Cecil Hotel Mysteries Part 2

Not only were there many events at the Cecil but poison, murder and lies seemed to be in abundance.

Episode Transcript

(01:38):
And welcome to Unsolved. You know, we're looking at part two of the
Cecil Hotel, and you know,it's a fascinating, fascinating thing because part
of the I don't know what Icall it explanation if you like, a
part of the reasoning behind what wewent on at the Cecil with regard to

(01:59):
dear suicides, murders and more.There was a bit of an attitude that,
you know, this is going tohappen in hotels over many years.
I went and specifically head a lookand found it's actually really unusual. The
occasional person may suicide in a hotel. Absolutely, people do die in hotels
from health issues and so on.Absolutely, but even when you add them

(02:20):
up over the period of years,you don't get anything like the Cecil,
and you don't get the range ofissues. And I don't believe it's because
it was an la or because ofwhere it is. So I think sometimes
one thing leads to another, ifyou like, but if there's a certain
element of people that are drawn toa particular place and it can lead to

(02:43):
the next thing. You know,in more recent years there's been an understanding
that you don't we do not,especially not in this country. You do
not promote suicide, if you like, by putting it in the papers.
You just don't do that. Ifa death is mentioned, it's called a
death because there's a reality and arecorded reality and a statistical reality that once

(03:10):
that's done, people that are thinkingalong those lines, thinking of suiciding,
once they see something like that inthe paper or on the news, it
often tips them into the next stageof what they want to do. So
we've got a very real understanding inthe New Zealand Health Department has a lot
on the suicide site about this typeof thing. So it's media silence on

(03:31):
those behaviors because there's a tendency tohave a spate following through and it's disturbing,
but it's that whole tipping a personinto this is an option for me.
But it isn't just suicide. Soas we heard last week spoiler alert,
you know, there have been murdersthere and some of the so called
suicides may not have been suicide.So there's a few few difficult little things.

(03:57):
There's a track record which can newseven into nineteen thirty three. Now
we've only got to nineteen thirty three, and this hotel has only been open
since nineteen twenty seven, so it'sa very short history with a lot going
on at a time when one wouldhave expected a little lists in this range

(04:17):
of behaviors. We mentioned last weekabout a truck driver being caught between this
truck and the hotel and fatally crushedagainst the cecil's wall, and we both
three Or and I were sort ofstaggered a little bit is to comprehend how
that could actually happen. It's nota highway speed and so then it becomes

(04:39):
more of a possibility that it wasmore likely to be perhaps a murder or
an intentional hit of some sort,because if you look at photos, especially
early photos of the time, theredoesn't seem to be a lot of options
to get run over between the actualwall and the road out a person deliberately

(05:00):
aiming for you. So these arelittle anomalies that are in a number of
the cases that we've looked at withthe CECIL, And if you missed last
week, go back and have alisten and perhaps start there, because it's
a chronological list that we've got throughthe years. So that track record continued
and then again in nineteen thirty four, so he's just a year apart,

(05:24):
the body of a fifty three yearold former Army medical course sergeant Lewis a
d Boarden and Borden. I meaneven think of the name, you know,
when I was trying to find moreinformation about him, which was it
was just about impossible beyond the factthat it happened. We have the Lizzie
Barden family name in there, whichI could be stretching the coincidential possibilities or

(05:47):
the synchronistic possibilities, but you know, lewis Lizzie, So you know,
I'm just saying, so there's thesefunny little things that happened, and of
course he cut his own throat witha razor. I'm just like, it's
a bloody death right there. Innineteen thirty seven, Grace E Magro death,

(06:11):
the Gracey Megro death, which isa phenomenal story as it's both dramatic
and the results were in conclusive,leaving yet another mystery. So she fell
from a ninth and they keep usingthat word fell, which distresses me.
Fell from a ninth story window,now getting caught up in a massive telephone

(06:32):
wires which ended up wrapped around herbody by the time she hit the ground.
According to the Los Angeles Times,her companion checked in as MW.
Medicine, a twenty six year oldsailor on the US's Virginia, and he
said he was asleep in the roomat the time of the incident and therefore
gave no information as to how Graceended up falling from the window. We

(06:56):
think this is really suspicious, andmaybe we're just cynics, Juda and I,
but it's like, really so,she she has a whatever we call
it, which a rendezvous if youlike, or a date or whatever it
might be called with a man,goes to his room with him, magically

(07:17):
falls out of a window. Well, he's having a wee naps. When
we think that the police would havethought of Grace as a bit of a
loose woman at the time and maynot have tried too hard to figure it
out with a navy man in thesights for her murder if it was a
murder, or even bringing a glimpse, because remember it's nineteen thirty seven,

(07:38):
right, We have another interesting thingaround this era. The Black Dahlia was
said to have been on a datewith one of the suspects of her murder
at the Cecil Hotel and we seea little bit of this treatment of her
as well with the police. Youcan go back and listen to that show.

(08:00):
Date definitely had a bit of anattitude, and no doubt because she
was an actress and because she wasdating and she was sexually active, their
thoughts on her or their desire tosolve her crime. When the suspects were
notably men of means, if youlike, and one was a military man,

(08:22):
perhaps the incentive wasn't there, andthat could cause problems because I find
this whole story of grace really hardto believe. I really do. The
chance of having a rendezvous with aman and having something enjoyable that you're doing,
and then suddenly thinking, you know, while he's asleep, I'll fling
myself out of the window and oops, let's have a look out the window.

(08:43):
This is the other part of thesethings that make me a little bit
curious, shall we say, youknow, it's an interesting hotel, go
and have a look at the photos, because we don't see it as likely
that people just fell out of thehotels and photos of the rooms from the
inside, which have been made quitepublic over the years, especially since the

(09:05):
Lysa Lamb which we will look atnext week. You can see that it
wouldn't happen accidentally as a rule,and it almost never outside of these uncon
conventional disks at the cecil. Theirwindows are like hip height. If you're
an average height person or taller.For most women, especially if they're not

(09:26):
really tall, it might be evenas high as waist height. You have
to literally fling yourself out or stepup, possibly onto a window sill.
Nobody's adequately shown why this would beconsidered falling. If you want to add
to that, if you have alook again the photo, especially the older
ones, there are lots of obstaclesat the bottom of the front. And

(09:52):
if you look at the three verticalbuildings in line one from the back to
the front, and at the backthere was a car park, a big
car park. When you look atthe earliest photos, massive car park.
They keep talking about these alleys andthere are aspects here that just don't seem
to make a lot of sense.So I can't imagine that between the hotel

(10:15):
buildings there are telephone wires just strungacross. It's possible. So whenever we're
talking about the front of the building, we are talking about a person landing
on the street below, and ofcourse that happened. But if you're talking
about the back of the building,the landing and the car park, there
is no way a person can commitsuicide or even fall out of a window

(10:37):
being pushed or whatever and land tothe side of the building because there are
no windows. There are no exitson both sides of the cecil, on
each and any of the floors.So the inside edge of sorry, the
external edge has um what do youcall them, our fire escapes, and

(10:58):
the inside the stairwells and the lifts. I have no doubt about that.
On both sides there's no windows evenclose to edge. If you if you
flung yourself, you would have tostand up and you probably still couldn't make
it far enough to land on theside of the building. So I just
thought i'd mention that because this comesup a couple of times to how and
where people landed. But with fourold grace she lands amongst the whole pile

(11:22):
of phone lines. And again I'velooked at the photos of the building and
have to ask where are they exactly? We were these so called phone lines
in nineteen thirty seven. If youlook at the building right from when it
was built that the likelihood of themstrapping phone lines between the buildings is incredibly

(11:43):
slim. They can incredibly slim,but they don't have verandas on any of
the building outside, they were alldefinitely inside, so we haven't even got
that possibility that they stepped out onto. Like you know that you could open
full length doors in some hotel,especially in Europe, and you could stand
there and you're sort of inside,but there's just a little wee like a

(12:05):
foot or two maybe wide, akind of not even a rounda really with
a railing around it. Well,I could see that, but this is
different, and I really struggle tosee how how this works. But we've
also got this choosing to spend anight with a man and then using that
same room to leap to her death, and he's not even questioned about it.

(12:28):
For a suicide, the chances arehigh she would have looked first.
And I come back to this afew times, so Didrida when we talked
about it. Now researches it's like, if you're going to jump out of
a window, right, so youthink I'm going to commit suicide, would
you look first? I'm thinking yesto make sure that it works, because

(12:50):
nobody wants to jump and just damagethemselves for either right become paraplegic or quadriplegic
or broken in some way permanently butstill alive. Everybody wants that. So
if there's an idea of suicide,one would expect that their thought would be
to make sure that they could fallall the way. And I think that's

(13:13):
a powerful thing. To me,I just can't see anybody not doing that.
It's just like, what if youonly landed two stories down, you
know what? Then it just weird, weird, weird weird. And she
didn't die in the fall because ofthese power lines. She was carted off
to hospital where she died later ofher injuries. There was no autopsy done

(13:37):
to determine if these were caused byher fall, or if even if her
fall caused her death. There isalways going to be the possibility that she
was beaten then thrown out of thewindow, right, that something happened inside
that room, to me seems muchmore logical. And that as she was
thrown out of the window, andI say thrown because she she's landing this

(14:00):
tangle of phone lines, not powerlights, And so I don't know.
It's just so unstraightforward, and theredoesn't seem to be any real in depth
look into the cause of her death, and a lack of an autopsy seems
to me to be pretty pretty poorat the very least. But we go

(14:22):
on after that because you know,I'm not going to get past the concerns
I have over she fell out ofthe window. A marine fireman named Roy
Thompson checked into the cecil on Januaryof nineteen thirty eight. This is you
know, I think it works outless than a year after Grace goes.

(14:43):
He stayed for several weeks, givingno indication that anything was a right or
why he was there. And thenone day, the thirty five year old
man went up to the top floorof the hotel and jumped out of a
window, landing on the skylight ofthe building next door. Now, this
is another one of those weird things. How can you end up on a
sky like go look at those photos. So if there is no way to

(15:05):
end up on a building next door, and I keep coming to this.
Now, if he was on theroof, yes you can jump off to
the side, but not jumping outof a window. And so we've got
a few questions in some of these. So that means that the person would
need to have decided they wanted todie and gone up to the roof,

(15:26):
and that means they would have hadto know how to do that gain access
to that to that roof area.And then instead of because jumping off again
jumping off front or back of themiddle building, or jumping off the back
of the front building or the frontof the back building, I think I
said that correctly, we'll leave youjumping between the buildings. And it's a

(15:48):
feeling narrow space actually, so Icould see why nobody would want to do
that because you could quite easily beseen going down or there must be you
know, steers or crossings or somethingbetween those buildings, one would imagine,
but I haven't seen a photo betweenthem to know for sure, or there's
nothing between them beyond the edges ofwhere people can cross from one building to

(16:12):
the other, or you may notbe able to outside of the lifts.
So there's this interesting aspect for methat when they tell me that somebody jumped
out of a window or fell outof a window, like in Ray Thompson's
case, there is absolutely no waythey can land on a building next door.
I mean absolutely no way. Andif you add to an earlier case

(16:36):
where the report actually said, youknow that he was run up against the
cecil wall an alleyway a decide ofthe building, I've got that's impossible as
well. It was a feeling narrowroad and a truck would have to turn
around and face them. So Idon't think the reports are inaccurate. I

(16:56):
think that the tailored reports to suea narrative that makes something sound like an
accident that wasn't. And we areat a time when the police in Los
Angeles and New York had really badnames, and we're at a time when
the mafia and gangs were running townsand cities. So there is a possibility

(17:17):
that some of these things would havehappened. And there was a drug dealer
operating out of an opium dealer operatingout of the Cecil as well at the
same time. So we've got someinteresting questions thrown around in here. So
if we look at the reality,there is no way you could jump out
of a window and end up atthe side of the cecil. Just can't

(17:37):
happen. Back at this time,there was no Elliott. The back of
the building was a big car park, and I do mean a big car
park. It was their car park, and they bragged about it in the
advertising that they had this car park, and I would be surprised if it
still isn't there. Whether it's undercoveror singular, who knows, but who
would give that bit of land upbecause obviously people will need to park,

(18:03):
so a lot of interesting things,and just landing on a skylight in the
report is a very specific thing,and I'm thinking, well, there is
no skylight on the actual building itselfbecause from the roof down there's nothing in
between. And if a person madea mistake, if there is a covering
at some point between the buildings,again I can't see that. I haven't

(18:26):
seen it. Then it would thenbe about jumping between still within the seesaw
right, so between two of thebuildings of the secaw, but you can't
go into the roof of the otherone because they're all the same hype.
So everything leads to a question markwith regards to that. In May nineteen
thirty nine, Irwin Celt Niblets,a thirty nine year old sailor on the

(18:49):
USS right, died in his roomafter taking poison. That's the second time
poison, not medications, not drugsis mentioned. It seemed nisbit nibblett sorry
had been upset about being called toduty already and unable to handle the pressure
of war. But that was justconjecture words. Nobody knew why and how

(19:11):
that even becomes a reason is aquestion. He's a thirty nine year old
person in nineteen thirty nine, sohe's been likely in the armed forces for
a while, in the military fora while. He's on a ship,
and I just don't know that itmakes any sense really from that perspective.

(19:33):
Is it possible he bought drugs andthen died overdose. I think that's entirely
possible, except the word poison,which suggests something else. There was no
note and no apparent reason for hissuicide. But again we've got a ruling
of unknown death, not suicide.So we've got a number of these from

(19:56):
the coroner's reports where they put suicide, slash unknown death or a slash possible
possible murder. Just basically they're sayingwe're not sure what went on here.
Again, we're seeing the word withoutthe word poison, without an actual report

(20:17):
of exactly what the poison was.Overdasing on medications has never been too uncommon,
but poison tends to be the realmof the murderer, right or a
person. Again, we mentioned lastweek that it's a time where spy versus
spiced or either a real thing.You know, in England and America,
throughout Europe, through the periods ofthe war, during before and after,

(20:41):
it was a major, big deal, a huge deal. There were secret
people running around all over the place, and without over emphasizing it, it's
pretty difficult to completely ignore that.And with some of the exposing books that
have been written in more recent years, you can only it there and think
a little bit about like that,that word poison just keeps on giving.

(21:07):
It just keeps on giving. Andjust so as we understand, they could
identify for nearly one hundred years orso, they could identify arsenic poisoning,
they could identify him lot poisoning.In fact, they could identify a lot
of poisons by the time you hitnineteen thirty seven, nineteen thirty eight,
nineteen thirty nine, So that initself, murder by poison was a fairly
well known thing. And so thatword keeps striking me, keeps striking me.

(21:34):
So I think they're saying, whileit was poison, we don't know
if somebody administered it to that person. And to note one of the cases
we looked at last week, therewere some really weird things about that case.
So the hotel cecil provides one thingthat other hotels may not have provided.
It was enormous, seven hundred rooms. It also had longer term residence

(21:57):
and part of the hotel, sothere's three separate buildings. I'm pretty sure
that probably the front was all onehundred percent hotel. The middle part may
have been a combination of libins.The lower floors at the back I have
no doubt would have been cheap,cheap accommodations or longer term rentals. But

(22:18):
after the poisoning of Irwin Niblett,seven months later, another poisoning, So
this is like within a matter ofa couple of years, we've seen that
word poison pop up quite a fewtimes in the see saw. So it
would be quite a good anonymous placefor not wanting to be noticed people to

(22:38):
meet. It's how I would seethat as a general massive environment. Also
beautiful lobbies, bars, cafes,you could do everything within there without actually
leaving if you wanted to, andpeople could meet you in your room,
I'm absolutely certain without being noticed,there would have been a lot of coming

(22:59):
and going. So at seven monthslater with another poisoning, it was January
of nineteen forty when a forty fiveyear old teacher, Dorothy Skeeger, was
found quote unquote near death. Shehad ingested poison. Though unconscious, she
was still breathing when she was discovered. Staff rushed to get her help,
but unfortunately Dorothy did not survive thetrip to the hospital. The similarity to

(23:27):
those three cases within a year orso of each other, and the word
poison should really be a few questions. Sure, they'll never be solved now,
that's where we were unsolved, right, unsolved mysteries. But at the
same time they getting that extra bitof information is the challenge, and there's

(23:48):
something's not right category. In Septemberof nineteen forty four, which is four
years later, another Dorothy that's myname, Dorothy Jean Purcell. She was
nineteen and had been staying in thececil for a couple of days with a
guy named Ben Levine. He wasthirty eight. She was nineteen when she
awoke in the early morning hours tothe feeling that she was about to give

(24:11):
birth. Now there's more weirdness thanthis, anyway, But according to the
Los Angeles Times, Percell then wentto the restroom of her floor and delivered
the baby alone. She told policethat she did not want to wake Levine
out or disturb him. We needto remember, though, that this was
a shared bathroom she went to.And while it's rare, there are women

(24:34):
who claim not to know they arepregnant. But here we smell a rat,
and I really smell a rat atthe sun. If she didn't know
she was pregnant, she would havethought that she was experiencing a major,
healthy episode that would likely require anambulance or a doctor or aid or assistance.
She would have had many moments ofdiscomfort over the time, and it

(24:55):
is very likely her companion, whowas much older, knew that she was
pregnant. While there are people wholike to say, you know, oh,
well, she wasn't even showing,that's just an impossibility. I'm sorry,
but you know, just even thesmallest of baby sizes ere it's got
to fit in there somewhere. Sothere's a lot of stinky bits about the

(25:18):
story. Upon her delivery of thebaby by herself, Purcell claimed to believe
the baby was stillborn, and forthat reason, whatever reason that's supposed to
be, strew him out in nearbywindow. I mean, we're all just
gob smacked even thinking about what she'sdoing here. So the fact that she
tried to get rid of the babymeans that she was either trying to hide

(25:41):
it from Purcell or from family.Probably trying to hide it from Purcell.
So she may have dressed in sucha way as he wouldn't know, but
eight months pregnant, going on ninemonths pregnant, it is pretty hard to
hide things going on there. Ifyou're sharing a room with somebody, one
would think anyway, the baby.Again, it says the baby landed on

(26:02):
the roof of a nearby building,and I'm saying, no, it couldn't.
There's just this is a number oftimes that this has been said.
There's there's a gap called it aroad between the cecil on one side.
In the early days, that gapgets filled up by a building later,
So even if that happened, it'sto the side. So we've got this

(26:26):
issue to the side. To theside if she threw it this baby out
one of the windows, it wouldland between the buildings of either the front
or the back, or it wouldland in the car park at the back,
not on another building. So thisbrings you to the question. Not
so much of the reporting, butthe story itself suggests that she either went

(26:49):
up to the roof and then throwthe baby off the roof to the side
of the building. It's the onlyway I can see them doing that.
I had a good look at theat the fire escape. I thought,
or maybe she went out to thefire escape, because of course she's lying
all the way through, but maybeshe went out to the fire escape and

(27:10):
then through the child's sideways. WhenI looked at that, I thought,
absolutely, you'd have to have somekind of serious good skills to make their
go sideways all the way over aroad to a building next door on the
other side of the building. You'vegot a closer building, but you've got
the same problem. And again,you would be very lucky to do that.

(27:33):
So what did she do? Andto me, that sort of leaves
her the option of walking up ontothe building roof. There's no other way
to do that, and that makessomething quite different, not a response or
reaction, But she's also got moretime with the baby. Right, So
the baby that landed on the roofof a nearby building, and Percell went

(27:55):
back to a room, quote unquotedeciding not to tell Levine about what happened.
So again we've got the situation wherewe're meant to believe that he wasn't
aware she was pregnant and therefore wouldn'tbe aware that she got rid of the
baby. And we're not even goingto talk. But we're all women,
and if you've had children, andif you're a man and your wife said

(28:17):
a baby or your partner said ababy, you kind of know there's an
afterthing that goes on, right,So nothing happens in two seconds, so
aside from giving birth, this isa lot of detail. But aside from
giving birth, there's a little periodof time and it can be half an
hour where the placenta is coming outas well, so it has to go
somewhere. Where did that go?So we've got a lot of questions in

(28:37):
here. Again, she was arrestedshortly after the event took place, so
we're like, well, how isthat possible? So again, we smell
a rat, either someone saw herroaming around at night, or Lavine woke
up and wondered where his pregnant girlfriendwas and not being a party to the
murder, reported her himself. Again, with all the photos that we've looked

(29:00):
at from all the angles possible thatwe can see, but if you live
in La and you're near the Cecil, then as some photos, it won't
be exactly the same. Now Iknow that as I looked at later photos,
there were buildings that were built intoareas right beside the cecil, but
they weren't there in the thirties,So we've got two aspects to look at

(29:21):
there, as as the toilet areasare really important. So they were a
shared toilet that meant that you hadto walk out of your room and go
down to a bathroom that somebody elsecould want to use. Right because it's
a hotel, it could just bebad reporting, but we see this building
a few times happening with regards topeople landing on buildings beside the hotel.

(29:51):
We also saw that same thing reallywith Alice Lowell's demise, which is equally
curious. All of the hotel window, now this includes the toilets they face
the front to the street, orthey face the inner walls of each other
hotel, each other of the hotel'sbuildings, and that is to say they
face each other. So, withoutputting too fine a point on it,

(30:18):
there seems to be some aspects ofimpossibility. And as we know because of
the advertising that there was a carpark to the rear, there was no
roof and it's plain to see justby seeing it off to an angle.
So how did Purcell's baby boy endup on the nearby building? Well,
join us next week and we'll explorethat some more. That's our show for

(30:41):
today, Chow for now,