Standing outside the front door of her family home in Croydon, Chloe Ayling got ready to read a statement.
The then-20-year-old had managed to survive being held hostage for six days in Italy, terrified she might never see her family again: ‘I feared for my life, second by second, minute by minute, hour by hour,’ she told the press pack camped outside her doorstep.
It didn’t occur to Choe that what she wore – a white vest and blue shorts – or how she spoke might be forensically dissected by the public. She was just glad to be alive and home.
However it turned out that because the young woman had kept her emotions in check – and even dared to smile, not to mention while wearing blue shorts, god forbid – it was enough for people to decide her whole ordeal must have been a made up hoax.
It also meant that instead of attempting to move on from the most traumatic time of her life, Chloe 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 candidly.
The kidnapping
In the summer of 2017, the young glamour model thought she’d been hired for a photo shoot in Milan. However, 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, she admits 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’,they told her. The plan was 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.
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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,’ she remembers. She didn’t cry or scream and the ‘days dragged,’ she adds. ‘I felt like I was constantly walking on eggshells, not wanting to say the wrong thing.’
A 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 her to sleep in his bed, but they did not have a sexual relationship.
On what would become Chloe’s last day, Lukasz gave her pizza and fruit, and she ate for the first time after previously fearing he was going to poison her. She was then taken shopping for shoes as hers had been taken away.
Her captor then drove Chloe to the UK consulate in Milan and gave her a list of conditions for her release — she must end any investigation and pay the ransom herself.
‘Even though I was out, I didn’t feel safe,’ she remembers, especially as Lukasz had convinced Chloe Black Death could still be after her.
After speaking to police, and it soon transpired that Lukasz, alongside his brother Michał Herba, who worked in computer programming and transport logistics in the UK, were the only people involved. There had been no international crime gang.
Chloe’s account of what happened was in no doubt by the Italian authorities and after a month of investigations, she was allowed to fly home.
Her plan was to keep quiet and get on with her life
‘I was embarrassed by it,’ explains Chloe. I didn’t want anyone to ever know -but that choice was taken away from me.’
What she hadn’t counted on was the reaction to a press conference the Italian authorities held the day before she landed back in the UK.
Not being believed
Some struggled to accept aspects of Chloe’s 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.
‘It was a perfect combination of all the things that made it unbelievable,’ she admits. ‘My job as a glamour model is associated with publicity. How I look and dress, which was normal to me, didn’t go down well. Neither did my calm reactions.
‘It’s expected that when something bad happens, a person must be sad and crying. Cases are more complex than that. Mine certainly was,’ she adds.
‘When I spoke to the press outside my home, I had already been free for a month. I’d just been reunited with family, and I no longer had fear as I knew the Black Death wasn’t after me. It was a happy moment for me.’
Having to justify herself, surely that must have felt lonely and exhausting? ‘It was what it was. I just had to throw myself into it. I didn’t have a choice. I became numb to it,’ she replies matter-of-factly.
The impact on Chloe
In 2020, Lukasz was convicted of kidnapping and sentenced to 16 years and nine months in prison, and in 2021, Michał was given 16 years and eight months. The pair’s sentences have since been reduced to 12 years and 1 month, and 5 years and 8 months, respectively.
Despite the convictions, Chloe still feels the hangover of not being believed.
Now 28, she is honest about making 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 Chloe calmly talked about what she’d been through. However, she insists, her main goal was to present the facts to debunk theories. ‘That’s what I cared about from day one,’ she explains.
The 2024 six-part drama, Kidnapped: The Chloe Ayling Story, has helped rectify some misconceptions, and soon, BBC will release a documentary, Chloe Ayling: My Unbelievable Kidnapping, in which she will recount the complex horror in her own words. The three-parter also features interviews with friends, UK and Italian investigators, and Phil.
‘After the conviction, I didn’t get closure as the lies overpowered the truth. The documentary is hopefully going to change public perception,’ she says.
Understanding herself
The backlash also led Chloe to analyse her own personality. She thought back to childhood when she would be told off for smiling while being disciplined. As she reached early adulthood, people would comment on her ‘monotone voice’ and ask if Chloe had got Botox, as ‘there were no facial expressions’.
She had always wondered if there was something ‘different’ about her, and then a kind email from a teacher landed in her inbox last autumn. The subject: ‘Possible undiagnosed autism’.
‘It was nice, not the typical criticism and negativity that I was used to. It said, “I think this is why people can’t relate to you, and you should seek a diagnosis”,’ recalls Chloe.
So, earlier this year, she followed the advice and received a diagnosis in March. It has helped her gain a greater understanding of her reaction, which, at times, has also confused Chloe herself.
‘I would get frustrated as I didn’t know why everyone expected me to be acting differently,’ she explains.
‘It was a relief to get the diagnosis. I’m able to give myself more grace and patience. All these things that I was trying to change, I don’t worry about anymore.’
Although she is keen to stress: ‘It’s not only someone with autism who can react as I did. There are so many reasons, such as delayed reactions or dissociating.’
She also learnt to appreciate parts of herself that she’d never been given the chance to before.
‘My calmness helped me so much in the kidnapping, but in the media, it backfired. I never got recognition for getting myself out. Experienced detectives couldn’t save me; I had to rely on myself. I was only 20 years old, but I outsmarted the kidnapper,’ she says.
Chloe, who still works as a model but likes to share her content on Instagram and OnlyFans for more control, hopes the documentary can change the narrative on how a victim of trauma should act or behave.
‘I want people not to judge what they don’t understand. A victim shouldn’t have to fit in your ideal box,’ she passionately states. Chloe adds with a smile: ‘And I like proving people wrong.’
Despite what she went through, Chloe never sought therapy as she didn’t see how ‘talking to a random person’ would help. But after spending hours being interviewed for the documentary, Chloe feels she’s had the closure needed.
‘I’m definitely the happiest I’ve ever been now,’ Chloe shares. ‘I could never have had a still, one-dimensional life. I need to take the ups and downs as it’s interesting.’
Chloe Ayling: My Unbelievable Kidnapping will be available to stream on BBC iPlayer on August 4 and live on BBC Three at 9pm.
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