A model who was kidnapped and sold to the dark web in 2017 revealed the exact moment she woke up after being drugged.
Chloe Ayling was 20 years old when she was hired under false pretences to attend a photoshoot in Milan, Italy. However, it wasn’t until she arrived at the address that she realised something wasn’t right.
From there, Chloe was abducted and drugged by two men, before being held at ransom at a farmhouse in Turin by Polish national Lukasz Herba and his brother Michal.
While the British model managed to convince her kidnappers to let her go after telling them about her young son, the ordeal lasted days.
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Herba had threatened to auction her on the dark web for sex trafficking unless a €300,000 (£260,000) ransom was paid.
During their six days together, the kidnapper began to develop feelings for Chloe, who convinced him to take her to the British consulate in Milan on 17 July, 2017.
After she was released, the two men were arrested by authorities and Lukasz was sentenced to 16 years and nine months in prison, while Michał was given a 16 year and eight month sentence.
Chloe recalled the traumatic ordeal - which is the focus of a new BBC docuseries, Chloe Ayling: My Unbelievable Kidnapping - and remembered the exact moment she woke up after being drugged with ketamine and thrown into a suitcase by her captors.
"I can still remember some parts of it so visually. I was so heavily drugged but waking up I can still remember the feeling of 'was I on a boat or was I on a ship', like It was a crazy dream," she told BBC Breakfast last year while promoting the 2024 BBC drama, Kidnapped: The Chloe Ayling Story, which was a dramatised telling of her story.
"I still remember that exact moment, but I tend not to think about it. Especially because back then I talked about it so much. But I kept it out of my mind in my own time."
Chloe says she hopes the show will help people to understand what happened to her during the terrifying ordeal, after she was accused of faking the whole thing.
"I want it to be understood," she said. "All I wanted at the time was for the facts to be laid out and for people to understand the case. What happened in court and the evidence against him.
"I just feel that was never shown at the time. It was so focused on me and that's not what I wanted. I wanted everyone to see facts and that's what the drama shows and people will gain a lot of knowledge from this drama."
She also recalled how conspiracy theorists said it was a publicity stunt, mostly using surveillance footage of Chloe calmly walking around with Herba and holding his hand.
However, despite many 'not believing her', Chloe says this was something she did to survive.
Chloe Ayling: My Unbelievable Kidnapping, which features raw interviews with Chloe and people involved in the case, can be streamed on BBC iPlayer now.
Topics: BBC, Crime, TV and Film, UK News
Britt Jones