Bizarre life of fantasist who sent his lover texts – as he held girl hostage
THE Polish man at the centre of the Dark Web kidnap plot sent text messages to his girlfriend while allegedly holding a Page Three model hostage. Lukasz Herba had told partner Natalia he was a successful businessman who was travelling to America to meet new clients for his chicken feed firm.
But the ‘fantasist’ was in Italy where it is said he drugged model Chloe Ayling, before holding her hostage for six days.
Herba, 30, who was arrested in Italy last month, claimed to be part of a ‘ Black Death’ kidnap group who planned to auction her on the internet.
But his story began to unravel yesterday as Natalia – from Poland and living in Birmingham – painted a picture of a Walter Mitty-type character who tried to impress her with details of his success while living in a West Midlands council flat.
Herba told Natalia he ran an international firm making synthetic chicken feed, and turned up at her home driving a Mercedes and wearing a pinstripe suit. He also told her he owned land in Scotland, was a crack shot who owned a sniper rifle, and was involved in the gold trade.
He even joked about spiking her drink with drugs and then continued to text her while he was holding Miss Ayling in a remote farmhouse near Turin.
In a message sent on July 11 – the day Miss Ayling was taken – he said to Natalia: ‘Long routes now I have and barely have time between recharging and meetings. Then I am so knackered that I do not want anything and shower and sleep.’
In another sent three days later he said: ‘At hotels but it is literally just sleeping because of the … mega tight schedule right now. Just terrible I’m tired all the time.’
Natalia, who is too scared to give her real name, said: ‘It was really believable, the way he was talking and describing what he was doing, that he was travelling all the time. I did not have a reason to think he was lying.’
She said she realised it was all rubbish when a friend sent her a link to a news story about the kidnap and she recognised his picture. Natalia added: ‘It was him, the same name and everything. Now I am scared. I could not believe it. I live by myself and he was at my house, he might have shared my details with someone.
‘He seemed different to other guys, like he had class, but that is just the image he was trying to create.’
Natalia said Herba first got in contact via Facebook on June 1. They had two mutual friends on the site and he sent her a message saying he would like to get to know her. She said they exchanged messages for a few days before meeting for the first time on June 4.
‘Straightaway he was asking me if I wanted to have a family,’ Natalia said. ‘He said he wanted a family and he was looking for someone to settle down with.’
On Facebook he claimed to be the boss of a firm called Karmerg which purports to be a ‘global leader in technology trade, servicing independent labs and scientists and delivering to prosperous clients’.
Office clerk Natalia said: ‘I was very impressed by him – he’d told me he had finished three types of business studies, had a big imagination and big plans for his business … We were seeing each other every day after we first met, he was coming to my house. He told me he was going
‘Now I am scared’
to Los Angeles for six weeks to find new contractors, we stayed in touch after he left and he even sent me some photos. He left on the 13th of June and said he was going to Szczecin in Poland for one day.
‘On the 14th he said he is catching a flight to LA … for all the time during that week, when he kidnapped that girl, he was texting me saying he was in Mexico, or in Texas, calling me telling me what contractors he had met.’
On July 10, the day Miss Ayling arrived in Milan, he texted Natalia saying: ‘I think about you all the time.’
The following day, she asked him where he was, to which he replied: ‘Texas further east. The flights are rubbish here. I’m running off to sleep because even the hotel WiFi is so-so. When I get up I’ll call.’
In another message, Herba told her he owned a Steyr HS .50 rifle, saying: ‘This is a big precision rifle, not for short distances.’ When she joked ‘You’re a sniper?’ he replied, ‘A very good one’, with a smiley face. He also sent her pictures of bullets and a target from a shooting range. Later, he sent her a picture of what he claimed were homes in Hollywood but was of a building which looked very similar to the farmhouse where Miss Ayling was held.
She said the last message she received from him was on July 16, adding: ‘I thought he had met someone else or just did not want to speak to me.’ Miss Ayling was released on July 17 and Herba was arrested in Italy the following day.
News of the kidnapping broke over the weekend, when Herba was identified as a suspect. ‘My friend sent me a photo of him from the news and the name and I saw it was him,’ Natalia said. ‘When I looked for him on the internet I could not find any trace of him, he sort of disappeared.’
Far from the picture he painted to Nata- lia, Herba was living with his brother in a council flat in Tividale, near Dudley, where neighbours described him as a strange loner who drove a battered red Toyota.
They said he appeared to leave for work each morning in a suit, but returned repeatedly throughout the day, sometimes with a pet rat on his shoulder.
Yesterday, it emerged that Herba had once given out a business card to someone in Birmingham with the image of the Grim Reaper alongside the words ‘Permanent Solution’. On the back it said to contact via the Dark Web and gave an address for ‘MD’. In Italy, Miss Ayling had told police she too was given a business card and told to address him as MD.
Yesterday, Herba’s mother Lucyna, of Szczecin, north-west Poland, said her other son Michal called her to tell her Lukasz had been arrested. Lukasz then called her from jail. The retired council worker told MailOnline: ‘He was such a normal boy … I don’t believe he did this. He told me he was trying to save her.’
‘Could not believe it’