A Polish man charged with kidnapping a British model for ransom testified that she agreed to the scheme in a bid to boost her career, denying his previous statements that he was trying to make money for treatment of leukaemia.
Lukasz Herba, testifying in his own defence, said that 20-year-old Chloe Ayling did not know that the kidnapping plot was afoot when she came to Milan for a modelling job last July. But the defendant said that he revealed it to her when she arrived at the mock photographic studio, and that she agreed.
“She knew that when the scandal finished, she would earn lots of money,” he said through an interpreter.
Ms Ayling has previously said that she understands why people may doubt her story, but insisted she was "terrified" and certain she would die during the ordeal.
Prosecutors allege Mr Herba drugged the aspiring model and transported her in a canvas bag to a farmhouse where she was held for six days last July, at times handcuffed by her hands and feet. He was arrested after Mr Herba allegedly had a change of heart and released her at the British Consulate.
Mr Herba, 30, told the court that he met Ms Ayling over Facebook in 2015. Under questioning by his lawyer, he said they went out once together in England while she was pregnant. He told the court that that is when the kidnap idea was first hatched, but that she backed down after entering into a relationship.
He said that he contacted her again after seeing on Facebook that the relationship had ended, and then arranged through her agent for her to go to Milan and Paris for a modelling job in April 2017. He said he revealed the kidnapping plot to her at that juncture, but she refused because she did not like the venue where she would be staying.
Under cross-examination by the judge, Mr Herba said that Ms Ayling was convinced before going to Milan and to Paris that the modelling jobs were real.
Speaking softly, he denied his initial statements that he was ill to investigators and that he needed to earn money to treat his leukaemia. He also said he had made up both the Black Death group, which he claimed was behind the kidnapping and deep web auctions of women, and a series of Romanian co-conspirators.
He acknowledged building a website where women were advertised to the highest bidder and describing himself as a killer-for-hire who had worked for the FBI, CIA and Mossad, but said he only made these claims to draw attention to the site to bring greater notoriety when he would eventually kidnap Ms Ayling. He said the Black Death group was solely his invention.
He also said that his brother, whom Italy wants to extradite from Britain to face charges in the case, was convinced throughout that the kidnapping was real.
He testified that he changed his story now because Ms Ayling had backed out of a pledge to cast blame elsewhere in case of his arrest.
Prosecutor Paolo Storari asked the court for a psychiatric evaluation of the defendant, citing the many contradictions in his story.
