Pablo Vergara (Aka Morbid) Completely Changed His Life After The Elisa Lam Case

Shortly after Elisa Lam's body was found in the rooftop water tank of Los Angeles' Cecil Hotel in 2013, internet sleuths turned their attention to metal musician Pablo C. Vergara (aka Morbid). He'd stayed at the hotel a year prior to Lam and posted a video during his visit. It's this — combined with Vergara's dark music persona, videos, and lyrics — that armchair detectives glommed onto, sending Vergara hundreds of messages accusing him of murdering Lam. However, as Vergara explains in Netflix's Crime Scene: The Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel, he was in Mexico recording an album at the time of Lam's disappearance and has documentation to prove so.

Though authorities cleared him of the allegations, Vergara says the stress of the experience led him to attempt suicide and, after waking up in a psychiatric hospital, he stopped making music. Instead, he shifted gears and received a bachelor's degree in communicational sciences from Monterrey ITESM Tech Institute in 2009. He then enrolled in the New York Film Academy's filmmaking program in New York in 2016 before moving to Hollywood to work on completing his MFA at NYFA's Los Angeles campus.

"I became a father and was struggling in a failing music career where basically I was stuck and being ripped off left and right and was going nowhere," Vergara, who's been in such bands as Dynasty of Darkness, Slitwrist, and Synergy of Souls, explained in an NYFA interview. "So I decided to make a drastic decision, and that was to change careers and move into film, another of my main passions."

Following his graduation, Vergara won the Award for Best International Fictional Film at 2019's International Film and Metal Festival for his short film Necromurder. Also a horror screenwriter, he's published works centering on everything from vampires to serial killers. Most recently, he served as a production assistant on the 2020 crime thriller Adverse, which stars Mickey Rourke, Sean Astin, and Penelope Ann Miller among others.

It's Vergara's personal bio that may sum up his path his best: though he's inspired by "the dark aspects in life and the nature of life/death," that's also led him to be "misinterpreted and questioned for his lifestyle and his artistic methods."

If you or someone you know is experiencing suicidal thoughts, call the National Suicide Prevention Hotline at 1-800-273-8255 or text HOME to the Crisis Text Line at 741741. You can also reach out to the Trans Lifeline at 877-565-8860 or the Trevor Lifeline at 1-866-488-7386, or to your local suicide crisis center.