Strange Deaths at The Cecil Hotel
The Cecil Hotel is known more for the strange connection to unexplained deaths than for its rooms -from Richard Ramirez to Elisa Lam
The Cecil Hotel opened in 1924 in the skid row area of downtown Los Angeles. The once upscale 700-room hotel became a budget motel and then a rooming house known for housing undesirables, drug use, and crime. The hotel attempted to rebrand itself and move away from its dark history with a name change in 2011. The hotel became known as The Stay on Main. The former Cecil/Stay on Main now serves as an affordable housing complex.
A Gateway to Murder
On January 22, 1927, three years after The Cecil Hotel opened its doors, Percy Ormond Cook shot himself while a guest in one of the rooms.
This strange suicide was the first of more two dozen unexplained or mysterious deaths or murders occurring at the hotel.
Here’s a look at some of the most well-known and strange death cases from The Cecil Hotel in Los Angeles.
Dorothy Jean Purcell
In September 1944, Dorothy Jean Purcell and her husband, 38-year-old shoe salesman, Ben Levine, stayed in one of the rooms at The Cecil. The nine-month-pregnant Purcell never shared the news with her husband.
She went into labor while staying at the hotel with her husband as he slept. Not wanting to disturb the tired man, she delivered the baby in the bathroom.
Thinking the baby boy was dead, Purcell tossed him out the hotel window. He landed on the roof of an adjacent building and passed away from his injuries.
Though charged with murder, Purcell was determined to be “mentally confused” at the time of the incident. She was found not guilty by reason of insanity in January 1945.
Richard Ramirez
Serial killer Richard Ramirez, also known as The Night Stalker, stayed at The Cecil Hotel during his 1988 - 1989 murder and rape spree that terrorized Los Angeles. Richard paid $14 per night for a room up on the 14th floor. He never committed any of his murders at the hotel, instead using it as a place to relax after the attacks.
Ramirez often walked outside the hotel in his underwear, bloody from the murders, yet no one said a thing. The Cecil was just one of those crime-riddled hotels where people come and go and others minded their own business.
“Back in the ’80s, I would never go no farther than the 6th floor,” the resident, Kenneth Givens, says in Vanishing. “Usually, the higher floors of the Cecil, people used to get killed up in there. Once they got a guy in the room, they would rob him, beat him up, and throw him out the window. So if you didn’t watch yourself, you might come flying out of there with no wings.”
Pauline Otton
On October 12, 1962, Pauline Otton and her husband, George Gianni, argued in their 9th-floor room at The Cecil Hotel. George took off in a rage and Pauline, fed up with it all, decided to jump out of the window of the hotel room.
She did just that, landing atop her husband George who rushed out of the room just moments before. Both Pauline and George died instantly.
Elisa Lam
Elisa Lam disappeared from her room at The Cecil Hotel (then named Stay on Main) on January 31, 2013. Video surveillance captured Lam acted strangely shortly before she disappeared. This led to many theories on what happened to Lam.
No one heard from or saw the girl alive again. Three weeks later a maintenance man found her decomposing body in a water heater.
The Medical Examiner determined her death was caused by “accidental drowning.” The case was closed.
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