The Other Girl in the Water Tank: Debanhi Escobar

Eerily similar to Elisa Lam, this young woman vanished, only to later be found in the cistern of a motel.

Rivy Lyon
5 min readApr 30, 2022
Debanhi Susana Escobar. Instagram/@debanhi.escobar

The story of California tourist Elisa Lam is widely known and studied in the true crime community. Her case, if not already universally popular, was made even more so when the 2021 Netflix documentary Crime Scene: The Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel was released. The very next year, another woman vanished in a similar matter and two weeks later she was found dead in the most unusual location.

Just like Elisa, she was discovered floating in the water tank of a motel.

This time the tragic case took place in Mexico. A law student named Debanhi Susana Escobar was found two weeks after she disappeared, floating dead and decomposing inside a cistern.

Employees at Motel Nueva Castilla had been receiving strange complaints about an odiferous smell coming from the area. The police were eventually notified when the putrid stench was found to be originating from the motel’s water supply.

On the 21st of April 2022, a body was removed from the water, but the victim, sadly, was unrecognizable. However, investigators noticed she was wearing the same clothing Debanhi Escobar had been wearing on the night…

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Rivy Lyon
Rivy Lyon

Written by Rivy Lyon

Investigative Journalist | Criminology, Psychology & Sociology B.A. | I’ve loved true crime since Forensic Files was Medical Detectives!

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