Liam Payne death investigation latest: Police question witnesses as escorts tell prosecutors star refused to pay them

Two Argentine escorts who were with Liam Payne in the final hours of his life have told how the star refused to pay them.

In sworn statements to the Buenos Aires prosecutor, the women, who are both 25 and admit to working in prostitution, said they were booked for a client at the CasaSur hotel through an online escort service.

They arrived at the hotel at 11.30am and left at 4pm. They had expected to leave the hotel earlier, but they hung around as they claimed they had not been paid, according to sources close to the investigation. 

The pair said the singer did not consume drugs while he was with them and seemed normal. ‘We drank alcohol,’ the two women stated.

They gave their evidence on Wednesday night, just hours after Payne’s body was discovered. A source said: ‘The witnesses were co-operative, not only in their statements but also in offering access to their phones.’

Prosecutors have also been questioning three employees at the Casa Sur hotel to reconstruct the incident, according to the Argentine outlet Clarin.

Police in the capital said Payne’s hotel room had been ‘in complete disarray’ with ‘various items broken’ – adding that a whiskey bottle, lighter and mobile phone had been retrieved from the internal hotel courtyard where his body was found.

One Direction fans and celebrities have paid tribute to Payne while others mourned his death at a vigil outside the hotel where they lit candles and laid flowers.

The singer died of multiple traumas and ‘internal and external haemorrhage’, a post-mortem examination report said.

Argentina’s National Criminal and Correctional Prosecutor’s Office No 16 said it was investigating the incident as an ‘inconclusive death’ following the report.

Meanwhile, staff have revealed they were concerned about the star’s access to a balcony prior to his fall.

Employees reportedly feared that the 5ft 10in star was so inebriated he could easily fall over the glass railing of the balcony which is said to stand at a height of around 4ft and was ‘easy to fall over.’

Argentinian police are now hypothesising that he was ‘going through some type of outbreak as a result of substance abuse’ prior to his death.

The  star plunged 45ft from the third floor into the courtyard of the Casa Sur Hotel in Argentina’s capital on Wednesday at 5pm local time (9pm UK time), before medics confirmed his death.

In the lead up to his death, a panicked hotel worker made two calls, saying in the first: ‘We have a guest who’s off his head on drugs and is destroying everything in his room. We need someone to come.’

He then phoned back after the line went dead, saying: ‘I don’t know if the guest’s life is in danger. The room has a balcony and we are afraid he might do something.’

Payne was said to have been ‘acting erratically in the hotel lobby and smashed his laptop’ before he ‘had to be carried back to his room’, according to local media.

Seconds later the employee, who identified himself as Esteban, added: ‘Just send an ambulance, only an ambulance.’ Workers had heard a loud sound in the courtyard before the singer’s body was discovered just after 5pm local time (9pm UK time).

The singer died from 25 injuries sustained in his fall that led to ‘internal and external haemorrhaging’, preliminary autopsy results have revealed with the ‘injuries to his head alone enough to cause death.’

Medics announced that the singer ‘did not adopt a reflex posture’ during his fall suggesting he may have been fully or semi unconscious at the time of his death.

Last night, guests staying in the same hotel as Payne shared recollections of the moments leading up to his death including hearing ‘violent noises’ and a ‘scream’.

One, Doug Jones, told the BBC: ‘I thought they were working on the room. There was a lot of noise, like heavy lifting, like banging, a lot of loud, violent noises, I thought.

‘And I saw hotel people going in and out of that room, so I thought they were doing work on the room.

‘So about 4pm, 4.30pm, I started hearing some more noise, I was still doing work, and I heard a really loud, violent scream around 4.45pm, 5pm.’

Hotel staff raised the alarm at 5.04pm following Payne’s fall. An ambulance arrived at 5.11pm and Payne was then certified dead.

Payne’s One Direction toured across the globe and had five chart-topping albums, as well as four number one singles in the UK chart with hit tracks including Little Things.

Payne, who was born in Wolverhampton, released his debut solo album LP1 in 2019, which included the songs Polaroid and Strip That Down featuring Quavo.