It is a picture that will shock music fans around the world: the late British pop star Liam Payne being manhandled through a hotel lobby by three men, just minutes before his fatal fall from a third-floor balcony.
The tragic image, which has been given to the Daily Mail, was taken from CCTV footage recorded inside the CasaSur Palermo Hotel in Buenos Aires where Payne was staying at the time of his death on October 16.
High on drugs, Payne, whose face we have chosen to obscure, appears to have been picked up by the trio of hotel employees – he had, according to one witness, been ‘convulsing’ on the lobby floor. He was taken, via the elevator, back to his third-floor suite.
The question is, why did they move him at all, if he was so ill? Why did the hotel not call an ambulance straight away?
The timestamp on the still image shows 16:54:48. Bizarrely, however, a second picture taken from CCTV outside Liam’s room shows the three employees and Payne at 16:54:37. In other words, apparently eleven seconds before they were in the lobby.
The journey from the lobby to the third floor takes at least 90 seconds, according to one guest. Clearly at least one of the timestamps is incorrect.
What we know for certain is that shortly after 17:00, Payne fell 13 metres from the balcony of his room into the hotel’s inner courtyard. He died instantaneously.
At 17:11, an ambulance arrived and certified the singer’s death. A subsequent autopsy found Payne had suffered ‘multiple traumas’ causing ‘internal and external bleeding.’ The toxicology report found traces of ‘alcohol, cocaine and prescription antidepressant.’
Just days after Payne’s funeral, which took place on Wednesday at St Mary’s Church in Amersham, Buckinghamshire, the images perhaps offer a somewhat clearer picture of what happened leading up to the tragic accident. They also raise two serious questions.
To repeat, the first is why would hotel staff – who expressed concern in their call to the emergency services that Payne could come to serious harm on his suite’s balcony – take the intoxicated singer up to his room and leave him there alone?
And second, for reasons I will explain, did Liam fall from the balcony while attempting to leave the hotel undetected – a trick he had been pulling since his days in One Direction and which he had repeated just a month previously to evade a concerned bodyguard in Florida?
If the CCTV timestamp is accurate, the sequence of events begins at 15:53 on October 16 when Liam enters the hotel with his friend, the Argentine-American businessman Roger Nores.
Liam is at this point wearing a black cap – which he donned to avoid being recognised by his legions of Latin American fans – and carrying a small bag containing his personal belongings.
The star appears in good spirits and chats with fans in the lobby before heading up to his room with Nores shortly after 16:00.
A few minutes later, at 16:05 if the timestamp is right, the pair return to the lobby. Liam has brought his laptop down with him and – crucially, where this timeline is concerned – left his cap and bag up in his third-floor suite.
He continues to chat with a small group of American fans, discussing his life in Florida, where the singer was renting a $12,000 a month house with his girlfriend, the American influencer Kate Cassidy.
At 16:06, Nores says goodbye to Liam and leaves the hotel. At this time, Liam remains in good spirits and continues to interact with hotel guests. At 16:26, Liam is pictured lounging in the lobby, scrolling on his laptop.
Two minutes later at 16:28, Liam is photographed making one of what witnesses later described as three or four trips up to his room in a roughly 30-minute period. Each time he returns to the lobby, his behaviour appears increasingly erratic.
At one point, a witness recalled Payne receiving an email to which he exclaims: ‘F*** this s*** mate,’ before striking his computer on the floor.
In a separate outburst, he tells another hotel guest: ‘I used to be in a boyband – that’s why I’m so f***** up.’
It now appears that on the occasions Payne is said to have gone up to his room, he is likely to have been ingesting narcotics. The next known picture of him is this desperately sad one of him being hauled away by the hotel staff at 16:54:48.
Two of the men pictured carrying Payne away are dressed in the uniform of CasaSur reception staff. The Mail understands that one of the two is chief receptionist Esteban Grassi. The third man – wearing trainers, shorts and a T-shirt – works as a masseur in the hotel spa.
A few minutes after taking the singer back to his room, the hotel put in a call to the emergency services.
‘I’m calling you from the hotel CasaSur Palermo,’ says chief receptionist Esteban Grassi. ‘So, we have a guest who is high on drugs and who is trashing the room. Erm, so we need someone to come.’
The line then cuts out, but Grassi calls 911 again and continues: ‘We need you to send someone urgently because, well, I don’t know whether his life may be in danger, the guest’s life. He is in a room with a balcony and well, we’re afraid he might do something.’
The transcript from the 911 call shows that the operator asked reception staff whether they could gain access to Payne’s room. The staff replied that they could not.
But why on earth, if Esteban Grassi was indeed concerned that Payne’s life was in danger because his room had a balcony, did the hotel allow the singer to be taken up to that room and seemingly left there? And why would they call 911 just a couple of minutes after doing so? At the time of writing, the hotel has not responded to a request for comment.
It would surely have been more appropriate to hold the ‘convulsing’ Payne in the lobby and call an ambulance immediately. Did hotel staff prioritise keeping the lobby clear for other guests over Payne’s safety and well-being?
The Mail understands that no members of the CasaSur hotel staff – including the three men who carried Payne away – are being investigated by Argentine authorities.
Three individuals have been labelled as ‘people of interest’ in Payne’s death. They include 24-year-old Brian Nahuel Paiz and 21-year-old Ezequiel David Pereyra, both on suspicion of dealing Payne drugs.
Nores strongly denies the allegation and told the Mail two weeks ago: ‘I never abandoned Liam, I went to his hotel three times that day and left 40 minutes before this happened. There were over 15 people at the hotel lobby chatting and joking with him when I left.’
The prolific entrepreneur – who in 2017 featured in the Forbes ’30 under 30′ list of influential young people for his role in the energy industry – continued: ‘I could have never imagined something like this would happen. I’m really heart-broken with this tragedy, and I’ve been missing my friend every day.’
But while the behaviour of hotel staff leaves more questions than answers, this new picture published by the Mail today leads back to that second question – and a new possibility as to what actually happened when the singer died.
Quite clearly, the picture shows that as the pop-star is taken back to his room, he is neither wearing his black cap or clutching his bag.
And yet, when Payne‘s body was recovered by the emergency services at 17:11, he was found to be wearing the black cap and to have on his person the small bag he used when out and about.
In other words, it appears that between being returned to his hotel room and being found dead, Liam Payne got dressed to go out.
Could it be that Liam Payne slipped while attempting to leave the CasaSur hotel via his balcony, in a bid to avoid detection by hotel staff?
The Mail understands that hotel staff remained outside his room – according to a statement in the prosecutor’s file – seemingly to ensure he did not return to the lobby and disturb other guests.
Police found a host of drug paraphernalia in Payne’s room, including burnt pieces of tin foil and traces of white powder. It is certainly plausible Payne may have panicked in his paranoid state and made an ill-fated attempt to purposefully climb out of his room from his balcony.
In a further revelation, a source close to Payne has confirmed to the Mail that the pop star frequently climbed out of hotel balconies in order to avoid detection. In fact, it was a trick he and his bandmates learnt in the early days of their fame to evade their management team while on tour with One Direction. And, shockingly, the Mail can reveal it is also a trick Payne used just one month prior to his death in Florida.
My source revealed that on September 15, while staying at his rental property in Palm Beach, Payne wanted to go out and purchase drugs. His bodyguard, aware of the singer’s problem with narcotics and attempts to stay clean, had closed the door to his room and urged the singer not to go out looking for a ‘hit’.
Undeterred, my source says the singer escaped via his balcony, stringing a set of sheets together to act as a rope.
Further proof of Liam’s high-risk stunts emerged shortly after his death when a picture resurfaced from 2014 showing the then 20-year-old singer standing on a narrow exterior ledge of the 34th floor of his London apartment building – some 350 ft in the air.
The photograph was taken following a night of raucous celebrations marking One Direction bandmate Zayn Malik’s 21st birthday.
Later that day, the singer issued an apology to his impressionable young fans, saying: ‘You may have seen a photo of me today, taken on top of a building. I regret being there and having a photo taken of me.’
‘I do not endorse any fans trying to repeat this as it is extremely dangerous,’ Payne’s apology continued. ‘It was a stupid and irresponsible thing to do. I am sorry.’
Fans have since taken to social media to point out the tragic foreshadowing between the 2014 picture and Liam’s death five weeks ago.
The truth is that no one will ever know for sure what Liam Payne’s intentions were on that fateful afternoon of October 16. However, the release of this latest picture from the CasaSur hotel lobby helps fill a hole in the sequence of events that led to his fatal fall.
One thing is for sure, the image of Payne as he is taken out of the lobby, at a time when he appears to have needed care and immediate medical attention, raises new and profound questions about where responsibility lies in the tragic tale of the deeply troubled star.
