The harrowing true story of a British model who was drugged and kidnapped in a six-day ordeal is being turned into a BBC dramatisation.
Chloe Ayling was abducted at the age of 21 in 2017 after being lured to Milan with the promise of modelling work by Polish national Lukasz Herba.
Once there, she was injected with the tranquiliser ketamine at a photo studio, stuffed into a holdall bag and driven in a car boot to a remote farmhouse near Turin.
She was drugged with ketamine and held captive for six days in a farmhouse
She said that she had been unconscious for much of the journey and was gagged, before being told that she would be auctioned as a sex slave in an online auction on the dark web.
Her abductor, who was a member of the ‘Black Death’ crime syndicate, told her that she would be sold unless she or a family member could pay a ransom of more than £250,000.
She was finally released after six days in captivity and attended the British consulate in Milan.
Days later, she did TV interviews in her mother’s garden in Coulsdon, where she told reporters: “I feared for my life, second by second, minute by minute, hour by hour.”
Doubts however had begun to surface about the veracity of her story, with reports emerging that she had been caught on CCTV in an Italian village holding her kidnapper’s hand and visiting a shoe shop.
During an appearance on the ITV show Good Morning Britain, she was interrogated by former host Piers Morgan, who asked: “Why would you lie to the police about such a thing? It’s not insignificant to be going shopping with the alleged kidnapper and buying new shoes.
“If you’re going to conduct media interviews where you’re being paid money, and you’re doing a book for thousands of pounds before there’s even been a trial, I think we’re perfectly entitled to ask you difficult questions.”
Piers Morgan interrogated Chloe Ayling during an appearance on Good Morning Britain— (ITV)
While her responses were not entirely convincing, Ms Ayling remained steadfast in her story and claimed: “It will all come out in the end.”
In 2018, her abductor was convicted of kidnapping and extortion and was sentenced to 16 years and nine months in jail, with the prosecutor describing Herba as a “fantasist with narcissistic tendencies”.
The complicated case has now been written as a six-part series called Kidnapped, which the BBC said “follows her terrifying kidnap, her bravery and resilience in captivity, and the subsequent court case that put her kidnappers in jail”.
The broadcaster continued: “Yet despite their convictions, Chloe faced headlines accusing her of faking her own kidnapping, and found herself at the centre of a media storm.
“The series asks why Chloe was blamed for her kidnappers’ crimes. How do we relate to survivors of crime who make the front pages? And how does it feel to be an ordinary person, caught up in events so extraordinary that you aren’t believed?”
Written by Georgia Lester, the series has drawn on legal documents, her published diary and extensive interviews, with Nadia Parkes cast to play Ms Ayling.
