Chilling Email Sent After British Model Was Kidnapped In Milan

During the search for a missing 20-year-old woman, officers received a chilling message from the person who had abducted her.

In 2017, British model Chloe Ayling flew to Milan, Italy, believing she was booked for a photoshoot. But instead of stepping into a studio, she was drugged and kidnapped by a man who had been emailing her agent while pretending to be a photographer named 'Andre Lazio'.

The horrifying plan was to auction her off through the dark web. Luckily, Chloe made it out alive. Her kidnapper began to develop feelings for her, and she used that emotional connection to convince him to set her free.

At the same time, law enforcement teams in both the UK and Italy were doing everything they could to track down Chloe before she could be sold off to the highest bidder.

As the deadline approached, they received a message that left one investigator feeling completely crushed, believing they had run out of time.

The email was short and deeply unsettling. It simply read 'she's gone mate', suggesting that Chloe had already been sold. At that moment, the authorities still had no idea that Chloe was actually alive and not yet harmed.

Chloe Ayling was kidnapped in 2017 chloeayling97/Instagram

One of the detectives who worked on the case in 2017 has now spoken out in a new BBC documentary series, though he chose to remain anonymous.

The show is titled Chloe Ayling: My Unbelievable Kidnapping, and the first episode aired on BBC on August 4.

In the documentary, the investigator recalled the exact moment he read the email suggesting Chloe had already been sold to someone.

He said: "There was a single email that came in around 3am that just said 'she's gone'. She was going to be sold into the sex industry. You don't know where she's going to be held or for how long, what's she's going to endure... You think, well there's no coming back from that."

"That moment was terrible," he continued. "It was probably the lowest ebb in 30 years. I'd been given a responsibility and I'd failed. It's not an easy thing to admit but it's true."

However, Chloe had not been sold. The very next day, the investigator discovered that her abductor had unexpectedly brought her to the Milan consulate instead.

Although she was initially told to drop the investigation into her kidnapping, Chloe chose to share everything she knew about the man who took her. He was later identified as Łukasz Herba.

Almost a year after the frightening incident, Łukasz was put on trial. He was ultimately found guilty of kidnapping Chloe and was sentenced to nearly 17 years in prison.