The Water Tanks

[Perplexed 123]

wow.....

Why wow, am I missing something? It's sounds like a fairly standard description of a managers duties.

 

[Conductor71]

Well, I don't think this has much bearing on the case, but you never know.

I did some sleuthing on the Cecil as a property and found quite a list of permit information on maintaining and altering the structure. There is a permit request dated just last week for repairing a water tank on the roof! Doesn't tell us much other than it sounds like the LAPD have completed any sort of forensic work up there.

Looks like they intended a 3rd elevator at one point too ?

I have attached a PDF list of permits because I could not get you directly to a web address for a database research list. Each permit on the web list is linked to a bit more info in a new window.

The database is at zimas.lacity.org and search by Parcel # 5148021010

 

[noodled1]

Well, I don't think this has much bearing on the case, but you never know.

I did some sleuthing on the Cecil as a property and found quite a list of permit information on maintaining and altering the structure. There is a permit request dated just last week for repairing a water tank on the roof! Doesn't tell us much other than it sounds like the LAPD have completed any sort of forensic work up there.

Looks like they intended a 3rd elevator at one point too ?

I have attached a PDF list of permits because I could not get you directly to a web address for a database research list. Each permit on the web list is linked to a bit more info in a new window.

The database is at zimas.lacity.org and search by Parcel # 5148021010

thanks that's great, good find

yeah they have a big honking hole in the side of one of their tanks now... man talk about a circular financial double whammy, bad press followed by having to pay a bunch of fees for a permit to replace the tank that led to all the bad press

 

[AlphaWolf]

Why wow, am I missing something? It's sounds like a fairly standard description of a managers duties.

good afternoon perplexed!

why that jumps out to me....( I thought that the new owners who purchased the building and tried to remodel it, may have newer staff....and may have an unexperienced maintenance crew...with limited knowlege/access of the building)

reason #1 - nearly 30 years of working on the same building, He would be able to save so much money for the building owners by doing/ Overseeing/supervising all the maintenance/repair of ac units/plumbing/tanks/minor elevator maintenance rather then using contractors.

That means it's much more likely that the Hotel ( staff ) did most of the rooftop maintenance.

why is that important? - It's important because that means there may be actual staff who are very familar with the hotel's roof/water tank access ( rather then using contractors)

reason #2 - It says supervises in electrical/plumbing and general maintenance...supervising means he is working with other people.

that could mean there are other persons staff? who have access and knowlege of the roof.

reason #3 - If we found out that the Hotel has 1 maintenance person who didn't do much ( with little expierience of the hotel).....or the Hotel used technicians for service and repair of the rooftop ( wich they still may....but with someone with 30 years on staff....likely they do alot of work themselves)

that means there would be less of a chance with someone who was really familar with the roof....

on the contrary.....there is someone with 30 years of experience on that building!!.... he supervises other persons ( who likely have access to the roof or know how to get to the roof...are familar with the roof)

(again, I am not saying anything...other then there is someone who knows that building well...and may supervise other staff in the same areas)

 

[noodled1]

good afternoon perplexed!

why that jumps out to me....( I thought that the new owners who purchased the building and tried to remodel it, may have newer staff....and may have an unexperienced maintenance crew...with limited knowlege/access of the building)

reason #1 - nearly 30 years of working on the same building, He would be able to save so much money for the building owners by doing/ Overseeing/supervising all the maintenance/repair of ac units/plumbing/tanks/minor elevator maintenance rather then using contractors.

That means it's much more likely that the Hotel ( staff ) did most of the rooftop maintenance.

why is that important? - It's important because that means there may be actual staff who are very familar with the hotel's roof/water tank access ( rather then using contractors)

reason #2 - It says supervises in electrical/plumbing and general maintenance...supervising means he is working with other people.

that could mean there are other persons staff? who have access and knowlege of the roof.

reason #3 - If we found out that the Hotel has 1 maintenance person who didn't do much ( with little expierience of the hotel).....or the Hotel used technicians for service and repair of the rooftop ( wich they still may....but with someone with 30 years on staff....likely they do alot of work themselves)

that means there would be less of a chance with someone who was really familar with the roof....

on the contrary.....there is someone with 30 years of experience on that building!!.... he supervises other persons ( who likely have access to the roof or know how to get to the roof...are familar with the roof)

(again, I am not saying anything...other then there is someone who knows that building well...and may supervise other staff in the same areas)

Interesting thoughts

look at the permit pdf we now have thanks to Conductor 71..

If you click on the permit number it will take you to a summary of the permit and tells exactly who was doing the job

 

[AlphaWolf]

Interesting thoughts

look at the permit pdf we now have thanks to Conductor 71..

If you click on the permit number it will take you to a summary of the permit and tells exactly who was doing the job

- If the Hotel was doing any major renovations requiring a licensed contractor...then they would have to use a outside contractor.

- I was talking about routine preventative maintenance on the building( a knowlegable maintenance crew could do that rather then hiring a professional)....

examples:

changing water/HVAC/Filters /preventitive maintenance

changing out an electrical outlets/minor electrical repair/changing fixtures

servicing/cleaning the water tanks/tank filters/chlorination

Plumbing repair/service

Minor elevator repair/cleaning

Paint/flooring repair

 

[Conductor71]

- If the Hotel was doing any major renovations requiring a licensed contractor...then they would have to use a outside contractor.

- I was talking about routine preventative maintenance on the building( a knowlegable maintenance crew could do that rather then hiring a professional)....

True, keep in mind that the building has no private owner that I know of; it is in foreclosure, and the Stay on Main hostel is run by a property management group owned by Bill Lanting. He has blogged for LA alternative news sources and responded to blog posts on the legal problems of converting the Cecil into strictly a hotel. Just google his name; he has a linked in profile. No harm in emailing him and asking.

 

[AlphaWolf]

Well, I don't think this has much bearing on the case, but you never know.

I did some sleuthing on the Cecil as a property and found quite a list of permit information on maintaining and altering the structure. There is a permit request dated just last week for repairing a water tank on the roof! Doesn't tell us much other than it sounds like the LAPD have completed any sort of forensic work up there.

Looks like they intended a 3rd elevator at one point too ?

I have attached a PDF list of permits because I could not get you directly to a web address for a database research list. Each permit on the web list is linked to a bit more info in a new window.

The database is at zimas.lacity.org and search by Parcel # 5148021010

just wanted to say ....amazing job!....great info.

 

[Ghostwheel]

thanks that's great, good find

yeah they have a big honking hole in the side of one of their tanks now... man talk about a circular financial double whammy, bad press followed by having to pay a bunch of fees for a permit to replace the tank that led to all the bad press

Bad press? IMO, until this is solved, ghost hunters will abound. If this is never solved it will make the property more interesting to the "haunted hotel" crowd, although I'll bet they will come in groups and stay together.

 

[Ghostwheel]

Has anyone wondered why that particular tank was most appealing to the perp?

If he had to carry EL, it was the most difficult tank to access. It was on the inside surrounded by the other tanks and on the outside edge of the building. The body was not just dumped out of convenience.

Why was that tank chosen? I don't believe it was a missing lid. Maybe it has something to do with water flow as Oblios astutely points out in his first post. Welcome, BTW!!

Any engineers in the group? If not, my dad is a civil engineer, I can get his input fwiw.

I see several things that would make this tank more appealing. Some were already mentioned, but on the one side of the tank is what looks like a three foot high half wall, maybe 12 to 18 inches from to back, that runs the length of two tanks with a metal fence with round cross bars at equal levels. If there was no ladder, this would suffice as a way to get up for either of the two tanks next to it. The two tanks that are not near this half wall have nothing to hold onto if you were trying to climb on top to open the lids. The two tanks near the half wall have pipes on the top that a person could grab onto, and the one she was found in has pipe closest to the half wall. No matter how she got in there, those features make this the most likely tank.

Source: Years of climbing on top of my elementary school building....

 

[MissedItByThatMuch]

Has anyone wondered why that particular tank was most appealing to the perp?

If he had to carry EL, it was the most difficult tank to access. It was on the inside surrounded by the other tanks and on the outside edge of the building. The body was not just dumped out of convenience.

Why was that tank chosen? I don't believe it was a missing lid. Maybe it has something to do with water flow as Oblios astutely points out in his first post. Welcome, BTW!!

Any engineers in the group? If not, my dad is a civil engineer, I can get his input fwiw.

It could have been for as little purpose as being better hidden in case someone came up on the roof at the time. Or, he may have deemed that tank least likely to be checked by a maintenance man. It's a very good question if neither of those are the correct answer. Another alternative is that the party responsible was a Cecil staffer who knew that individual tanks serviced different parts of the building. In this picture, he either wanted to avoid contaminating a certain part of the building, and/or he wanted to target a certain part for contamination.

 

[MissedItByThatMuch]

SB - EL's tank isn't shown in the photos. LE states they didn't search that tank because the lid was on. But if you look at the location of that particular tank, the only way to know for certain if the lid is on or off is to either climb the ladder next to the tank itself, or from up on the rooftop of the equipment room.

I don't have a lot of faith that they did either one. They would either have to climb the ladder to the roof of the equipment room, then walk around a partial barrier to the edge, and peer down on top of the tanks. Or - climb the ladder and look up close, in which case, being so inquisitive, I think they would have lifted the lid and looked inside.

What exactly does "LE" stand for, though I'm sure it refers to the police. Are you implying that the police, in the very beginning, opened three of the tank doors but not the fourth one with the girl? Is that the official account?

 

[MissedItByThatMuch]

Take the Chinese website with a grain of salt. There has been no official announcement on what position the body was found in. The Chinese investigators have done some great work in obtaining pics and videos but there tends to be some real leaps of faith on breaking things down.

On the other hand, it could be expected that Elisa's parents are to this day talking to relatives in China, giving them some details that police won't report to us here.

 

[MissedItByThatMuch]

Heh heh. Sharp as a tack sb. Except they weren't tasked with looking for a living person, but a living scent. If a handler noticed a wooden A-frame ladder, wouldn't he lay it down for the dogs to search it? He wouldn't climb it.

But they didn't even do that. Why? Because they said the lid was on EL's tank. And how did they come to know this without actually looking at it?

Are you imagining or suggesting a conspiracy involving the police to cover the crime?

 

[MissedItByThatMuch]

"The decomposing body of Elisa Lam floated inside a water tank..."
(snipped)
"Eventually, the hotel maintenance department investigated the water problem, sending a worker to look into the tank, police said. He saw Lam's lifeless body at the bottom."
(snipped)
http://www.cnn.com/2013/02/21/us/california-hotel-water-corpse

The above two snips from the same article are an example of why we, the readers, can get so darn confused.

We're told that Elisa was floating in the tank, and we are told that her body was at the bottom of the tank.

It cannot be both.

I have a hard time believing that the worker saw her body on the bottom of the tank, only because it had to have been dark inside the tank and how could he see all the way to the bottom, even if the water was fairly clear, which it likely wasn't.

IMO.

Are you suggesting a conspiracy involving the maintenance worker?

The claim of that worker, if I recall correctly, is that the tank that Elisa was in was 1/4 empty when he found her. The chances of a cistern not working properly like that, in the course of the three weeks that Elisa was there, are very low. A cistern (i.e. an open, unsealed tank) that is in operation to supply tap water for the hotel has an automatic shut-off valve for allowing water into the tank from a pressurized source, but not allowing the water level to overflow the tank. The shut-off valve, perhaps similar in principle to the one in your toilet tank, is a simple mechanism that doesn't easily fail to shut off water, but in this case, we are to believe that the valve ceased to allow water IN to the tank. That's a bit hard to believe, but is possible if a part of Elisa's body was in contact with the open-and-close mechanism of the valve. But that can't be true if her body was at the bottom of the tank.

Therefore, the claim that the tank was lower in volume than normal sounds like a fabrication. Why such a lie would be conjured up, and by whom, is a question for discussion. It may not have originated with the maintenance man. He may have been ordered by his superior to tell the fabrication. It may be that the body was discovered by another method, and that the fabrication was a whitewashing of the true method.

The hotel owner / manager may have known that Elisa's body was in there from the start, and he decided that it had to be removed due to the foul smell of the tap water i.e. the guests were becoming upset. But, of course, the owner / manager didn't want to remove the body (secretly) in the state it was in by that point, and so he devised a plan to have the police over-see the removal: he got his maintenance man to "find" the body, and to report it. But he didn't want the maintenance man to report the real way in which he got him to check the tank.

An alternative, if that doesn't seem feasible, especially if the maintenance man had access to the video room, is that he decided to "find" the body all on his lonesome, because he had been the killer. There's other explanations of course.

I don't see why he would lie about the body being at the bottom versus the top, unless it was to support the case of low water pressure i.e. giving us the impression that the body was blocking the outlet pipe.

 

[jetsetsam]

"I have a hard time believing that the worker saw her body on the bottom of the tank, only because it had to have been dark inside the tank and how could he see all the way to the bottom, even if the water was fairly clear, which it likely wasn't."

Have you ever heard of a flashlight?

The outlet is at the bottom of the tank.

There was a report of a problem with the water pressure.

The maintenance worker went up to look into the tank to see if something was affecting the water pressure.

Such as something blocking the outlet at the bottom of the tank.

He would have known that the small opening at the top of the tank wouldn't let in enough light to look down through the water, clear or not, to see if something was blocking the outlet at the bottom of the tank.

FLASHLIGHT

A FLASHLIGHT

 

[noodled1]

Bad press? IMO, until this is solved, ghost hunters will abound. If this is never solved it will make the property more interesting to the "haunted hotel" crowd, although I'll bet they will come in groups and stay together.

it'll take more than a handful of ghost and true crime seekers to make up for the bad press of having a corpse in the water system...

 

[Conductor71]

I don't see why he would lie about the body being at the bottom versus the top, unless it was to support the case of low water pressure i.e. giving us the impression that the body was blocking the outlet pipe.

Couldn't this be answered by forensics? We know that EL had to be identified by body marks. This says to me that her remains were fairly well decomposed, so given that bodies sink then float as they fill with gases I think it safe to guess she was floating. Unless, a piece of her clothing, a hoodie, for example was blocking the pipe?

 

[findinganatta]

Couldn't this be answered by forensics? We know that EL had to be identified by body marks. This says to me that her remains were fairly well decomposed, so given that bodies sink then float as they fill with gases I think it safe to guess she was floating. Unless, a piece of her clothing, a hoodie, for example was blocking the pipe?

The stuff I read about body decomp in water from the FBI website said that bodies will sink, then float, sink again, eventually refloat, and then sink permanently eventually due to significant decomposition. So there's no telling which cycle EL's body may have been in. And of course other factors could have been involved, such as suction or part of her body being stuck on something. Also, presumably the tank's water level rose and fell over time, so that shifting and movement could have created some condition that was unusual compared to a normal body in water.

 

[MissedItByThatMuch]

The stuff I read about body decomp in water from the FBI website said that bodies will sink, then float, sink again, eventually refloat, and then sink permanently eventually due to significant decomposition. So there's no telling which cycle EL's body may have been in. And of course other factors could have been involved, such as suction or part of her body being stuck on something. Also, presumably the tank's water level rose and fell over time, so that shifting and movement could have created some condition that was unusual compared to a normal body in water.

The water supply to the tanks needs to be, probably by law, sufficient in volume to handle a full-hotel water demand. Usually, city building codes add in a saftey feature just in case, meaning that the water supply to the tanks was MORE than able to handle typical full-hotel water demand. But as the Cecil was apparently not near to being full when Elisa was in the tank, it's doubtful the water level would go up and down in the tank unless the inlet valve was obstructed, which I don't find likely, but it happens.

I've read from one person that the hotel may have been on well water, but another post said city water. Does anyone know for sure?

I was seeking yesterday to find an article telling whether individual roof tanks handle only certain parts of the hotel's areas, but was unable to find anything. Also, I don't even know whther the report of the tank being 3/4 full is reliable. Anyone know for sure?