Random Terrible And Creepy Things That Have Happened At The Cecil Hotel (12 items)

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  (#1) The Night Stalker Lived At The Cecil While He Was Killing His Victims

  Richard Ramirez, a serial killer and rapist known as the Night Stalker, terrorized Los Angeles and San Francisco from June 1984 to August 1985, murdering at least 14 victims and injuring dozens more in little over a year. A practicing Satanist, Ramirez brutally killed using a variety of weapons to take the lives of his victims.

  During the time Ramirez was breaking into homes in and around LA and assaulting, murdering, raping, and robbing the occupants, he was a guest at the Cecil Hotel. According to some sources, Ramirez paid just $14 a night to stay for 14 days, presumably while he commited his unspeakable acts of violence.

  By the time he was apprehended, Ramirez had finished his stay at the famed hotel, but his connection to the Cecil lives on.
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  (#2) Elisa Lam's Dead Body Was Found In The Hotel’s Water Supply

  In January 2013, Elisa Lam, a 21-year-old Canadian tourist who was staying at the Cecil Hotel, went missing. Nearly three weeks passed before the young woman’s nude body was found floating in a water tank on the building’s roof. Disturbingly, a maintenance worker discovered Lam’s corpse because he was investigating complaints from guests at the hotel who had reported poor water pressure; others stated the water had a strange smell, color, and taste. 

  Following the recovery of the young woman’s remains, the LAPD released video footage from the hotel that showed Lam behaving strangely prior to her disappearance, leading some people to suspect foul play, drugs, or even supernatural activity. However, a toxicology report determined that no illicit substances were in Lam's system. The 21-year-old died of drowning, and it is thought that Lam, who was being treated for depression and bipolar disorder prior to her passing, may have experienced mental health issues that caused her to crawl inside the tank and accidentally drown. However, no one knows how Lam gained access to the rooftop water tank, which is behind a locked door and a series of fire escapes. Only three days into her time at the Cecil, where she had been staying in a hostel-style room, Lam's roommates complained about her odd behavior and the hotel moved Lam to a private room.
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  (#3) An Austrian Serial Killer Stayed At The Cecil While He Killed Women In California

  Johann “Jack” Unterweger, an Austrian journalist and author who had been released from prison after murdering a teenage girl when he was a young man, stayed at the Cecil Hotel in 1991 while he was researching a story about crime in Los Angeles. Unbeknownst to authorities in Austria or the United States, following his parole from prison, Unterweger killed a number of women in Europe, and during his visit to California, he murdered three sex workers while he was a guest at the Cecil. 

  Unterweger, a popular writer who had once served as a shining example of the power of rehabilitation, was eventually arrested and convicted of killing at least nine victims, including the three women he murdered while visiting Los Angeles. Unterweger was sentenced to life in a psychiatric prison, but he hanged himself in his cell the night he received his sentence.
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  (#4) A Woman Threw Her Newborn Out The Window Of Her Hotel Room

  In September 1944, 19-year-old Dorothy Jean Purcell was awakened by severe stomach pains while staying at the Cecil Hotel with Ben Levine. Careful not to wake Levine, who was sleeping in the bed beside her, Purcell went to the bathroom and, to her surprise, gave birth to a baby boy. The teenage mother was completely shocked, having no idea that she had been pregnant. 

  After Purcell delivered the infant, completely alone and unaided, she thought the child was stillborn, and tossed the boy's body out of the window. The newborn landed on the roof of a neighboring building where it was later discovered. An autopsy revealed the baby had been born alive. Purcell was charged with homicide, but a jury found her not guilty by reason of insanity and she was sent to a hospital for psychiatric treatment.
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  (#5) Many People Have Taken Their Lives While Staying At The Hotel

  In 1931, a 46-year-old man, W.K. Norton, was found deceased in a room at the Cecil. Apparently, Norton had checked into the hotel under an alias and taken his life by ingesting capsules filled with poison. 

  North wasn't the last person to take his own life at the Cecil. Many people have died by suicide in the hotel since the 1930s.
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  (#6) A Passerby Was Killed By The Body Of A Falling Woman

  In 1962, a 65-year-old man named George Gianinni was walking past the Cecil Hotel when he was hit by the body of Pauline Otton, 27, who had jumped from the window of her ninth-floor room. Following a fight with her husband, Otton lept 90 feet to her death, not knowing she would also end the life of a complete stranger. 

  The passerby, Gianinni, was killed instantly, proving that even walking past the Cecil Hotel can be deadly.
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  (#7) A Hotel Resident Known As Pigeon Goldie Was Murdered

  In 1964, retired telephone operator Goldie Osgood, known to the locals as "Pigeon" because she loved to feed the birds in Pershing Square, was found sexually assaulted and murdered in her room at the Cecil. 

  Sadly, the person responsible for Osgood's murder has never been caught.
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  (#8) A Young Woman Fell From Her Hotel Window And Got Tangled In Telephone Wires

  In 1937, 25-year-old Grace E. Magro died as a result of either falling or jumping from the window of her room in the Cecil. Instead of hitting the sidewalk below, the young woman landed on the the wires connecting the telephone poles next to the hotel, and her body became entangled. Magro was taken to a nearby hospital, but she eventually died from her injuries.

  The police were unable to determine if the young woman's death was an accident or a suicide, and M.W. Madison, the sailor Magro was sharing the hotel room with, couldn't explain how or why his companion plunged from the window - he claimed to have slept through the incident.
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  (#9) A Woman Jumped To Her Death And Landed On The Hotel's Marquee

  In 1954, Helen Gurnee, a middle-aged woman from San Diego, checked into the hotel under a fake name and jumped from the window of her room on the seventh floor.

  Instead of plummeting to the street below, Gurnee's body landed on the marquee of the Cecil - a sight that disturbed many witnesses below.

   
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  (#10) A Suspected Murderer Was Arrested While Hiding Out At The Cecil

  On the afternoon of July 6, 1988, the body of 32-year-old Teri Francis Craig was discovered in the Huntington Beach house the young woman had shared with her boyfriend, 28-year-old salesman Robert Sullivan. 

  More than two months later, Sullivan was arrested at the Cecil, where he had been staying, and charged with murdering Craig, making him yet another person who sought refuge in this notoriously dark hotel.
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  (#11) A Photograph Appears To Show A Ghostly Figure Outside Of A Hotel Window

  With so many people dying at the Cecil as a result of jumping or falling to their deaths, it should come as no surprise that a ghost or two might hang out around the hotel's windows.

  In January 2014, Koston Alderete, a boy from Riverside, CA, captured what he believes to be an apparition haunting the outside of a fourth-floor window of the notorious hotel.

   
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  (#12) A Man Opened Fire From The Hotel's Rooftop

  Jeffrey Thomas Paley terrified guests at the Cecil and people passing by the hotel when he went up to the roof and fired several shots from a rifle in 1976. Thankfully, Paley failed to shoot anyone, and he was arrested by police shortly after the rampage began.

  After he was taken into custody, Paley told the officers he hadn't actually intended to harm anyone. According to Paley, who had spent time in a mental hospital, he purchased the gun and fired the shots to demonstrate how easy it is for someone to get their hands on a dangerous weapon and take out a large number of people.

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