Who is Morbid, one of the subjects in Crime Scene: The Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel? The Mexican musician was identified as a key suspect in Elisa Lam's 2013 death, but not by actual professional detectives who investigated the now-famous case. As The Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel shows, online sleuths jumped to conclusions and accosted Morbid virtually, believing him to be responsible for Lam's murder based on assumptions and (weak) circumstantial evidence. Such amateur investigators constantly bullied Morbid online to the point at which he nearly lost his career and attempted to take his own life.
Crime Scene takes an unorthodox approach while documenting Lam's tragic death at the Cecil Hotel, a downtown Los Angeles building known for its history of violence. Rather than beginning with the core sets of facts about the case, director Joe Berlinger primarily focuses on the conspiracy theories that emerged when the LAPD released the last known footage of the subject, which shows her displaying odd behavior in an elevator at the Hotel Cecil. The 21-year-old Canadian initially disappeared on January 31, 2013, and her body was subsequently discovered in a water tank on the building's roof three weeks later. From there, the Lam case became an internet phenomenon as web detectives tried to understand the available evidence.
The fourth and final episode of Crime Scene reveals that Lam's death was ruled as an accidental drowning, the result of her bipolar disorder that had gone unmedicated for at least a couple of days. Forensic pathologist Jason Tovar explains the logic for his findings, and a Cecil Hotel employee named Santiago Lopez reveals that he found Lam's body in a water tank with the lid open — a key fact that arguably should've been acknowledged earlier in the docuseries. Because so many online detectives initially believed that Lam was murdered, they searched the internet for people who might have been at the Cecil Hotel in late January 2013. Unfortunately for Morbid, he became a prime suspect despite having an alibi.
Morbid, whose real name is Pablo C. Vergara, is from Monterrey, Mexico. Crime Scene identifies the musician/filmmaker as a suspect in the Lam case during the third episode, "Down the Rabbit Hole," and then properly introduces him without makeup in the fourth episode, "The Hard Truth." Morbid discusses how web sleuths interpreted his music and videos as evidence of his complicity in Lam's death, and how online bullying led to a failed suicide attempt.
Morbid was initially suspected of murdering Lam because of various YouTube posts. Web investigators found a video of him documenting his visit to the Cecil Hotel that he posted online in February 2013. Incidentally, they began looking into his music videos and lyrical content, and decided that the musician had subtly referenced his involvement in Lam's death. As the media's coverage of the case intensified due to the viral LAPD surveillance video, Morbid became a more prominent suspect and began receiving hateful messages on social media accounts. As it turns out, Morbid visited the Cecil Hotel one year prior to Lam's disappearance, but that fact was overlooked by web detectives. In Crime Scene, Mordid also states that he was recording an album in Mexico when Lam went missing.
Morbid isn't necessarily a well-known death metal musician, but has earned various accolades for his filmmaking work. In 2016, three years after Lam's death, he received a scholarship to the New York Film Academy, and then earned festival awards for his 2018 short film Necromurder, which will be adapted into a feature horror film. On YouTube, Vergara's account doesn't include any content that was posted before 2014, presumably to distance himself from the Lam case. Crime Scene doesn't acknowledge any of Morbid's filmmaking accomplishments but fortunately does offer a large platform to express his side of the story.
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