A cistern, a hotel and a missing woman: the similarities and inconsistencies between the cases of Debanhi Escobar and Elisa Lam

Debanhi Escobar disappeared early on April 9, 2022 on a stretch of the Nuevo Laredo-Monterrey highway, in northern Mexico; she was 18 years old when she attended a party with her friends at a Quinta located in the Escobedo municipality of the same state, however, she never returned home.

Elisa Lam was a young Canadian girl of Chinese descent, was 21 years old and was traveling in the North American city of Los Angeles when her parents last had contact with her, like Debanhi, she never returned home.

The cases of Elisa Lam and Debanhi Escobar shocked citizens because of their inconsistencies and similarities because, although they happened at least seven years apart and thousands of kilometers away, both girls disappeared in similar contexts, with loose ends and unfortunately with one main factor in common: impunity.

The first similarity in both cases lies in the last photographs that exist of both young women. In the case of Debanhi, the alleged “trusted” driver who should have taken her home safely captured the moment when he left her on the road during the early hours of Saturday, April 9, 2022. That mysterious image left several questions about the case for her family, friends and all the people who followed the case of the young law student.

Why did the driver leave a teenage woman in the middle of the night on a highway that is popularly known as “the road of death”? why did you take a picture of it before you left it? Where did Debanhi go after getting out of the car that would transport her home? questions continue to haunt the case, but the incompetence of the Mexican authorities has led to more doubts than answers.

In the case of Elisa Lam, the 21-year-old fulfilled her dream of getting to know the city of Los Angeles, traveling alone and constantly communicating with her parents to tell them about the progress of her journey until from one day to the next, she lost contact with them. The lack of communication with her daughter alerted her parents who almost immediately contacted US authorities to begin the search, leading them to disturbing images of the Canadian woman inside an elevator of the Cecil Hotel.

In the images, Elisa Lam appears inside an elevator of the hotel where she was staying, with an extremely strange behavior as she is seen with apparent fear. The 21-year-old Canadian girl repeatedly looks out the door and tries to hide inside the elevator, then descends from it and that is the last image of her alive.

Who was Elisa Lam hiding from? why did he behave so strangely? Why didn't the elevator doors close all the time you tried to hide? are some of the questions that have not been clarified on the case since 2013.

In both the case of Elisa Lam and that of Debanhi Escobar, the place where they found their bodies plays an important role: the Cecil Hotel and the Nueva Castilla Motel.

For Debanhi, who was alone in the middle of the road late in the morning, the Nueva Castilla Motel might have been an option to ask for help returning home, since it was just a few meters from where she had attended a party and from where she had attended a party the alleged driver had abandoned her, however, the only thing that found that this passing hotel was death.

During the duration of their search, the motel was inspected on at least two occasions by members of the Attorney General's Office (FGE) who claimed to have searched quarter by room and the surrounding grounds with canine binomials, however, during their first investigations they did not obtain any indication that Debanhi was there.

For her part, Elisa Lam stayed in 2013 in one of the most controversial and frightening hotels in the city of Los Angeles. Hotel Cecil was the scene of multiple crimes, home to serial killers and even the ideal place for different people to perform rituals of a dubious nature. However, for Elisa it proved to be a viable option due to its central location and low costs.

After the disappearance of the young Canadian woman, United States authorities searched the room in the Cecil Hotel where she had stayed. However, they were unable to find any indication that the lock had been forced, as well as any trace of blood or clue that could indicate where Elisa Lam was, indifferent to the concern of their parents, they closed the investigation.

Debanhi Escobar was missing for 13 days while Elisa Lam's relatives had no news about her for two weeks; the bodies of both girls were found in the cistern of the hotels where they were last seen.

On the night of Thursday, April 21, authorities from the Attorney General's Office (FGE) informed Debanhi's parents about the discovery of a woman's body in one of the cisterns of the Nueva Castilla Motel, where Mexican authorities had allegedly already carried out an exhaustive search as it was a site close to the disappearance of the 18-year-old girl.

According to the report, it was the employees of the Motel who reported a foul smell coming from the cistern; in the first instance the Attorney General's Office (FGE) managed that Debanhi, in an apparent state of intoxication, fell by his own means into the cistern. However, her father Mario Escobar and the citizenry, who understand the security emergency that women in Mexico are going through, completely ruled out the authorities' version, who later reported that the cause of death of the young woman from Nuevo León was a cranial contusion.

With regard to the case of Elisa Lam, it was the guests of Hotel Cecil who reported that the water in the rooms had an unpleasant taste and a strange smell, as well as a viscous consistency and a mysterious brown color. Thus, the maintenance officers of the Hotel Cecil checked one by one the water tanks of the site, the last one where they found the body of the young Canadian woman in an advanced state of decomposition.

The Los Angeles police proceeded to extract Elisa Lam's body from the cistern of the Hotel Cecil, however, to date they have not been able to clarify how it got there since, in addition to the recordings of the elevator, there is no other image of Elisa Lam in the hotel, nor are there any witnesses or clues that anyone was with her. Likewise, it was impossible for her to reach the cistern by her own means because access to that part of the hotel required an access card.

US authorities reported that the cause of death of the 21-year-old girl was due to drowning, although there was no culprit to persecute, they handled the version that it had been a suicide. However, this information was denied by Elisa Lam's parents who claimed that their daughter did not suffer from any type of mental disorder, in the same way, toxicological tests of the body revealed that the Canadian had not used any type of medication or drug that had motivated her strange behavior.

The authorities' indifference, lack of evidence, poor investigations and impunity are some of the factors that have led to the fact that, more than seven years after her death, no one is yet responsible for the death of Elisa Lam in Los Angeles. Unfortunately, the case of Debanhi Escobar has followed many of the steps that Elisa Lam's case went through, despite this, her parents demand justice and clarification of the facts to give with the person responsible for the death of his daughter.

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