Netflix has announced a new documentary series exploring the mysterious disappearance and death of Elisa Lam, which is due to premiere on the streaming service next month.
The four-part series, Crime Scene: The Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel, delves into what happened to the 21-year-old Canadian student - who vanished from the Cecil Hotel in Downtown Los Angeles in 2013, leaving behind all her possessions in her hotel room.
Her puzzling story grew even stranger when CCTV footage from the hotel surfaced, showing Lam talking and gesturing wildly in the corridor near an elevator, seemingly alone
She also entered and exited the elevator several times, and even appeared to hide inside it - her odd behaviour prompting numerous conspiracy theories about what might have happened.
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Lam's body was eventually recovered from a water tank on top of the hotel more than two weeks after she disappeared, but experts still have no idea what happened to her after she went missing.
Crime Scene: The Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel, which comes from executive producer and director Joe Berlinger, sets out to deconstruct the events leading up to her death through interviews with Cecil Hotel employees, guests who had been staying there and several investigators on Lam's case.
Berlinger, who was also behind Conversations With a Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes, said: "As a true crime documentarian, I was fascinated in 2013 when the elevator video of Elisa Lam went viral and legions of amateur detectives used the internet to try to solve the mystery of what happened to her, a 21-year-old Canadian tourist on her first trip to Los Angeles.
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"So, when journalist Josh Dean, who is also a producer on the project, brought us his research into this case, we realised there was as an opportunity to do something different by not just telling the story of Elisa's disappearance, but to create a series that explores a particular location's role in encouraging or abetting crime - or the perception thereof.
"My past projects have leaned into individual crimes and criminals, but I have never explored the role a particular location has played in creating an environment in which multiple crimes seemingly take place over and over again.
"The fact that Elisa disappeared in a location that has a multi-decade history of crimes is what made her case fascinating to me."
According to Variety, the documentary will premiere on Netflix on 10 February.
Featured Image Credit: Cecil HotelTopics: Entertainment, True Crime, Netflix