Chloe Ayling: ‘I can’t believe I’m still talking about being kidnapped eight years later’
The model's story was questioned by the public.
When Chloe Ayling was kidnapped, she dreamed of returning home to her normal life. But after miraculously surviving, the then-20-year-old quickly realised that this didn’t exist anymore, and instead, she faced a new battle — convincing people she wasn’t a liar.
‘I can’t believe I’m still talking about this eight years later,’ she tells Metro.
In the summer of 2017, the young glamour model thought she’d been hired for a photo shoot in Milan. Upon arriving, Chloe was injected with the tranquilliser ketamine by two men in balaclavas, before being driven 120 miles in a car boot to a remote farmhouse.
Although Chloe is mostly able to speak about what happened in a detached manner, it’s difficult for her to talk about when the kidnappers grabbed her from behind as she arrived at the faux shoot. ‘It takes me back to the feeling of not being able to breathe and that panic about suffocating,’ she explains.
Her captor, Lukasz Herba, whom she knew as MD, had been ‘hired by an international crime gang, Black Death’, she was told. They planned to sell her at a sex slave auction unless a €300,000 ransom was paid by her manager Phil Green, who had set up the shoot. It was money that he didn’t have.
Chloe was kept handcuffed to a set of drawers and slept on the floor for much of her six days in captivity. ‘I accepted that I was going to die, because there was nothing I could do,’ Chloe remembers, saying that she didn’t cry or scream. ‘The days dragged. I felt like I was constantly walking on eggshells, not wanting to say the wrong thing.’
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Previous Page Next PageA glimmer of hope came when she noticed how Lukasz looked at her. Thinking quickly, Chloe told him that if she were freed, they could be together. He started treating her differently and invited Chloe to sleep in his bed, but they did not have a sexual relationship.
On what would become her last day, Lukasz gave her pizza and fruit, and she ate for the first time after previously fearing he was going to poison her. He then took Chloe shopping for shoes as hers had been taken away, before driving her to the UK consulate in Milan, but not before giving her a list of conditions — she must end any investigation and pay the ransom herself.
‘Even though I was out, I didn’t feel safe,’ she says, explaining he’d convinced her Black Death could still be after her. She did speak to police, and it soon transpired that Lukasz, alongside his brother Michał Herba, who were working in computer programming and transport logistics in the UK, were the only people involved. There had been no international crime gang.
After around a month of investigating, Chloe, who was believed by Italian authorities, was allowed to fly back home, and she planned to keep quiet.
‘I was embarrassed by it. I didn’t want anyone to ever know, but that choice was taken away from me,’ she says, while reflecting on the moment that Italian authorities held a press conference the day before she landed back in the UK.
Not being believed Chloe spoke to the press outside her home (Picture: Invicta Kent Media/REX/Shutterstock)The public interest in Chloe’s ordeal was now feverish. Journalists waited outside her family home in Croydon, hoping for more insight.
Chloe made a statement outside her front door to a pack of photographers and reporters. ‘I feared for my life, second by second, minute by minute, hour by hour,’ she said of her ordeal. How dare she smile, wear shorts or pose for photographers, some raged. This wasn’t how a victim should behave.
Some struggled to accept aspects of the story, such as why she was holding hands with Lukasz while shopping, and how he freed her without police intervention. Quick to spot an opportunity, his lawyer declared the kidnapping was a publicity stunt to benefit Chloe’s career.
Chloe, now 28, is honest that she did make money out of her story, appearing on Celebrity Big Brother and releasing an autobiography. She also visited the TV studios of This Morning, Good Morning Britain, and Lorraine, where she calmly talked about what she’d been through. Her main goal was to present the facts to debunk theories. ‘That’s what I cared about from day one,’ she says.
