shape
carat
color
clarity

"The water did have a funny taste."

kenny

Super_Ideal_Rock
Premium
Joined
Apr 30, 2005
Messages
34,635
Los Angeles (CNN) -- Tourists staying at a Los Angeles hotel bathed, brushed teeth and drank with water from a tank in which a young woman's body was likely decomposing for more than two weeks, police said.
Elisa Lam's corpse was found in the Cecil Hotel's rooftop water tank by a maintenance worker who was trying to figure out why the water pressure was low Tuesday.

Lam's parents reported her missing in early February. The last sighting of her was in the hotel on January 31, Los Angeles Police said.
Detectives are now investigating the 21-year-old Canadian's suspicious death, police Sgt. Rudy Lopez said.
It was not clear whether the water presented any health risks. Results on tests on the water done Wednesday by the Los Angeles Public Health Department were expected later in the day.

The hotel management has not responded to CNN requests for comment.
Video appears to show four cisterns on the hotel roof.

People who stayed at the Cecil since Lam's disappearance expressed shock about developments.

"The water did have a funny taste," Sabrina Baugh told CNN on Wednesday. She and her husband used the water for eight days.
"We never thought anything of it," the British woman said. "We thought it was just the way it was here."
What she described was not normal.

"The shower was awful," she said. "When you turned the tap on, the water was coming black first for two seconds and then it was going back to normal."

The hotel remained open after the discovery, but guests checking in Tuesday were told not to drink it, according to Qui Nguyen, who decided to find a new hotel Wednesday.

Nguyen said he learned about the body from a CNN reporter, not the hotel staff.

http://www.cnn.com/2013/02/20/us/california-hotel-water-corpse/index.html?hpt=hp_c1
 
Yeesh :o
 
:knockout: This makes me feel absolutely sick to my stomach. I don't really blame the hotel staff, but I'd think covers of some sort would be required for water that is intended for human consumption. :confused:
 
justginger|1361444308|3386264 said:
:knockout: This makes me feel absolutely sick to my stomach. I don't really blame the hotel staff, but I'd think covers of some sort would be required for water that is intended for human consumption. :confused:

I so agree with this - everytime I see something written about this it just makes my stomach turn! I am sorry for the young woman and sorry for the guests who drank and used the water - yuck!!
 
Ummmm.... eeeeew!!! :errrr:
 
How could a water tank be open? Anything could fall in there: animals, birds, people, dirt! What an awful thing to happen.
 
Maybe the villain took off the top, then put it back. I'm gonna barf!

--- Laurie
 
:shock:
just ... ICK!!!

I can't believe that is standard practice to leave a water tank exposed...??
 
Um, if the water is black, that means something is seriously wrong.
 
This is awful... I just saw on the news that she was staying there alone. What the heck? :sick:
 
Re: "The water did have a funny taste."

Ack.... Poor girl... Hope they find out what happened to her.

And ack! For people drinking the water and showering in it and everything else!
 
I think the water tank did have a lid. I remember seeing them in the video footage.
 
Source: http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2013/02/21/172579930/l-a-hotel-where-body-was-found-in-water-tank-has-long-dark-history

The gruesome discovery this week of a young woman's body inside a rooftop water tank at the Cecil Hotel in Los Angeles is not the Cecil's first brush with such notoriety, as Southern California Public Radio's KPCC reports.

Chris Nichols, associate editor at Los Angeles Magazine, told KPCC about the hotel's "long, dark history."

"There were murders there in the '20s and 30s," he said, "and a woman jumped out a window in the '60s."

"Night Stalker" Richard Ramirez, now on California's death row, was a frequent resident in the 1980s, Nichols said. Back then, KPCC writes, "room rates were as cheap as $14. It's reported that he stayed in a room on the 14th floor while killing 14 people [he was convicted of 13 murders]."

Austrian murderer Jack Unterweger, KPCC adds, also stayed there in the '80s. "He picked up some prostitutes nearby and they ended up dead," Nichols said. The Guardian reminds us that "between 1990 and 1993 Unterweger murdered 11 prostitutes in Vienna, Prague and Los Angeles, strangling them with a self-styled ligature constructed from his victims' bra straps." Unterweger killed himself in an Austrian prison in 1994.
 
The hotel is in a 'bad' part of downtown LA.
It is the kind of hotel that many indigent, near-homeless people live in who can't come up with two-months' rent, or qualify for a "real" rental because of bad or no credit history.
They recently added a nice lobby and an upgraded section for tourists that is nicer.

The tanks have covers, which must be removable.

cecil_hotel.jpg

screen_shot_2013-02-21_at_10.png
 
lin_ny|1361468279|3386521 said:
Not sure if you guys have seen the surveillance footage of her in the elevator, but it's definitely creepy. She appears to be on drugs. Acting verrrryyy strange. :shock:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Zq4LmWiDiC0

That's so strange. I've only seen bits of the video where she looked out the elevator and then hid, and the media made it seem like she was running from someone.

Did she travel by herself?
 
Wow, just wow. I had not seen that video, and she surely seems she is not in her right mind - at least not in a good, rational, frame of mind. Someone said she was staying alone. So she's staying in a seedy hotel. Alone. Seemingly not in her right mind. And she disappears and is found in the water tank. It sounds like she was totally vulnerable to seedy creeps who would pray on someone just like her. Really, really sad.

Does anyone know if she had any mental health problems before this?
 
A friend of my coworker knew her. Apparently sometime in her past she had to deal with periods of depression, but aside from that she was a normal, lovely out-going young woman. Most people in my city are quite sad that she's gone.

I'm pretty sure that someone killed her, people don't just "end-up" in water tanks.
 
..."The opening at the top of the cistern is too small to accommodate firefighters and equipment, so they had to cut a hole in the storage tank to recover Lam's body. The cisterns are on a platform at least three metres above the roof.

To get to the tanks, someone would have to go to the top floor then take a staircase with a locked door and emergency alarm preventing roof access. Another ladder would have to be taken to the platform and a person would have to climb the side of the tank."...

http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/story/2013/02/21/hotel-body-water.html
 
From a Yelp review that gave it 4/5 stars:

"But stop being whiny. just have a can of antibacterial spray"
 
OMG, macabre humor. :o
I heard today that since the water tasted funny the victim was probably a clown. :o
 
HopeDream|1361499544|3387216 said:
A friend of my coworker knew her. Apparently sometime in her past she had to deal with periods of depression, but aside from that she was a normal, lovely out-going young woman. Most people in my city are quite sad that she's gone.

I'm pretty sure that someone killed her, people don't just "end-up" in water tanks.

This is horrific! This poor young lady was vitimized by some sicko. Crimes against women really upset me. I'm glad to hear that people are remembering her with respect. So sad for her & her family :(sad
 
IMHO all human life has equal value.

A 6 foot 5 inch male 230-pound fit football quarterback suffering the same fate would be equally upsetting.
 
kenny|1361503269|3387304 said:
IMHO all human life has equal value.

A 6 foot 5 inch male 230-pound fit football quarterback suffering the same fate would be equally upsetting.

Kenny- I do agree with you. I have two sons & would be out of my mind if anyone ever hurt them. It just seems that so many young women are victimized, the brutality is shocking. I wish the world was a kinder,gentler place. I'm still horrified by the brutal rape in India where the young college student died. Seems like every time you turn on the news you hear of a shocking crime. I value everyones life equally, of course.
 
I understand.

As a generalization men are stronger than women so more crime happens in that direction.

Also there is the sexual aspect of victimization. (Yes, I know rape is crime, and not sex.)
As in many animal species male humans pursue females.
Very often female murder victims are found in autopsy to be raped.
Over two weeks underwater may have destroyed any such evidence in this case; I don't know.
 
GET 3 FREE HCA RESULTS JOIN THE FORUM. ASK FOR HELP
Top