Elisa Lamtraveled to Los Angeles in early 2013 in search of adventure.
What steps did you take to ensure it would be?
That’s the first way, I think, we were respectful to Elisa Lam.
Credit: Netflix
To me, that is very disrespectful to the victim by not honoring the truth.
The first season of your anthology series also tells the story of the Cecil Hotel.
How did you find the right balance between telling both tales?
Netflix
The Cecil Hotel is located in this area known as Skid Row, where homelessness is out of control.
It gives a larger context for telling her story than the haunted house approach.
What does this teach viewers about the responsibility behind investigating cases?
Netflix
I believe we live in a post-truth era.
We seem to have lost the ability to have an objective truth.
Not that the show is so much about that but I wanted to look at it through that lens.
Netflix
Was this already known?
There are other tellings of this story that haven’t revealed that but the information is accessible.
The docuseries didn’t dig this up.
There are still people who consider this case unsolved.
Do you feel it is?
People still want to selectively tell the story by leaving information out like the hatch.
To me, it’s a solid case.
This was somebody who was having a mental health episode and a tragic set of circumstances collided.
She thought she would be safer by crawling into that tank and she became trapped.
Elisa’s friends and families did not participate in your docuseries.
I don’t know that I would be interested in revisiting the case on film.
I feel like we did a pretty good job of telling the story.
But if they were open to talking about it, I certainly would love to talk to them.
All four episodes ofCrime Scene: The Vanishing at the Cecil Hotelare currently available on Netflix.
