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Forever Unsolved — True Crime
The Tragedy of Pigeon Goldie
The 65-year-old was raped and murdered in the infamous Cecil Hotel, LA.
The Cecil Hotel is now globally renowned, and for all of the wrong reasons.
The latest Netflix docu-series, Crime Scene: The Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel, highlights the hotel’s disturbing past and present, through an exploration of the sad case of Elisa Lam.
Residents from across the decades have suffered enormously within the walls of the hotel. Some guests have terrorized the USA whilst enjoying the hospitality and relative anonymity offered by the establishment.
With serial killer ‘tenants’ such as ‘The Night-Stalker’ Richard Ramirez, and Jack Unterweger, notable associations such as The Black Dahlia and high profile deaths like Elisa Lam, The Cecil Hotel isn’t short of A-list criminals and victims. Films, documentaries, and books about all of these are readily available and regularly rehashed.
For tourists who happen to be visiting Los Angeles, you can take a dedicated tour around the outside of the building, and cruise the adjacent Skid Row streets as you listen to the stories of the killers and killed from an enthusiastic guide.
When The Cecil Hotel reopens, you can even enjoy the thrill of a night or two there, knowing that your room was almost certainly a death scene at some point.
But as with so many well-known stories, from Oliver Twist to Star Wars, it’s often the case that the lesser-known, peripheral characters and sub-plots are just as intriguing as the leading-diegesis.
The story of The Cecil Hotel is no different.
One of the hotel’s victims who is regularly glossed over or forgotten entirely was a wonderful, 65-year-old* lady who lost her life within the walls of the Cecil.
Her murder was horrific and truly disturbing, and unlike Netflix Number 1 Show — the Elisa Lam case, this cold-case will likely remain forever unsolved.
This is the tragic tale of Pigeon Goldie.
