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Gone at Midnight: The Tragic True Story Behind the Unsolved Internet Sensation
368Overview
A Fortune Magazine “Most Anticipated Books of 2020” Selection
A Goodreads Featured Release for February 2020
Oxygen’s List of “Best True Crime Books of 2020” Selection
“The Cecil Hotel in Los Angeles is a palpable presence in Gone at Midnight. Given the checkered history of the Cecil Hotel (which was recently named to the Los Angeles registry of historic landmarks), I wouldn’t rule out Jack the Ripper.”
—The New York Times
“Outstanding…true crime buffs won’t want to miss this gripping search for the truth.”
—Publishers Weekly STARRED REVIEW
A Los Angeles hotel with a haunting history. A missing young woman. A disturbing viral video followed by a shocking discovery. A cold-case mystery that has become an internet phenomenon—and for one determined journalist, a life-changing quest toward uncomfortable truths. Perfect for Murderinos looking for their next fix…
Twenty-one-year-old Vancouver student Elisa Lam was last heard from on January 31, 2013, after she checked into downtown L.A.’s Cecil Hotel—a 600-room building with a nine-decade history of scandal and tragedy. The next day, Elisa vanished. A search of the hotel yielded nothing. More than a week later, complaints by guests of foul-smelling tap water led to a grim discovery: Elisa’s nude body floating in a rooftop water tank, in an area extremely difficult to access without setting off alarms. The only apparent clue was a disturbing surveillance video of Elisa, uploaded to YouTube in hopes of public assistance.
As the eerie elevator video went viral, so did the questions of its tens of millions of viewers. Was Elisa’s death caused by murder, suicide, or paranormal activity? Was it connected to the Cecil’s sinister reputation? And in that video, what accounted for Elisa’s strange behavior? With the help of web sleuths and investigators from around the world, journalist Jake Anderson set out to uncover the facts behind a death that had become a macabre internet meme, as well as a magnet for conspiracy theorists.
In poring through Elisa’s revealing online journals and social-media posts, Anderson realized he shared more in common with the young woman than he imagined. His search for justice and truth became a personal journey, a dangerous descent into one of America's quiet epidemics. Along the way, he exposed a botched investigation and previously unreported disclosures from inside sources who suggest there may have been a corporate conspiracy and a police cover-up. In Gone at Midnight, Anderson chronicles eye-opening discoveries about who Elisa Lam really was and what—or whom—she was running from, and presents shocking new evidence that may re-open one of the most chilling and obsessively followed true crime cases of the century.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780806540054 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Kensington |
| Publication date: | 02/25/2020 |
| Pages: | 368 |
| Sales rank: | 336,788 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.10(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.50(d) |
About the Author
Table of Contents
Author's Note ix
Part 1 Discovery 1
Chapter 1 Missing 3
Chapter 2 Found 18
Chapter 3 The Investigation Begins 25
Chapter 4 Rise of the Websleuths 39
Chapter 5 The West Coast Tour 54
Chapter 6 City of Demons 69
Chapter 7 Further Down the Rabbit Hole 80
Chapter 8 The "Suicide Hotel" 89
Chapter 9 The 14th Floor 103
Chapter 10 The Autopsy 114
Part 2 Serotonin and Synchronicity 121
Chapter 11 The Art of the Meltdown 123
Chapter 12 David and Yinna Lam vs. the Cecil Hotel 140
Chapter 13 Friends and Enemies of Occam's Razor 149
Chapter 14 Inbound Train 162
Chapter 15 A World with Evil 172
Chapter 16 Dark Synchronicity 185
Chapter 17 The Last Bookstore 195
Chapter 18 Return to the Cecil 206
Part 3 Coverup 231
Chapter 19 Revisiting the Cause of Death 233
Chapter 20 Whoever Chases Monsters 247
Chapter 21 Inside Job 254
Chapter 22 A Missing Element and A Bombshell 264
Chapter 23 What Happened to Elisa Lam? 287
Acknowledgments 325
Source Notes 327
Index 339
About the Author 351