Chloe just loves the camera says kidnap model’s ex
‘I don’t know what to make of it’
THE ex-boyfriend of the British model who was kidnapped in Italy has said she ‘just loves the camera’ after she posed within hours of her safe return to the UK.
Conor Keyes said he did not ‘know what to make’ of claims Chloe Ayling was nearly auctioned as a sex slave.
mr Keyes, who is also the father of miss Ayling’s 21-month-old son, appeared to be surprised that the model posed in a skimpy top and hot pants outside her mother’s home in South london on her return.
mr Keyes, 21, told the mail: ‘Apparently she got put into a suitcase, jabbed with ketamine – all this craziness. If that happened to me I wouldn’t be outside smiling, I wouldn’t want to talk to people. But that’s just the sort of person she is maybe. She just loves the camera.’
Speaking at his home in Hackney, East london, he added: ‘I don’t know what to make of it. It’s a weird situation. People on my side are saying it’s mad, but other people are saying it could be true.’ mr Keyes described her as being ‘100 per cent focused on her modelling career’ and said their son Ashton spends much of the time with him because miss Ayling is often abroad on photoshoots.
last night it emerged that the 20year-old was lured to Italy by an assignment worth £1,200.
She received the fee after alleged kidnapper lukasz Herba paid her agency £2,000 for two photoshoots.
Herba, 30, first booked her for a photoshoot draped over a motorbike in Paris in April. But he cancelled at the last minute, claiming his studio had been ransacked.
weeks later he told her agency he had moved to a studio in milan and booked her again for July 11, when she was kidnapped.
He paid the agency a total of £2,000, even though the first booking was cancelled.
miss Ayling flew back into Britain on Sunday after telling police she had been lured to a fake photoshoot in milan where she was drugged, stripped and handcuffed. She said she was bundled into a suitcase in the boot of a car and held hostage for six days at a remote farmhouse by the human trafficking group Black Death, who demanded a £270,000 ransom for her release.
The model said she shared a bed with Herba during her captivity and he made ‘various sexual advances’ towards her which she rebuffed ‘by putting it off to the future’.
Yesterday her alleged captor implied that he became involved with Black Death because he needed money for cancer treatment.
Herba, in an interview with Italian police, said: ‘I would like to say that around march 2017 I was diagnosed with a grave form of leukaemia.
‘I was desperate and I was in a quest for money to get cured, also with methods alternative to traditional medicine.’
Among those he asked for money were romanians from Birmingham, he said. Herba, who is Polish and based in Britain, said he ‘was so desperate that I didn’t ask myself too many questions’ and later found out they were planning to kidnap a girl for ransom.
Questions over apparent inconsistencies in the accounts of miss Ayling’s kidnapping have gathered momentum. Detectives are understood to be baffled by how she ended up shopping for shoes with her alleged captor during her ordeal. Investigators are also sceptical about Herba’s alleged claims that he was working for Black Death, which is said to operate on the so-called Dark web.
The model’s Italian lawyer Francesco Pesce leapt to her defence yesterday, insisting she did not collude with her kidnappers.
‘There was no co-operation, no kind of involvement with Chloe and her captors whatsoever,’ he said.
mr Pesce admitted it was strange for Herba to take miss Ayling inside the British consulate in milan at the end of her ordeal, thereby allowing himself to be arrested.
‘why this person drove her back to the consulate to let her go – I have no idea,’ he said. ‘He was not able to explain this properly. Some things do not match and it’s strange. why would one throw himself into the arms of the police and bring the hostage inside the British consulate?’
mr Pesce added: ‘It does appear to be incredible but it’s actually true.’