The Cecil Hotel – A Magnet For Murder, Suicide, And Tragedy

The Cecil Hotel is one of Los Angeles’ most famous places to stay, but its reputation is not for its award-winning hospitality. Instead, the Cecil’s popularity is linked to the inexplicably high number of suicides, murders, and unsolved cases, making the building one California’s most haunted landmarks. This spooky hotel is a magnet for ghost-hunters, thrill seekers, and (seemingly) death itself.

From Glamour to Gutter – A Brief History

The Cecil hotel was constructed in 1924. It was marketed as the ‘hotel of choice’ for tourists and people traveling on business. The décor was lavish and over-the-top with stained-glass windows, a grand entrance, and a marble lobby. The cost to build the Cecil hotel was one-million dollars (a hefty price for the time), but was very profitable in the first five years. In 1929; however, the Great Depression triggered a downward spiral that would change the way people viewed the Cecil forever.

Shortly after the economic crash, the Cecil found itself adjacent to a growing area in town known as “Skid Row”. This section of the city was largely inhabited by the poor and homeless. Estimates said that as many as ten-thousand homeless people were within a short walking distance of the hotel during this time. It didn’t take long for the Cecil to become known as a place for undesirables.

New owners purchased the Cecil hotel in 2007. Construction to update the historic building began immediately and, in 2011, the hotel was renamed “Stay on Main”.

The Stay on Main is still in full operation today. Renovations are scheduled to be completed by the end of 2019.

Desperate Times

During the Great Depression, the suicide rate in America rose by over 20%. As people lost their homes and life savings, it is not difficult to imagine that they would have sought out places like hotels or office buildings (places away from their families) to end their lives.

Could this explain some of the suicides at the Cecil? Perhaps, but it is not the silver bullet I was looking for. The gruesome discoveries continued (if not accelerated) long after the economy recovered in the 1940’s.

The Cecil Suicides

The Beginning

On November 12, 1931, a 46-year-old man named W.K. Norton from Manhattan Beach checked into the Cecil with a fake name (‘James Willys’ ‘from Chicago’). Norton stayed there for six nights. On November 19 he was found dead from taking poison. No one knows why he used an alias or what business he might have attended to in those six nights. Norton’s is the first person on record to die at the Cecil hotel.

Less than one year later, a 25-year-old man named Benjamin Dodich checked into the hotel and shot himself in the head. No one could provide an explanation as to why he might have wanted to die, nor did he leave a note.

The Men Who Served

The next group of suicides were all men who served their country. These were all unrelated instances.

It was the summer of 1934 when a maid found the body of 53-year-old, former Army Medical Corps, Sgt. Louis D. Borden. Borden had slit his own throat with a razor. He left a number of notes explaining that he no longer wanted to live due to his declining health.

Next, a Marine fireman named Roy Thompson checked into the Cecil in January of 1938. He stayed for several weeks, giving no indication that anything was awry. Then one day, the 35-year-old man went up to the top floor of the hotel and jumped out of a window, landing on the skylight of the building next door.

Lastly, in May of 1939, Erwin C. Neblett a 39-year-old Navy officer was discovered in his room by a maid. He had poisoned himself.

Still Breathing

It was January of 1940 when 45-year-old teacher, Dorothy Sceiger, was found “near death”. She had ingested poison. Though unconscious, she was still breathing when she was discovered. Staff rushed to get her help, but unfortunately, Dorothy did not survive the trip to the hospital.

The Jumpers

The next cluster of suicides were all performed by way of jumping out of the hotel windows. As you will read, this was the method of choice for many guests who decided to end their stay at the Cecil (and this life) prematurely.

In November 1947, a 35-year-old man named Robert Smith killed himself by jumping from a 7th floor window. In October of 1954, a 55-year-old woman also leaped to hear death from the 7th floor. She had stayed in the hotel for a full week prior to her suicide. In 1962, 50-year-old Julia Frances Moore jumped from her eighth-floor window. In 1975, an unidentified woman climbed to the twelfth-floor and fell to her death. She too, had stayed at the hotel for several weeks.

There was one earlier case of a woman named Grace Magro who ultimately died from falling out of a ninth story window. As she fell, her body became tangled in some telephone wires, causing further injury. She passed away in a nearby hospital, but whether she jumped or fell by accident was never confirmed.

A Suicide-Murder (Yes, In That Order)

The next two deaths at the Cecil are simply baffling.

On October 12, 1962, a young woman named Pauline Otton was arguing with her husband, Dewey. Having had enough of the back-and-forth screaming match, Dewey left the hotel room and slammed the door behind him. Whatever was said in that room destroyed Pauline. She was so distraught, she made the very rash and devastating decision to throw herself from the window in her room.

Pauline killed herself with this act; however, she took another life with her. Pauline’s body did not come into contact with the sidewalk below as she would have expected. Instead, she fell on an unsuspecting pedestrian named George Gianinni, killing them both on impact.

If you have read this far, you now know that the Cecil hotel is no stranger to death, but what is coming up next are acts of pure evil.

Murders and Murderers

Dorothy

It was September of 1944 when Dorothy Jean Purcell and Ben Levine checked into the Cecil. Dorothy was 19 and Ben was 38. The nature of their relationship was not described, so we will need to make our own assumptions.

One night, after Ben had fallen asleep, Dorothy woke up with pain in her lower abdomen. Not wanting to disturb Ben’s sleep, she made her way to the bathroom and, to her great astonishment, she gave birth to a baby boy. She didn’t even know she was pregnant! Dorothy had to think fast. What was she going to do?

Dorothy did the unthinkable. She threw her baby out of the hotel window, where he landed on the roof of the building next door. The baby was soon discovered and Dorothy was arrested and charged with murder. During her trial; however, a team of three psychiatrists provided testimony that Dorothy was “mentally confused” when she committed the act and she was found “not guilty by reason of insanity”.

Goldie Osgood

In 1964, a phone operator known as “Pigeon Goldie” took residence at the Cecil. She was well known in the area and often hung out in Pershing Square to feed the birds (hence the clever nickname). On June 4^th her brutally assaulted, beaten, and stabbed body was found in her room by a worker at the hotel. The police were called and, within a few hours, a man named Jacques B. Ehlinger was arrested. He was found walking through Pershing Square wearing bloodstained clothes. Though he was charged with Goldie’s murder, he was cleared of the crime in court due to lack of evidence. No other arrests were ever made.

Richard Ramirez

Better known as the “Night Stalker”, serial-killer Richard Ramirez chose the Cecil to be his home for a number of weeks in 1985. Ramirez was a Satanist and was astonishingly brutal in his killings, using a variety of weapons against his victims including guns, knives, a machete, a tire iron, and even a hammer. He is best known for breaking into people’s homes in the middle of the night to rape, murder, and burglarize his victims. According to the timelines, it is more than likely that Ramirez was staying at the Cecil while terrorizing the people of Los Angeles before he was caught.

Ramirez was convicted of 13 counts of murder, 5 counts of attempted murder, 11 counts of sexual assault, and 14 counts of burglary and was sentenced to death. He died in his cell due to health issues before his execution could take place.

Jack Unterweger

In 1991, Austrian serial killer, Jack Unterweger, was also a guest of the Cecil hotel. Unterweger was initially convicted of a single murder in 1974. While in prison, he wrote several papers which caught the attention of Austrian literary nobility. Believing he showed signs of rehabilitation, they lobbied to have him released and by 1990, he was paroled. Big mistake!

While on parole, Unterweger started a career in writing, but the taste for blood returned and within a few short months, he went back to killing. In total, he murdered between ten and twelve women. Three of the women were strangled to death during his stay at the Cecil. After his capture and conviction, Jack Unterweger hung himself in his cell.

The path to death and destruction leads straight to the Cecil, but as we’ll discover next, the real stuff of nightmares is made up of the unknown.

Unsolved Mysteries

Elizabeth Short

Arguably one of the most famous unsolved mysteries in American history is the murder of Elizabeth Short, AKA “the Black Dahlia”. Short was an aspiring actress from Boston who moved to Los Angeles. On January 15, 1947, she was found murdered in the Leimert Park neighborhood, her body mutilated and bisected at the waist.

Over 150 suspects were brought in for investigation, but none of them were arrested. A few days before her murder, she was seen at the bar at the Cecil hotel. Though this information remains disputed, it is not far from reason.

Elisa Lam

Perhaps the most disturbing and hair-raising death at the Cecil hotel was that of 21-year-old Canadian student, Elisa Lam. Elisa was reported missing on Jan 31, 2013.

Three weeks after the student’s disappearance, a hotel maintenance worker went up to the Cecil’s rooftop to check the water supply tanks. Guests of the hotel complained of issues with low water pressure and some complained that the water had a strange taste. On Feb 19, the maintenance worker’s investigation revealed the root cause of the issue: Elisa’s naked, decomposing corpse in the water tank.

In a desperate attempt to find out what had happened, police reviewed the hotel’s video surveillance recordings. Though they could not find anything that revealed how she died, they did find footage of the young girl a few hours before her death in one of the elevators.

The Video:

The video showed Lam acting very strangely. She entered the elevator and pressed several buttons. When the doors didn’t close, she stuck her head out into the hallway as if she was checking to see if someone was pursuing her. She then tucked herself back into the elevator and seemingly hid in the corner. The elevator doors oddly remained open. She stepped in and out, looking confused and agitated. Even the way Lam moved her arms seemed strange and unnatural. The way she articulated her wrists at one point looked as though she was being manipulated by a puppeteer. After several iterations of her getting in and out of the elevator, she eventually stepped out into the hallway and out of view of the camera. The elevator doors closed behind her.

The video was released to the public and can be seen here. Warning: though there are no graphic scenes, this video is incredibly disturbing.

Elisa Lam had a bipolar disorder for which she took medication. Police used this fact to explain her erratic behavior in the elevator. In the absence of evidence that would indicate there was any foul play, the L.A. County Coroner ruled (controversially) that her death was by accidental drowning.

My Questions

1. Is it possible that dark forces had a hand in the fate of the people who died here? A sinister shadow lurking between the walls of the hotel?
2. If people were checking into the hotel with the specific intent to commit suicide, why did many of them stay for so many days before following through? Were they hearing the voices of the spirits who died before them?
3. Why were so many people attracted to the windows?

Before I end this article, I want to leave you with one more video. In it, the abc news station interviews a young boy who took a photograph of one of the windows of the Cecil hotel. The photo depicts an apparition of a woman who is floating just outside of the window.

Could this be the ghost of one of the jumpers?

References:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_deaths_and_violence_at_the_Cecil_Hotel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cecil_Hotel_(Los_Angeles) https://www.history.com/topics/great-depression/great-depression-history https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skid_Row,_Los_Angeles