The drug-addled final days before the death of troubled One Direction singer Liam Payne, which took place mostly inside a Buenos Aires hotel in October, were the culmination of years of on-and-off substance abuse stemming from a struggle with parts of himself “he was never willing to face,” his ex-fiance told Rolling Stone.
The magazine on Tuesday published a cover feature that reveals aspects of their relationship and how his former fiancée reportedly sought legal recourse for his actions while mourning his death.
Model and author Maya Henry detailed her tumultuous relationship with the troubled pop star in Looking Forward, her 2024 novel based on “true events.” The book thinly veiled her experience as the two met in 2018, and became engaged in 2020 only to split and then reconcile months later in 2021 and ultimately split in 2022.
“While I loved him deeply, he did things that hurt me in ways I’ll never fully understand, and he continued to hurt me years after we broke up,” Henry, who later discovered Payne shared with friends intimate photos of her for years, told Rolling Stone in a mailed statement. “On drugs, he became someone unrecognizable — so different from his sober self. I kept hoping each incident would be a wake-up call for him to get help, but it never was. I tried to be there for him. I loved him so much that I convinced myself I could fix things.
“I knew there were parts of himself he was struggling with — parts of his identity he wasn’t ready to fully face, even within our relationship,” Henry added in her statement. “In the end, it wasn’t just the betrayals or the addictions that broke us — it was the realization that I had spent years in something that was never what I thought it was. I don’t fault him for his struggles.”
The magazine reports that multiple sources alluded to Payne’s struggle with his sexuality. “During his relationship with Maya, he sexted men,” the magazine reports one source, who remains anonymous, revealed. A male waiter Payne met while in Argentina, who stands accused of supplying the pop star with drugs, has said that the two became intimate in the hotel room where he fell to his death days later.
The magazine reports, citing anonymous sources, that Payne had frequently phoned Henry to harass her after their breakup. She reportedly sought lawyers to explore how to “seek legal remedies” upon learning that intimate photos had been shared by Payne as far back as their engagement.
Payne was with his girlfriend, influencer Kate Cassidy, days before his death at the CasaSur in the Argentine capital’s Palermo district, where he fell 40 feet from the balcony after his whirlwind final hours that included a public meltdown in the lobby, hiring sex workers and destroying parts of his room. The magazine reveals that Payne and his fellow members were known to escape their hotel rooms via balconies while on global tours at the height of their fame.
“You could tell on his face that Liam was unwell,” a hotel worker told Rolling Stone’s reporters Kory Grow and Jon Blistein, who also interviewed Rogelio “Roger” Nores at length for their cover story. Nores is the young Argentinian businessman who’d befriended Payne years earlier and has been reported to have been the singer’s guardian while he was visiting Argentina — a fact that he has repeatedly denied as he faces charges in his friend’s death.
“I was his friend,” Nores, who was with Payne hours before his death told the magazine. “I wasn’t a doctor, I wasn’t a psychiatrist, I wasn’t his legal guardian. I never had any control of that. I wasn’t his manager; I wasn’t his father. You can only do so much.”
When the two met for breakfast on Oct. 16, the day of Payne’s tragic death, at the hotel restaurant, Nores says he protested as the singer took a whiskey shot; when they went to his room, his friend says Payne had no narcotics that he “personally saw” on display. It was half an hour after he left that two sex workers arrived and after Payne refused to pay the $5,000 he’d promised them; the hotel room was subsequently trashed and the two women complained about Payne to the hotel’s staff, who called Nores. Along with the businessman, two CasaSur staff members are now facing charges relating to negligence in his death. The magazine reports that Payne ordered cocaine around 4 p.m. on Oct. 16 and the two women left the hotel.
Nores returned to the room to find “white powder, aluminum foil and a makeshift pipe” in Payne’s hotel room. Noticing a smashed TV, he “expressed his displeasure,” as he wrote in his official statement, and left his friend. Payne said he would meet an unknown friend in the lobby but there, in two incidents, he created a scene after seeing something on his laptop and was escorted back to his room and began “shaking or convulsing,” foaming at the mouth and “completely gone on drugs,” according to an eyewitness.
Guards were placed at Payne’s door. No one saw him alive again.
Nores, CasaSur Palermo’s manager, and the receptionist at the hotel were ultimately charged with homicidio culposo, the equivalent of a manslaughter charge in the U.S.
Payne had traces of “alcohol, cocaine, and prescription antidepressants” in his system at the time of his death, per a toxicology report released in November by the prosecutor’s office in Buenos Aires. A criminal court judge has ruled there is enough evidence for the cases to go to trial and an appeal hearing was scheduled for Feb. 11.
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