Film of British model retracing journey shown during Black Death kidnap trial
VIDEO footage of British model Chloe Ayling retracing her steps from a city studio where she was allegedly grabbed to a farmhouse where she was held for six days was played yesterday at the trial of a Polish man charged with her kidnapping.
The 20-year-old was allegedly snatched by a group calling itself Black Death, after being lured to a fake modelling shoot at a studio in Milan in July.
According to prosecutors, Ms Ayling was drugged at the studio, zipped inside a canvas bag and transported to a farmhouse near Turin, where she was held captive and drugged.
Lukasz Herba, a 30-year-old Polish man, is being tried for the kidnapping. He was arrested after he released the model at the British consulate in Milan.
Italian prosecutors are also seeking to try Herba’s 37-year-old brother, Michal, who is in custody in Britain fighting extradition.
Evidence shown in court yesterday featured Ms Ayling revisiting the farmhouse in Italy’s Piedmont region where she says she was held while her captors allegedly negotiated her online sale into sex slavery.
In the video footage, Ms Ayling is seen walking calmly with police through the streets of Viù, a mountain village north of Turin, to the locations where she was seen with her alleged kidnapper.
Inside the building, she pointed out furniture to which she said she had had her hands and feet shackled on the first night. She then showed a bedroom, where she said she later shared a bed with her kidnapper. The pair used separate blankets.
A forensic toxicologist testified that while Ms Ayling’s urine tested negative for Ketamine, a two-centimetre hair sample tested positive. The time frame of ingestion could not be determined.