been paying $35 a night in today's money to stay there. Well, we went to LA with the pain game.
We had an absolutely unreal trip to LA. I was so buzzing. I can't wait to get back there. But one of the things that people were definitely telling me to be cautionate about was going to downtown LA. A lot of people were saying like don't go through Skid Road, definitely don't do it on foot, anything like that.
And I didn't really understand so much apart from this story, the history of it. So was it like that at that sort of time that they built the hotel? And was that maybe a reason why they had built it to try and up market it a little bit? >> Well, this is the thing. It wasn't like that at all. So Skidro came in a little bit later and really this hotel was designed and created for two types of people.
There were theatergoers because two blocks away was a massive theater district. I mean we see this in London in the West End, don't we? You know, you see those people sort of flooding into the theaters coming out at night and there's loads of trade for restaurants, for bars, for cabbies as well. They love the theater district cuz it's lots of people having a great time wanting to get out of the city as soon as possible going to their suburban homes.
And so there's a lot of money around that. So again, this hotel was meant to cater for those theatergoers, but also there was the financial district of LA just one block away. They described it as the Wall Street of LA. And again, they were hoping that there'd be a lot of bankers, the people involved in the financial industry that would be frequenting this hotel and bringing their money into the hotel as a result of that.
So again, it felt very up market. But 5 years after the hotel opened, something called the Great Depression happened. This was in 1929. There was a stock market crash which downstream led to over one quarter of the US population becoming unemployed. There was massive swaves of poverty all over the United States and LA was sort of really hit very hard by this.
It affected the tourism industry so much that 50% of tourism across the United States as a whole went down. So it was massively changed and over 80% of hotels in this time period, it lasted for 10 years, the Great Depression, over 80% of the hotels closed down. >> So I'm guessing that in order to not shut down, you're probably going to have to reduce the rates a lot.
>> Yeah, exactly. Exactly that you would have to reduce the rates, but also I think the hotel was doomed from the start. And the reason why I say that is because only 200 of the individual rooms had their own on suite. So what that meant is that 500 rooms you either sharing a shower, which is sort of fair enough.
You get your own toilet, but you have to share a shower. But there was also ones you had to share your own toilet as well. >> Sounds like some of the hosts that I'd stay in, the cheap ones in Thailand. >> Exactly. So it's not meant to like if you're catering towards the theater or a financial visitor, they're not really going, "Oh, this is a really lovely place to stay.
" It's sort of like I have to share all this. I'm crammed in. There's 700 rooms in a 14 story book, which by the way is quite high density. It's quite difficult to fit everyone in something like that. So again, immediately it felt like it was struggling from the get- go, let alone if the Great Depression hadn't happened. So it was already starting to be quite difficult.
But nevertheless, it did stay open. It didn't close during the the Great Depression. And during the 30s and the 40s there were people going and staying in the hotel mainly as you say because the rates were reduced and and it wasn't you know a massive expense to say that but it very much felt different to the way that it was marketed let's put it that way right but in that 20 year period the financial district basically just moved away the theaters closed down and so the general area around the hotel very much changed and this is where something called skid row
as you rightly mentioned was starting to be created. Now the town planners of LA allowed Skidro to be created. Now let me just explain very quickly what Skidro actually was. So Skidro is quite a scary place and what the LA town planners decided to do was to keep as much low-income housing, homelessness, and people dealing with drug addiction all in one place.
And they even had a name for this policy. It was called containment. So the hotel, the area around the hotel and the guests that were frequenting this place changed significantly since the period that it had opened. But that's just the context of the hotel because as I said, some very, very troubling things happened in the hotel itself over the years.
So much so that this place has a reputation that I think you'd really struggle to not have heard of by this point. Obviously, you said you went to LA, you'd already heard of it. You'd heard some of the paranormal rumors that have been floating around this hotel and I think a lot of people now in the modern era have heard about it and are very concerned about it.
And there's a few reasons why which I must tell you about. And first we have to go all the way back to 1962. There was a 27year-old lady called Pauline Uton who was staying in the hotel with her husband who was called Jie. The couple were not getting on and they were arguing about their failing marriage. So basically what Julie does is he decides to leave Pauline in that hotel room, go downstairs and go and get dinner for himself.
Soon after that, Pauline decided that she was going to end her own life. She opens the window from her 9inth floor residence in the hotel Cecil and she jumps from the building. Unfortunately, she lands on the sidewalk and she passes away immediately from the injuries after jumping from the building. But what is even more tragic than that is that she also took the life of an innocent man because she landed directly on someone and his name was George Giani.
He was a 65year-old pensioner. And police officers that attended the scene thought that they might be a couple and they might have jumped together. In fact, that was the prevailing theory for quite a long period of time. Then there was an autopsy carried out on both of these victims and they found that there was no way that George could have jumped from the building.
The way they did that is that he still had his hands in his pockets and he still had his shoes on. And again, this is a bit of a morbid fact about people jumping from building. So again, prepare yourself for this. Um, when you jump through a building, you very often have your shoes sort of thrown off of you just basically by the force of hitting the pavement.
So it was deemed that there was no way that he could have jumped from the building and then it was sort of ascertained that he had been landed on by Pauline. >> Mate, we're talking about what makes people scared to stay in this hotel. You've just given me saying that would make me scared to walk past this hotel. >> Yeah, exactly. Yeah, it's terrifying.
And this isn't the half. I mean, there's so many other stories because in 1964, another tragic event happened at the hotel. There was this woman called Julia Goldie Osgood and she was staying in the hotel and she was basically a retired telephone operator who lived a very very quiet life.
She spent the majority of her days walking to nearby Persing Square where she fed the pigeons. And so she got the affectionate nickname of Pigeon Goldie. And tragically, this very unassuming, shy, and quiet woman was attacked in the most horrific way in Hotel Cecil. Because on the 4th of June, 1964, Julia Osgood was found deceased inside her room.
She had been brutally beaten, raped, stabbed, and strangled. Her body was staged with her signature baseball cap and a paper bag full of bird seed next to her. The community that knew Julia pulled together some cash for some flowers for her memory. But the problem was that the murder was never solved and the person that committed that murder was never found.
And as a result of that brutal murder, people started talking about the Cecil Hotel. They started wondering if there was something more sinister happening around the grounds of this residence. Was there a satanic curse on the building? Were there strange voices being broadcast from inside of it? And was there something supernatural that no one could explain? And the next hotel guests that we have to talk about did nothing to dispel any of those rumors because in 1985, one of America's most well-known serial killers lived in the
hotel for a few weeks. His name was Richard Ramirez, and he was dubbed the Nightstalker. He rented a room on the 14th floor of the hotel, paying just $14 a night to stay there. All in all, during his spree, Ramirez murdered at least 13 people and attempted to kill several others, as well as committing dozens of sexual assaults and burglaries.
And because Ramirez was operating in that Skidro area, he was able to conduct his murderous activities in plain sight. And what he would do is find potential victims, murder them, and then return back to the hotel. It's said that Ramirez would even return back in the middle of the night after committing his attacks, discard his blood soaked clothes in the hotel's alleyway dumpster, and then walk into the hotel in his underwear.
And apparently, not a single soul there would bat an eyelid. Apparently, Joey, this was just a normal occurrence in that hotel and people didn't really even care, which is ultimately the most terrifying part for me, I would say. >> And this is the thing, like Richard Ramirez is the man that we know committed so many of the crimes that we will probably go on to speak about on this channel.
In fact, however, think about how many unsolved horrific murders there were in this area from this time. There could be so many more people than just himself that were staying at this hotel, but his particular reign is really, really scary. >> Yeah, it is. And I think it's most scary because Ramirez didn't really have a modus operandi and a type of victim that he would go for.
Now, what you see with a lot of these serial killers is that they will have a type of person they want to assault or murder. And usually that tends to be young women or prostitutes or, you know, whatever, right? We've seen lots of different examples of serial killer and traits. >> Anyone they feel can be particularly vulnerable and lured to sort of quieter places than what >> exactly that.
Now, what is so concerning and I suppose so scary about Ramirez is he didn't really have a target at all. He would attack men, women, children, the elderly. He would go into their homes under the cover of darkness. And that's what people were so scared about because again, it was home invasion. You were often asleep.
you were, you know, in what you felt was your safe space. And he was going in and targeting those people, which again fueled a lot of fear in, you know, in the time. And he used various weapons, including guns, knives, hammers, and tire irons. But looking back, that's not what really scared people fascinated with the Seesaw Hotel.
Rather, it was the way that Ramirez would force his victims to swear on Satan and he would torment them while he was assaulting them. He drew pentagrams on bedroom walls and also on victim's bodies and he even had one on his palm and would shout, "Hail Satan." And during his trial, Ramirez showed no remorse at all.
He didn't seem to be, you know, have any care for his victims whatsoever, which again made people even more concerned about him. Now, what I find even stranger than that is that he actually had a group of groupies. He actually had people that were actively seeking him out while he was in prison. So much so, he actually got engaged and married.
>> Yeah. I always find this one of the weirdest elements that now doesn't even surprise me because it seems to pop up so much with so many of the sick people that we've covered on this channel. And that's the fact that so many people are fascinated with them to the extent where they develop friendships and even sometimes romantic relationships with them.
>> Yeah. And this is the thing. I think Ramirez was one of the most concerning Syriakers I think in the world. And we have to do a video on it. I have to say. Yeah. We we've got to cover this. And his affiliation with the hotel, bearing in mind he spent weeks there, only makes it even more creepy. >> But he wasn't the only serial killer that stayed at this hotel because in 1991, a man called Jack Unvega stayed at the Seesaw Hotel.
Now Joe, prepare yourself for this cuz this is one of the most mental true crime cases that I have ever heard and we've got to cover it on the channel. Have you ever heard of this guy? >> No, I actually haven't heard of this Okay, so I've got to tell you this story. It's mad because Johan Jack Unvega was born in Austria in 1950.
His early life was spent with petty crime, theft, and assault. But in 1974, he committed his first murder, strangling an 18-year-old German girl called Margaret Schaefer with her own bra. He was found, tried, convicted, and eventually sentenced to life imprisonment in 1976. But Joey behind bars, he did a big educational push on himself.
He basically he taught himself to read and write in prison and he started to become a bit of an author. He wrote short stories, plays and even an autobiography called Purgatory. And as a result of this um the public became aware of this writing and this rehabilitation that he was doing and so some Austrian intellectuals and politicians started campaigning that this guy should be released.
It was meant to be this big sort of story that the prison system had rehabilitated this man. He had gone through the education system. He had reformed and therefore he was able to go back out on the streets. Now we've heard this case a few times in the UK. We've seen this thing. you know, people have become rehabilitated and people have gone, oh, you know, maybe they should be let out.
You know, they seem like they're decent people now. They've taken acknowledgement of their crimes and that they should be released and very often they aren't released. But he was. So, he was actually released from prison in 1990. And soon after this, he became a media personality. He was a talk show guest and a freelance journalist.
And in 1991, he used that guys of being a journalist to travel to LA because he wanted to write a story on street crime and more specifically the area called Skidro. >> Skidro. Did he want to be a character in this story by any chance? >> So he deliberately stayed at the Hotel Cecil, the Cecil Hotel.
And obviously it had now got a bit of a reputation after the Ramirez story. the trial and that sort of thing. And the really concerning thing is that Jack was not reformed. He wasn't ready to integrate into society. He was a killer and continued to be because as soon as he was released from prison in Austria, he started killing again all over Europe.
And after flying to America, he continued. He murdered three women while staying at the hotel and they were called Shannon Xley, Irene Rodriguez and Peggy Jean Booth and all of them were ladies of the night and he attacked them in the streets of LA. So again, the hotel was in the middle of a serial killer's attack and this guy had actually sort it out because he'd wanted to stay there because what he felt was that it was full of easy victims.
But this doesn't end all of the weird occurrences and events that happened at the hotel because over 80 people are estimated to have died inside the hotel and in addition 11 self deletions have occurred just from jumping from the building. >> I find the number 80 actually quite low. >> Yes.
Why is that? Well, you got to remember when I was looking into this hotel, one of the things about it being so sort of cheap and affordable meant that let's say for example, someone was homeless on the streets and they had a good day in terms of people giving to them on the streets. Often they would be able to afford enough to be able to have a shared room for the night, something like that.
Um, and these were a lot of people that had come off of Skid Rone. You know, we obviously know with a lot of the homeless people on Skid Row, a lot of them were taking substances or addicted to substances and and stuff like that. So, I think that with the amount of the homeless population that would do the odd night in this hotel >> and obviously the health of a lot of these people, 80 actually sounds somewhat low to me.
>> I think that's perhaps suspicious deaths as opposed to just deaths in total. But yeah, you're right. And I think a lot of what was happening is that some of these crimes would happen outside of the hotel, but people would be staying in the hotel for example. So the hotel is the hub of the crime and the local area is the sort of recipient of >> And we all know from when you do stay at a hotel, how much room uh how much time do you really spend? >> Exactly. Exactly.
>> Especially in a place like LA, you're going to be out a lot more. It's funny cuz when we went to LA, funny is probably not the right word, but when we went to LA, we were in the hotel that who died in. >> I can't remember the name. >> Whitney Houston. >> Whitney Houston. She was she she passed away on our floor.
I was fascinated with >> which also by the way the hotel didn't necessarily broadcast it but they did sort of say Whitney Houston died in the hotel like they were they weren't hiding it. >> No but it wasn't it wasn't like dark and disturbing was it? I mean it was actually a lovely hotel to be honest with you. >> It was a lovely hotel.
But do you want to know that though? >> No I don't know if I necessarily would even want to know. But what one of the things that I didn't feel that it gave me was like a vibe where I thought oh god this is sinister in any type of way. So it's not just the fact of oh some murderers stayed here some people passed away.
It really is the back catalog of tragic and horrifying in many circumstances events that were tied to this hotel isn't it? >> And ultimately it culminates in the Alysa Lamb case. And so, can you tell me a little bit more about her time at the hotel and what actually happened? Because this is super strange, isn't it? >> Yes.
So, she checks in on the 22nd of January and originally nothing seems wrong. She's actually assigned to a room of multiple occupants, which much like I say, when you're traveling around and you're definitely doing so on a budget is pretty common. I used to do it all the time in Thailand. you stay in like a dorm. There's loads of people.
It will always usually be the same sex, but I don't know whether it could be different in different countries cuz I haven't done it in America. But it's a shared hostel room. And the main thing that I remember from my time staying in these shared rooms, I mean to put it bluntly, Josh, don't be a dick.
Do you know what I mean? Like don't don't be I mean people getting late, that's fine. But when you are getting late, don't be having rows. Don't be taking phone calls in the room. Don't be making >> try not to snore, Joey. I mean, if you're a snorer in a dorm room, people tell you about it very clearly. >> There you go.
So, that's how >> I'm not a big snorer. And most of the time when I'd be getting in, I may or may not have had one or two drinks. You know what I mean? We've heard about that. >> One or two. One or two. So, I'd probably sleep through a lot of the snoring. But what I wouldn't sleep through is arguments, people bashing about, banging round, people basically acting with no manners.
And that's kind of how Elisa Lamb was acting. And that might be a shock to a lot of people because she was always described as such a well-mannered girl, but due to her mental health conditions at the time, she really wasn't thinking about those around her. So, it starts off where she's basically locking other occupants of the room out of the room.
And then she's barricading the door. She's putting furniture and stuff like that in front of the door. And when they're actually knocking and banging on the door saying, "What are you doing?" You got to remember these people are probably thinking she could be robbing their possession. She could be doing anything really. Um, when they're banging on the door to try and get in, she's saying, "No, no, you've got to give me the password.
" Now, obviously, there is no password to this room. Alisa has come up with a password in her head and in her delusional state at the time hasn't actually told anyone what the password is. And nevertheless, there shouldn't really be a password. You know, everyone's paying the same amount of money.
you shouldn't be doing that. It's not the sort of manners that you want to have to be staying in one of those dorms, so to speak. And she actually targeted specific roommates in that dorm because she was leaving messages that she had wrote on their bed, such as, "Go home, go away, you're not welcome." So you can imagine, mate, right, if you've got this sort of um young girl in that room with you who, let's be honest, you're feeling is acting a little bit loco at the time.
you're pro, especially if you're traveling around LA and you're standing in these sort of rooms, you're probably not really thinking, well, this girl's mentally unstable because the girl's on her own and that takes somewhat of a responsibility and sort of emotional maturity to be able to do that. So, if anything, you're probably thinking, right, are substances is alcohol at play here? Cuz this girl is being massively disruptive and she's actually making it very much unjoyable for the rest of the guests in that room. She's being
somewhat of an intimidating presence. And eventually the complaints pile up. They are going to the reception and saying, "Listen, this girl in the room is acting crazy." And therefore, instead of kicking her out the hotel, they assign her to a private room. Now, while staying in LA, Alisa Lamb applies to and gets the green light to be part of the audience for a Conan O'Brien show that's being shot in LA.
But she's actually taken out physically of the audience because she's being disruptive. She is talking. She's making noise. I think she's shouting stuff out. And she had even given certain members of security a handwritten letter to give Conan O'Brien. Whilst inside the hotel, even once she's assigned to the private room, she's still acting disruptive.
She's wandering the hallways sometimes late at night. She's apparently said to be shouting, "I'm crazy, but so is LA." at the top of her lungs. And obviously, some people are out of their room, but some people are inside their room. They're trying to sleep. Things like that. A lot of people are putting in complaints about Alisa at this point.
And it's not just occupants of the hotel. It's people that work at the hotel. They're saying that there's been certain times when they've said to Alisa, "Oh, sorry. You can't go through there or you can't go into this area, which is meant for staff only." And apparently when they do so, Alisa is screaming at them.
On the 31st of January, her erratic behavior intensifies a lot. This is when the infamous elevator footage is recorded. Alisa's in the lift. She's pressing multiple buttons. She's stepping outside and motioning as if she was mid-con conversation with someone and almost acting in response to someone talking back at her.
She jumps back into the lift and hides as if someone's there and they're looking for her before eventually walking out of the lift and out of the camera shot. Elise is not seen again after that CCTV footage. And the next day, when her family are expecting to hear from her, as they had been at this time, there's no word from Alisa.
This is something that immediately sends them into a panic because they know that it's against their agreement. They know that it's out of character and also after ringing up the hotel trying to get as much information as they could on their daughter, her whereabouts and her state of mind, they're informed by the hotel that Alisa has been acting erratically, which means that her parents alongside the hotel itself immediately call the police. The LAPD come down.
They search her room. They search the entire hotel. And maybe strangely to some people, they actually even search the roof of the hotel. I say strangely because most people wouldn't think that anyone could get up on the roof. But at the same time, there had been a lot of deaths recorded where people had jumped from either windows or the roof.
And it had been noted that Alisa had been wandering into areas such as stairwells that were prohibited for normal occupants of the hotel. But when they do all this, it yields no results, no clues, no evidence. And therefore, they start to think, right, maybe she's left the hotel and it just hasn't been caught on CCTV somehow. So, they go into LA.
They start putting up posters. They're questioning people. They're asking everyone because in the police's eyes, someone's got to have seen something. Basically, no one can have not heard or seen anything. And this girl's just vanished into thin air. But as they do that, they don't receive anything.
And at this time, they're actually really scouring through the CCTV to try and see if there's anything on there that could give them any indication as to where she was. And actually, there's a lack of evidence for one thing, which gives them a lot more of an indication as to what could have happened. And that's actually the fact that there's no CCTV footage of her walking out of the hotel.
and more or less all of the exits that you wouldn't actually harm yourself in getting out of, such as, you know, everything other than the roof if you were to jump off of it. Most of the CCTV around that is actually working. And that really starts to make them take a real look into who's in the hotel at the time because at this point you're thinking, well, if she hasn't left the hotel and if this hotel in the past has been frequented by multiple criminals, then maybe something very sinister could have happened here.
Now, this is when the police finally come across the CCTV footage. They see what's going on with Alisa, but they have the ability to check other cameras, and the public didn't really have that at the time. Meaning, the police were able to draw a conclusion pretty much straight away that no one was even in that hallway.
And therefore, they felt like Alisa could have been hallucinating at that moment. She could have had something in her mind that was there that wasn't actually there. So they check all of the CCTV and they see that in their opinion no one was actually with Alisa and it's actually weeks before any new developments happen. But by midFebruary a lot of occupants of the hotel start complaining about the water.
They're saying that there's no pressure. They're running the taps and there's no water coming out. And when it does come out there's often like dark discolored water flowing out of the taps which has a disgusting taste to it. I mean do you know what mate? That is >> that is sick. horrific to think about with what we're about to talk about.
The fact that people drunk this water, it's absolutely mindblowing. >> They describe it as murky, dark, discolored water in the tap with a foul and unusual taste. And on the 19th of February 2013, a hotel maintenance worker is sent to the roof to check the four massive 4x8 ft water tanks. They supply all of the water to the hotel's guests rooms and therefore they're thinking that maybe something's happened inside those tanks and this is what is causing the water issue.
At the time, right, the actual worker who was sent there, he's not thinking about Alisa Lamb at this point. It's actually completely unrelated and obviously, you know, the police have been up there and searched there. There's no reason to suspect that she could be in a water tank. It's more likely if anything like a bird or something has got in there and that's the reason for the water problem that's going on.
But once he lifts the lid, he sees the naked body of Alisa Lamb floating inside one of the water tanks. The same clothes that she was wearing in the footage from the elevator are found alongside her room key at the bottom of the tank. meaning that Alisa or someone removed those clothes either before or after she got into the tank.
Now, there are quite a few theories of what happened to Alisa, but um a lot of them are out there to discredit her or question her ability to do certain things and we're never going to judge her. So, first of all, the key thing to say is it's a victim here. She's passed away.
We feel incredibly sorry for her and for her friends and family that have had to deal with this loss. That's the most important thing. And what we'll always try and do is come up with theories that have evidence behind them. But we're also going to present all of the potential options so that everyone watching can make up what they think for themselves actually happened to her.
Right? So why don't I go through some of the more outlandish theories first and then we'll go into what basically is the official narrative of what people say happened to her. So theory one is called the hotel coverup theory and in this theory it is said that Alisa was murdered potentially by hotel staff and her murder was covered up by those same people.
And now people have looked through that footage and like Joey has already called out, I believe in some of the analysis that you've already done on the footage earlier on, Joey, you noticed that there was some strange sort of like cuts and like editing really that was done on that footage. It wasn't like it was like consistently shown as one block of footage.
There there seems to be some weird moments. There was a cut in the footage which I mean even from sort of art editing editing experience. >> Yeah, >> you kind of need to have done that. Someone needs to have manually done that. >> Yeah. And also there was a time stamp I believe in one of the corners that was also heavily blurred and obscured.
And again for anyone that doesn't know this, if you see a time stamp in the bottom of a screen and you have a cut between it, you can very clearly see that there's a time element that's been removed. Right? So again, why would you necessarily need to have blurred that timestamp if you weren't trying to obscure that the footage had been tampered with? So again, the footage in itself is already disturbing enough, Joey.
Let alone the fact that it might have been altered or adjusted. It also just seems very strange. And also, some people even claimed that at least 1 minute of footage was missing, suggesting that the hotel or the police edited that tape to protect a potential attacker who was just out of frame. Also, Joey, I don't know if you noticed this in the video for over 3 minutes, the elevator doors don't close.
>> This was a hotly debated part of the video. Yes. >> Yes. So, she's pressing a lot of those buttons. She's pressing a lot of them in a short period of time. Now, anyone that's ever been in a lift knows as soon as you press that button, short weight, and then you're going up or going down depending on where you are.
But that doesn't happen here. >> And the button she's not pressing is the button with the two arrows, which is to keep the doors open at the time. >> Yeah. So, what people said is there must have been someone there for on the outside of the of the lift pressing that call button, which effectively means the the lift stays there.
and with the doors open. So again, it doesn't quite add up what happened really there without that explanation, does it? Like why else would the doors stay open of the lift unless it was faulty, which again, I don't think anyone has ever said that that lift was faulty. Not that I've seen anyway. >> Yeah.
But without the actual presence of someone that was on the outside, that the police were able to look into. You'd think that that would have maybe stopped the rumors that there was someone on on the outside or there was something keeping the lift open. Yeah. A lot of people were saying, "Well, what if there was somewhat of an invisible presence there? What if there was I mean, for want of a better word, a ghost?" >> Are you saying there was something supernatural that was going on? >> I'm not saying it, >> but a lot of people have.
>> Well, there was a conversation being had in that footage. There were some strange actions being held by her. So, I think a lot of people have said there's some sort of like otherworldly presence there. And a lot of people stick by that, by the way. >> Yeah. But not only was the lift pretty concerning, the water tank itself was also a key bone of contention because people argued that there was no way a 120lb woman would be able to open the hatch to that water tank, climb inside, and then close that water tank hatch
afterwards. Basically, Joey, it's physically impossible once you get inside that water tank, whether you're £121, whether you're 300 pounds to close that door. It's really, really difficult. That's the thing that always got me. It's impossible to be able to do that. Not only that, to be able to do that and then once you're inside, remove your clothes, put the key to the bottom.
That there was the biggest thing that pointed me in the direction of someone [snorts] else has got to have been present here. >> Yeah. And there was also the case of the the chief engineer that was um operating that building. He said that there was a door up to the roof, but that door had an alarm on it.
So if you'd press that, so you you know it's like you press the the button to get through. Fire escape gets you onto the roof. And then in a lot of American buildings, they have the fire escapes on the outside. Have you ever seen that? They're like the stairs on the outside. >> Um so yeah, an alarm would have gone off. Now there was no alarm.
>> No. But who would be able to potentially get out of that door or access that door without setting an alarm off? >> Some people that worked there. >> People that had at least access to certain master keys. >> Yes. And not only that, there were some police dogs that were sent in after the fact.
Now, uh, famously on the Joey and Josh True Crime Channel, we often listen to the testimony of police dogs. >> We love a sniffer dog. >> We They never lie to you. No. And what they were unable to find was any scent from those stairs up to the roof that identified that Alyssa had been up that route. And >> and they actually went onto the roof.
The police >> they did. Yeah. And they again they couldn't even get any scent there either, which doesn't add up with the assume. >> No, you would you would imagine that those police dogs would be barking their heads off at the water tank. And then there was the fact that her phone was never found afterwards, but she continued to keep on posting on Tumblr even after she'd passed away.
So people had alleged that someone had access to that phone and they were continuing to post on her behalf. So that's the theory that there may have been foul play. There may have been a murder that had gone on um at the hotel and therefore that you know it involved someone at the hotel because of all of the reasons that we said access to the top of the roof etc.
So the next theory, theory two, is even more sinister because it involves government interference and it's all linked to biological warfare. Because during Alysa stay at the seesaw, a highly publicized severe tuberculosis outbreak was occurring amongst the homeless population in the surrounding area of Skid Row. Theorists discovered that the standard internationally recognized test used to diagnose tuberculosis is called what do you think Joey? >> Isn't it called something along the lines of lamb Alisa? >> It's literally called lam lamb hyphen
Alisa. >> That is too close for coincidence, isn't it? >> Yeah. So, this is the thing. People have alleged theorist online. We're not going to call them conspiracy theorists, Jerry. >> Just online online theorists. >> Online sleuths. That's what they like to call us, online sleuth. Yeah, exactly. In the paper.
>> Online sleuths have alleged that she may have been a genetically engineered test subject or an agent sent to target the LA homeless population and infect them with tuberculosis. >> Can I ask a question? Right. If the government had been involved, would you not suspect that there would be a less messy cleanup job done there rather than, okay, let's leave her in a water tank? >> The government theories, Joey, you know what I'm like.
I don't really ever believe these sort of government conspiracy theories. And this one doesn't seem to have any evidence at all. I have to be honest with you. Other than the fact that it's a massive coincidence, strong that the test was literally her name. [clears throat] M >> beyond that there's not very much to go on here.
So why don't we go on to theory three which is all about the more supernatural side of this story which I think people are very fascinated by especially from that footage seems strange. >> I would always think that it would be quite a small portion of people that would go down the line of a supernatural presence taking part and playing a role in this.
But actually, when you look it up online, it's so heavily dominated at certain times by people claiming that there was a strong supernatural theory at play here. >> Yeah. And it all goes back to that thing that I mean, there's a series of theories around this, but it goes back to the elevator game that you mentioned earlier on.
Now, I had to look up what the elevator game even was because I didn't know what it was. But effectively, it's u >> back in the day, I don't know if you remembered this, there was a name that you had to say three times, look into a mirror, and someone would appear. >> Candyman. >> Was it the Candy Man? >> Four times. >> Four times.
But there was also another kid. There was another serial killer that would appear if you said his name three times. I can let us know in the comments. That's 100% a thing. Well, that Well, maybe not. That's why I'm not even saying it now. >> Have you never watched Candyman, though? >> No, I've never watched >> Oh, Candyman was scary as [ __ ] He would come and get you if you said his name three four times.
You go, "Candy man, candy man, candy man." And then you say it one more time and then he come >> and then he comes and gets you. >> Yeah. He don't give you candy. >> Well, this is the thing. The elevator game rather than summoning a supernatural being actually transports you to another dimension. >> That's what that's what it's been told.
That's what was alleged in the film anyway. >> And is that some kind of sinister dimension? I don't know what sort of dimension it is, but it would transport you to somewhere else, which perhaps is more interesting than just, you know, being accosted by a potential serial killer after saying his name four times in a mirror.
>> Yeah. Yeah. Weird that they would just use an elevator. >> Well, elevators are strange places. They transport you to other locations. >> Yeah. >> Fair play. Fair play. >> And this is the thing, you know, I think you might have subscribed to the theory that you go on a plane. Do you actually go up in the sky, Joey? Maybe you're just sort of Maybe it's all just, you know, TV screens on either side of you.
Maybe you're not even actually going up into the into the other sky. >> That's a conversation for another day. >> Well, this is the thing, you know, just saying. Maybe you're in another dimension in the sky. Yeah, >> just saying. So, that was one theory. Uh, but another theory is that Alyssa made frantic, highly unusual gestures with her hands and moving them in ways that some people have described as inhuman.
Some also argued that she was specifically speaking to or being physically manipulated by an invisible entity. Now, people have alleged that this may have been the ghost of a former Cecile resident and Satanist called, would it be Richard Ramirez? Called Richard Ramirez. But it doesn't quite add up because he didn't die until 4 months after Alyssa had.
So not really sure how you could be haunted by a ghost of a man that still is alive, but it's someone that was in that hotel. So people have alleged that might have happened. Again, I want to know the sort of the ghostly logistics. It's very difficult to ascertain that. And then finally, believers in the occult curse pointed to a bizarre near identical parallel to the 2005 horror film called Dark Water.
Now Joey, have you seen this film? >> I've not seen Dark Water. Well, in this film, a young girl named Cecilia, which phonetically is very similar to Ceil, drowns in a building's rooftop water tank, causing the residents to notice dark, foul water coming out of their faucets. I never can get my head around these things.
How fiction, some would claim, can reality, >> seep into reality and predict the future. so many times. I've looked at the X Files have done it so many times. I mean, even things like the Simpsons and things like that >> and when it's this specific and there's those sort of coincidences, >> you have to ask the question, what is going on here? >> Yeah. 2005.
I mean, you know, long time before >> some someone might have planned that potentially someone supernatural. So, those are the supernatural theories. Why don't I now go on to the official story? >> Yep. what police said actually happened. Well, the official investigation by the Los Angeles Police Department concluded that Alyssa Lamb's death was an accidental drowning with her bipolar disorder acting as a major contributing factor.
But what is the evidence for that proclamation? Well, Alyssa didn't have any defensive wounds, bruising, cuts on her body. In fact, it was just shown that the cause of death, as I say, was the drowning. So, there was no evidence to say there was a third party involved because she had no defensive wounds.
That it didn't it wouldn't have made sense if she was murdered because again, if you're a murder victim, it's very clearly often defensive wounds. >> Yeah. And it's not exclusive to having defensive wounds. It's not like someone can't be psychologically threatened and and you know without having any sort of wounds and trying to get away but >> no there's not but again that's one theory you know one piece of evidence that they've said but not only that they went through a toxicology report and they tested her heart uh her liver tissue her bile and it was all negative
for recreational drugs and it showed that she was not intoxicated by alcohol so she wasn't on anything per se, but potentially she should have been on something, Joe, because she had prescribed medication for her bipolar disorder. And unfortunately, only trace amounts of this medication were found in her system, which meant that she was not actively taking the prescription that she was meant to.
And in bipolar patients, taking the mood elevating anti-depressants alone without stabilizing presence of antiscychopathic or mood stabilizers significantly spikes the risk of a severe manic episode. So clinical experts reviewed all of this evidence and they said that the footage indicated that Alyssa might have been going through a manic episode and it may have been a direct result of not being on the medication that she should have been. And it wasn't just that.
There was also an explanation of how she could have ended up on the roof. And this was because Chief Engineer Pedro Tovar testified that there were three external fire escapes accessible through standard hallway windows. And obviously if you went through these windows, you would have gone round the doors and therefore there would have been no alarm being sound.
And also it would have been very difficult for the police dogs to trace someone going through a window and up onto the roof. Yeah, especially the sniffer dogs. That would make sense, wouldn't it? The the key thing there is, would there have not been any CCTV footage that would have led to them to at least believe she'd walking down walked down these hallways with the windows or even covering these hallways? >> Yeah.
And then they went through the hatch evidence of the water tank itself. Now, this was a key part of the case because, as we've said, people that initially saw the footage of the tank and heard some immediate media reports heard that the tank the hatch was closed. >> That's what I always heard. I always heard from the start of when this case happened, and I used to look into it, that someone or the person in question would have had to lifted the heavy hatch and then closed it behind them.
>> Yeah. Now, opening the hatch was possible for a woman her size. So, it would make sense if she was able to open the hatch herself. Now, what we've said very clearly is it would be impossible to close the hatch because you're in a body of water and it makes it way more difficult. Again, you have to reach up.
It she just wasn't big enough basically to reach it, let alone strong enough. But the fact of the matter was is that police testified that when they found the water tank and the hatch was open. So, again, that was found to be completely false. It's basically fake news. So the what the the hatch was open and that was the sort of real case of the events.
And then finally uh I mentioned earlier on that she was continuing to post even after she passed away. That's very simple to explain. There's a scheduling feature on Tumblr and she had scheduled some posts to go out in the subsequent days and that's the reason why there were posts up on the Tumblr. Soon as the scheduled post had finished that's when the post finished.
So it wasn't like someone had access to her phone and was continuing to post. So ultimately this is the story of a tragic passing of a young lady who was experiencing you know significant mental health problems. She had been prescribed medication for those problems and wasn't taking it. And so the official story goes that she wasn't you know in her right state of mind and therefore unfortunately went into an area which was incredibly dangerous for her and she subsequently passed away.
Yeah, this was one of the things that came out of the autopsy, especially after her body was recovered, and that was the fact that she had taken one anti-depressant on or around the day of her death, but she had specifically not taken the medication that was there to stabilize her. And obviously we go back to the start of the story and we heard exactly what had happened when she had failed to take those medications that were there to stabilize her before and this was when she ended up in a psychiatric hospital and her sister had
spoken before about the tendency when she was having these visual illusions which or hallucinations I should say which obviously can be determined or at least what would you they assumed was going on when she was in that elevator that she was potentially having. I think that the footage that we've seen definitely leads us to that conclusion.
>> What had happened often when she was having these hallucinations is that she had tried to squeeze herself in to tight spaces. Now, maybe under severe illusion, the water tank would have been one of them. It doesn't mean that we're left without questions, though, does it? I mean, it doesn't actually tell us why she didn't squeeze into a tight location in her bedroom, why she didn't go under her bed to seek refuge.
It definitely leads us to believe that Alisa must have been massively confused in her final moments. And it must have been an episode probably way more severe than the one she had had in the past. >> And this is the thing, I think, a manic episode, Joey, when you see someone going through it. Now, we've covered quite a few cases of people going through this type of psychosis.
I mean, the one that springs to mind is the Swedish sisters. >> Yeah. >> Um, and watching the footage, which was a little bit more crystal clear in the Swedish sisters case and certainly more thorough in terms of the amount of footage compared to this case, would you say? Um, I found that footage some of the most concerning footage that I think I've ever seen.
>> Yeah. Um, so watching Alyssa in those moments, you know, potentially going through a manic episode is really concerning and that's why people find it so creepy and worrying. >> Um, and why potentially the supernatural and the occult claims come from because you find it difficult to explain. It's hard to wrap your head around um, someone that's not thinking logically or potentially not in their right minds.
And something I find so tragic is like people can have these manic episodes happen to them when they're at home alone. They could have it happen to them, they're in a vehicle, they're in the car, something like that. There's no one around at that moment in time that could on a another day in another world have been able to help them.
And if you said, "Where could you put someone where they're most likely to end up running into someone that could potentially be there to provide assistance for them?" you'd probably say other than you know a psychiatric hospital itself maybe a busy populated hotel and again I'm not saying that's something I find suspicious but it's actually a tragic element of this case she was in a area where people were around she was in a hotel multiple occupants staying there at that time and tragically no one was able to even come
across her let alone intervene in those moments which led to her ending up in the water tank Can I ask you a question? Do you believe that we know from that conclusion there? Do you believe personally that we know everything about this case? >> I think there are elements of the footage that might have been removed for people's protection.
Do you know what I mean by that? Like you don't want to scare the general public, you know, too much beyond what they already are. >> Well, there was a guest, a musician actually that was staying in the hotel that was actuallyounded by the media during this time. Um, and this was because he had a sort of in some people's opinions, not mine, but a creepy sort of gothlike vibe about his music and spoke about a lot of uh, >> he was in a band called Morbid.
>> Morbid. >> So, that tells you everything you need to know. I mean, that's a pretty scary name for a for a band. >> And when you see the videos of him online, it definitely is a scary character. Obviously, character is the key word I used there because that was part of the >> part of the niche basically in the band he was in.
He was hounded online and he wasn't actually even in the country at the time I don't believe when this was happening. Definitely wasn't in the LA area when this happened and that could be proven yet that didn't stop him from facing intense internet scrutiny in the aftermath of that. So if you for example had a hotel worker that walked a walked past or something similar to that and hadn't intervened and helped maybe I'm not saying it'd be right to do it but maybe something could have been taken up for someone's protection.
And this is the thing I think a lot of people in relation to this case wereounded and really suffered. I mean he had a psychological breakdown that musician and he actually attempted self deletion as well. >> Really? So he again he left music. He he went on to become a filmmaker you know rather than continuing in the music.
>> I've seen a picture of him now completely different when he's in his makeup and stuff like that. >> Yeah. Yeah. So this the thing and he wasn't the only person that was sort of you know chased down and I suppose bullied I think is the is the main word. There was the hotel manager. Have you heard about Amy Price? >> Yeah.
>> She actually left the hotel industry and became a jewelry maker. She just didn't want anything to do with it. Again, maybe she didn't know the full history of the hotel Cecil either. >> And didn't you tell me that the hotel's not even in full operation anymore after obviously what happened with Alisa Lamb, but after all of the sort of >> press and media attention, that sort of thing. Yeah.
Well, in 2014, the hotel was actually sold and it was sold for $30 million. Um, and it went to a guy called Richard Bourne, who was a hotelier. Uh, and it was closed in 2017 for extensive renovations. And in late 2021, the hotel reopened with this massive renovation and it provided 600 apartments for unhoused LA residents under the management of the Skidro Housing Trust.
But even after that renovation, there was still massive issues with the hotel. It had cockroaches infested within it. It had various elements of damp in the building as well. It was a building that was very much on its last legs. even after being renovated by this new hotelia. So much so that the building was then put up for sale again in March 2024 and they're still seeking a buyer to try and have affordable housing units within it.
So the hotel itself doesn't operate as a hotel anymore and affordable apartments are very different from hotel rooms, aren't they? So yeah, the the legacy of the hotel is very much still up in the air. And one other thing that I want to tell you about, Joey, is that I don't know if you know this, but there was actually some legal action after this.
>> In 2013, Alyssa's parents actually sued the hotel owner. Um, said that they didn't adhere to their duty of care for their daughter. Um, but this case was thrown out. So, they never got any restitution or any ability to say that the hotel was at fault for not protecting their daughter. I think when you look at the fact that there was so much missing CCTV and so much missing from actual witness statements around the disappearance of their daughter, I think I can see why there was some sort of legal action there.
>> Yeah. Now, I don't know what you think of the documentary because the Netflix documentary is quite controversial, isn't it? They said they sensationalized the case. They say they didn't potentially give uh enough sensitivity to Eliza. They left key moments out like I don't think in the documentary they spoke about the fact that she had been kicked out of a multiple shared room.
I don't think they spoke about the fact that she had also been kicked out of the set of Conan O'Brien. But I I kind of go into these things with an open mind and understand the sort of content that I'm watching and therefore things might seem salacious at times but that's the industry. >> Yeah, that is and and look we really want to know what your perception if you have seen the Netflix documentary is.
Um, and also just generally about the theories because we try to present the evidence on the multiple theories around the case, especially the supernatural one, which is very difficult to find evidence for. >> Yeah. And I've got no doubt that people will have their own things to add on to the theories we spoke about or potentially even have theories of their own, which I think we'd love to hear, to be fair.
>> Yeah, definitely. Definitely. Right. So, if you enjoyed this episode, please do hit the subscribe button. It massively helps us. And right now we've got near enough 55,000 people that have subscribed to the channel, which quite frankly means the absolute world to us. The fact that so many of you are enjoying our videos right now is a massive source of joy for us both and we really really appreciate all the love.
>> 100%. Every single weekend I'm getting messages saying, "Are Joey and Josh up? Is there going to be a Joey and Josh upload this weekend? Are you dropping a video today?" So, I know that so many of you guys have actually worked this into your routine on well predominantly a Sunday, but we have other days that we upload stuff and we're really really overwhelmed by that.
>> Yeah, we really appreciate it and what we have to say is that this case was one that was recommended by our members and again it was recommended over and over again. So, we had to cover it and we had to make sure that we look after our members because they are a huge part of how this channel exists.
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And not only that, Joey is we have this new offer which lets people get the first month for free. >> Lovely. So you can try before you buy and that is a wonderful way to get access to our membership. Thanks to all of our members that have supported us and thank you for watching this video. If you want to watch another one similar to this, why don't you check out the Swedish sisters video? We mentioned it earlier on and it is another case of a very scary manic episode by two Swedish sisters which was the first video we ever made on the Joey and Josh channel.
Thank you so much for watching. We'll see you in the next one.
