Crime Weekly - S3 Ep254: Crime Weekly News: Liam Payne's Death Investigation Takes a Turn

Episode Date: November 27, 2024

On October 16, 2024, Liam Payne of One Direction fame died after falling from a hotel balcony in Argentina. Liam had struggled with addiction in the past, and it's now been revealed that he was under the influence at the time of the fall. Authorities are now investigating those who may have enabled or endangered Liam before his death. Try our coffee!! - www.CriminalCoffeeCo.com Become a Patreon member -- > https://www.patreon.com/CrimeWeekly Shop for your Crime Weekly gear here --> https://crimeweeklypodcast.com/shop Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/CrimeWeeklyPodcast Website: CrimeWeeklyPodcast.com Instagram: @CrimeWeeklyPod Twitter: @CrimeWeeklyPod Facebook: @CrimeWeeklyPod ADS: 1. UncommonGoods.com/CrimeWeekly - Get 15% off your next gift!

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apply. Hey, everyone. Welcome back to Crime Weekly News. I'm Derek Levasseur. And I'm Stephanie Harlow. And before we get started today, we want to make a special congratulatory announcement to our editor Shannon and her fiancé, Sam. We've mentioned them both on the show before. If you've come to Crime Weekly, you've had the opportunity to meet Shannon and Sam. They're great people. And before I came in, I was looking on my Instagram and saw that Sam popped a question. So congrats to them. Yeah, absolutely. Congratulations. We love both Shannon and Sam. They're invaluable to Crime Weekly. Shannon has her own criminal coffee character. They are also invaluable during crime cons. We love them. They are also invaluable during crime cons.

We love them. Those are our people, man. Sam's our tech guy on scene when we're there. And yeah, and Shannon's been with us for a while now. Sam's also like the calming presence. Yes. Where like you, me, and Shannon are very chaotic. Sam's just chill.

He says like seven words all weekend. Yeah, he's awesome. He's great. And their photos were amazing that they put up. Shocker that that was the case. Right. So they're like very artistic, creative people. So really good couple. Really good couple. Make sure you put in the comments. Congratulate Shannon and Sam. Also, this is coming out on Wednesday for Crime Weekly News. Happy Thanksgiving to everybody. Tomorrow, we hope you, if you celebrate Thanksgiving, you enjoy it with the people

you love uh one thing i always think about when we cover these tragedies is there's something to be taken from it because in a lot of cases there's real people who are losing their loved ones and don't get that opportunity to celebrate with them anymore so if there's any silver lining in coverage covering these cases it's getting off putting your computer down putting your phone down and realizing that you may be lucky and have those people still in your life. So happy Thanksgiving, everyone who's celebrating. Hope you have some good turkey, potatoes, stuffing. Stephanie, what's your favorite Thanksgiving day food? Oh, it's turkey, mashed potatoes and gravy. That's it. Like

I don't want corn. I don't want stuffing. I don't want any vegetables. I want a whole plate of turkey, like half of it, turkey, half of it, mashed potatoes, gravy, all over everything. Are you a dark meat person or light meat? I like the light meat, but I like, but it can get too dried out, man. So you've got to make sure you're going to the right person's house for Thanksgiving. That's all I'm going to say. Final question. Cause I know you're Italian and you guys cook a lot in your family. Do you guys fry it? Do you bake it? Like do you cook it? Is there a special recipe that you guys use? We have fried the turkey in the past. Usually, we're putting it in the oven. My mom works on it all day. She's like a

surgeon with this turkey. She's got a timer on her phone. She's like, got to check the turkey, got to baste the turkey. It's very serious, very serious stuff. Yeah. I mean, listen, it's some people, this is their day. This is their Superbowl. So I love Thanksgiving. Yeah, no, it's a good day. Love to eat, allows you to cheat and eat whatever you want. You don't have to feel guilty about it. Okay. Now switching to why we're here. You can see from the thumbnail, this is a story that's been going on for a while, but for those of you who are living under a rock and don't know, Liam Payne from One Direction died on October 16th, 2024. saying that this was potentially a suicide. And a lot of people were speculating that he was depressed. He was possibly on some drugs and decided to take his own life. And then that's, you know, people were still talking about it. They didn't really know if this was just going

to be an open and shut case because it was a suicide or if there was more to the story. Many were speculating that there was in fact more to the story and that Liam would never do something like this. And that's where this story kind of took a turn a couple of weeks ago. Was it right? It's a couple of weeks, Stephanie? A couple of weeks ago in early November, we had some updates. Now, I do want to say that the reason initially it seemed like it might have been suicide was because

Liam Payne has publicly sort of had come forward that he's struggled with drugs and alcohol abuse and has at times considered suicide. So it was in 2021, he was on a podcast called Diary of a CEO. And, you know, they were talking, obviously, about Liam Payne's start in the industry, which was with the boy band One Direction. We all we all pretty much know that. And he was basically, you know, talking about how getting fame at a very young age had sort of maybe stunted his growth emotionally and put him in the spot. I completely agree. And we've heard this from child stars over and over and over again. Yet the industry still encourages this kind of sort of come up with young people.

But when your brain's not fully developed and then you're thrust into the spotlight, all of a sudden you have fame. You are the subject of Internet forums. You have money. You've got people throwing themselves at you. You don't know who's your real friend. You don't know who wants to be around you just because of who you are. It can really cause a lot of issues, right?

So he's had some issues with drugs, alcohol, mental health issues. There was, I believe in 2014, he put a picture up and it was a photo of himself standing on the ledge of his apartment building in East London. And his fans were very concerned about him. He apologized for the photo. He didn't post it himself. One of his friends shared it. And he said, quote, I still feel like a child in so many ways. There is no link between money and happiness.

It's a myth. Money is the ability to relax on certain things. And he goes, the day the band ended, I was like, thank the Lord. I know a lot of people are going to be mad at me for saying that, but I needed it to stop or it would kill me. End quote. In that 2021 interview with the podcast, he said he had been sober for about a month, but we know things happen, relapses happen, you kind of get back into things. And that does appear to be the case here,

that Liam was back into drugs and alcohol. But in the beginning of November, the first week of November, three people were charged in connection with Liam Payne's death. The identities of these people were not revealed, but they were charged with the crimes of abandonment of a person followed by death and also supplying and facilitating the use of narcotics. Now, Payne had fallen from his room's balcony on the third floor of his hotel in Palermo, which is the capital of Argentina, and his autopsy said he died from multiple injuries as well as external bleeding. A three-story fall is quite a bit, and it's not good for the body. Now, the toxicology report showed that Liam Payne's body had traces of alcohol, cocaine, as well as a prescribed antidepressant. And these things had been consumed in the moments before his death.

Now, he was by himself in his hotel room when he fell, right? Yes. But apparently, one of the people charged was often with Liam during his time in Buenos Aires. And the second was a hotel staffer who allegedly and reportedly gave Liam some cocaine during his stay at the hotel between October 13th and 16th. And then the third is a drug dealer. And this similarity has been called up to the forefront already that this has a lot of echoes of the Matthew Perry situation. Yes. A lot of people have been saying that, absolutely. He's got people around him that maybe aren't necessarily there for his benefit. So that was kind of what we had all assumed. These people had given him drugs and then he took his own life.

What was interesting before we continue is with the person who was with him, obviously we don't know the dynamics, but law enforcement, they were doing raids, cell phone analysis, toxicology reports. They were all over the place. Because this is a big star, right? And to die in their area, in this hotel, that's not what they want.

And so the abandonment charge was interesting because this person was a supposed to be. Abandonment after death. Yeah. Yeah. It actually has a maximum sentence of 15 years in prison if he's convicted. So that's not good. Right.

That's not good for this person. And then the person that was at the hotel staffer allegedly supplied him with drugs twice. And then the drug dealer also supplied him on October 14th. And apparently he was getting something called pink cocaine and ketamine. Yeah. So first off, when that came out, I was like, I'm all for it because we do got to hold the people accountable. Although the abandonment thing, I would have to know more of the specifics, how they can say, hey, this person choosing to leave just because they didn't want to be present for whatever was going on anymore. Well, it kind of seems like, like you ran, like he died and then you're like, oh shit.

And then he took off. It kind of shows a little bit of guilt. Like you're afraid. Yeah. I'd have to know more. I probably would be on board if I knew more because it's a pretty significant charge. So there's gotta be more facts to support it. Obviously the person who gave him the drugs and the drug dealer himself. Absolutely. We have to see more of that. You want to have a deterrent, start charging the drug dealers with the crimes. If they're, if they're victims, right. Their clients, if you will, air quotes, start dying from the product they're supplying them. You want to see that slow down. That's one way to do it when you, and it's hard to do by the way, kudos to them. You want to see that slow down? That's one way to do it when you, and it's hard to do by the way, kudos to them. I could tell you narcotics was my bread and butter.

We had overdoses quite often, but being able to track what drug was used and who supplied it extremely difficult. So I would love to see that reverse engineering that was conducted. Obviously they have people on the ground over there and they probably had some snitches who rolled on this guy, but that's going to be a tough case to prove anyways, because you have to prove that the drugs, this person specifically supplied are the ones that contributed to his death, which clearly the prosecutor Andres Madrea thinks he has something here. But as you were alluding to before I cut you off there, that's what we had. And I thought that was really where it was going to end, kind of with these guys getting arrested. But there was a recent twist in the story

within the last day, I believe. And it completely changes the perspective of not only why this happened, but who's responsible and where the blame is being put now. And also that it doesn't appear that Liam's intention was to take his life. Which is the biggest thing, right? Yes. So drug influenced or not, it doesn't appear it was the case. And we're going to get into that right after this break. All right. So we're back. And Derek and I chatted a little bit about this before we hit record, kind of giving each other what we already knew about it. And it looks like the day of his death, Liam Payne was possibly under the influence of something.

Yes. There's actually no disputing that. Everyone's agreeing on that part. He was kind of making a menace of himself in this hotel. I guess you said he was breaking stuff, wrecking shit. They removed a mirror from his hallway. He was being erratic. He was causing a commotion down in the lobby. So what the hotel employees ended up doing to, I guess, sort of do some damage control, stop his reign of terror, they locked him in his hotel room. And there's surveillance footage of hotel

employees dragging him through the lobby. He appeared to be heavily intoxicated. He definitely was fighting back. He did not want to go inside. There's also security footage from the hallway outside of his room. And they say, like, Liam Payne's fighting back. He does not want to be shoved inside his hotel room, at which point they're going to lock him in there. Three people, three hotel staffers had to carry him. Now then, somebody from the hotel, a hotel staff member, made a call to 911, and they basically said something that is going to impact what happens now. And they said to the people on 911, they explained what happened, and then they said, quote, I don't know whether his life may be in danger. He's in a room with a balcony. And well, we're a little afraid, end quote. Because these hotel employees, knowing that he was under the

influence of something, that he was erratic, that he was not really being logical, they locked this 31-year-old man in his hotel room by himself where he had the capability. I mean, even if he didn't have a balcony, right? There's stuff in there he can hurt himself with. This is why when people go crazy in prison and they have to put them in solitary, they put them in a room where there's nothing there that they can hurt themselves with. They're not going to put them in a room with a mirror that they can break and cut themselves with.

They're not going to put them in a room with sheets that they can hang themselves with. They're going to make sure there's nothing in that room that they can hurt themselves with. They're not going to put them in a room with sheets that they can hang themselves with. They're going to make sure there's nothing in that room that they can hurt themselves with. But these people put Liam in his hotel room by himself in this condition, and then they called 911. Yep. And then obviously, as we know, Liam somehow went off the balcony. Now, what it appears to be is that Liam was not trying to kill himself. He was trying to escape his hotel room. He had a big issue with being trapped in hotel rooms. You told me it had happened about a month or two before. Yeah, he used a garden hose to climb down a balcony. So this wasn't out of the ordinary. So he'd been locked in another hotel room.

Yeah, I believe it was by his bodyguard in that one. Again, he was kind of acting out, and they put him in there. And to escape this hotel room, he got a garden hose. He got out of the room. This time he wasn't so lucky. Now what it looks like is he was trying to get to the second floor balcony so that he would have a closer way of getting to the ground. Yeah, I would say from the picture, maybe eight to 10 feet from the first floor balcony. When his body was found, he had a bag strapped around his shoulders and he also had a hat on. And you do not see those things in the surveillance of him outside the hotel room. So obviously he went in, he's like, I'm out of here, put the hat on, put a bag on. He's trying to scale down the balcony.

That's important. And by the way, I can't believe I'm saying this, but they do have some good investigations. They've been over in Argentina. If you want to see these photos, the crime scene photos that have now been obtained, go to TMZ. They have all the photos that Stephanie's describing right now, where they were located on the deck to prove what they're saying now. So yeah, we'll put them up in the YouTube video. But if you are listening on podcast platforms, you can look them up yourself. And we'll have a photo of the balcony as well. You can see the drop, the difference between, I would say from the third floor where he was probably about a 20, 25 foot drop, still not fatal. If you land on your feet, you probably just break your ankles. But to get to your point when you're going to get there, Stephanie, it

makes more sense based on what we know now. And then two days after he died, they found another bag. It was a brown leather bag. The kind of the way I'm picturing it is it's sort of like a toiletry bag. It's no, it's a bigger bag. It's like a duffel bag. I'm looking at it right now. We'll have it up for you guys. It's a brown like duffel bag size. And it says for Liam on the bag, inside the bag, there was pills and a bottle of whiskey.

And they believe that he probably tossed that bag down to the second floor because they found it on one of the second floor balconies. That's right. And then he planned on climbing down to the second floor balcony himself and grabbing the bag. And then along with the bag he already had and this bag he retrieved, he would make his getaway. That's right. Yeah. It was a bottle of Jack Daniels in there. You toss it down there, you scale down, and then you're home free. And what they're speculating a lot. But what I would say is, like I said, the drops far, you're definitely going to get injured, maybe killed, even if you try to make the jump. But if he wasn't planning on jumping and he fell

backward while trying to climb down, that would explain why he died from it. And because he probably fell on his neck or his head or his back, something where it wasn't, this wasn't a planned jump. And the fact that he had the hat on as well, if you were going to commit suicide, why would you, why would you put a bag on and your hat on? He was trying to get away. He was just trying to get away. He didn't want to be locked in the room. And I don't know if you've already said, I think you did. He didn't like being locked in rooms. He, he, that was. It was something that was a trigger for him. It was very triggering for him, yeah.

With the travel he did and probably as a young child being controlled all the time, being told where to go, he just didn't want to be in that position. He even said in that 2021 podcast, he said years and years of spending time in these lonely hotel rooms had taken a toll on him. So it looks like, yeah, this was something that was triggering for him. Now, the question that we want to discuss and that we want to leave you with is, is the hotel responsible, right? Because- TMZ believes they are. They believe they're covering this up. They believe it's a collaborative effort where they're putting the blame on these three individuals- Who aren't necessarily not to blame. Correct. But they're kind of just

putting the focus on them so that the hotel can be protected. Yeah. And so Harvey is saying, from TMZ, is saying, hotel's responsible. They acknowledge that they put this guy who was not in a good place in a room with a balcony. They're responsible. I agree that they are somewhat responsible. Like I already said, knowing the condition he was in, he was wrecking stuff already. It would have been very easy to place him in a security office, have somebody there monitoring him while you call the police and then the police arrive, why they would have locked him in his hotel room and then called the police and acknowledged that there was danger that this person could hurt themselves because of the condition he was in and because he was alone in his hotel room.

Yes, that shows some responsibility. The hotel worker said, I'm afraid. We're afraid. So they're acknowledging that they knew there was some danger to putting him in there. Here's where I fall on it. Without knowing more of the details, I definitely agree with what you just said. The three individuals that were already mentioned at, at minimum, the two, the two dealers should be criminally liable for his death because without the drugs, maybe he doesn't act out. Maybe he doesn't, uh, lose his

balance while trying to make this, you know, trip back down to the first floor balcony. As far as the hotel's concerned at minimum, you got civil liability civil liability. Liam's dad, I think his name's Jeffrey. He's going to sue the shit out of him and probably win a lot of money, but that's not going to bring Liam back. So yeah, if you're a hotel guest and you're clearly not in the right state of mind and the hotel intervenes, as you just said, they have an obligation to protect you from, even if it's yourself, they could have put them in a security room. They could have done something else. They could have just sat with them in the lobby. Or you kick him out. Like I've seen people in casinos get like super drunk and aggressive and they're messing

shit up. And the police will or the security people will escort them off the premises. That means whatever you do now, we are not responsible for. But you kept him there. You locked him in his hotel room. They have to have a security office. They have to have some kind of room that he could have just sat in with a security guard or a hotel employee. And even if they restrained him in some way until the police got there, but to leave him completely on his own, knowing that he's like fighting,

like grabbing things to not go in that room. I don't know. It seems a little irresponsible. Yeah. And then there was a TV broken in the room. He was clearly out. He was acting out. He wanted to get out. He was going to leave the room. He grabbed all his stuff. And so we'll see how it plays out. If there's a major update or a major twist, we'll obviously let you guys know. But we're thinking of Liam's family and obviously what they're going through right now. And this was another situation that was avoidable. It was preventable. And it's very sad.

Yep. It's a very sad situation to have a talented person like this taken so early, so young. And also, we want to hear from you guys in the comments. Oh, of course. Yeah. No, I'm interested to see if people are like. What do you think, Derek G? You think the hotel is responsible at all?

Civilly. Civilly. Yes. I don't think there's a criminal element. You'd have to prove some type of some type of act or some type of premeditation or something where they intentionally put him in danger. I think that they made multiple attempts to try to help him. They even called 911. They were in fear of it. Well, criminally, even if it wasn't intentional, couldn't it be kind of like first degree murder is intentional, second degree or homicides, unintentional.

Maybe manslaughter, but I doubt it. Like what their, their behavior, their decision resulted in death. I don't think you, I think that's a stretch. Well, I think that it's safe to say if they hadn't locked him in that hotel room, he wouldn't have fallen off the balcony. They probably, I don't think they thought by putting him in the room, he would jump, but her acknowledging it or him acknowledging it on that phone call poses a major issue for them. So I don't think that's why I want to stay up on it because it could set a precedent, although it's not in our country.

But like, do they decide to charge this specific employee who made this call or the manager who made the decision to put him in his room or the bodyguards or whoever it was. I'm interested to see how it plays out. I have a strong suspicion. They're going to go after the people at the root of the issue, and they're going to probably do something civilly where we'll never hear the results of it, but it's going to, it's going to be a large sum of money that Liam's family will get moving forward. That's, that's my, That's my guess, but definitely weigh in down below and let us know what you think. And yes, on a positive note, I wasn't sure if I was going to do this, but I am. Because not everybody watches Crime Weekly News.

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That's all I got. Any final words from you? No final words. Thank you guys so much for being here. Happy holidays. I hope you enjoy however you celebrate Thanksgiving. We really hope you enjoy it. And be safe.

Be safe. Don't drink and drive. That's a big one. Don't do that. Yes. All right. Have a good night. Bye.