- Crime Scene: The Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel is a new Netflix series that dives into the strangeness and mystery surrounding infamous locations involved in contemporary crime.
- The first installment of this new series focuses on Downtown LA’s notorious Cecil Hotel.
- The new Netflix series will be released on the streamer two weeks from today, on February 10.
The first installment of Crime Scene — a new Netflix series that “deconstructs the mythology and mystery surrounding infamous locations in contemporary crime,” according to the streamer — drops two weeks from today, and it promises to be a doozy of a binge for true crime fans.
Thanks to the trailer Netflix released this week, which you can check out below, we know that the initial focus of this new documentary series (“The Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel“) will be all the strange and terrifying oddities and deaths surrounding the hotel in Downtown Los Angeles that’s been referred to as “Hotel Death,” and as a place where serial killers go to let their hair down. “Is there a room here that somebody hasn’t died in?” a hotel staff member says at one point during the newly released trailer.
“For nearly a century,” according to an official description from the streamer, “the Cecil Hotel in Downtown Los Angeles has been linked to some of the city’s most notorious activity, from untimely deaths to housing serial killers. In 2013 college student Elisa Lam was staying at the Cecil when she vanished, igniting a media frenzy and mobilizing a global community of internet sleuths eager to solve the case.” Lam’s disappearance, the description continues, is but the latest chapter in the hotel’s “complex history,” and makes for a fascinating and frightening lens through which to view one of the most nefarious settings in the city.
According to one newspaper account, the Cecil Hotel racked up at least 16 deaths since opening in 1927. And in the 1930s alone, half a dozen people reportedly killed themselves there.
At least two serial killers have lived at the hotel. The Netflix series will look at the hotel’s past while also focusing on its most recent shocking case, the death of 21-year-old Canadian college student Elisa Lam, whose naked body was found at the hotel in 2013.
“Bad things keep happening here, over and over again,” says a voiceover at one point during the series’ trailer. Adds another: “This hotel is hiding something.'” As disturbing as the rundown of this new Netflix series sounds, though, it’s already generating a good bit of buzz on social media. Here’s what some users are saying about the upcoming docu-series:
A @Netflix documentary about the Hotel Cecil and Elisa Lam case?
Yes I will be watching that.https://t.co/oidsmXJakF
— Ratty (@HeyRatty) January 27, 2021
A Netflix documentary on the infamous Cecil Hotel and the death of Elisa Lam. No thanks, I prefer my sleep without nightmares. https://t.co/GQy8obM78w
— Angry Asian Man (@angryasianman) January 27, 2021
The latest @netflix docuseries digs into the infamous history of the Cecil Hotel and the mysterious 2013 disappearance of Elisa Lam whose body was found in a water tank on the roof of the Los Angeles landmark. https://t.co/HFFB6jmAvh
— KNOTFEST (@KNOTFEST) January 26, 2021
