Was Elisa Lam Gay?

 

The Elisa Lam case has some undeniable fascination.  In January 2013, a 21 year old Canadian college student on a tour of California checks into the sleazy Hotel Cecil in downtown L.A. (why would anyone who knows anything about Los Angeles stay anywhere near downtown?).  She vanishes.  

Two weeks later, her body is discovered in a water tank on the hotel roof.  The only way to get there is through a door that will ring an alarm, or up a fire escape on the outside of the building.  In the middle of the night?

And the tank access lid was closed.  Elisa would not have been able to close it after jumping in.  Obviously someone was with her, helping or forcing her into the tank.

Then there's the security footage of Elisa in an elevator, crouching, pushing all of the buttons, making weird hand gestures, looking around as if she is waiting for someone, apparently talking to someone.  Who was with her?

The video went viral on the internet, with wild, crazy speculation.  She was playing a Korean game where, if you push elevator buttons in the proper order, you end up in a parallel world.  She was re-enacting (or being forced to re-enact) the plot of an old horror movie about a haunted hotel.  A ghost was holding the elevator doors open.

The bloated Netflix miniseries Crime Scene: The Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel plays up all the speculation, and adds some of its own.  Why did the police searching the hotel not check in the water tanks?  It took guests complaining that the water tasted funny for a staff member to think to take a look.  Why did the autopsy report take so long?  Were the police involved in a cover-up?  What about Morbid, a death-metal musician who stayed at the Cecil -- could he be the murderer?  What about the two men who delivered a mysterious package to Elisa the day before she disappeared -- could they be involved?

There are a lot of closeups of people's hands on keyboards, a lot of interviews with people who weren't involved in any way ("Yeah, we stayed at the Cecil two years before Elisa did.  It wasn't very nice"), and a lot of set-pieces about unrelated incidents at the Cecil (two serial killers stayed there...not at the same time as Elisa...and no hotel guests were victims..but still...).  Strangely, there are no interviews with Elisa's family or friends.  

The series waits for the last 10 minutes of the last episode to reveal that Elisa was bipolar, and had the habit of not taking her medication, which resulted in psychotic episodes where she thought people were trying to kill her.  She had been exhibiting bizarre behavior during her entire stay at the hotel.  On the night she died, she was probably fleeing from an imaginary assailant.  She climbed onto the roof, thought the water tank would be a good place to hide, climbed in, was unable to get out again, and drowned.  

The closed hatch? Probably a staff member noticed it the next day, and closed it without checking for a body at the bottom.

The elevator?  Elisa accidentally pushed the "stop elevator" button, got frustrated when the elevator wouldn't move, looked around for someone to help, and talked to herself before giving up.

The mysterous delivery? Some books she bought earlier that day.

Morbid?  Not even in the country at the time.

The four hours of wild speculation are not only annoying, they do Elisa a disservice, making her mental illness a "dirty secret."  And having to postpone it to the big reveal means that we learn nothing about her life before the visit to Los Angeles.  We learn nothing about her family and friends.  

 I assumed that the absence meant that Elisa was gay, and skittish producers closeted her.  But an internet search reveals several photographs of Elisa in chummy poses with male friends.  Buddies, or romantic partners?  It would be nice to know.