Through the open hatch he saw Lam lying face-up in the water. The tank was drained and cut open since its maintenance hatch was too small to accommodate equipment needed to remove Lam’s body. On February 21, the Los Angeles coroner’s office issued a finding of accidental drowning, with bipolar disorder as a significant factor. The full coroner’s report, released in June, stated that Lam’s body had been found naked. Clothing similar to what she was wearing in the elevator video was floating in the water, coated with a “sand-like particulate”. Her watch and room key were also found with her. There was no evidence of physical trauma, sexual assault, or suicide. Toxicology tests showed traces consistent with prescription medication found among her belongings, plus nonprescription drugs. A very small quantity of alcohol (about 0.02 g%) was present, but no other recreational drugs. Investigators and experts have however noted that the concentration of her prescription drugs in her system indicated that she was undermedicating or had stopped taking her medications recently. The autopsy report and its conclusions were questioned based on the incomplete information. For instance, it does not say what the results of the rape kit and fingernail kit were or even if they were processed. It also records subcutaneous pooling of blood in Lam’s anal area, which some observers suggested was a sign of sexual abuse. One pathologist noted it could also have resulted from bloating in the course of the body’s decomposition, and her rectum was also prolapsed. The coroner’s pathologists were ambivalent about their conclusion that Lam’s death was accidental.
For her trip to California, Lam traveled alone on Amtrak and intercity buses. She visited the San Diego Zoo and posted photos taken there on social media. On January 26, she arrived in Los Angeles. After two days, she checked into the Cecil Hotel, near Downtown’s Skid Row. Lam was initially assigned a shared room on the hotel’s fifth floor. Her roommates complained about what the hotel’s lawyer would later describe as “certain odd behavior” and Lam was moved to a room of her own after two days. According to Amy Price, the manager of the Cecil Hotel and Stay on Main at the time of Lam’s disappearance, Lam was leaving notes for her roommates that said “go home” and “go away,” and would lock the door to the room and require a password for entry. A few days before her disappearance, Lam attended a live taping of Conan in Burbank, but was escorted off the premises by security due to disruptive behavior.
Lam contacted her parents in British Columbia daily while traveling up until the day she disappeared. On January 31, 2013, the day she was scheduled to check out of the Cecil and leave for Santa Cruz, her parents did not hear from her and called the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD). Her family flew to Los Angeles to help with the search.
Hotel staff who saw Lam that day said she was alone. Outside the hotel, Katie Orphan, manager of The Last Bookstore, was the only person who recalled seeing her that day. “She was outgoing, very lively, very friendly” while getting gifts to take home to her family, Orphan told CNN. “[She was] talking about what book she was getting and whether or not what she was getting would be too heavy for her to carry around as she traveled,” Orphan added.
Police searched the hotel to the extent that they legally could.
Lam had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder and depression. She had been prescribed several medications for her mental health issues. Lam had no history of suicidal ideations or attempts. She had a history of not taking her bipolar medications and, as a result, on several occasions suffered hallucinations that would cause her to hide under her bed for refuge; she was hospitalized at least once for one of these episodes.
The investigation had determined how Lam died, but did not initially offer an explanation as to how she got into the tank in the first place. Doors and stairs that access the hotel’s roof are locked, with only staff having the passcodes and keys, and any attempt to force them would supposedly have triggered an alarm. The hotel’s fire escape could have allowed her to bypass those security measures. Her scent trail was lost near a window that connected to it. A video posted to the Internet after Lam’s death showed that the hotel’s roof was easily accessible via the fire escape and that two of the lids of the water tanks were open.
After her death, her Tumblr blog was updated, presumably through Tumblr’s Queue option that allows posts to automatically publish themselves when the user is away. Her phone was not found either with her body or in her hotel room. Whether the continued updates to her blog were facilitated by the theft of her phone, the work of a hacker, or through the Queue is not known, nor is it known whether the updates are related to her death.
The circumstances of Lam’s death have been compared to plot elements in the 2005 horror film Dark Water. The Lam case has been used as inspiration for series.
