It’s the true-crime case that’s gripped TV viewers: the story of a British model who was lured to a fake photo shoot in Milan before being kidnapped and held captive for a week.
But one of Chloe Ayling’s kidnappers has continued to claim the case is ‘fiction’ in his first interview since the 2017 abduction.
Michal Herba was jailed along with his brother Lukasz after the pair kidnapped Ms Ayling for a sex trafficking gang and tried to sell her as a slave for £250,000.
Ms Ayling, who was just 20 at the time, only managed to escape after convincing Lukasz that she would be his girlfriend if he let her go.
However, after being arrested, the brothers claimed that Ms Ayling had been in a relationship with Lukasz all along and planned the abduction as a ‘publicity stunt’.
Their claims were discredited and Michal was sentenced to 16 years in an Italian prison – serving five. Lukasz was also sentenced to 16 years – cut to 12 on appeal.
However, the Polish brothers’ accusations have sparked years of speculation over whether the case was ‘fake’ – which is now the subject of BBC drama Kidnapped.
Tracked down in Poland last week, Michal continued to insist that he is innocent despite serving time for the crime.
The lorry driver, 43, told The Mail on Sunday: ‘I have not watched the BBC drama and, if they [the writers] did not include the statement my lawyer gave at the trial, I can guarantee it will be 100 per cent fiction.’
Speaking from his mother’s house, he added: ‘I am sure [Ms Ayling and Lukasz] were a couple because my brother kept going to London to see her.
‘He told me he has proof they met, but I can’t say what. They met one or two or three times and went somewhere and, you know, she was young and pretty.
‘Everybody wants to have a young and pretty girlfriend. She wanted publicity and told him, ‘You do something for me and I won’t tell anyone’.’
His allegations have been discredited. However only last week Ms Ayling, from south London, said she still received messages from online trolls seven years after the abduction.
She told The Times: ‘I feel like there was no [acknowledgment] of what I went through. I was never praised for my bravery getting out of that situation. Instead I always have to defend myself.’ While Lukasz, 37, remains in jail, Michal was released in 2022. He brands the Italian legal system ‘the worst in the world’.
He added: ‘The judge believed [Ms Ayling] even though there was no proof.’ In fact, forensic DNA evidence backed up her story.
It placed the brothers at the scene and Michal’s hair was found in the boot of the car she was taken to a remote farmhouse in.
There were also emails between the brothers, who were living in the West Midlands at the time, outlining their plan as well as discussing the purchase of a gun and a bag big enough to fit her body in.
On the key evidence, Michal claimed: ‘If we were talking about a bag, we were talking about something else. Did they find something in the bag? Skin or something? No. Did they find something in the boot? No.’
When our reporter pointed out that they found a strand of his hair in the boot, Michal replied: ‘If the boot is open you can find my hair in my boot or in the back seat, it doesn’t mean anything.’
He also dismissed the emails, which included obscene language about women, saying: ‘You can’t translate Polish into English and understand the real meaning.’
Instead, Michal insisted his brother was ‘stupid and has paid a high price’. He said he did not expect he will be released from prison until 2027.
‘We talk on the phone all the time and I would like to go and visit him, but I have been banned from Italy for 15 years,’ he added.
‘My brother has always been a very helpful person, always wanting to help people. Jail is hard, but he is a strong character. He told me that, after what happened, he would never date a model.’
Asked about his victim, Michal did not show a shred of remorse. ‘I don’t feel anything for Chloe,’ he said. ‘I don’t care what she said because what she said, from the beginning to the end, is b*******.’
Chillingly, Michal said it was ‘too bad we didn’t do this somewhere like Germany because the court system is better there’.
He added: ‘If something happens in Italy involving a woman, it doesn’t matter what the truth is, they will believe her.’
Ms Ayling has been approached for comment.