The investigation into the death of British pop star Liam Payne is focusing on who supplied the late singer with drugs prior to his death.
However, prosecutors denied this week that they had released toxicology test results after two US media outlets reported he had multiple drugs in his system when he died.
Two outlets in Argentina this week reported that preliminary results from the body do indicate the presence of cocaine. Tests on a white powder found in the late singer’s hotel room were initially inconclusive.
The Public Prosecutor’s Office said that Andrés Esteban Madrea, the prosecutor in charge of the case had met with Geoff Payne, the father of the One Direction boy band member who fell to his death from a hotel balcony last week in Buenos Aires.
Madrea, who heads National Criminal and Correctional Prosecutor’s Office No. 14, took over the investigation this week from interim prosecutor Marcelo Roma.
He updated the singer’s father on the investigation and told him that toxicology tests still needed to be completed before the body can be released, a statement said. That process could take between a week to 10 days.
Payne Snr, who is expected to remain in Argentina until the body is released for repatriation, was shown the autopsy report, expert reports and witness statements.
The statement added the office would, as the mourning father requested, update him on the investigation and “guarantee the family’s privacy.”
Prosecutors have not “disclosed any specific technical report outside the exclusive framework of the investigation and the judicial process corresponding to the case,” it added.
Given the high profile of the case and the family’s need for privacy, communication on the case will be limited to the institutional channels of the Public Prosecutor’s Office, the statement concluded.
Police officers from the special investigations and technology divisions were sent to the Hotel CasaSur to seize elements of interest for the investigation,” said a police source who asked not to be identified.
Television images showed a handful of agents working on computers at the lobby counter.
‘Pink cocaine’ claims
US media reported on Monday that Payne had a cocktail of drugs in his system when he died. ABC and TMZ claimed so-called “pink cocaine” – a mix containing methamphetamine, ketamine and MDMA – had been found during a partial autopsy, citing anonymous sources familiar with the preliminary tests.
Experts, however, stress that the substances would only be identified individually in any test results, rather than as a single ‘mix.’
Payne – who was found dead after staff called emergency services twice to report a guest “overwhelmed by drugs and alcohol” who was “destroying” a hotel room – had spoken publicly about struggles with substance abuse and coping with fame.
Post-mortem results indicated that the 31-year-old was alone at the time of the fall and “was going through an episode of substance abuse,” prosecutors have said.
Investigators were examining mobile phones, computers, photographs and videos from security cameras, and have taken “numerous witness statements to reconstruct the victim’s final hours and the scene of the events,” the public prosecutor’s office said.
Hotel employees, the late singer’s friends, medical professionals and others linked to the victim have been questioned. A copy of the singer’s phone has been recreated by a forensic team.
Madrea is analysing videos from the hotel’s security cameras to detect whether there was a drug delivery at the location before Payne’s death.
Police officers from a special investigative unit visited the Hotel CasaSur last Wednesday with a court order to seek further information.
Payne’s girlfriend Kate Cassidy, who left Argentina a few days before her partner’s death, said in a post this week that she had “lost the best part of myself.”
In a post on Instagram a week after Payne’s death, she wrote that her “heart is shattered” and said that the couple had been “manifesting our lives together” in Argentina prior to his death.
Posting a short part of a note he wrote in her possession, she revealed that they planned to be engaged to marry within a year.
– TIMES/AFP/NA
