The Cecil Hotel
The Cecil Hotel: The Deadliest Hotel in Los Angeles
we’re headed fordowntown Los Angeles, to the area known as Skid Row. At the intersection of South Main and 7thStreet stands the Cecil Hotel, which infamously became known as ‘the deadliest hotel inLA’, or ‘LA’s tower of terror’, or even as ‘the most haunted hotel in Los Angeles.’ Throughout its history, the Cecil’s repeatedcases of crime, suicide, and murder are undeniable. But are all the stories about the Cecil true? Is the hotel a real-life cursed palace thatattracts unfortunate visitors, only to then cast doom upon them? Or has its mythology been exaggerated overtime? Let’s find out together.
It’s time to check in, at the Cecil Hotel. Early DaysThe Cecil Hotel’s construction was completed in late 1924 by the construction company WeymouthCromwell, contracted by hotel entrepreneur William Banks Hanner. Hanner invested approximately $1 million atthe time; in today’s money, this would be around $14 million. For his money, he got one of the largest hotelson the West Coast in the 1920s, standing 14 storeys tall and offering 700 rooms. From the outside, the Cecil may appear asa simple building made of concrete and bricks, but the interior is far more striking. Hanner demanded a grandiose look for the lobbyand main staircase in order to attract a wealthy clientele of international businessmen andsocial elites. The interior was Art Deco, with the lobbyfeaturing marble and stained-glass windows, plus an ornate staircase and mock-Roman statues. During the first five years after its opening,The Cecil consistently checked in the type of guests Hanner had in mind. But it also started attracting trouble fromthe get-go. The first reported death took place on June19th, 1926, when a retired mining employee, William McKay, died of natural causes in hisroom. So, nothing to see here, please move along.
A more exciting event happened eight monthslater, in February of 1927: John Croneau, a long-term resident of the Cecil, receivedan unexpected form of room service, consisting of a pair of handcuffs. Croneau, a notorious burglar, was apprehendedby the LAPD in his hotel room, the first arrest to happen at the Cecil. To further add to this series of firsts, let’sskip ahead to April 1929, when 33-year-old Dorothy Robinson was taken from the hotelto a local hospital in a dazed condition that lasted for three days. Mrs Robinson’s husband had died just onemonth prior: following a nervous breakdown, she had been prescribed barbiturates, on whichshe had just overdosed. Was this accidental? Or the first of many attempted suicides thatwould add to the Cecil’s reputation? Take note of that year, 1929.
As you all know, this was the year that changedeverything, with the beginning of the Great Depression. The economic downturn struck hard at the downtownand Main Street areas, which slowly but inexorably became a congregating point for vagabonds,sex workers, drug dealers, fences, and other elements of the so-called underworld, hopingto lose their scent. The area would later become infamous as SkidRow. Unsurprisingly, The Cecil lost much of itsprestige, threatened by the double-pronged attack of the recession and competition fromother hotels in ‘better’ parts of L.A. From a hotel intended for international business,it first became a resting point for local travelling salesmen, little more than a motelin the middle of the City. By the early 1930s, its reputation as a seedyestablishment was solidified. Take the case of George Ford, for example. In August of 1931, the 40-year old was arrestedat the Cecil for attempting to sell 10 pounds of opium[Caption: 10 pounds = 4.5 Kg] for $10,000 – that’s 156,000 in today’sdollars.
The interesting thing was the comment fromthe Los Angeles Times: “One of the most important captures madehere in many months” Let’s unpack that: ‘one of the most important’arrests made at the Hotel in many months … ?!? Well, that implies that arrests taking place atthe Cecil were already a common place occurrence by 1931. Soon, the number of mentions for the Cecilin the crime pages of local newspapers started piling up. Earlier, I spoke about the first attemptedsuicide; well on the November 16th, 1931, the LA Times reported the first case of acompleted suicide at the Cecil – a type of event for which it would sadly become infamous. Suicide HotelW.K. Norton, aged 46, had been missing for days from his house in Manhattan Beach, some24 miles [38 km] by car from the Cecil.
On November 15 1931, he was found in his hotelroom, dead from a suspected suicide by poison. He had checked in under the assumed name ofJames Willys. Less than a year later, a 25-year-old BenjaminDodich took his own life with a shot to the head. I will not go into the details of every singlecase of suicide, but by the end of the 1930s, seven guests had made an attempt in one foror another. Only one of them survived. The most puzzling case was that of Grace E.Magro, also only 25, who had apparently leapt from her ninth-floor window during the night,hitting some telephone poles during her descent. When she hit the pavement, her body was entangledin telephone wires. The detail that made Grace’s suicide particularlypuzzling was that she was not alone when she fell off her window. Her boyfriend, a sailor from USS Virginia,was sleeping in the same room. He hadn’t noticed anything out of the ordinaryand could not explain Grace’s actions. The rate of suicides slowed down in the 1940s,50s and 60s, but the accounts of guests jumping off the Cecil’s windows never really stopped.
The most spectacular case happened on October12, 1962. Pauline Otton, age 27, and her estranged husbandDewey, had been attempting a reconciliation. Earlier that day, Pauline had paid a surprisevisit to Dewey at his place of work, with the hope of sorting out their relationship. Perhaps to avoid a scene at work, Dewey hadconvinced Pauline to relocate their discussion to the nearby Cecil. They checked into a room on the ninth floor,and it is unclear how long they spent in there. What is clear is that Dewey eventually leftthe room to eat dinner alone, and after he walked out, Pauline climbed out onto the ledgeand jumped. Normally, we might say that she jumped ‘toher death’, but in this case, it is more correct to say that she jumped ‘to theirdeath’. As Pauline hit the ground, she did not landon the sidewalk, but on a completely unsuspecting passer-by, George Giannini, an elderly retiree. Both died instantly. Initially, the police thought that both individualshad jumped at the same time, in some sort of suicide pact. That is, until someone noticed that Georgestill had his shoes on. According to experts, the impact of his bodyfalling to the ground would have sent them flying across the sidewalk. All in all, 11 suicides took place at theCecil. These continued occurrences are what has ledfans of the occult to speculate that the Hotel may cast some sort of curse on its occupants. The idea is both frightening and intriguing,of course: a real life Overlook Hotel, in the heart downtown LA, just like in StephenKing’s novel about a malevolent building with the power to push its guests to insanity.
But let’s bring in our good old debunkingfriend, statistics. According to a study by N.L. Farberow and M.D. Simon, the suicide ratein Los Angeles in 1967 was 18 cases per 100,000 inhabitants, a rate considered to be high. Now, let’s apply that rate to the populationof the 700-room Cecil Hotel. Let’s continue with some assumptions. We can’t assume the hotel was fully occupiedall the time, so let’s figure a 50% occupancy rate for the sake of argument. Now, what about guest turnover? We know that many guests only stayed one night,while many others used it as a long-term housing alternative. Let’s settle on a seven-day average. This implies that over one year, the Cecil’sfront desk may have checked in a total of 18,250 guests. [Caption: 350 guests X 52 weeks in a year= 18,520 guests] If we apply the rate I mentioned, that wouldgive us a total of 3 suicides per year. The 11 suicides reported at the Cecil tookplace over a span of 31 years. Does that mean that it would have been perfectlynormal for … 3 by 31 … that’s 93 … 93 suicides (!) to happen at the hotel, insteadof 11?!? Well, maybe not, and probably I have overestimatedthe so-called ‘universe’ of Cecil guests.
But even so, the average suicide rate forLos Angeles would make it absolutely possible for 11 cases of people taking their own livesat this same location. With that in mind, does this grant the Cecil’sreputation for being a mythical cursed palace? Unfortunately, there are other kinds of violentdeaths to haunt the halls and rooms of the hotel … Homicide Hotel The first instance of confirmed homicide to plague theCecil was also the worst possible kind, as it involved the death of a new born baby. In early September 1944, the lifeless bodyof a baby was found on the roof of a building adjacent to the Cecil. The LAPD soon took in for questioning a youngwoman of 19, Dorothy Jean Purcell, who had been staying at the hotel for several dayswith her lover, a shoe salesman twice her age named Ben Levine. Police discovered that one night, Dorothyhad woken up with intense abdominal pain. Not wanting to wake up Ben, she went to thebathroom, and, to her complete surprise, gave birth to a baby boy. Confused and in pain, she thought that theinfant was stillborn. For fear of compromising her relationshipwith Levine, she made a terrible decision: she dropped the boy from the window. And like that, she went back to bed. The forensic surgeon, though, found that theboy had air in his lungs.
He was born alive! The trial concluded in January of 1945, whereDorothy was found not guilty by reason of insanity. What became of her? It could be a total coincidence, but a DorothyJean Purcell whose age matches that of our protagonist, married a US Navy Yeoman in 1965and the died in the year 2000. The next murder in the unlucky hotel was perpetratedon June 5th, 1964. The victim was Goldie Olson, a retired phoneoperator known as ‘Pigeon Goldie,’ after her habit of feeding pigeons in nearby PershingSquare. Her body was found in her room by a hotelemployee: she had been stabbed, strangled, and raped. Goldie was remembered by the LA Times as a“Kindly woman … whose most violent act had been to scare away the larger birds thatthreatened her favourites” The same evening, the police arrested a suspect,29-year old Jacques B. Ehlinger. He had been spotted in Pershing Square, coveredin blood, and was linked to another murder that had taken place in the nearby RosslynHotel.
Authorities could not build a convincing caseagainst Ehlinger, though, and he was eventually released. There is another case of unsolved murder linkedto the Cecil. Probably the most infamous, the brutal homicideof 22-year-old Elizabeth Short, better known as the Black Dahlia. On the January 15, 1947, Elizabeth’s bodywas found in a vacant lot in Leimert Park, about 6 [9 km] miles south west from the Cecil. She had been horribly mutilated. In the words of the LA Times:“The young woman’s mouth was slit with a knife three inches on each side while shewas till alive … other mutilation of the body, which was found cut in half and otherwisedesecrated, occurred after death” According to forensic doctors, it was haemorrhagefrom the mouth wounds, plus a concussion of the brain, that eventually led to Elizabeth’sdeath. Homicide Detective Captain Jack A. Donohoeacted quickly: with the help of the FBI and their fingerprint archive, he first identifiedthe name of the victim, then was able to trace her last confirmed movements. Two weeks before her body was found, Elizabethwas working in a hospital in San Diego and was renting a room at the house of one ElveraFrench. By January 7, she had left the house in thecompany of a red-haired youth. Where does the Cecil come into this story? This is based on the testimony of a policewoman,Myril McBride, who reported speaking to a frightened young woman on the evening of the14th of January.
The young woman had just emerged from a baron Main Street, claiming that a suitor of hers had just threatened to kill her. McBride later saw the young woman walk backinto the bar, later leaving in the company of another woman and two men. Based on this report, several sources haveclaimed that Elizabeth had been seen drinking at the Cecil’s bar. Sources like LA news outlet KABC-TV Channel7, or true crime website The Line Up. The death of Elizabeth Short is yet anotherstory that may get you wondering if the Cecil really is cursed. If you’re even remotely superstitious, theevidence really does start to pile up. However, if you look closer into Myril McBride’sreport, you will note that she does not state the name of the bar. It could have been one of the many wateringholes in the Skid Row area. Plus, McBride initially claimed that the youngwoman she met did look like Elizabeth Short, but became more dubious upon seeing more photosof the victim on January 16. Final point: when McBride briefly spoke tothe young woman, the latter said she was due to meet her parents at a bus station laterthat night. If this is true, then the young woman wasdefinitely not Elizabeth Short: her parents had been estranged since 1930 and on the 15thand 16th of January her mother Phoebe was confirmed to be in Medford, Massachussets. So, if I were to place a bet, I’d wagerthat the Black Dahlia’s association with the Cecil Hotel is a later construct, to buildon the mythology of the hotel.
Also, the homicidal reputation of the hotelappears to be largely exaggerated. Two confirmed murders have been committedon its premises, which is within or below the range of US homicide rate in the 1950sand 1960s: 5 cases per 100,000 population. What else may have happened, then, that madethe name of the Cecil so infamous? Night StalkersDuring a period of 16 months, from 1984 into 1985, serial killer Richard Ramirez terrorizedLos Angeles. Ramirez was a self-described Satanist andDevil worshiper, nicknamed ‘The Night Stalker’ by the press, who murdered at least 13 womenin their sleep. His crimes also included burglary and sexualassault. After his arrest on August 31st 1985 it emergedthat he had been staying at the Cecil. He did not kill any of the guests or bar patronsat the Hotel, but he used it as a base of operation. Ramirez would return to the Cecil after killinghis last victim and discarded his clothes, soaked in blood, in the hotel dumpsters.
Then, he walked into the hotel either naked,maybe just in his underwear - none of which would have been noticed by the Cecil regulars. According to Richard Schave, a local tourguide, the Cecil and other nearby hotels like the Rosslyn and the Alexandria had“just become these giant coral reefs of the worst people in the world”. The halls of these hotels were haunted notby ghosts or demons, but by drug dealers and their overdosed clients. Who would have taken notice of a young manwalking in his underwear? And even if someone did, who was going toactually call the police. And so Ramirez went in and out, undisturbed,retiring to his room on the 14th floor, smoking pot and listening to AC/DC. Six years later, after the arrest of Ramirez,an Austrian journalist checked in at the Cecil. His name was Jack Unterweger, and he had travelledto LA to write a series of enquiries about prostitution in the US. The Cecil made for a perfect choice -- althoughthe hotel was more rundown than ever, it was located in the right spot, where he couldfind easy access to the seedy street life of Skid Row.
During his stay in Los Angeles, the Austrianjournalist joined the LAPD in ride-alongs in red light areas as part of his research,which had started as an intended feature but evolved into a more sinister story: duringthat period, a serial killer has begun targeting local sex workers, beating them and stranglingthem with their own bras. This detail aroused the suspicions of Austrianpolice: six prostitutes had been killed in Austria in the previous months, all of themwith the same Modus Operandi. Moreover, 17 years prior, a German woman hadbeen strangled, also with her bra … by none other than Jack Unterweger. Unterweger had been convicted, but behindbars, he had turned into a model inmate, publishing poems, plays, and an autobiography, becomingthe poster boy for a rehabilitation programme sponsored by the Austrian government. Soon, the local arts community began to lobbyfor his release. In 1990, after serving 15 years, Unterwegerwas granted parole.
Had he been rehabilitated? Absolutely not. Unterweger maintained an honest façade asa respected author and journalist, but his dark impulses drove him to kill again, onboth sides of the Atlantic. In February of 1992, Unterweger was arrestedin Miami and extradited to Austria. In June 1994, an Austrian court sentencedhim to life, this time with no chance of parole. That same night, Jack Unterweger hanged himselfin his cell. Now– two serial killers staying at the samehotel over a period of 7 years? That’s a coincidence that sounds more thanjust a coincidence. According to the FBI, there are between 25and 50 active serial killers at any given time in the US. That’s an average of 37 individuals outof a population that spanned between 240 and 250 Million from 1984 to 1991. That’s a ratio of 0.00000015 – or oneserial killer per 6.6 Million inhabitants. According to tour guide Richard Schave, theCecil was way more run down in the 1980s and 1990s than ever before. So, I’d give it a 25% occupancy rate, andaverage guest turnover of 2 weeks. That gives us 72,800 guests at the Cecil from1984 to 1991.
But even at full occupancy and faster turnover,it would still make it statistically very unlikely for two serial killers to materialiseat the same establishment. And this occurrence alone would be enoughto justify the Cecil’s eerie reputation. Haunted HotelIt would seem perfectly natural for the halls of this hotel to be roamed by the ghosts ofits many suicide victims, or of the women killed by Ramirez and Unterweger. The Cecil, in fact, appears in many listsof ‘America’s most haunted hotels’ and even inspired the 2015 season of the anthologyTV series, ‘American Horror Story’. There are many reports of hotel guests seeingdark figures in their rooms or waking up as their sheets are tugged by an unseen force. But when it comes to documented events, allwe have is the photo taken by a local 11-year old boy on January 26, 2014. The picture shows what appears to be a ghostlyapparition, floating outside one of the hotel windows. But it was the year before that when the Cecilreturned to the news for a case that would make headlines worldwide: the disappearanceof Canadian tourist Elisa Lam.
This case is arguably the one that cementedthe Cecil’s place in the world’s collective consciousness, and it is so famous that youmay already know more about it than I do. Just in case, here are the basics:In January 2013, 21-year old Elisa had reached Los Angeles. In search of affordable accommodation, shehad checked in on the 26th at the Stay on Main, a hostel which occupied some of thefloors within the Cecil Hotel. A few days later, on February 1st, Elisa vanished. Some CCTV footage, captured during the earlyhours of that day, shows Elisa behaving erratically inside one of the Cecil’s elevators. In the video, Elisa appears to be hiding insidethe elevator, presses all the buttons, peers out of the doors and gestures in a bizarreway to somebody who is outside of the camera frame. Days later, guests at the Stay on Main andCecil started to complain about the odour, colour, and taste of their tap water. Finally, on February 19, hotel personnel inspectedthe water tanks on the roof of the building: there, they found Elisa’s dead and nakedbody, floating in the water. The autopsy determined that the cause of Elisa’sdeath was accidental, due to drowning.
The coroner’s report notes that Elisa sufferedfrom bipolar disorder and that several prescription drugs were found amongst her belongings. Naturally, a toxicology analysis was carriedout, but Elisa’s body did not present any traces of alcohol, marijuana, opiates, cocaineor other recreational drugs. The exam did find traces of some prescriptiondrugs in her blood, heart and liver: bupropion, venlafaxine and lamotrigine. All three of these drugs are anti-depressants,and, if administered without an anti-psychotic, may induce manic episodes in bipolar patients. This is one of the theories behind her death:in the throes of a severe manic episode, Elisa first behaved unnervingly inside the elevator,then climbed to the rooftop and willingly plunged inside one of the cisterns. According to other theories, Elisa may havebeen stalked inside the hotel, and her death was a homicide. Paranormal investigators and enthusiasts believethat Elisa may have been drawn to her death by the ghosts, or demons, that plague thecorridors of the Cecil. LandmarkIn February of 2017, the Los Angeles City Council conferred landmark status to the CecilHotel, making it a historic-cultural monument. This award came after a bid submitted by SimonBaron Development, a group who had acquired the building with the intention of renovatingit and turning the Cecil into a high-end boutique hotel… again. But even before this official recognition,the Cecil Hotel had already achieved a mythical status within America’s collective imagination. As we discussed today, some of the claimsmay have been exaggerated.
The evidence of paranormal activity is scarce;the number of suicides and homicides, however tragic, is still within the national averages;the Black Dahlia never had a last drink at the Cecil Bar. But when you add unto those layers, Elisa’sstory and the killing sprees of Ramirez and Unterweger, it is understandable how the Cecilhas carved a space into America’s own modern mythology, a place of honour as a cursed palacelike those in ancient myths and fairy tales. We have tried to be balanced in our accountof the events at the Cecil Hotel, now it’s up to you to give us your opinion: would youspend a night there? And if you have … did you experience anythingunsettling? Please let us know in the comments and asusual … thank you for watching!
Comments
Post a Comment