Inside the hotel of horrors where serial killers ‘let their hair down’: How the Hotel Cecil became a haven for evil criminals who prowled its halls – and shocked the world when a gruesome discovery was made in the water tank

Los Angeles is known for its glitz and glamour.

From the Beverley Hills Hotel to the Four Seasons, there are many famous celeb-heavy spots that bring in thousands of tourists each year.

But few are as gristly or infamous as the former Cecil Hotel.

The establishment is located on the city’s so-called Skid Row, where most of LA’s homeless population sleeps, and was put on sale last year after being converted into an affordable housing complex by LA’s city council.

It is just the latest instalment in the history of a building so macabre and shocking that it is difficult to believe. 

The Cecil Hotel (renamed in 2011 to Stay on Main, though most used its former title) opened on December 20, 1924. With 700 rooms and decadent decor, it was a luxury establishment until the Great Depression of the 1930s, when it fell on hard times.

After this time, the once grand 14-storey hotel changed drastically. It adopted a more hostel-style model, where tenants rented cheap rooms, taking both short and long term stays.

The cheap rooms – which offered tenants shared bathrooms – alongside the hotel’s location in a deprived, crime-ridden area meant that many of those staying there included criminals, those suffering through hard times, and sex workers.

It was in January 1927 that the first suicide took place at the hotel, when, according to reports, estate agent Percy Ormond Cook took his own life by shooting himself in the head, after the irretrievable breakdown of his relationship with his estranged wife and son.

Sadly, another three men would take their lives over the next 11 years.

The Hotel Cecil in Los Angeles (pictured in 2013) – renamed the Stay On Main – has a surprisingly macabre past

There have been at least 16 deaths at the Cecil Hotel since it opened in 1927, from suicides to accidents and murders

In 1931, WK Norton took poisonous pills. Three years later, in 1934, Army Sergeant Louis D. Borden died by suicide after slitting his throat. And in 1938, Roy Thompson, of the Marine Corps, leapt to his death from the building.

He would, sadly, not be the last person to die after falling from the building: a number of further deaths – some ruled as suicides and some as accidental occurred over the next few decades. 

These deaths included the 1938 fall of Grace E Margo, the 1947 death of Robert Smith, and the 1954 tragedy of Helen Gurnee. 

They were followed by Julia Frances Moore in 1962 and Alison Lowell  in 1975. In 1992 and 2015, two unidentified men fell to their death.

A sinister death took place in September 1944, when a newborn baby boy was thrown from the hotel by his mother Dorothy Jean Purcell, 19. She later said she believed the baby was stillborn, though this was not corroborated by the coroner’s findings.

While she was arrested and tried for the crime, Purcell was found not guilty of murder, due to reasons of insanity. Instead of being incarcerated in prison, she was admitted to a psychiatric hospital.

In 1947, one of the biggest mysteries linked to the hotel took place: the vicious murder of actress Elizabeth Short, 22. While it is not thought that she was killed at the hotel, it is thought that the crime may have some ties to the Cecil.

Elizabeth, whose case became known as the Black Dahlia murder, was last seen alive at the hotel according to unconfirmed reports, with claims (that some deny) that she was either a guest at the hostel or was drinking at its bar.

Aspiring actress Elizabeth Short (pictured in the 1940s) was murdered in 1947. Her body was found five miles away from the Cecil Hotel – according to some rumours, she had been seen at the hotel before going missing

Haunted history: Six people reportedly committed suicide in the hotel in the 1930s alone, while a teen mother threw her newborn baby out of the window after giving birth in 1944

After going missing on January 9, 1947, Elizabeth’s body was found some five miles away from the Cecil, in an empty lot in the Leimert Park area. The crime had been violent, and her body was naked and mutilated.

Her body had been severed at the waist and completely drained of blood. Her face had been slashed from the corners of her mouth toward her ears, creating an effect known as a Glasgow smile.

Elizabeth also had multiple cuts on her thigh and breasts, where entire portions of flesh had been removed. The body had been washed and cleaned and had been ‘posed’ with her hands over her head, her elbows bent at right angles, and her legs spread.

Despite ongoing interest in the case, and numerous theories, it remains unsolved – with the FBI saying that due to the passage of time, it is likely that the culprit will never be found. 

In 1962, a tragic suicide became a homicide, when Pauline Otton, 27, leapt to her death from the building, landing on George Giannini, 65, who was walking on the pavement below. They both died instantly. 

Just two years later, retired telephone operator, ‘Pigeon’ Goldie Osgood was found murdered in her room at the Cecil Hotel on June 4, 1964.

Osgood, who earned her nickname by feeding the pigeons at nearby Pershing Square, was raped, strangled, and fatally stabbed to death. A suspect was found walking nearby in bloodstained clothes, but he was later cleared. The crime remains unsolved.

Serial killer Richard Ramirez (known as The Night Stalker) who killed at least 13 people was known to stay at the Cecil Hotel

Austrian serial killer Jack Unterweger (pictured) also lived in the notorious Cecil Hotel, around 1991

Among the hotel’s most infamous guests were serial killer Richard Ramirez (known as The Night Stalker) and Austrian serial killer Jack Unterweger. 

Ramirez who killed at least 13 people in California in the mid-1980s, and he lived in a room on the hotel’s 14th floor in 1985 before he was caught.

Richard Schave, who runs Esotouric bus tours in Los Angeles with his partner Kim Cooper, told CNN in 2013 that while Ramirez was staying at the Cecil, he was ‘just dumping his bloody clothes in the dumpster at the end of his evening and going in the back entrance’.

Meanwhile, Unterweger was working as a journalist covering LA crime for an Austrian magazine when he checked into the hotel in 1991. He killed three sex workers in the city while staying there.

‘We believe he was living at the Cecil in homage to Ramirez,’ Schave said. 

A more recent tragedy took place in 2013, when student 21-year-old Elisa Lam went missing while staying at the hotel. 

She checked into the hotel on January 26, 2013, after traveling from British Columbia, Canada, where she was studying, on her way to Santa Cruz. 

On January 31, Elisa stopped using her phone. She was last seen in surveillance footage on February 1, behaving strangely in the hotel elevator, appearing to hide from someone or something.

Elisa’s naked body was found float in the hotel’s water tank on the roof on February 19, 2013, after hotel guests complained the water tasted and smelled bad.

Police believe Elisa, who was bipolar and had been staying at the hotel, had been there for two weeks by the time she was found.

TRAGEDY: Canadian student Elisa Lam went missing while staying at the hotel. Her body was later found in a water tank on the roof 

Elisa’s naked body was found floating in the hotel’s water tank on the roof on February 19, 2013, after hotel guests complained the water tasted and smelled bad

No other information about her final movements — including how she got onto the roof and into the tank — has been confirmed. Lam’s death was officially ruled accidental but how she died and the details leading up to it remain a mystery.

Her story was part of an anthology series made by Netflix which focused on eerie places shrouded in death, criminal activity, and conspiracy theories.

Crime Scene: The Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel, which debuted in 2021, was the first installment of the anthology series. The debut season touched upon the Cecil’s haunted past while investigating Elisa Lam’s disappearance.

In the programme, a former Cecil Hotel manager recalled being asked: ‘Is there a room here that maybe somebody hasn’t died in?’

‘I never got used to that,’ she admitted.

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