Gone at Midnight, page 29
Lithium is not some concoction birthed by scientists in a lab. It’s a naturally occurring unstable light metal, first discovered by humans in 1800 on a sparkling island near Sweden. When it was first applied as a psychiatric treatment, its potential was immediately seen as medicine that could discreetly treat neural networks and reduce severe mania.
Lithium became so popular in the 1940s that people were using it as a substitute for table salt. It was briefly an ingredient in the drink 7Up. But, unsurprisingly, such feckless overuse caused sickness and several deaths, leading to it being banned by the FDA in 1949. Though it has made a resurgence in recent decades, lithium presented a weak profit motive. Author Lauren Slater writes: “Perhaps better than any other drug, lithium reveals the extent to which psychiatry is tightly tied to capitalistic corporate interests.”
The recent resurgence of lithium can be attributed to studies showing that in places where lithium is found in tap water, such as 27 counties in Texas and several areas in Japan, suicide rates decrease. This was described in the article my doctor gave me as well as in Slater’s book.
I told my doctor I wanted to give lithium a shot. He was receptive but said I would have to get regular blood tests, as lithium can cause permanent thyroid and kidney damage.
Interestingly, this may be why Elisa was not prescribed lithium. Though I have no information on whether her doctor ever ran tests on her thyroid, her autopsy noted that her thyroid had anterior hemorrhage/erythema, leading some to speculate Elisa had an underlying thyroid condition, which is common in women but underdiagnosed. It is also worth noting that thyroid conditions frequently cause depression.
I became convinced that lithium was the answer to all my problems, that my years of depression, anxiety, mood disorders, and ADD were the result of not being properly medicated. That I had stumbled upon a cosmology article about the mysterious missing lithium in the universe on the same day as I accidentally retrieved the old article about lithium in tap water and then discovered a lithium crystal registered as yet another bewitching synchronicity, a signpost in the wilderness.
When the lithium kicked in, it draped me in a velvety calmness. It curbed some of my anxiety, evened my temperament, mellowed my mood.
But there was one problem, and it was a big one: Lithium did nothing for my depression. I know that for people who do not experience these chronic disorders, the distinction between depression and anxiety may seem specious, but it’s like describing the difference between a broken bone and a deep cut. Qualitatively different ilks of pain.
Depression without anxiety is like starving to death in the woods without a massive bear nearby.
The honeymoon with lithium lasted a few more weeks before I broke down and told my doctor that I would have to get back on an SSRI. I cycled through two or three that did not help. This included a reunion with Prozac, which I had taken for years in my twenties. Now it seemed to have very little effect, which terrified me.
I remembered the story of the great author David Foster Wallace, who went off his antidepressant Nardil, an MAOI, and then when he got back on it, the drug no longer worked for him. Months later, he hung himself in his garage.
As these thoughts circulated in my head, I began to panic in the Portland rain. I had gone through a half dozen prescriptions, on top of the dozen or so I had already experimented with over the course of my entire adult life. Was I treatment-resistant?
The mystery of my psychiatric illness competed tooth and claw with the Lam case itself. And they felt connected somehow.
Later that day, I spoke with the LAPD’s chief psychologist, who told me that Stearns and Tennelle never contacted him or his staff regarding bipolar disorder. This struck me as almost unbelievable. This means that as the LAPD detectives ruled out foul play by way of not running a rape kit and assuming Elisa’s death was an accident resulting from her bipolar disorder, they did not once consult with their in-house team of psychiatric professionals about said illness.
Their interest in bipolar disorder, it seems, was only as a convenient explanation that helped them close the case.
ENDGAME
By autumn of 2018, things were escalating much quicker than I had anticipated. I had to start thinking about my endgame for this book. The manuscript was due at the first of the year. It had once seemed inconceivable to me that there would be even a glimmer of hope for solving this case. There was simply too much deception and silence, too little information, too few of the principal players willing to speak (at all, much less on the record).
But the landscape had begun to change. The new information coming to me from several sources suggested a coverup. There’s a saying I like that goes something like this: When people show you who they are, believe them.
I decided to apply that to the two powerful entities in control of this investigation: the Cecil Hotel and the LAPD. The first, the Cecil Hotel, has a history of employees sexually assaulting tenants; the second, the LAPD, has a history of corruption and covering up crimes. Why should be it be surprising then that these are the two voices saying, “Nothing to see here” in a case in which a predatory crime against a young woman appears to have been covered up?
But I was running out of time and resources. Our Kickstarter money for the documentary had long been spent on filming, and I was dipping significantly into my own funds, money originally invested in cryptocurrency, to hire investigators and consultants. Our supporters remained understanding about the shifting timeline and the reality that it costs a lot of money to make a documentary, especially one that requires an investigation like this.
I decided to take one final trip to downtown LA. I didn’t have a specific plan, just a vague feeling that something would happen.
I was in a better headspace from a new antidepressant, Viibryd, which is expensive as hell but has virtually no side effects, and the lithium, which managed the mood swings. While I still had damage, my systems were pushing forward. I was like a used car with a check engine light on and in need of a tire alignment—but still pushing toward the destination. With the synchronicities still at play, it felt like the stars were aligning, that there was a mystery ready to be revealed and by tinkering with the right gear of the clockwork, I could crack open the truth. But maybe that was the serotonin speaking.
When I landed at the Burbank airport, I got a rental car, loaded up as much synthwave music as I could find, and got to work.
First, I got a drink with the filmmaker Ama McDonald, who was stuck in post-production hell on a documentary about the Cecil Hotel. The last third of his film is about the Lam case. Ama claimed to have interviewed several residents there, and, based on their testimony, he believed Elisa was killed.
One of those interviewed was Alvin Taylor, a long-time Cecil tenant who drew the suspicions of websleuths from early on because he appeared briefly in a CNN segment on the case—and he is a registered sex offender, a fact I verified with an Intelius background check.
I wondered if Ama might use that sex offender status to make Alvin seem more suspicious than he really was. Almost a year earlier, Ama passed along Alvin’s phone number to me but with a caveat: “He won’t answer. After I interviewed him, he stopped returning my calls and now he won’t answer the phone for anyone.”
This matched up with an experience Jared had outside the Cecil. He saw Alvin using his special fob to enter and politely asked him for an interview. Alvin said no, and when Jared asked why, he responded, simply, “Trust.”
I told Ama that together our projects could help reopen the case. He seemed doubtful about this, which surprised me.
Then, our contrasting visions came to light. I had just briefly outlined some of my research on the LAPD and some of my evidence regarding a cover-up. Abruptly, Ama remarked that he felt like I was going way off topic. It stunned me that he didn’t view police corruption as relevant to the case.
Overall, our conversation was pleasant and interesting. Ama is a devoted filmmaker, and I respect him.
But something didn’t square: He didn’t think we could get the case reopened, yet he believed he had evidence of foul play; at the same time, he didn’t think there was a police cover-up. If he truly had evidence that cracked the case, I thought, the only reason it would be impossible to get the investigation reopened is police negligence.
The Cecil Hotel was closed for renovations. In fact, as I write these words, it’s still closed. But a dozen or so full-time residents still lived inside. I watched them from the cafe next door using their special keycards to enter the building. I decided to delay another direct approach to the hotel. I would work in concentric sweeps around the Main Street area, canvassing the neighborhoods.
It was my third time doing this, but I didn’t start until around 2015. I should have started in 2013. The early bird gets the worm.
I had one untapped lead, a man named Henry who used to live in the Cecil. I got his phone number from one of our contacts, and when I called him, he was receptive. Like many Cecil residents, he had a plethora of stories from the inside—paranormal activity, drug busts, gang-related activity, missing persons—but at this point, I felt I had covered enough of that. I needed direct clues from Elisa’s final evening.
The information I really wanted was the name of someone who currently lived there. Henry had moved out a few years before the Lam case.
“I know one guy who still lives there,” he said. “His name is Dred. At least that’s what I call ’em.”
He gave me Dred’s number.
The canvassing was a bust. Lots of people had heard of the case, of course, but no one knew anything or had even the slightest semblance of a lead. I talked to security guards, street cops, store owners, hotel concierges, local residents, transients, etc. I must have talked to a hundred people.
I took a break and called Dred. No answer, so I left a message.
Then, on a lark, I walked to the alley behind the Cecil and looked at the graffiti etched on the back of the hotel. There was a lot of it. I scanned for anything that resembled the graffiti seen on the roof, or any names. Nothing to write home about.
I left the alley and hove right on Main to approach the front of the Cecil, under the gaze of several external surveillance cameras. As expected, the door didn’t open. I cupped my hands around my eyes and peered through the glass into the lobby. The beams of the setting sun made it difficult to see, and I couldn’t detect any movement. The front desk appeared unmanned.
What an eerie thought, that this giant, haunted 600-room hotel should be closed and empty but for a dozen tenants residing in the upper floors—with seemingly no management in operation.
Suddenly, a dark shape appeared at the back extremity of the lobby floor where the elevators are stationed. Through the glare of the sun on the glass, I identified the outline of a figure, a silhouette in motion, that gradually grew bigger. It walked toward me. As the figure reached the halfway point, I could distinguish a security guard uniform.
It reminded me of a scene in Eyes Wide Shut when Tom Cruise’s character waits at the gate of the mansion where the secret society held their masked orgy; a surveillance camera spots him and then a black limousine slowly snakes a windy path around from the mansion to reach the gate. A stern, older man in a suit exits the limo, walks up to the gate, and hands Cruise a letter through the bars. Then he turns around and gets back in the limo, which retraces its path in reverse.
The letter reads: “Please cease all inquiries, which are completely useless. Consider this your final warning.”
The security guard arrived at the door and stared at me through the glass. He didn’t seem happy. This was the same guy who accosted me on the 14th floor and berated me in the alley when our drone operator, Ryan Washburn, tried to deploy Falcor (his drone).
“We’re closed,” he said, his voice muffled through the glass.
He started walking away from the door.
“Did you work here in 2013?” I called out.
He kept walking and his shape disappeared in the darkness. At least Tom Cruise got a letter.
The day’s frustration continued, but I wasn’t done yet. And I was about to find a juicy worm.
WHEN WEBSLEUTHING TURNS PATHOLOGICAL
One of the aspects of this case that has fascinated me the most is the extent to which it has burrowed into both popular culture and fringe conspiracy circles. The case has become a fixture in the public imagination, a part of the zeitgeist, and is deeply personal for some people.
One result of this was the preponderance of online witch hunts. Earlier, I discussed how the musician Morbid found himself targeted by websleuths who accused him of killing Elisa. At first, Morbid seemed to have found the attention mildly amusing and he ran with it, playing along with what he thought would be a short-lived Internet curiosity. But more users flagged his videos and soon YouTube terminated his channel. He lost ten years’ worth of original works, much of which had not been backed up.
In addition to losing the content from his channel, he also lost the revenue he earned by monetizing his account with AdSense. This was one of his primary sources of income. Then Google terminated Pablo’s email account and he lost more important files of his.
When I spoke to Morbid, it was clear that the events had significantly damaged his life.
What happened to Morbid was not an isolated incident. Earlier, I also relayed the story of how Dillon Kroe’s name surfaced in connection with the case. Apparently, Kroe painted a portrait of Elisa that raised some eyebrows. Some websleuths accused him of being involved with Elisa’s death, especially after he took the portrait offline. When I started a conversation with him, he abruptly broke it off with what sounded like legal talk.
I hadn’t really intended on speaking with Dillon again until one day, a websleuth I had been in contact with emailed me an IMDB link for the 2016 film about Richard Ramirez, Nightstalker. The link directed me to the trivia section of the film, where there were five facts listed. One of them was the following:
“The drawings that are seen hanging in Richard Ramirez’s cell in the film were actual drawings done by Ramirez, that were originally sent to his personal acquaintance: Dillon Kroe.”
I couldn’t believe it. Was this another weird link between Dillon Kroe and the Cecil Hotel? Was Dillon really a “personal acquaintance” with one of the most brutal serial killers of all time? The same guy who painted a portrait of Elisa and liked her posts?
Now I had to reach out to him again. This time, he opened up.
“Downtown LA is a second home to me. I love all that trash,” he said.
I told him that his name has surfaced in the forums.
As far as the social media and painting, he said, “Anyone can follow Elisa Lam. She doesn’t follow me back. Quite a few people have done art of her. It’s because I have a dark art persona. If I was a yuppy guy, no one would care.”
Then he told me the real reason he couldn’t talk about the case earlier. He had worked with Ama McDonald on his documentary and didn’t want to “leak” anything.
Ama. My competitor rises again. Always one step ahead of me.
“No one and I mean no one knows more detail about Elisa and the Cecil than him.”
“Great, yeah. He’s cool,” I muttered.
Then Kroe told me how he knew Ramirez.
“I used to live in Whittier, grew up there. And Ramirez killed a few people there. During his killing spree, someone tried to break into our home. My mom saw a tall skinny man in black run away. Two weeks later the news broke of the murder he committed about five blocks away. It’s always haunted me that it was him. I initially wrote him to ask if it was. But the prison system blacked out any questions pertaining to his crimes in the letters. I could only talk about miscellaneous stuff, like his paintings.”
And so he became art pen pals with a serial killer.
“So many serial killers start painting in prison,” I noted, recalling the works of John Wayne Gacy, Keith Jesperson, Henry Lee Lucas, and many others.
“Honestly, he sucked. He traced everything.”
As I have documented earlier, the videos made by one websleuth, Wilhelm Werner Winther, feature graphic rape speculation complete with images of men having sex with a bound body. Winther documents specific narrative sequences of the men who he believes raped and killed Elisa, how long it took, and what they did with the body afterward.
A member of the Elisa Lam Facebook group, Caitlin Ellisa, posted one of his videos on July 31, 2018.
“Look at this video and this entire youtuber. What the actual hell?” She posted above it. “One video says he was her online boyfriend and she whined too much about feminism.”
Caitlin is an amateur sleuth and became immersed in the Lam case in 2017, determined to help solve it. She believes her intuition gives her an important perspective on true crime cases. In my conversations with her, she stated that her intuition, “as well as many symbolic connections in the videos on [Winther’s] page,” leads her to believe that he was somehow involved in what happened to her.
“He seems sick but he also says there were 4 men on the roof, yet only names 3. So he is the 4th?” she wrote to me.
And so one websleuth began hunting another.
The more I watched Winther’s baffling videos, the more it struck me that in several instances he claimed to have pictures and video of Elisa from the night she died. He outlines incredibly specific details from the night of her death, details that only someone there could know. In other videos he purported to show footage of her body in the water tank. However, in the text accompanying the pictures he frequently lapsed into bizarre tangents that feel unhinged.
