The Kidnapping of Chloe Ayling

April 02, 2022

I read a news report about the kidnapping of a young British glamour model in Italy and thought I’d share it with you guys.

Chloe Ayling, a 20 year old model from London, was kidnapped from what she believed was a legitimate photo-shoot at an apartment in Milan, Italy on July 11, 2017. She had traveled from a shoot in Paris to Milan with the intention of attending a session that had been booked through her agent back in England when she was attacked by two men.

The men restrained Ayling, injected her in the right forearm with Ketamine, handcuffed her hands and ankles and took photographs of her before stuffing her unconscious body into a black bag and throwing her in to the trunk of a car.

(Image of reconstruction here. Source)

From there she was driven two hours to a villa in the picturesque, isolated village of Borgialdi di Lemie in Turin.

She was then taken out of the bag and chained to a heavy chest of wooden drawers. Ayling would be held captive on the property for almost a week under constant surveillance. Any attempts to escape were met with threats of murder.

(The Villa where Chloe Ayling was held captive for almost a week. Source)

Her kidnapper, identified as 30 year old Polish-born British resident Lukasz Pawel Herba, was allegedly setting up an online auction on the dark web where he intended to sell the model to the highest bidder at a starting price of around d $300,000.

(Lukasz Pawel Herba. Source)

He claimed to be a member of a group called “the black death group” who he said dealt in human trafficking, arms dealing, assassinations and other criminal activities.

While the young model was being held captive in the villa (which he had rented under the guise that he was a painter looking for inspiration), Herb was in negotiations with her agent back in England in an attempt to receive a ransom payment. He alleged that if the ransom was paid in full, he would release the victim and the auction would be cancelled. Although he originally demanded $300,000 for her safe return, he eventually accepted a negotiation of $60,000.

This point made me feel skeptical about his claims to be part of a group that apparently successfully and regularly hosted online auctions selling off kidnapped woman to be used as sex slaves. If that was really the case, why would Herb even bother to negotiate and accept such a dramatically lower fee than he originally asked for? Unless he never had the intention of releasing the girl and just wanted to make a quick $60,000 from scamming the agency before sending her off to auction?

I did a quick search on “the black death group” to see if there were any mentions of it on the surface web and turned up a couple of interesting links.

The first one that I want to look at is this article from Vice, detailing the reporters failed attempt at viewing one of the live auctions and attempting to obtain more images of the “merchandise”.

In that article there is a link to a Reddit post where the author originally heard of the group. In the Reddit post the OP details their visit to the no-longer active black death site and requests further information on the group. Users in the comments debate the legitimacy of the site/group including the screenshot of it from the vice article.

Apparently the image used on the site (of a blonde woman tied up) turned out to be a still from a pornographic film and was debunked by a user on Twitter some time ago (tweet no longer available).

The Vice article implies (at least to me), that the website is probably just a scam site. However, nobody knows for sure. What happened to Chloe Ayling however, was very, very real.

In an article in “the Sun” newspaper the 20 year old glamour model (who had only just returned to her London home), told reporters that her abductors said that there were several parties interested in purchasing her after they posted her pictures online.

She went on to say that he told her she would likely be sold to “someone of the Arab world” who would feed her to their pet tiger when they grew bored of their purchase.

According to Ayling, she was released and escorted to the British consulate in Milan when her captors realized from looking at her instagram profile that she had a child. Apparently kidnapping mothers was against the group’s rules.

Upon release she was handed a letter in English explaining the terms. Detailed in the text were instructions on what to say and what not to say about the group, as well as a demand of a payment of $60,000 in Bitcoin currency before the month was over.

The letter ends with the threat of “elimination” if the terms are not met.

(The letter. Source)

Chloe Ayling’s abductor was arrested for his crimes. When local authorities searched the villa they discovered literature for “the black death group” including the rules of purchasing a sex slave (intended for the client), and a pamphlet with a list of website links headed by a drawing of a group of people in plague doctor masks.

(The pamphlet. Source)

Ayling said she believed there were around five individuals involved; two of which she had actually seen.

Not much is known about Lucasz Pawel Herba at the time I write this, but I’m sure over the coming weeks more information will be revealed in the news.

His neighbors in the Birmingham apartment where he resided said that he didn’t say a word the whole time he lived there and neglected to interact with people in the community.

Apparently he wasn’t home much, but on the occasions he returned home he was usually clad in a suit and generally had a pet rat perched on his shoulder as he walked around the local area.

In a recent article in the independant, Chloe revealed that she had actually met Herba several months earlier at a shoot in Paris, although she did not elaborate.

When I first read about this story I thought maybe Herba was obsessed with the page 3 glamour model, but the fact that he got several others in on his plan makes the whole thing seem like it was a bigger operation. Perhaps he paid them?

(One of Chloe’s selfies from her public instagram. Source)

I translated this article to English and it seems to say that Herba claimed to have cancer and needed the money for treatment. It also says that “The black death” group kidnapped young European women and sold them to “rich businessmen in the middle east” promising the girls were virgins.

Also, it clearly took a few months of planning on Herba’s part to execute this plan, so why exactly did he fail to scroll through Chloe Ayling’s public instagram profile to see that she is clearly a young mother? Seems like a pretty bad blunder if the abduction of mothers if off the table.

Hopefully all questions will be answered in upcoming reports.

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