Welcome back to Spooky L.A., a series where we shine a flashlight on some hair raising history and haunts across Los Angeles.
Today, Esotouric L.A.’s Kim Cooper walks us through the Hotel Cecil in downtown L.
A. Once intended as a luxury stay for business travelers, the hotel has a dark and troubling history that includes serial killers and suspicious deaths spanning nearly 100 years. The Hotel Cecil was built in the 1920s with the intent of providing accommodations for traveling business people.
But the hotel succumbed to the Great Depression and by the 1930s, it was a known site for many suicides for people from all walks of life . By the 1960s, Cooper said Hotel Cecil experienced a decline like many other buildings in downtown. She said the hotel went from being travel friendly to hosting long term residencies.
“In the 1960s, people who were getting displaced from Bunker Hill chose to live in Hotel Cecil because it was a large, well run hotel,” said Cooper. Later, in the 1980s, that’s when the likes of the “Night Stalker” Richard Ramirez, who was convicted for 13 murders and committed a series of sexual assaults, started seeking residence at the hotel. “You didn't really have to flash an ID.
It was very cheap. It was close to the bus station. And people wouldn't ask questions if you came home after a night of really awful behavior covered in blood,” Cooper said.
Australian serial killer Jack Unterweger was also seen staying at the hotel in the 1990s. He is b.
