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Liam Payne called hotel employees ‘all the time’ to ask for alcohol and advice on where he could buy cocaine shortly before he died and offered an escort $5,000 to visit him, a newly unearthed prosecution file has revealed. The One Direction star died on October 16 after falling from a third floor balcony at the CasaSur Palermo hotel in Buenos Aires, Argentina. He was 31.
In the weeks since, police have launched a wide-ranging investigation into his death; five people have been charged, including several hotel staff and Argentinian businessman Roger Nores, who denies being a suspect.
Esteban Grassi, the chief receptionist who is now under formal investigation, claimed Payne called down ‘insistently’ to ask for alcohol, and to ask where he could get cocaine – allegedly insulting a member of staff who said he could not help.
Further to this, text messages purporting to have been exchanged between Liam and an escort in which he offered her $5,000 (£3,900) to ‘party’.
It came as reports suggested a psychiatrist had emailed Nores to advise it was ‘impossible’ to continue supporting Liam with his mental health – and to warn of the risks associated with mixing antidepressants and alcohol.
Messages provided to prosecutors, obtained by Argentine journalist Mauro Szeta and published on his website VíaSzeta, appeared to show a phone number from southeastern Florida sending messages to an escort on WhatsApp.
The messages included a link Liam’s Instagram profile to the escort, before asking if she wanted to ‘play’.
‘I have all day… I’d gift you $5,000… US dollars,’ the message reads. ‘You come to my hotel, we party, just me and u.’
Noticing that the escort’s WhatsApp background featured another woman, the texter alleged to be Payne then asks: ‘Who’s your friend, do you want to bring her?’
The escort replied: ‘Let’s go Noe [sic] until 7pm, 5000 USD both, it’s the whole day the two of us together.’
The person texting, alleged to be Payne, replies: ‘Ok fine but bank transfer.’
Prior to this, Grassi said he had been texted by a bellboy on Monday October 14 following an altercation with Payne as he dropped off a fruit basket to the singer’s room.
He invited me [in] to his room (which was a disaster, by the way) and asked me if I could get him cocaine,’ Mr Benitez said in his text.
‘I replied, “I apologise sir, but neither I nor any of the staff can help you with that type of service,” to which he replied that I was “useless” and that I should get out of his sight.
‘I felt a little intimidated, since his manner was not very polite.’
Reports in Argentinian media have named waiter Barian Paiz, hotel worker Ezequiel Pereyra and Nores as being accused of providing drugs for payment; Nores is also charged with abandoning Payne before he died.
Grassi and Gilda Martín, the hotel’s head of security, have also been charged and summoned to testify next week between December 17 and 19. Paiz, Pereyra and Nores are also being summoned for further questioning.
