Liam Payne was trying to escape from his hotel when he fell to his death, and the hotel knew he was threatening to use the balcony as the means to escape, but left him by himself ... this according to witnesses, the police report, a 911 call and surveillance video.
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00:00So we put a story up on the website this morning about Liam Payne's death, and I don't think this is an overstatement.
00:07I think we know exactly what happened, and I think there is something really shocking behind this.
00:15That the three people charged, I'm just going to give my personal opinion, are patsies.
00:20They are an excuse to cover up the real offender in this case, and the offender is the hotel where Liam Payne died.
00:29Because we know, based on all the evidence we've seen, and we've looked at police reports,
00:35we've looked at screen grabs of surveillance video, 911 calls, and other evidence, including talking to witnesses,
00:43Liam Payne was trying to escape from his balcony when he died.
00:48Right, he was trying to get out of that hotel, and the first clue that sent us down this path was a still from surveillance video in the hotel.
00:59And it shows hotel staffers carrying Liam through the lobby.
01:04Now we should say, Liam was causing a disruption in the lobby.
01:08There was something that happened in the last 40 minutes of his life where he had gone up and down to his room.
01:14It's apparent he was drinking, he might have been using drugs, and he was getting erratic in the hotel lobby.
01:23He had smashed his computer.
01:25So when you go back to that picture, they are carrying him, he's conscious.
01:29Forcibly carrying him, he's conscious, yeah.
01:31This is so important to know, he is conscious, his head is upright, and we can further show you why.
01:39He's struggling with them, and yeah, just minutes before, he's standing, and so he's upright, this is not, he's unconscious.
01:46Now there's more evidence that he's conscious, because go to the hallway outside of his room, on the upper left of the screen,
01:55he is struggling with the hotel employees, because he does not want to go in his room.
02:01Right, but they used a master key, and they got in the room, and they put him in the room.
02:07We also know that they were concerned about him breaking things, because he was so erratic, they took a mirror off the wall, and then locked him in the room.
02:16So here's what we know, and I think this background is really important.
02:20Liam hated being locked in rooms.
02:22This happened a lot during One Direction, and he even talked about it, he said this is why he became a substance abuser,
02:29because he couldn't go out in public, there was a mini bar, and that's what led him down a path.
02:35He had actually escaped from a balcony a month before, at his home in Florida, when a bodyguard tried to keep him in a room,
02:43and he used a garden hose to scale down.
02:45So this time, when they put him in the room, five minutes later, five minutes later,
02:53one of the people who carried him into the room calls 911.
02:58Listen to this call.
03:15So, that always struck us, the first time we heard that call, why did they say that about the balcony?
03:42They said it because Liam threatened, he said, there's no doubt why they would say that,
03:47because he told them he was going to leave from the balcony.
03:51And that's exactly what he tried to do.
03:53We have a lot of evidence to show exactly what happened.
03:57When he was in the lobby, he was not wearing a hat.
04:00When his body was found, there was a hat, and there was one of those bags that straps around his shoulder, that he was not wearing.
04:09So we know that he had put that on, put the hat on, and even more, there was a larger bag, a carry-on luggage,
04:18that was found on the second floor balcony, right underneath his room.
04:22That was two days after he died.
04:24Somebody came into the second floor room to hang a painting, and they saw that bag, and they realized it was Liam's.
04:34And what clearly happened here was that he dropped the bag from the third floor balcony to the second.
04:41And planned to get down there himself.
04:43And planned to scale down to the second floor balcony, and then he could jump to the ground,
04:48something he had done before, because it wasn't that far of a fall.
04:51So now the question, who's responsible for Liam Payne's death?
04:56This was not a drug overdose.
04:58He was under the influence of drugs.
05:00Clearly, right.
05:01But, he was trying to get out of that hotel, via the balcony, intoxicated.
05:08The hotel knew it, and they shut the door, and they just left him alone, knowing there was that kind of fear that he might fall.
05:17Yeah.
05:18And by the way, when the coroner says he was unconscious, I'm not buying that.
05:23Because he was conscious all the way up until he got to the balcony.
05:26Right.
05:27So, the idea of saying he's unconscious, he was conscious in the lobby,
05:31he was conscious in his room, he was conscious when he put the backpack on,
05:35he was conscious when he put his hat on, he was conscious when he dropped that leather bag onto the second floor.
05:41So, I think he just slipped.
05:44And now, whose fault is that?
05:46Right.
05:46Well, that is the question now, and what will police and prosecutors do in Buenos Aires?
05:52We have a producer, TMZ producer, on the ground in Buenos Aires, who's been gathering a lot of this information.
05:59Brian Andrews is joining us now from Buenos Aires.
06:02Brian, this has been an extraordinary weekend of revelation of what's going on down there and what's not happening, apparently, with the prosecutors.
06:12Well, it's very clear to me that the stench of cover-up, possible malfeasance, people pointing fingers this way, it is all over the place.
06:23And this is still the biggest story in Buenos Aires.
06:26I've been on the ground for a couple of days.
06:27We've been beating the streets, speaking to as many people as we possibly can.
06:32And the stories that we're hearing are leading to the conclusion that you and Harvey have been discussing.
06:38Clearly, Liam was trying to escape a situation.
06:42It would appear that he was taken against his will by hotel security staff to his room and then locked in his room.
06:51Now, the justice system here in Argentina is nothing like the justice system in the United States or the UK.
06:57It just operates very differently.
07:00In the United States, there is tremendous transparency.
07:03You can look at court records, police reports, arrest information.
07:07That is not the case here.
07:09I have been personally to the prosecutor's office at least four times now and have been told that no one would meet with me.
07:17No one would speak with me.
07:18I thought it was a gringo thing and I didn't want to speak to somebody in English.
07:21So I flipped to my Spanish.
07:22I said, oh, yeah, you're so lucky.
07:24You'll get a lot of the day.
07:24It's the story. They weren't interested in talking.
07:28However, through our sources, we have developed a cache, if you will, of records connected to this case, which you are seeing on our TMZ website, which do tell the story.
07:38We believe that Liam was taken against his will from the lobby, put in his room, and then he put on his hat, his strap bag and decided he was going to make a run for it down the balcony.
07:49What happened? Did he slip?
07:51Did he lose his footing?
07:52How did the fall happen?
07:54That's still to be determined.
07:55But we do have a new piece of information.
07:58We are hearing from our sources here in Buenos Aires that there is a very strong possibility that a new prosecutor will be appointed as early as this week and basically reopen the case from point zero.
08:13We should say there are three people now who have been charged.
08:16There is his very good friend.
08:19And I know that there's some dispute whether he's technically charged or not, but he's definitely in their crosshairs for abandonment.
08:28He left 40 minutes before when Liam was OK, according to all the video.
08:34So he's they're looking at him for abandonment.
08:37They're looking at a waiter for selling drugs and another person.
08:42And in terms of the drugs, in terms of abandonment, the abandonment, it seems to me, is on the part of the hotel.
08:51They were the ones that threw him in the room, shut the door after he said he was going to scale that balcony.
08:58It's the only reason that because it never made sense.
09:01Why was the hotel manager talking about the balcony?
09:03Right. Because those because Liam had said it.
09:06Right. Because Liam had said it.
09:08That's why he mentioned it.
09:09And and I guess, you know, Brian, what I'm trying to figure out is what is the connection?
09:15Why would the prosecutors and the police do somersaults to avoid doing anything to the hotel and going after what I believe are Patsy's?
09:26That's a really good question. And I've asked it to a number of sources that were working here in the city right now.
09:32I'll be frank with you. There has been the discussion of corruption, outright corruption, extortion.
09:39There have been talks of friends and cronyism at the hotel with some of the prosecutors who have been investigating this case.
09:47I have gone personally to try to speak to prosecutors to get the facts from the horse's mouth.
09:52The prosecutors will not speak to us because under Argentine law, they don't have to.
09:58They only have to present their case to an Argentinian judge.
10:01And the court proceedings surrounding this are closed.
10:05They are not open to the public.
10:07You will not hear anything about these cases officially until a judge in Argentina has rendered a decision.
10:14So what we're trying to do is track down everybody involved.
10:17I've been to the hotel. I've stood in front of the tree.
10:20I've looked through the window. I've been thrown out of the lobby trying to talk to some of the staff.
10:24We're going to get to the bottom of this because this is still a huge story.
10:28And the original story that's out there, guys, it just doesn't add up.
10:31It does not add up. It never made sense when the day after Liam died, when there was a police official who came out and said, flat out, it was a suicide, he jumped.
10:43Right.
10:43And I remember we said at the time, how would they know that?
10:46They must have video. They must have a witness who told them that.
10:49But there's nothing that points to this being his job.
10:52Here's what we know.
10:53It's very apparent Liam Payne was trying to scale down the third floor balcony when he lost his grip and fell.
11:03And that is what all of the evidence points to here.
11:06By the way, we we contacted the hotel.
11:08They said no comment.