Trazee In-Depth: The Notorious History of Hotel Cecil

Located on south Main Street in Los Angeles, Calif., Hotel Cecil offers low rates, complimentary breakfast, free WiFi, a slew of unsolved murders and a guest book of serial killers. The notoriously creepy hotel has been a main stop on haunted tours in Los Angeles for years, with a sordid history dating to the 1930s.

The Hotel Cecil was built in the late 1920s for business travelers staying in the city. The close proximity to public transportation and the downtown area made the Cecil a prime location for travelers passing through — all while offering a low nightly rate.

By the 1930s, the area became a hot spot for visitors with hotels, hostels and motels popping up in every direction — rendering the Cecil less desirable when compared to the newer, nicer competition.

After the rise in competition, the Great Depression hit and the Cecil became the go-to location for alternative and temporary residency — known specifically as the kind of place for guests down on their luck. The hotel inevitably transitioned into a single-room-occupancy business.

The SRO alterations allowed various long-term tenants to rent individual rooms, sharing bathrooms with neighboring residents — and ultimately acted as a hub for famed serial killers Richard Ramirez and Jack Unterweger.

Before infamous murderers called the Cecil home, it was known to locals as the place for guests at the end of their rope. The long list of suspicious deaths and suicides committed in the Hotel Cecil began in the 1930s, but really began to pick up in the 1950s and 60s when the hotel earned the nickname Hotel Suicide among LA locals.

From 1931–62, several questionable suicides, suicide attempts and suspicious deaths occurred at the Cecil, where guests either jumped to their death, were pushed or were found in their rooms by a hotel maid. One victim, Goldie Osgood, a long-time resident at the Cecil, was found in her room brutally murdered with a suspect seen walking the streets in bloody clothing. The man was arrested on suspicion, but never tried or convicted.

In 1947, Elizabeth Short, more famously known as the Black Dahlia, was found brutally murdered and left on the sidewalk in downtown LA with the Cecil one of her last known locations. This happenstance may have been a coincidence or vital information, as the case is still unsolved.

With a laundry list of suspicious activity, fatalities and brutal murders occurring in and around the Hotel Cecil, it is no wonder how two high-profile murderers found their way to the now infamous hotel.

Richard Ramirez, also known as the Night Stalker, lived on the top floor of the Cecil in 1985 for $14 a night. The Hotel Cecil, then filled with low-income and transient residents, acted as the perfect hideaway for Ramirez’s nightly activity. From 1984–85, Ramirez terrorized the Bay Area by breaking and entering, ransacking homes, stealing valuables and assaulting and murdering his victims. He made his way to the downtown LA area where he set up shop in the Hotel Cecil so he could easily sneak out at night, come back, dump evidence in the nearby dumpster and sneak back to his room through the hotel’s backdoor.

With so much deviant activity surrounding the area, Ramirez went unnoticed for quite some time as he racked up a rap sheet of 13 murders, 11 sexual assaults and counts of rape, 14 burglaries and five attempted murders. Eventually, Ramirez was caught trying to steal a car by local residents of a neighborhood in East LA, when a few brave citizens pursued him on foot. Ramirez received the death penalty, but later died of “natural causes” in 2013 in prison before his execution — he was 53.

Another notorious resident of the Cecil was Austrian serial killer Jack Unterweger. He was something of a con artist, in and out of jail for assaulting women and finally convicted of murder in 1974. He was sentenced to life in prison in Austria, where he studied and wrote several short stories, poems and plays. He eventually wrote and published an autobiography, Fegefeuer – eine Reise ins Zuchthaus, loosely translating to Purgatory – a Journey To The Penitentiary — well received by critics and the public. After only 16 years of his life term, Unterweger was thought to be a successfully rehabilitated prisoner and was released into Austrian society.

Shortly after his release in 1991, an Austrian magazine hired Unterweger to write about crime in Los Angeles, and he relocated to the Hotel Cecil. Unterweger rode along with local police investigating LA crime before heading back to Austria to report his findings. Once back, investigators noticed a pattern of missing women and violent crimes, similar to Unterweger’s 1976 conviction. Austrian authorities reached out to LA police asking if any young women had gone missing and, not coincidentally, three women were found beaten and brutally murdered over the course of Unterweger’s stay in LA — identical to the crimes committed in Austria.

By the time investigators went to Unterweger’s home to arrest him, he was long gone. After a year on the run in Europe, Canada and California, Unterweger was finally caught in Miami, Fla., and brought back to Austria to be tried for 11 homicides. He was sentenced to life in prison, but committed suicide in his cell shortly after his conviction.

Although just a footnote in Unterweger’s story, Hotel Cecil’s long brutal history isn’t one most businesses can come back from. In 2013, Canadian tourist Elisa Lam checked into the Hotel Cecil where she stayed with roommates in one of the hostel-style rooms. Her roommates complained about her odd behavior and Lam was later moved to another room.

Lam was last seen alive on surveillance footage popping in and out of the elevator. She was alone, but seemed to be speaking to someone in the hallway before popping back in the elevator, out again, looking around and then running back in the elevator pressing buttons. Lam was later found dead in the water tank on top of the hotel roof after guests complained of low water pressure.

Several theories surround Lam’s death, including murder, as she seems to be hiding from someone in the elevator surveillance footage. It also seems unlikely she would have been able to climb out of her hotel room window, bypass the rooftop alarm, climb into the four-foot-tall water tank and close the lid all by herself, but the autopsy displayed no signs of struggle or trauma.

Due to Lam’s erratic behavior and battle with bipolar disorder, some people believe this was a case of accidental suicide or use of hallucinogens and she may have been talking to herself in the hotel hallway, but the toxicology report shows no signs of drug use, essentially leaving investigators with a dead end.

After a long history of violence, Hotel Cecil attempted to rebrand as the Stay on Main, but has since officially closed its doors. The surrounding area is no longer appealing to visitors and the hotel’s history is specifically tailored to haunted tourism. Recently, there have been talks of turning the old and beautiful Art Deco building into a homeless shelter or recovery house, so another attempt at a reboot may be on the horizon.