The story of Chloe Ayling stands as a shocking reminder of how life can mirror fiction.
Like a real-life take on Pierre Morel’s Taken, Ayling says she was drugged and abducted in 2017.
There was no Liam Neeson to swoop in and save her.
Her case featured on BBC Three in Kidnapped: The Chloe Ayling Story, yet doubts persist even eight years on.
Ayling says her agent, Philip Green, booked a photoshoot in Paris for her.
A man using the name ‘Andre Lazio’ hired her, but the Paris session was cancelled after the Champs-Élysées boulevard terror attack.
Andre then rescheduled the assignment for Milan, Italy.
Ayling maintains she travelled to Italy as planned.
One day later, at the supposed shoot location, she says she was drugged and kidnapped.
Her story was previously documented in Kidnapped: The Chloe Ayling Story (BBC)
Ayling has disclosed more in a new BBC docuseries, Chloe Ayling: My Unbelievable Kidnapping.
Her captors held her for several days.
They claimed a criminal group called ‘The Black Death’ had seized her and planned to sell her as a sex slave on the dark web.
When her captor, known as ‘MD’, told Green the ransom would be €300,000 ($346,000 in 2025), Green alerted the British and Italian police.
Despite questions over the legitimacy of her kidnapping, law enforcement soon realised the danger was real.
The new documentary shows how Ayling had to engineer her own escape, staying calm when confronted by MD/Lazio — later identified as Łukasz Herba.
“I always remained calm.”
“With anything that happens, it’s like, so this has happened, and what can I do about this?”
“If the answer is nothing and it’s out of my control, then I have to just accept it.”
Ayling says she knew panicking would make the situation worse.
She added she had to rely on herself, and noticed a change in Herba’s behaviour.
“In that moment, I knew I needed to rely on myself, and that was when I got the first ever inkling that he liked me in any way.”
“I had no clue before. I thought maybe he liked me as a person because I was not throwing a fit, but this was the first time I thought ‘wow, things have changed’.”
When Herba tried to kiss her, she says she made excuses and kept him on her side.
Six days after the abduction, she convinced him to release her, and he took her to the Milan consulate.
Herba later admitted he had been inspired by the film By Any Means.
In 2018, he received a prison term of 16 years and nine months.
Although some accuse Ayling of profiting from the ordeal through documentaries, a memoir, and Celebrity Big Brother, she says she wants to raise awareness about her traumatic experience.