Model Chloe holds hands with her ‘kidnapper’... day before her release
Lawyer says she was under duress as trial shown CCTV
GLAMOUR model Chloe Ayling and her alleged kidnapper appear to walk hand-in-hand in astonishing CCTV filmed the day before she was freed.
Chloe, 20, was seen with Lukasz Herba, 30, during a shopping trip in Viu, northern Italy, five days into her alleged abduction.
The next morning she told police and British Consulate staff she was drugged and abducted at a fake fashion shoot in Milan.
The pictures were shown to an Italian court as jurors were also told the pair had been in touch on Facebook since 2015.
Reacting to the footage, Chloe’s lawyer Francesco Pesce claimed she was under duress, saying: “You can tell she is not happy to be holding his hand. She was probably just trying to keep him calm.”
Herba is accused of injecting Chloe with horse tranquilliser ketamine, stuffing her in a bag and holding her at a mountain hideout.
Chloe, from Coulsdon, South London, claims she was drugged and kidnapped on July 11 before being stripped and advertised as a sex slave in an online auction.
Polish national Herba allegedly claimed to be a hitman for the Dark Web crime gang Black Death.
But there were doubts about Chloe’s story after it emerged she went shoe shopping with Herba, despite telling police she never left her prison.
Investigators found she accepted a Facebook friend request from Herba in March 2015 and sent him two messages the next month.
Experts found no contact with Chloe in Herba’s Facebook account but said he “probably deleted them as there are various black holes in the timeline”. However, they found he had repeatedly searched online for “Chloe Ayling”, “Black Death”, “sextrafficking” and “ketamine”. Police said Herba was even researching how to make the lethal nerve agent ricin. Other computer records suggested there were more victims. One folder contained Black Death web pages created over several years, with different girls being auctioned. Police are not sure if they were real. There were also some apparently genuine messages about the auction for Chloe, the court heard. Prosecutors maintain the kidnap was not a publicity stunt and Chloe was an innocent victim. Herba denies abducting the model. His trial in Milan was adjourned until later this month.