The Chloe Ayling story: a glamour model, an international kidnapping plot – and a computer nerd from Tividale

The words of Adrian Sington, agent to Page Three model Chloe Ayling, probably seemed like an understatement to the residents of a nondescript cul-de-sac in the Black Country, when they discovered their unassuming neighbours were the masterminds behind an international kidnapping plot which attracted attention around the world.

Now the dramatic story about the kidnap of a glamour model at a photoshoot in Milan, a European crime syndicate called Black Death, and an oddball computer expert from Tividale is the subject of a BBC drama series which launches tonight.

Chloe, now 27, hopes Kidnapped: The Chloe Ayling Story will finally nail the conspiracy theories that have dogged her life since she was abducted seven years ago.

The drama, starring Nadia Parkes in the title role, will show how Chloe was lured to a bogus modelling assignment, injected with horse tranquilisers, and crammed into a holdall bag before being driven 120 miles in the boot of a car to a remote farmhouse, where she was held for six days.

On July 18, 2017, residents of a three-storey block of flats in Sampson Close, Tividale, were shocked to see their neighbours' front door being smashed down by police. But that was nothing to the surprise when they discovered what their neighbour, 30-year-old Lucasz Herba, was accused of doing. The quiet-living Polish computer programmer, remembered mainly for his smart business attire, was now prime suspect in a kidnapping case which was being beamed around the world. Officers were later seen returning to the block with Herba's older brother Michal, who was believed to have run a transport business.

Neighbour Sinead Boyce said: "I hadn’t seen Michal at all since he moved out earlier this month.

"But last week, I saw him coming back with the police and a friend of his.

"They barricaded the door to his flat, which was smashed down during the raid. Then they towed away one of his cars, the grey Audi."

The pair, who seemed so unremarkable, had been living a double-life as the masterminds behind Black Death, a supposedly international crime syndicate which had orchestrated the elaborate kidnap plot.

The previous April, Chloe – who had a one-year-old son – had been due to appear in a photoshoot in Paris. The assignment had been booked through her agent Phil Green, a lawyer and part-time DJ, by a man calling himself Andre Lazio. The campaign would have seen her draped over a motorcycle, but the shoot was cancelled at the last minute after Lazio said his studio had been ransacked.

Nevertheless, a few weeks later Lazio contacted Green again, apologised for the inconvenience, and rearranged the shoot to take place in Milan. And he was a good payer – even paying the agency £2,000 for the cancelled appointment – so Chloe had no qualms about making the trip.

The shoot was due to have taken place on July 11, and Chloe's mother became concerned when her daughter failed to return home that evening. She contacted Green, who had no idea about Chloe's whereabouts. Then the following morning, all was explained in an email.

The email came from a group calling itself Black Death, and its demands were chilling indeed. Green was told he had five days to come up with a ransom of £230,000. If he failed to make the payment, Chloe would be sold as a sex slave in the Middle East, in an auction that would take place on the dark web. A friend offered to pay £20,000, but the offer was dismissed out of hand.

Not knowing what to do, Green contacted the UK consulate in Milan, and Italian police visited the address where the shoot was supposed to have taken place. Officers who attended found no sign of a photographic studio, just a few of Chloe's clothes. But with no other clues to go on, Chloe's whereabouts remained a mystery.

Then, on July 17 – the day the deadline expired – Chloe, accompanied by Herba, turned up at the British consulate in Milan. This wasn't the initial plan; Herba had originally intended to drop her a short walk from the consulate, and then make his escape. Except that he turned up two hours before the consulate opened, so he suggested they had breakfast in a nearby cafe. Herba told Chloe to tell the consulate staff that he was her only friend in Italy, and that she had managed to borrow a stranger's phone and got him to come to her rescue. Herba assumed he would simply be allowed to walk out of the building.

The plot unravelled pretty much from the beginning. The police asked Chloe for Herba's number, which she didn't have. The model quickly changed her story, and told the translator she had been kidnapped.

Herba claimed Chloe was in on the plot from the beginning, an elaborate publicity stunt to boost the model's career, and help her out of financial difficulties. He claimed to have fallen in love with Chloe, and said the idea came from the recently released film By Any Means, where a C-list celebrity basks in the spotlight after being kidnapped.

The problem for Chloe was that many people believed Herba's version of events.

Witnesses came forward who had seen her laughing and joking with Herba in the cafe before they went to the consulate. It later emerged that she had been a Facebook friend of Herba two years before. Police, who had been looking for her after receiving Green's email, told her they had footage of her shoe-shopping with Herba four days after the kidnap, and holding hands.

Her demeanour as she returned to the UK didn't help her cause. She smiled for the cameras in her mother's front garden, dressed in hotpants and a low-cut top, holding her dog and generally seeming to enjoy the attention. She started writing her memoirs before Herba went on trial. Rumours began to circulate that she was dating the comedian David Walliams – which she denied, although she did not deny being his friend. The following year she appeared on Celebrity Big Brother, just weeks after giving an interview ruling it out.

In October 2017, Chloe was grilled by Piers Morgan on the breakfast show Good Morning Britain about her shopping trip with Herba. When she protested at his line of questioning, the journalist retorted: "If you're going to conduct media interviews where you're being paid money, and you're doing a book for thousands of pounds before there's even been a trial, I think we're perfectly entitled to ask you difficult questions."

Chloe said that during her captivity, Herba convinced her he was a senior member of Black Death, a violent Romanian people-trafficking group, which he was seeking to leave. In order for him to be allowed to leave, he would need to pay an exit fee of 300,000 euros. And if she was sold as a sex slave, she would be fed to tigers once her owners had lost interest in her. Herba convinced her he was her friend and that he was trying to save her life, to the point that she was afraid of him leaving her side.

During her tetchy interview with Morgan, Chloe's parting words were: "It will all come out in the end." And when Herba went on trial in 2018, it quickly emerged that the evidence against him and his brother was overwhelming. Text messages, emails, 50 witnesses for the prosecution. Before the kidnapping, Herba had been trying to manufacture the poisons cyanide and ricin, while searching the internet for the terms 'Chloe Ayling', 'Black Death' and 'sex trafficking'. There were even phone images of an unconscious Chloe having been drugged with ketamine. There was no evidence of any collaboration between Herba and Chloe.

Her lawyer, Francesco Pesce, said he initially thought Herba must have been some kind of genius to come up with such an elaborate plan. But this perception quickly evaporated during his trial, where his ineptitude was laid bare.

Herba and his brother Michal, who was his accomplice and drove the car to the farmhouse in Viu, near Turin, were each jailed for 16 years and nine months, although their sentences were reduced on appeal. Michal was recently released from prison.

Chloe's agent, Adrian Sington, said the guilty verdicts were a vindication and proof of her innocence.

"One of the difficulties with a psychopath and a narcissist, as Mr Herba is, is that he behaves in such a way that it's almost impossible to believe that someone could be so stupid and so, in some ways, it's not surprising that the media found Chloe’s story difficult to believe.

"Let’s not forget she was bundled into a suitcase, injected with ketamine in the boot of a car and thought she was going to die."

*Kidnapped: The Chloe Ayling Story is on BBC3 at 9pm