Stunning new DNA evidence that backs up model’s story
‘He was weird and moody’
ITALIAN police have found DNA matching Chloe Ayling’s alleged captor and his older brother in the car used during the model’s kidnapping, The Mail on Sunday can reveal.
Hair left behind in the blue Volvo hatchback has been matched to Lukasz and Michal Herba, Polish nationals who lived in the West Midlands.
The pair were pictured together on CCTV in Milan on July 10, the day before Miss Ayling was kidnapped at a fake photoshoot set up by Lukasz, 30.
They are accused of carrying out the plot to cash in on a £39,000 ransom demand from three friends of the model. Herba initially claimed Chloe would be sold for £273,000 to rich Arabs as a sex slave.
Lukasz is being held in the high-security Opera prison in Milan awaiting trial on kidnapping and extortion charges after he handed Miss Ayling over to officials at the British Consulate on July 17.
Michal was arrested on Wednesday by armed British police at the council flat where the brothers lived in Tividale, West Midlands, after Italian officers issued a European Arrest Warrant for him.
The 36-year-old, who intends to fight his extradition to Italy, was seen visiting his mother at her home in Szczecin, Poland, in recent weeks, after Lukasz was arrested.
One neighbour told The Mail on Sunday: ‘The last time I saw Michal was a few weeks ago. He came to see his mother. I now know that this was after Lukasz had been arrested. So perhaps he came to tell her what had happened.’
Italian police sources say Lukasz was secretly recorded on the prison phone, ordering his mother to tell Michal to delete incriminating emails and ‘hide the car in the garage’. It is understood officers have found emails revealing Michal used his PayPal account to buy ski masks and the large holdall Miss Ayling, 20, was placed into before being transported in the boot of the hatchback.
The brothers grew up in a crumbling pre-war block of flats in the port city of Szczecin with their mother Lucyna and late father Hieronim, who ran a small import/export business.
After finishing school, they worked at a DIY superstore. One ex colleague described Lukasz as ‘a bit of a womaniser’ but said he was friendly and charming. Another said Michal – who is believed to have emigrated to Birmingham in 2007 to work as a lorry driver – was ‘weird and moody’, with few friends. Lukasz followed him to the UK in 2009, working first as a labourer and then a traffic warden, before becoming a recruitment manager.
The Mail on Sunday can also reveal Lukasz was cleared to carry out gun practice by West Midlands Police a month before the kidnapping.
Roger Schwirtz, owner of the Wednesbury Marksmen shooting club, said he turned up in early May saying he ‘just wanted to shoot’. He passed all the club’s security checks.
Former work colleagues say he was known for his ‘tall tales’ and money-making schemes. One said: ‘He was quite clever. He wanted to buy a coach to ferry people back and forth to Poland and asked me if I’d invest in it. I didn’t.’