Chloe Ayling: Video shows model retracing movements in Italian house where she was allegedly kidnapped
The building was supposed to be a photographer's studio – but according to prosecutors it was something else entirely
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Your support makes all the difference.Video has emerged of model Chloe Ayling retracing her movements in the Italian studio where she was allegedly kidnapped.
Ms Ayling became the centre of an international story last year when she said she had been lured to a fake photographer's studio and then kidnapped. The operation had been carried out by the Black Death Group, it was claimed, a shadowy organisation that some reports had suggested was stealing women and selling them as sex slaves.
The new footage shows Ms Ayling mapping her steps between the supposed photographer's studio in Milan where she was supposed to be having a photoshoot. From there, she was taken to a farmhouse, where she was allegedly held for six days.
The video has been made public after being played at the trial of the Polish man who is accused of kidnapping her.
In the video, 20-year-old Ms Ayling walks Italian investigators through the supposed photographer's studio in Milan where her agent had arranged a modelling job. She signalled to police a spot near a doorway where she said she was grabbed from behind.
Images shown to the court in Milan revealed Ms Ayling's suitcase, phone and clothing which were found by police investigating her disappearance last 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.
Only two suspects have been identified in the case. A 30-year-old Pole, Lukasz Herba, who was arrested after releasing Ms Aylingat the British consulate in Milan, is being tried for the kidnapping. Italian prosecutors are also seeking to try Herba's brother, who is in the UK.
Investigator Gianluca Simontacchi told the court that Ms Ayling broke down in tears as they reached the farmhouse, and had to be calmed by her lawyer before being able to continue.
Inside the building, she pointed out a piece of furniture where she said she had been cuffed by her hands and feet overnight on the first night.
She then showed a bedroom, where she said later she shared a bed with her alleged kidnapper; a photograph entered into evidence showed a blanket folded to create a boundary down the middle of the bed.
Finally, she showed investigators where she accompanied her kidnapper to buy food and a pair of trainers in a nearby town before her release.
In court testimony, a grocery store owner's son said that Herba had come to the store several times to buy fruit and vegetables, and that Ms Ayling waited outside once.
A neighbour of the farmhouse where she was held testified that he had seen Ms Ayling with Herba at least twice, and from a distance it looked like they were a couple.
Ms Ayling's lawyer, Francesco Pesce, dismissed any notion that a video showing Ayling walking hand-in-hand with Herba shown at an earlier hearing cast any doubt on the kidnapping allegation.
"She was holding hands with Mr Herba but she looked, at least in my opinion, she looked frightened, quite scared," he said.
A police toxicologist testified that tests of Ms Ayling's hair indicated the presence of the drug ketamine, under the influence of which one remains conscious but disassociated from reality. The expert said there was a tiny hole on Ms Ayling's inner wrist consistent with an injection, but she said there was no way of knowing precisely when the drug had been administered.
"It corresponds perfectly with the picture we have of Miss Ayling," she said, showing a photograph of the model with her eyes half-closed and her pupils dilated, which was allegedly circulated on the internet.
Herba's lawyer, Bozena Katia Kolakowska, said his client would testify at the next hearing, and that he is expected to say that the kidnapping was a ploy to give Ms Ayling's modelling career a boost.