Inside the kidnapping of a British glamour model

In 2017, Chloe Ayling was drugged and abducted - but no one believed her. Now, as a new BBC drama sets the record straight, screenwriter Georgia Lester talks to Ellie Harrison

- Georgia Lester

Think back on the Chloe Ayling story in 2017. You know, the “model who faked her own kidnapping”. You might remember how people fixated on her going “shoe shopping” with her abductor. On how she “smiled too much” when she got home. On her wearing outfits that were “too revealing”. What we don’t remember is that she was injected with ketamine, held hostage in a remote house, and told she was going to be sold as a sex slave. What slips our mind is the fact that the man who kidnapped her was found guilty of abduction and sentenced to 16 years in prison.

It’s this gap in our collective memory that the BBC’s new drama about the case is hoping to close. Kidnapped: The Chloe Ayling Story is a forensic study of Ayling’s abduction in July 2017. The six-part drama, in which Ayling is played by actor Nadia Parkes, tells of how the then 20-year-old model was booked for a photo shoot in Milan only to be drugged, gagged, handcuffed and stuffed in the boot of a car when she arrived at the studio. Ayling spent six days in captivity in the Italian countryside. Her abductor, Lukasz Herba, told her that a mafia-esque crime group called Black Death – later revealed to be a figment of his imagination – was going to sell her on the dark web. They took one trip into a nearby town to buy supplies, during which he told her she was being watched by a gang. Eventually, he decided to release her, on the condition she paid her own ransom and agreed to be his girlfriend back in the UK. He dropped her off at the British consulate in Milan. After intense police questioning in Italy – they were suspicious about the trip to the shops – Ayling was allowed to come home.