Players:
• Harry and Florence Schumacher – the original owners. But what was really going on behind the closed doors of this mansion? A speakeasy? Bootlegging? Were the Schumacher’s in over their heads and murdered by mobsters? Tune in to find out.

• Dr. Harold Perelson and family – on December 6, 1959, Dr. Perelson attacked his daughter, murdered his wife Lillian and then killed himself…or did he? Was Lillian really killed with a hammer or another means? Our investigation will reveal the truth about all this and so much more.

• Julian, Emilia, and Rudy Enriquez – They purchased the house “as is” from the Perelson estate directly after the murders in 1960, but never moved in, never rented it out, never renovated…and never cleaned up the crime scene. Before passing away, reporter Bob Pool asked Rudy if he knew about the rumors of his house being haunted. Enriquez replied: “Tell people to say their prayers every morning and evening and they’ll be okay.” Why purchase this house and then just sit on it for 50 years? Was something nefarious happening behind closed doors? Was Enriquez even the family’s real name?

• Lisa Bloom and Braden Polack – owners who tried to refurbish the house for three years and failed. The house remains the empty shell that it has been since 1959.

Players:
• Jack and Ruth Sowden – original owners, wealthy contributors to the artworld, occultists, good friends of Lloyd Wright.

• Lloyd Wright: Original architect who also does renovations after Hodel purchases the house.

• Dr. George Hodel. Owner, killer, occultist, artist, doctor to the stars, studio heads, politicians, elite society, and mobsters

• Elizabeth Short—murder victim.

• Tamar Hodel: Daughter of George, victim of his incest and the gang rape by George, and artist Fred Sexton. Due to Tamar’s accusations, the house is raided where LAPD finds multiple pornographic photos and films. He is brought to trial for the incest and found not guilty. Later, George would become the prime suspect in the Black Dahlia murder with the LADA’s office running live wire surveillance of the Sowden house 24/7 for 49 days in 1949.

• Barron Von Harringa, art dealer, occultist, and good friend of George’s, is overheard on the wiretaps with George and a woman screaming for help. This is a probable murder in progress. LAPD is listening live, but does not intervene.

• Man Ray-Surreal artist and good friend of George’s. Participated in the abuse of women in the house, possibly murder.

• Fred Sexton – Surreal artist and good friend of George, John Huston and Lloyd Wright. Allegedly an accomplice of George in multiple murders, including the Black Dahlia.

• Edmund Teske – Surreal artist and good friend of George and Lloyd Wright. Participated in the abuse of women in the house, possibly murder and would later say: “We played and paid there. Women were tortured for sport. Murders happened there. It is an evil place.”

• Lillian Lenorak – Daughter of director John Farrow. George Hodel drugged her, superficially slit her wrists, called the authorities for her attempted suicide, and had her committed after she threatened to expose him as the killer of the Black Dahlia. Later, Lenorak would be murdered.

• Dr. Mazur: Owner, colleague of George Hodel. Mazur and family abandon the house in the sixties due to spirit activity and unwittingly rent it out to a group that turn it into a satanic temple. While the house is empty, Tamar Hodel returns with Michelle Phillips and in the basement finds what she would later say were the trapped souls of George Hodel. She vows to come back and release them. She never does.

In 2003, retired LAPD homicide detective, Steve Hodel accuses his father, Dr. George Hodel (the then head of LACO Health Department of VD, which was at epidemic proportions, doctor known for doing underground Hollywood OBGYN work and abortions) of murdering many women, including Elizabeth Short aka The Black Dahlia in the house.

Since 1965, the Sowden house has not been inhabited by a family. In 2001, designer Xorin Balbes bought the house from the Mazurs and retrofitted and restored the house. It took him 11 years to sell it. Architectural connoisseurs refer to the house as a Mayan-inspired masterpiece. Our team refers to it as a portal to hell. Find out why in the premier episode.

Players:
• Lloyd Wright -architect who designed the home.

• Louis Samuel – original owner and business manager to Silent Screen star, Ramon Novarro.

• Ramon Novarro – took over the house from Samuel, called in Lloyd Wright to make renovations and additions, doubling the square footage.

• Designed by Lloyd Wright in 1927 for his good friend, Louis Samuel who is screen star Ramon Novarro’s business manager. Samuel mis-manages Ramon’s money and loses his fortune. Ramon, being gay, wants to avoid a scandal so he does a quiet transaction to take over Samuel’s house. Ramon lived in the house for a decade before moving to another house in Laurel Canyon. From that point on, the house has a rapid turnover in renters and owners until actress Diane Keaton purchases it and restores it to its original glory. After Keaton’s tenure, the house again had a rapid turnover of residents. For unknown reasons, the house is often vacant. It seems unwelcoming and uninhabitable. But why? On october 30, 1968, Ramon Novarro is murdered in his Laurel Canyon home by two male prostitutes in what was called a “rage killing”; but was it, or a “hit” put out on Ramon because he was about to publish a Hollywood-tell-all book?

Dubbed “Hotel Death” by tabloids, the Cecil has inspired books, documentaries, and even a season of American Horror Story. Though partially renovated and rebranded, its haunted reputation lingers. For many, the Cecil Hotel is not just a place where tragedy occurred — it is a place where tragedy resides.

The Hotel Cecil was built by property-building entrepreneurs, William Paden, Charles Smith, and WH Hamner, who had just completed the Biltmore Hotel. The concept was an elegant hotel for upper-middle-class visitors to the city: comfort and elegance at a reasonable price. The hotel opened in 1924 as a glamorous destination for business travelers, but it quickly declined with the first reported death of Percy Ormond Cook, who shot himself in the head. Soon after, during the Great Depression it became a budget lodging house in a crime-ridden section of downtown.

Few buildings in Los Angeles carry a reputation as chilling as the Cecil Hotel. Over the decades, the Cecil became synonymous with death, despair, and infamy. In 1985, the hotel leaped into the headlines when it was discovered that serial killer Richard Ramirez, the Nightstalker, lived at the Cecil while on his Los Angeles killing rampage. A few years later, in 1991, another serial killer, Jack Unterweger, stayed at the hotel as a tribute to Ramirez during his killing spree of three prostitutes from the Skid Row neighborhood.

It wasn’t until 2014 that the Cecil was dealt it’s deathblow when Canadian tourist, Elisa Lam, went missing from the hotel. The story went viral when the LAPD released security footage showing her behaving erratically in an elevator; fueling theories of foul play and paranormal influence. A few weeks later, the hotel guests started complaining about a foul taste and odor coming from the water faucets. When the maintenance engineer went to the roof to check the water tanks, he discovered Elisa’s decomposing body within. The coroner ruled her death accidental, but her case cemented the Cecil’s terrifying legend.

This death-fueled hotel is considered one of the most haunted locations in the US, but why? In 1905, MME Genevie, a psychic and palm reader, opened shop on the future site of the Cecil Hotel. Could it be that a portal was opened by Genevie long before ground was broken for the hotel?

Or does it have to do with the underhanded dealings of the original builders and their mobster associates? Does the hotel connect a string of murders to the Black Dahlia, who notoriously used this hotel along with George Hodel, the power players of Hollywood, law enforcement, and mobsters, who all planned and executed underhanded crimes, including murder in the hotel?

You’re not going to believe what our team found.

Everything you thought you knew about the Hotel Cecil is about to change.