This podcast details true crime cases.

It contains adult themes and may contain descriptions of violence.

This episode contains explicit language.

It is not intended for children.

Listener discretion is advised.

Thank you for joining me for today's episode of Once Upon a Crime.

We're in the series, infamous locales.

In this final chapter, I'll take you to a place that I consider perhaps the most infamous

of all places in the annals of true crime. The history of this location includes suicides,

murders, deadly freak accidents, no less than two serial killers, and one creepy, mysterious death.

In fact, there's so much true crime history to report that it's going to take two episodes to cover it all.

This is Chapter 3 of infamous locales, The Cecil Hotel, Part 1.

The 19-story Cecil Hotel sits on a plot of land located at 640 South Main Street

in downtown Los Angeles.

Built in 1924 by hotelier William Banks Hanner, it was designed in the

bow art style of architecture, popular at that time. Its features included a marble lobby,

stained glass windows, and Grecian-style statues and columns. The final cost for the building

totaled $1 million, and Hanner banked on his hotel being a popular

draw for the increasing number of tourists and business travelers into downtown Los Angeles.

Several other hotels were built in the area at the same time, including the Roosevelt and

Hollywood and the nearby Los Angeles Biltmore Hotel, now called the Millennium

Biltmore. The Cecil Hotel opened for business in 1927, and for a few years, visitors flocked

...