NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) – Stephanie Adams, a former Playboy Magazine playmate, and her 7-year-old son are dead after plunging off a building in Midtown, Manhattan.

It happened at around 8:15 a.m. at the Gotham Hotel at 16 East 46th Street near Madison Avenue.

Adams was 47 years old and lived in Manhattan, according to police.

The pair checked into the 25th floor penthouse suite of the hotel Thursday evening, police said.

The two were found on the second floor landing in the rear courtyard of the hotel.

“One of the guests of the hotel, they called on the lobby. They said ‘We saw a dead body,’ so they called the front desk,” a waiter at the hotel told CBS2’s Andrea Grymes.

“Early this morning, investigators located an individual whose attention was drawn to that same second floor area when he heard two loud noises, and his attention was drawn to that, and he discovered these two deceased individuals,” said NYPD Chief of Manhattan Detectives William Aubry.

Mom who jumped from Gotham Hotel w/ 7yo son is identified as former Playboy playmate Stephanie Adams. Sources say police are trying to determine if she jumped while holding her son, if she pushed him first or if they were holding hands. Both died. @CBSNewYork

(credit: twitter) pic.twitter.com/sslDSqxbzl — Andrea Grymes (@AndreaGrymesTV) May 18, 2018

No note was found, but police confirm Adams was in a bitter custody battle with her ex-husband over the boy.

Divorce attorney Raoul Felder, who was not currently representing Adams but had been friends with her for more than 20 years, told Grymes he believes other things must have been going on in her life that led to this.

“I walked in and they’re all crying here because they all knew the little boy,” he said. “The last conversation I had with her was very positive and nothing like this.”

Police sources said the Administration for Children’s Services had visited the home multiple times over the last seven months as the custody case played out. The NYPD also had several domestic incidents on record.

CBS2 has learned Adams recently asked a judge for permission to take her son to Europe but that request was denied.

As Grymes reported, Adams was no stranger to news coverage. In 2006, she filed a lawsuit against the NYPD, eventually winning a $1.2 million settlement. She also spoke with CBS2 in 2015 about the lack of crossing guards at an intersection downtown.

“My son and I almost got hit by a bus, MTA bus,” she said at the time, expressing concern for her son’s safety.