It’s been so long since I posted. I locked my previous post because it was getting spammed by unknown followers. But then again, my blog has always been followed by unknown people.

It’s Week 5 of Year 3 Sem 2. Today is the second day of CNY. This year’s CNY has probably been the quietest and most uneventful in my life, like a really big contrast to last year’s massive boomz. Due to COVID restrictions, we couldn’t gather as an extended family. There was only a reunion dinner with two family at Uncle R’s house on Thursday night. Yesterday, we didn’t go anywhere at all. I spent the entire day at home doing research for my electronic evidence paper, and studying for FIN2704X, a finance module that’s fascinating.

Today, I decided I wasn’t going to spend CNY break studying all day, so I went onto Netflix to watch something. I chose to watch Crime Scene The Vanishing at Cecil Hotel, from the same creators at the Ted Bundy Tapes which I watched like last year. I thought I should give a quick review of it. I have around 40 minutes before I set off for my Grandma’s house for dinner tonight.

*Spoiler alert!!! If you haven’t watched it, don’t read on!*

So this series contains just 4 episodes, all slightly under 1 hour each. I watched it all in one shot. The series is about this 21 year-old Chinese-Canadian girl named Elisa Lam who went to Los Angeles, California, USA for a vacation during her summer break so that she could get herself together. She stayed in Cecil Hotel, which, probably unknown to her, was a shady hotel with dark origins and lots of crime and chaos happening in the vicinity. On her 5th day there, she disappeared completely. The only footage of her last moment was a CCTV recording from the hotel’s lift (uh-huh electronic evidence…) showing her pressing all the lift buttons in one column, hiding in the corners of the lift, and then peeking out of the lift doors looking left and right, all the while having bizarre hand movements.

19 days after her disappearance, she was found in a water tank on the roof the hotel. Sounds like one of the cases we had in Singapore where a domestic worker’s body was found in a water tank right on top of a residential building. That case was a murder case, so I thought this would be similar.

The case garnered loads of internet attention because the elevator footage was released by the Police to the public to appeal to public assistance. In the end, after months of investigation and loads of conspiracy theories, the autopsy report was released ruling her death an accident, aggravated possibly by hallucinations from a relapse of her bipolar disorder.

I think the series was a very insightful one except for the grave misnomer (because there was no crime truly involved, except maybe the crime that lived on in the minds of the web sleuth’s conspiracy theories). I really liked how the story was narrated, focusing on Elisa Lam’s own tumblr post musings. As a student around the same age as her myself, I found her struggle really relatable except I’m fortunate to not suffer from a mental disorder.

But I think the most valuable part of the narrative was the fact that they included the first-hand testimony of the hotel’s general manager at that time, Amy Price, the lead investigators, as well as the coroner’s testimony explaining his findings. When cases like this which garner such huge media attention end up being ruled as just an unfortunate accident, the public’s knee-jerk reaction would often be that there was a cover-up by the hotel or police, that something just wasn’t right about it. It’s normal and human nature to assume the worst of people when we don’t have enough facts. This is the same thing we discussed in Advanced Criminal Legal Process class this semester where I was so fortunate to hear prosecutors explaining to us firsthand what exactly went on in some of the high profile cases in Singapore recently, like the Parti Liyani and the dental student’s strangulation case. From the explanation of the coroner, it’s easy to understand why death by accident would have been a logical conclusion, since there were no external or internal injuries, no signs of sexual assault, no signs of drugs in the system, the only abnormality being the low amount of prescriptive anti-depressants and other medications she was supposed to take. Combined with footage of her erratic behaviour and accounts from Elisa’s sister describing historical episodes of hallucinations and fright, we could come to the reasonable inference that she could have been imagining that someone was after her on the night of her disappearance, felt that there was no other place to hide, and ended up in the water tank tragically.

I guess the only difficult part to get over for me was how she managed to steadily climb up ladders to the roof and to the water tank, because it was showed to us that the only way she could have accessed the roof was through a steep ladder on the exterior of the building, which would have required careful navigation. I can’t imagine anyone in bad mental state navigating that. But I guess it was a possibility since the elevator showed she wasn’t walking unsteadily during her episode. It was all in her mind but her body was functioning normally.

I personally felt a bit cheated that after being introduced to the context of Cecil Hotel, about how violent, ruthless, lawless the hotel and the vicinity, called Skid Row, was supposedly, the entire incident turned out to have nothing to do with the bad people or even the hotel itself. It was great to have the general manager herself come out and tell her how she tried her best to manage the hotel, how frequent those crimes were happening and that there were 80 deaths in her 10 years as a manager there (how ordinary). I guess it put a human face to the hotel management, who some people probably still think was responsible for this incident even though a judge had ruled in favour of the hotel, against the Lam family who alleged negligence.

Another dimension to this was the perspective of the web sleuths, whom I would probably describe as enthusiasts, hobbyists, empathetic people who love to use their brains, tracking this entire case and providing perspectives and theories all along. Unfortunately, the true crime here was probably them wrongfully blaming the death metal musician “Morbid” for the supposed murder of Elisa Lam, thereby destroying his career and almost his life. I liked how we managed to see him unfiltered, uncensored in the show and listen to him talk like an ordinary person, even though his music and his video may portray him as a ruthless murderer. He probably was the true victim of the incident, the Internet, who ironically, through pursuing justice for one, ended up hurting another one.

The story’s ending isn’t the most satisfying one. There isn’t one celebratory moment where the aggressor was nailed and jailed. In fact, it seems anti-climatic. But that’s why it’s realistic. No matter how tragic we think her death was, there isn’t anyone to blame. No one possibly suspect was identified throughout the investigation. No one to even blame for negligence. It’s possibly the most frustrating for the family members.

There isn’t a coherent theme to this show — it’s not a true crime story (no crime was involved), it’s not exactly a mental health campaign–although the show ends reminding those who suffer from mental health illness to seek help, it’s also not a show designed to bring awareness to the homelessness and lawlessness in the Skid Row, it’s not a horror or thriller. I can’t really classify it as any type of show. Yet, it’s incredibly realistic and does its job narrating a story well.