Killer Stories with Harvey Guillén - Chloe Ayling: Kidnapping Victim or Fame Hungry Model?

Episode Date: February 23, 2026

When a young model vanishes in Italy, the story seems disturbingly familiar—until her sudden reappearance raises more questions than answers. As investigators dig deeper, a case that looked open-and-shut twists into something far stranger.Sources for this episode include:Chloe Ayling: My Unbelievable Kidnapping (2025, BBC Three) directed by Stuart Bernard and Miles Bladen-Ryall"Model Says She Was Kidnapped, Auctioned as Sex Slave on Dark Web" (Vice)"Model Chloe Ayling Was Lured to Italy and Held for Ransom for Days” (People)“Drugged and kidnapped model says people still call her a liar years on” (BBC)“Chloe Ayling: My Unbelievable Kindapping — Interview” (STYLE)Keep up with Killer Stories! Instagram: @killerstoriespodTikTok: @killerstoriespodX: @killerstorieshq Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

You know Helen of Troy, right? Yeah, of course you do. The face that launched a thousand ships, the most beautiful woman in the ancient world, famous mostly for being kidnapped. That's right. In the old myth, the goddess Aphrodite promised Helen to Paris,

the prince of Troy. But one problem. Helen is already married. So Aphrodite helps Paris abduct her. And that spark sets off a decade-long war. But there's another version of the story. story, a version where Helen wasn't taken at all, where she went willingly because she had a crush on the prince and wanted a new life. Two versions of the same story. They can't both be true. Not in the same universe. But here's what's

wild. Whether Helen is a victim or the accomplice, she's always the cause. Not the gods, not the kings, not the men with their armies, her. Now why do you think that is? Today's story isn't just another kidnapping story. It's a story about how it's decided which women get believed and which ones get blamed. I'm Harvey Guillen, and this is Killer Stories. You remember 2017? I do. It was the pre-COVID era, so everything felt different, but also in the ways that matter, kind of the same. You know?

That July, a young model named Chloe Aileen, lands in Milan for a photo shoot. She's 20 from South London and just starting to get traction in the world of glamour. She grew up with a Polish mom, the kind who worries about everything, especially how Chloe doesn't seem to worry at all. Because Chloe's wire differently, impulsive, ambitious, fearless, and unashamed about wanting to be famous. She's already built a big social following,

and this trip feels like the right step towards the life she wants. She spends her first day exactly how do you expect, checking into her hotel, exploring the city, grabbing some content for her socials. The photo shoot is scheduled for the next morning with a photographer named Andre Lazio. He'd hired her once before for a shoot in Paris, but it got canceled last minute.

Still, they met in person briefly, enough that she knows who she's looking for now. Chloe arrives to the location early. There's not a lot of people around, so she calls the contact number she was given. Someone by the name of Daniel answers. He says Andre hasn't arrived yet, but he's inside, so come on in.

But when Chloe walks through the front door, there's no one there to greet her. She's alone and not really sure what is happening. And that's when she feels a man's hand. It comes from behind and covers her nose and mouth, panicking. She tries to wrestle it away so she can breathe, but it doesn't work. A second man appears in front of her wearing a ski mask. He helps restrain her.

And in the struggle, Chloe watches something terrifying happen. Her attackers take out a syringe filled with something, and unable to break free, she watches the needle get injected into her arm. The next thing she knows, her body slumps over. Her vision fades to black. When her eyes open, it's still dark. She's alone. Her body is wrapped in a duffel bag in the trunk of a car with only one small hole to breathe through.

Can you even imagine? And understandably, it takes her a long time to realize what's going on, where she is, what's happened. But Chloe doesn't panic. She's not playing out all the horrible possibilities in her head, maybe because she's come up with a logical explanation. She's thinking, these guys must have grabbed the wrong person, and incredibly, Chloe stays calm through everything that happens next. Two masked men pull her from the trunk, lead her inside a farmhouse in the middle of nowhere

Italy, handcuff her to some furniture in a bedroom upstairs, and leave her in the dark. Even Chloe's kidnappers are shocked by how well she's handling things. One of them comes into the room and is like, I don't get it. You most girls are screaming and having a fit at this point. Why are you so calm? Okay, it's fair to say Chloe processes fear differently than most people. Something will come back to later. But it's not like Chloe isn't scared.

She definitely is, especially because she finds out she was the target. But she's one of those people who can keep level-headed in really extreme and bizarre situations. Like now, when she realizes she knows the guy who kidnapped her. It's Andre, the photographer, except Andre isn't his real name. Big surprise, he's not actually a photographer as well.

He tells her to call him MD. He says he works for a group called the Black Death, and they have big, big plans for Chloe. And while Chloe is trapped in that nightmare, back in London, her manager gets a terrifying email. It's from MD. He says he has Chloe, and that he's a contract killer working for a human trafficking group.

Chloe's manager needs to gather as much money as possible. Otherwise, Chloe will be sold at auction as a sex slave on the dark web. The auction is already set for Sunday, just a few days away. So, time is ticking. And things get even more serious when a second email comes. It says Chloe is being held in Germany and gives an actual dollar amount that needs to be hit. $300,000. dollars, or Chloe gets sold.

And even scarier, there are three pictures attached to the email. You need to see one of them to understand how investigators react. Chloe's lying on her back, on the floor, completely unconscious. She's only wearing a body suit and she doesn't look well. Her eyes are glazed over, staring up at the ceiling. When one detective sees the photo, he knows it's serious. He assumes she's dead. But somewhere in Italy, Chloe's alive and trying to stay that way.

Her days are consumed by paranoia. The date of her auction is ticking closer and closer. She says she feared for her life second by second, minute by minute, hour by hour. Out of the five men, she says, were involved in the operation. She only interacted with two, MD, and one other. But most of the time, it was just her and MD in the farmhouse. He told her he was a trained assassin, and he would sometimes play mind games with her,

like when she was starving, and he handed her a plate of rice cakes as he talked about poison being his favorite method of killing. Lots and lots of energy get poured into finding Chloe. Two different investigations in two countries, officials from both Italy and Italy, both Italy and the UK. But they never end up finding her

because she finds them first. Okay, this is the point in the story where it goes from strange to completely bizarre. On day six of her abduction, Chloe walks into the British consulate in Milan and tells officials about her kidnapping. And weirdly enough, she's not alone. She's with MD.

The trained assassin who abducted her and held her for ransom for almost a week. But that's not the story Chloe gives the officials. Weirdly enough, she acts like MD. He's a good guy. A friend of hers, someone who helped her escape, and if that is confusing to you, don't worry, you're not alone.

By the time Chloe makes it back to London, people have a lot of questions for her. About her behavior both in captivity and now, it all seems so strange that people actually start to wonder if maybe she wasn't kidnapped. If maybe it was all made up. If it was all a publicity stunt for more fame, I mean, it wouldn't be the first time tragedy turned into attention for Chloe.

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All over smooth, all-day comfort, vanity fair lingerie. Find yours at Target today. Okay, remember that first photo shoot, the one with Andre in Paris that was canceled last minute? Well, one of the reasons it got canceled was because of a shooting the night before. It was a really big deal and thought to be an act of terror. Three French police officers and one civilian were shot. One of the officers died. Now, what does it have to do with close?

Chloe ailing, well, she was in Paris that night, not particularly close to the attack, but she still gave a statement to the media, you know, about her experience, what it was like in the city, the fear she felt, and no one really thought much about it at the time. But a few months later, when she's making headlines again about a strange kidnapping scheme that went nowhere, people start to look at those statements in a whole new light. Maybe that was Chloe leveraging a tragedy for personal gain, and maybe it worked so well, she invented a new tragedy so she could do it again. I mean, on its face, the whole abduction story sounds unbelievable. The mass men, the syringe of ketamine, the ransom attempt that was never really enforced.

I mean, what self-respecting criminal enlisted in an organization called the Black Death Group? Come on. It sounds like something from Scooby-Doo. Jinkies. And Chloe's story begins to sound even stranger when you hear some of the details I haven't shared with you yet. Like how she didn't stay handcuff very long. She never tried to escape, even though she was only guarded by one guy most of the time,

Andre, aka MD. And basically the whole time Chloe was in captivity, she shared a bed with him. She also left the farmhouse with him. And this next detail is the one that people just couldn't get past. Chloe and MD went to a hiking shop, a grocery store. He bought Chloe's shoes. And a camera in one of those stores caught them holding hands.

So yeah, the broad strokes of everything feels a little fishy. And to add to the suspicion, when Chloe returns to London and speaks to investigators about her experience, she doesn't tell them about those shopping trips. She doesn't say she never left the farmhouse. She just omits that part from her interview. And then the media did what the media always does. You've probably heard of Pierce Morgan.

He's a popular television personality in the UK. Well, he uses Chloe's shopping trip omission as a big gocha moment on Good Morning Britain. Women have been cross-examined like this for thousands of years, especially when they don't perform the version of victimhood people expect. Because it's not just Chloe's story that people question. It's also how she acts when she comes home. The way she smiles for the cameras, the amount of paid media appearances she makes,

the clothes she wears. And by that, I really mean clothes she doesn't wear. That's what people comment. her risque outfit, she built a career on, for lack of a better word, thirst traps. Beauty becomes evidence against her, an ancient pattern. And they don't like that she brings that style to conversations about really serious trauma, her trauma, or alleged trauma, no one's sure. The optics get even worse when you consider the fact that Chloe gets a book deal from the experience

and a bunch of new social media followers, plus she lands and accepts a spot on Celebrity Big Brother UK, season 22. She lasts 13 days. Sure, she was a working model who had done a handful of high-profile shoots, but she wasn't getting those opportunities before. So you can't argue with the fact that if it was a publicity stunt, it was a pretty good one.

I mean, those are the results PR professionals dream of. Now, at this point, you probably have some questions like, what about the kidnappers? What do they have to say? Turns out the two main guys are brothers. Wukash and Maha Erba, originally from Poland. Wukash is the one who posed as Andre, aka M.D. He's also the one Chloe slept next to and went shopping with.

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One of the most interesting and disturbing parts of this case, well, to me, is after Chloe's kidnapping and she flies back to London safely, two very different timelines begin. The first is the actual criminal trial that happens in Italy. The second is the unofficial trial. that happens everywhere else. The jury is anyone with access to the news, and that's the timeline we've spent most of this episode

talking about so far. But let's go back and visit the other one. OK, so remember Chloe walks into the British consulate with Lukash Irba on July 17, 2017. She says she spent six days being held hostage by a dark web criminal organization known as the Black Death Group. She says Wukash is a good guy, a friend who helped her escape. But the next day, July 18th, police arrest Wukash on kidnapping charges.

After all, he played a big role in the abduction and arrest his brother, Mihal, about a month later. Even though Chloe says there were more men involved, they are the only two she interacted with. With the two brothers in prison, officials investigate, they conduct interviews, compare stories, examined the evidence and almost a year later in June 2018, they hold a trial in Italy. There's not a lot of fanfare, but at the end of it, Wukash and Miha are convicted of kidnapping Chloe Ailing and sentenced to 16 years in prison each. Meanwhile, the court ruled in Chloe's favor. She was telling the truth the whole time. And if you asked to tell him officials, it wasn't a close call. It was cut and dry. She was a victim. Not the culprit. Not an accomplice.

By the time the decision happens, the media cycle has moved on. People have made up their minds. They've already decided Chloe's guilt or innocence for themselves. And all those stories that question her character and picked away at her appearance, the headlines about how she was too happy, too sexy, too ambitious, to be telling her. the truth. That's what ends up sticking in people's heads. And here's the part of people forget. Can you imagine? I mean, really think about this. You show up to work one day, all right? And you're stabbed with a needle full of ketamine, driven to the middle of nowhere in a foreign country, told that you'll be sold as a sex slave if the train killers holding you hostage don't have

their demands met. And after you survive six days of captivity and finally make it back home, You're called a liar for years to come, even after you're vindicated in a court of law, all because people didn't care enough to listen to you and get the full story. The reason Chloe's story was so unbelievable wasn't because it was a lie, it was because the kidnapper's actions didn't make sense.

But that's not Chloe's fault. Her story never changed. And believe it or not, the answers to all those questions people had were there the whole time. Let's start with, was the Black Death Group real? Fair question. Does the name sound made up? Absolutely. Is it?

That's harder to answer. We don't really know. It's unclear how real, expansive, or legitimate they are. But, I will say, rumors about the Black Death Group and its alleged crimes predate Chloe's abduction by quite a bit. Two years before it happened, Interpol launched an investigation into its alleged activities. The group has also hosted a website on the dark web, and while a lot of its online claims have been proven to be fake, Chloe's picture appeared on the site during her abduction. and users seem to express interest in buying her.

That said, it doesn't matter if the Black Death Group is or was real. What matters is whether Chloe thought they were. And she definitely did. Which brings us to why did Chloe behave the way she did in captivity? More specifically, why didn't she try to run away from the farmhouse? And how come she and Wukash appear so cozy together? Well, the answers are pretty simple. Chloe didn't run away because she was afraid.

She didn't know where she was. She didn't speak the language, and in her mind there were lots of other people guarding the house waiting to stop her if she tried because that's what she was told. And I don't know about you, but I would believe the men who drugged me, stuffed me in a trunk of a car and drove me to an abandoned house

in the middle of nowhere, and in retelling her story, that's what Chloe says gets lost. Chloe may be good at keeping calm in high-stress situations, but she still says she cried almost every day that her nights and days were spent living in a nightmare. Except it was real. The reason Chloe slept in bed with Wukash is because he told her to.

He said he'd remove her handcuffs if she did, as she went along with it because he was. was in a position of power, and she wanted to survive, for herself, for her family, and for her young son back home. Yeah, I left that part out. Chloe is a single mom. She had a kid to get back home to. Of course, that doesn't explain the really friendly shopping trips,

but something changed over the course of Chloe's captivity. At a certain point, Wukash tells Chloe the Black Death Group made a mistake. that they shouldn't have taken her because she was a single mom. All of a sudden, he goes from being Chloe's captor and the reason she's there to being a beacon of light in the darkest place she's ever been. And then he goes one step further.

He says to Chloe, I'm going to help you escape, even though it means I'll be putting my own life on the line. He apparently fell in love with Chloe, But that aside, put yourself in Chloe's shoes. Wouldn't you be grateful to? He'd just open a possible escape hatch to her waking nightmare. So yeah, by the time Wuchash offered to buy her new shoes and food,

two things she needed, she fell more comfortable with him. In her mind, he was putting his own life on the line for her. And then, when he proposed a plan to both go to the British consulate, she followed it. to a T. He just thought he came up with a good enough story that he wouldn't go to jail. The Italian police just saw right through it. They used the words narcissistic fantasies to describe him. He apparently constantly changed his story.

He and his brother adopted the PR stunt defense only after that narrative was made popular by the media. And that just leaves Chloe's behavior after the fact. is the easiest to explain. It's 2026. Can we all agree that people handle things differently? There's no one way to grieve. There's no right way to process trauma.

I don't know why we're sometimes quick to give the accused the benefit of the doubt, but not the accuser. Chloe smiled when she arrived back home because she was happy to be alive. She dressed the way she did because she was a model and those were her clothes.

She liked them. She said yes to me. media appearances because it was her story to tell. And all of that should be enough. But it wasn't. But even with all that, something huge was missing from the public conversation. Chloe is autistic.

Her diagnosis affects the way she interacts with and reacts to things, to people, to experiences, to situations. Like when she's standing in her front yard, reading a prepared statement in front of a million cameras. But as Chloe says, the way people react to her isn't just because of her diagnosis. There were so many other factors at play,

assumptions and biases. And the worst part is she's still dealing with the fallout. People still message her, accusing her of being a liar, a fraud, an attention seeker. And that's despite the TV show, memoir, and BBC documentary that have all come out documenting otherwise. And that brings us back to where we started. I started this episode with Helen of Troy.

Unlike Chloe, Helen's a character, not a real person. She famously appears in Homer's epic, The Iliad, but let's pretend for a second that she is real. As real as Chloe. The Iliad is almost 16,000 lines long. Helen speaks roughly 80 of those lines, meaning she barely appears in a story that in every translation is about her. Her beauty causes the war.

Her beauty is her character. She feels bad about it, but that's about all we know. Now imagine a world where Homer let Helen speak as much as the people commenting on her, her appearance. And if, when she did, people really listen to understand. I don't know, that'd be pretty cool, right? Maybe we'd hear fewer myths and more women. Thanks for tuning in to Killer Stories, a Spotify podcast. New episode releases on Mondays. If you like today's story and want to

learn more, we drop some of our favorite sources in the episode description. Until next time, I'm Harvey and stay safe out there. Want to hear something spooky. Some monster, it reminded me of Bigfoot. Monsters Among Us is a weekly podcast featuring true stories of the paranormal. One of the boys started to exhibit demonic possession. Stories straight from the witnesses' mouths themselves. Something very snake-like lifted its head out of the water.

Hosted by me, your guide, Derek Hayes. Somehow I lost eight whole hours. Listen now on Spotify or wherever you get joined. podcast. A beloved 75-year-old man washing up getting ready for bed is brutally beaten and killed. Despite an exhaustive investigation, the killer avoids arrest and then strikes again. I'm Global News crime reporter Nancy Hicks. You might listen to a lot of true crime podcasts this year, but they're not crime beat. Search for and follow the award-winning podcast Crime Beat on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon on music and wherever you find your favorite podcasts.