Featured Image Credit: Facebook/ChloeAyling/Inside Edition
Topics: Celebrity, Crime, BBC, True Crime, TV and Film
Anish Vij
The British model who was kidnapped and put up for sale on dark web is grateful to have escaped.
Chloe Ayling - known for her stint on Celebrity Big Brother in 2018 - suffered a traumatic experience a year prior.
She was abducted and drugged by two men at an address in Milan, Italy, in 2017.
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Aged 20 at the time, Chloe went there for a modelling job, and was instead held at ransom in a farmhouse near Turin.
A 300,000 euro (£265,000) ransom was demanded.
Speaking to This Morning's Eamonn Holmes and Ruth Langsford, she recalled: "I walked into the studio and there was just silence.
"Normally someone would greet you at the door but I just didn't hear anything.
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"Before I had time to process my thoughts, that's exactly when the masked man put his arm around my neck and mouth... and another one came to the front of me and injected me in my wrists."
When she came to, Chloe says she found herself in the boot of a car in a zip-up bag.
"I had tape on my mouth and handcuffs on my feet and my hands," she revealed.
The model also noticed that there was an empty suitcase in the boot of the car with her, which she presumed her kidnappers planned to eventually put her in.
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She was held in a farmhouse two hours outside of Milan for six days while she tried to reason with her kidnappers and convince them to let her go.
Thankfully she was released six days later, on July 17, at the British consulate in Milan after Chloe managed to convince her kidnappers to let her go when she told them about her child back at home.
Polish national, Lukasz Herba, and his brother, Michal Herba, were subsequently jailed after an Italian court convicted them of kidnapping Chloe.
Now aged 25, her story will be covered in a six-part BBC series called Kidnapped.
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Georgia Lester, who worked on Killing Eve, will cover her time in captivity, and the subsequent court case.
Lester said: “Every moment that I have spent researching this series and spending time with Chloe, learning about the ordeal she suffered both by the men who abducted her and the people who doubted her, has been shocking and infuriating.
“It’s been an honour to work with Chloe and I can’t wait for audiences to finally see her courage, her charm and her unwavering resilience.”
The six-part BBC Three series will be directed by Without Sin’s Al Mackay, and produced by Viewpoint’s Clare Shepherd.
Casting for the series has yet to be announced, and filming will start later this year.