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You're listening to a morbid network podcast.

Wow, a new intro. Who this welcome back to Cult Leader. I'm your Cult Leader Spencer Henry. Today's intro was and forever now intro was created by Cult Babe.

I'm a re-salexander and his handles on everything are my name is Reese and it's Reese with AC. I'll put his information on the show description for today's episode.

Thank you so much to all of you who did submit intro ideas. This one was just like, this is it. So super excited. And speaking of things I'm excited about, we are coming up on our one year Cult anniversary and I have a really fun surprise for the one year episode that I think you guys are going to be stoked on.

So gear up for that and make sure that you have notifications on and you're subscribed so you get notified when new to feed when the new episodes come out. And that's it. Also I've had probably 18 cups of coffee today so I don't know how this is going to go.

But most of you have probably heard of the topic of today's episode. We are talking about this Cecil hotel which most of you probably have heard of or you might be somewhat unknowingly familiar because it has ties to a lot of really famous instances in true crime history.

It was also the basis for season five of American Horror Story, American Horror Story Hotel. And regardless whether you've heard of it or not, if you're active on in true crime in general on all those YouTube shows and IDTV shows and all of that, you've probably heard of the mysterious death of Elisa Lam.

And if you haven't, you're gonna because it's probably one of the most well-known disturbing instances on the property. I didn't want to make today's episode fully about that because a lot of people have talked about that case and broken it down so brilliantly.

But they tend to skim over the rest of everything else that has happened at the hotel, which is to me what makes it so haunted and creepy. So we'll do a quick background on the hotel. It's located in downtown Los Angeles, which in general is quite a scene in and of itself nowadays.

Like, think like artsy downtown, tall buildings, cool lofts, there's art students walking around dressed like 1800s fucking factory workers. It's hipsters galore, but just blocks away from the nightlife, gentrified hot dogs and $9 cappuccinos is Skid Row, which is a massive homeless encampment that has been there for a really long time.

So it's definitely got your good old city mix. But when the Cecil Hotel first opened in 1927, it was opened up by a guy named William Hanner and it was built with a purpose. It was a place for travelers and businessmen. That was their whole motto there. So in essence, a hotel. The hotel itself cost around $1 million, which in the 1920s was a whole lot of money.

But it was beautiful marble everywhere, fresh plants, stained glass, the whole nine yards and throughout the 1930s and 1940s the hotel was thriving. It was bustling, busy place, but this was not without a few deaths. Yeah, well we're going there. We're going there already. The first reported death was in 1931 about a week before Thanksgiving.

W.K. Norton, a 46 year old businessman from Manhattan Beach, was found dead in his room. He had checked into the hotel a week prior claiming to be a man named James Willys from Chicago. The cause of death was ingesting poisonous capsules very 1930s way to go. And he didn't leave a note, but his death was deemed a suicide.

Almost a full year later in September of 1932, a housekeeper entered the room of 25 year old Benjamin Dotaich and found a horrifying scene. Benjamin was dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound in the head and like W.K. Benjamin did not leave a note behind. On July 23rd, 1934, former sergeant Louis Burton was found dead still bleeding in his room. Now this is gruesome. So he slit his own throat with a razor which to be a dead man.

The only honest is just like probably one of the worst ways to go. And he was first to leave a note stating that he was ending his life due to existing health conditions, which brings us to a good point for those non-American cult baves. Be grateful if you live in a country where there is free health care because I've heard a few stories now, recent stories where people did kill themselves in America because they knew they wouldn't be able to afford hospital care.

I went to the hospital one time when I was traveling a ton for my last job and I was on a work trip and I just felt really off. So I went to the emergency room and it turned out to just be like anxiety. But I was there for less than two hours. They ran a few tests and I was built $2,800 just for that like two, three hours max.

I wanted me to stay overnight and I was like, yeah, no, like I'll die. But this is nothing compared to the outrageous cost and hundreds of thousands of dollars people are forced to pay to literally just be alive. It's a fucking joke, our health care system here.

But in Lewis's note, did it mention anything about medical affordability? But I can't talk about health care without it being without bringing up what's going on.

The next three years, things calm down no one died, which you know is great for business. I don't know the average amount of expected deaths at hotels statistically.

But I feel like it's pretty excessive here. In March of 1937, Grace Magro fell out of the window of her ninth floor hotel room and became tangled in telephone wires.

She was taken to the hospital and died shortly after arriving. And it's long been argued whether or not Grace intentionally jumped from the hotel window or if it was an accident.

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