Few buildings in America carry a body count like the Hotel Cecil. Since it opened its doors in Downtown Los Angeles in 1924, the 14-story building has been linked to at least 16 sudden or unexplained deaths – suicides mostly, but also unsolved murders and two separate stints as home base for serial killers.
Its most infamous case, the 2013 disappearance and death of Canadian tourist Elisa Lam, turned the Cecil into an internet obsession and a Netflix subject. Today it isn't even a hotel anymore. Since late 2021 it has operated as an affordable housing complex, and in 2024 its owners put the whole building back up for sale.
A Landmark on the Edge of Skid Row
Photo by Zheng Zhou
The Cecil sits at 640 South Main Street, in the heart of Downtown LA. The neighborhood around it is Skid Row, one of the largest stable populations of homeless people in the United States, a fact directly tied to the hotel's own decline.
The Hotel’s History: From Marble Dreams to Skid Row Reality
The Cecil Hotel in 1925
Three hoteliers – William Banks Hanner, Charles L. Dix, and Robert H. Schops – built the Cecil as a destination for business travelers and tourists. Architect Loy Lester Smith designed it in the Beaux Arts and Art Deco style, and it opened on December 20, 1924, at a cost of around $1.5 million. The lobby was opulent: marble floors, stained glass windows, potted palms, and alabaster statuary.
The timing was terrible. Within five years the Great Depression hit, and the surrounding blocks slid into what became known as Skid Row, with as many as 10,000 homeless people eventually living within 6 kilometers (4 miles) of the hotel. The Cecil's clientele shifted along with the neighborhood, and drug use and prostitution became a regular feature of the building.
In 1987, U2 filmed parts of their "Where the Streets Have No Name" music video there, capturing the building's fading grandeur. A partial refurbishment followed new ownership in 2008, and in 2011 part of the hotel was rebranded "Stay on Main," though it kept shared facilities with the rest of the Cecil and its original signage stayed up.
In 2014, New York hotelier Richard Born bought the building for $30 million, and developer Simon Baron Development took on a 99-year ground lease with plans to renovate. The Los Angeles City Council designated the Cecil a Historic-Cultural Monument in 2016. The hotel closed for renovation in 2017, and that work was suspended indefinitely when the COVID-19 pandemic hit.
On December 13, 2021, the Cecil reopened, not as a hotel, but as an affordable housing complex run by the Skid Row Housing Trust, providing accommodation for around 600 low-income residents. In April 2022, the hotel's historic rooftop rate sign, which had advertised "Hotel Cecil Low Monthly Weekly Rates 700 Rooms" on the building's facade since at least 1927, was illegally painted over.
A 2023 Los Angeles Times investigation found the building in poor shape: black mold, vermin infestations, water leaks, graffiti, and unsanitary shared amenities, with many residents, several of them formerly homeless, requiring ongoing medical, mental health, or substance abuse treatment. In 2024, owners Simon Baron Properties listed the Cecil for sale again.
Elizabeth Short - The Black Dahlia Connection
One of the Cecil's most persistent legends involves Elizabeth Short, the 22-year-old later known as the Black Dahlia. On January 15, 1947, her mutilated body was found in a vacant lot in Leimert Park, about 9 kilometers (6 miles) southwest of the hotel. The murder remains unsolved.
The Cecil connection rests on a single, disputed account. A policewoman named Myril McBride reported speaking to a frightened young woman on the evening of January 14, who had just left a bar on Main Street claiming a suitor had threatened to kill her. McBride later saw the woman return to the bar and leave with two men and another woman. Several outlets have since reported that this woman was Short, and that the bar in question was the Cecil's.
The identification is shaky. McBride herself grew less certain of the match after seeing more photographs of Short two days later, and the young woman she spoke with said she was due to meet her parents at a bus station that night, something Short could not have said: her parents had been estranged since 1930, and her mother was confirmed to be in Massachusetts at the time. The rumor that Short had a last drink at the Cecil's bar persists in write-ups about the hotel, but it's best treated as unverified legend rather than established fact.
The Disappearance of Elisa Lam
In January 2013, 21-year-old Canadian student Elisa Lam arrived in Los Angeles traveling alone. She checked into the Cecil a couple of days later and was initially placed in a shared room on the fifth floor. Her roommates complained about odd behavior, and hotel staff moved her into a room of her own.
On January 31, the day she was due to check out, Lam was last seen alive. Her family reported her missing on February 8. With no leads, the LAPD released surveillance footage on February 13 showing Lam alone in one of the Cecil's elevators, pressing every button, peering into the hallway, and gesturing oddly before stepping out and eventually disappearing off camera. The footage went viral worldwide.
Around the same time, guests began complaining that their tap water was discolored and tasted strange, with unusually low pressure. On February 19, a maintenance worker investigating the complaints opened one of four rooftop water tanks and found Lam's naked body floating inside.
The coroner ruled her death an accidental drowning, with bipolar disorder listed as a significant contributing factor. Toxicology results suggested she had been under-medicating or had recently stopped taking her prescribed medication. There was no evidence of physical trauma or sexual assault. How she got past the hotel's alarmed roof access was never fully explained, though investigators believed she may have used the fire escape.
Guests later sued the hotel, and a separate wrongful death suit filed by Lam's parents was dismissed in 2015. The case became the subject of Netflix's 2021 docuseries Crime Scene: The Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel, along with numerous films, songs, and other creative works referencing it.
The Cecil's Other Unsolved Murder Cases
The Cecil's grimmest reputation isn't limited to one case. In the mid-1980s, serial killer Richard Ramirez, dubbed the "Night Stalker," stayed on the 14th floor during his killing spree across Los Angeles. He would reportedly return to the hotel after a murder, discard his blood-soaked clothes in an alley, and walk in barely dressed without drawing attention. He was convicted of 13 murders in 1989 and sentenced to death, though he ultimately died of cancer in 2013 while still on death row.
Six years after Ramirez's arrest, Austrian journalist and writer Jack Unterweger checked into the Cecil in 1991, reportedly drawn partly by its association with Ramirez. While in Los Angeles researching an article on prostitution, he strangled at least three sex workers. He was later convicted in Austria in 1994 of multiple murders and sentenced to life without parole. He died by suicide in his cell that same night.
Other cases remain unsolved. In 1964, longtime resident Goldie Osgood, a retired telephone operator known locally as "Pigeon Goldie" for feeding birds in nearby Pershing Square, was found raped, beaten, and stabbed to death in her room. A suspect was arrested and later cleared, and her murder has never been solved.
In 1944, 19-year-old Dorothy Jean Purcell gave birth alone in a hotel bathroom, believed the baby had been stillborn, and dropped him from the window. A forensic examination later found air in the infant's lungs. Purcell was found not guilty by reason of insanity.
The Lobby
Cecil Hotel's lobby | Photo by Rach
Little of the Cecil's original 1924 interior survives untouched, but its Art Deco and Beaux Arts lobby, with marble floors, stained glass windows, potted palms, and alabaster statuary, remains the building's most historically significant space, which is part of why it earned landmark status in 2016.
Hauntings and Pop Culture
Photo by Jim Winstead
By 2008, longtime residents had taken to calling the building "the Suicide," a nickname that later spread widely online. The Cecil regularly appears on lists of America's most haunted hotels, and a 2014 photograph taken by a young boy, purporting to show a ghostly figure outside one of the windows, circulated widely.
Ryan Murphy has said the hotel's history directly influenced the 2015 season of American Horror Story: Hotel, and the building's story has since been referenced across true crime documentaries, horror films, and music.
The Building Today
The Cecil is no longer a hotel in any conventional sense. Since December 2021 it has functioned as affordable housing for around 600 low-income residents, many of them formerly homeless and in need of ongoing medical, mental health, or substance abuse support.
A 2023 Los Angeles Times report documented deteriorating conditions inside, including mold, pest infestations, and unsanitary shared spaces. In 2024, the building's owners put it back on the market, leaving its next chapter, like much of its past, unresolved.
