The beautiful 20-year-old British glamour model who claims to have been kidnapped in Italy and held captive for six days prior to her release says that it’s “hurtful” that some believe that her abduction was simply a hoax designed to make her famous. Chloe Ayling told police that two men kidnapped her while she was at a July 11 photo shoot. She said that after being attacked by the two, she was drugged with a horse tranquilizer, “stuffed into a suitcase and held at a rural house by criminals who threatened to auction her on the dark web,” according to the Associated Press.
In an interview with The Daily Mail, Ayling said that after being drugged, she awoke in the trunk of her kidnappers’ vehicle wearing only her underwear. She said that her mouth was taped and her hands and feet were bound. According to The Guardian, her kidnapper, 30-year-old Lukasz Pawel Herba “a Polish national who lives in Britain, has been charged with kidnapping and extortion. He reportedly told Ayling that he had planned to sell her as a sex slave on the dark web for £270,000 [$300,000] before he realized that she had a two-year-old child. After six days holding her in captivity he took her to the British consulate in Milan.”
Theories that Ayling’s kidnapping may have been a hoax surfaced after she was seen “buying shoes with her captor and laughing and joking with him in coffee shops and admitted to sharing a bed with him during her ordeal,” according to the Telegraph. But in her interview with the Daily Mail, the model said she was trying desperately to bond with her kidnapper in an attempt to not be sold into human trafficking.
(Image credit: Chloe Ayling / Facebook)
“I understand why people have questions. People need to understand that everything I did was so I could survive. I was in a crazy situation and I was terrified. I was in shock. That will always be the worst day of my life.”
“Then he said he wanted to help me because I had been taken by mistake. He asked me what my family had to offer. It was just me and Mum at home, there was no way we could afford a ransom. I gave him the names of three people who might help. I spent the first night semi-naked and handcuffed to the chest of drawers.” ~ The Daily Mail
Ayling claimed to be having that “worst day of her life” after her kidnappers told her that they were part of a group known as “The Black Death” and that she’d be sold on the dark web as a sex slave if her agent didn’t pay the ransom. But after six days of holding her captive, Herba drove her to the British consulate in Milan and set her free. British authorities seem to feel that Herba represents a substantial threat to public safety, considering he readily confessed to Ayling’s kidnapping and said that her abduction had been planned for several months. Herba will remain in British police custody until his trial later this year. Herba has also implicated nine other co-conspirators in Ayling’s kidnapping. “I know the truth, the police know the truth and it will all come out at the trial,” Ayling was quoted as saying to The Daily Mail.
