The downtown Los Angeles hotel was the home of Night Stalker killer Richard Ramirez and the site of a Canadian tourist's final, terrifying video.
If you’ve watched the 2021 Netflix docuseries Crime Scene: The Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel, you likely know the troubled history of the building at 640 S. Main St. Intended as luxury lodging, the Beaux Arts business fell on troubled times as the downtown area of LA began to lose its luster in the 1960s. High-profile homicides, as well as on-site deaths by misadventure or suicide, didn’t help its reputation.
“I was always very obsessed with the Hotel Cecil,” Murphy told Collider in 2015 when asked about the real-life influence on that season. “That place has had its share of bad publicity over the years, but that was one” inspiration, he said. In the years since Lam’s death, the Cecil has attempted to shake some of that reputation, and was even named a historic cultural monument in 2017.