The Notorious Cecil Hotel
The Cecil Hotel was founded in 1924 in Downtown, LA. Throughout its history, The Cecil Hotel has earned itself a reputation for violence, suicide and murder. The hotel’s dark past was the inspiration for American Horror Story: Hotel.
Built in 1924, by three hoteliers, The Cecil Hotel was originally intended to house business travellers and tourists. The hotel cost $1.5 million to construct and had an opulent lobby. The hotel had nineteen floors and seven hundred rooms available.
Within five years of the hotel’s opening, the United States entered the Great Depression. The Cecil became a budget hotel and became known for its unseemly clientele. The decades following, the area around the hotel, Skid Row became the centre of the homelessness crisis in Los Angeles. It is reported that Skid Row currently has over ten thousand homeless people.
In 2007, the hotel was bought and was refurbished. Half of the hotel was used as it was intended, the other half was used as a longtime stay for low-income tenants.
In 2011, The Cecil Hotel was rebranded as Stay on Main. Then in 2014, the hotel was bought for $30 million and renovations were planned, but the owners were committed to preserving the history of the building. In 2017, the hotel shut for renovations, but they have been postponed due to the pandemic. Also in 2017, the Los Angeles City Council voted The Cecil Hotel a historic-cultural monument.
The Cecil Hotel has been a hot spot for death, suicide and violence. According to the manager who worked at the Cecil between 2007 and 2017, they had eighty deaths during her tenure and made three calls a day were made to 911. Many long-term residents dubbed the hotel ‘The Suicide’ due to the high number of suicides.
The first death at the hotel came just three years after its opening in January 1927. Percy Ormond Cook shot himself in the head after failing to reunite with his wife and child. He died in hospital later that evening.
In November 1931, the first suicide was recorded at the Cecil Hotel. W.K. Norton was found dead in his hotel room after overdosing on ‘poisonous capsules’.
Over the next ten years, at least six more people died. Some of them were not ruled as suicides despite the method of death most likely being self-inflicted.
In 1944, the first murder took place at the hotel. Dorothy Purcell, aged nineteen, was staying at the hotel with her thirty-eight-year-old boyfriend. Unaware that she was pregnant, Purcell went into labour. Not wanting to disturb her sleeping boyfriend, Purcell gave birth to a baby boy in the bathroom. Purcell thought that the baby was a stillborn and so, threw him out of the window. The baby landed on the roof of the adjacent building. Purcell was charged with murder. Three psychiatrists testified that Purcell wasn’t mentally sound and she was ultimately found not guilty by reason of insanity.
In 1962, Pauline Otton committed suicide after a fight with her husband. Otton jumped from a seventh-floor window. Unfortunately, Otton landed on a pedestrian. Both were killed. Originally, the investigators thought that they had committed suicide together, however, the fact that the pedestrian’s hands were in his pockets and he was still wearing his shoes disproved that theory.
In 1964, ‘Pigeon Goldie’ Osgood was found raped, beaten and stabbed in her hotel room by a hotel worker. Her room had been ransacked. Hours after her death, Jacques Ehlinger was seen walking nearby, covered in blood. Ehlinger was arrested and charged with Osgood’s death but was ultimately cleared of all charges. Osgood’s murder remains unsolved.
During the eighties, serial killer, Richard Ramirez (The Night Stalker) lived at The Cecil Hotel whilst killing in the area. It was reported that it was not unusual to see him returning from a murder, covered in blood.
An international serial killer, Jack Unterweger, lived and killed at The Cecil Hotel in the early nineties.
The most well-known death that occurred at The Cecil Hotel was the death of Elisa Lam in 2013. Whilst on holiday, Canadian student, Elisa Lam, stayed at Stay on Main. She disappeared from the hotel at the end of January. Her family contacted the LAPD and the hotel was searched, but they couldn’t find any trace of Elisa Lam. After two weeks with no answers, the LAPD released the surveillance footage of the last known sighting of Lam. The video of her acting bizarrely in the lift subsequently went viral. Many conspiracies spiralled and the history of the hotel came into the international spotlight.
Elisa Lam was found a few days later, on February 19th. Lam was found in one of the water towers on the roof after guests of Stay on Main had complained about the water pressure, the water being black and tasting funny. Ultimately, Lam’s death was ruled an accidental drowning, helped by her under-medicating for her bipolar disorder. Despite the official ruling, many people still believe her case is unsolved. (If you want to find out more, go watch the documentary on Netflix: The Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel).
There’s no shortage of unsavoury happenings at Cecil Hotel, however, it has also been linked to the Black Dahlia case. It has never been proven that the Black Dahlia visited the Cecil Hotel bar a few days before her death, but many believe it to be true.
The Cecil Hotel has a dark past and we’ve barely scratched the surface. Not only have there been many deaths and suicides but it is now considered one of the most haunted hotels in the United States, probably due to its morbid past. For now, the hotel is closed and there is no word on when it will reopen.
