Autism Diagnosis and Final Reflections

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Fful terms at mintMobile dot com d In the early hours of july eleventh, twenty seventeen Chle Aling A twenty year old British glamour and page three model arrived at a studio in Milan, Italy's fashion capital For what she believed was going to be a leather clad motorcycle themed photos shoot but instead By the end of the day, she would be drugged with ketamine, stuffed into the trunk of a car, stuffed into a bag, driven across northern Italy by a man claiming to be part of a shadowy criminal organization known as Black Death An organization of nefarious agents spread out across Europe that was going to sell her into sexual slavery via a dark web auction being held in just a few days time unless she could come up with several hundred thousand dollars that she did not have and ran some money Italian investigators and their British counterparts, and then the public at large will struggle mightily to make sense of this story When she makes that alive, journalists will zero in on some of Chloe's seemingly strange behavior witnessed during her captivity. and directly following her release, and the British public will ridicule her Many will question whether a kidnapping had ever occurred. or if Chloe Alien's abduction had actually been a staged publicity stunt. What if the two men arrested for the crime were not her captors after all but instead were her accomplices So what really happened in Italy that summer? Was this a failed human trafficking attempt The bizarre ploy of love and obsession or an elaborate publicity stunt that spiraled out of control Today, we are diving into the highly entertaining and very unusual story of the abduction of Chloe Ailen, where the line between victim and suspect was blurred for so long by so many and still is today by some, on this true crime or is it fake crime ition time son This is Michael McDonald and you're listening to Time Suck Well, happy Monday. Wlcome or welcome back to the cult of the Curious Dan Cumin is a suck Master, Dan of God Nova Scotia, Royal Canadian Mount Police Audit And you are listening to Time suck Hell Nimerot, Hell, Sufina praise to be good boy Jangles and Glory B to Triple M. One quick announcement. Well You know what? It's a little bit of a long announcement. And then we were off into the story If you are thinking of attending the wet hot Bad Magic summer camp this fall, You you're going to want to get your ticket soon because this year will be the last year we were ever going to hold the Wed Hot Bad Magic summer camp. I know, not the greatest announcement to start off the show, but also Only one more of these makes this next one that more special Here's the reality of it first camp hosted a little over five hundred people. But each year, the attendance has dwindled a bit this year. We have around three hundred campers as I record this We've had a lot of the same people keep coming back, which I think speaks to how fun this event has been, But those same people can't keep coming back every year. It's just not financially responsible for us to keep taking this big risk going forward And I'm not actually upset about it. I mean, I'm a little bit sad, sure, but also so grateful. wayay more grateful than sad I'm grateful that we were ever able to pull it off even one time Camp is a huge ask Not just the cost of the ticket. It's also transportation, time off of work, days spent away from your family, which could also mean incurring childcare costs, you know, giving a PTO for a vacation with us instead of somebody else You know, we know that we've been asking a lot of you year over year Travel costs have gone up a lot more recently and might not be going going down anytime soon And also, you know, all good things come to an end It is just a natural cycle of life. And sometimes though when one thing ends, something else begins, something really cool. anotherother reason for wrapping camp up this year is a selfish one on my part I want to be focusing more on fiction. creat in stories starting next year I've been very creatively inspired, writing nightmare fuel short stories over on the Scared to Death feed is where we've been releasing them. I thought I would like writing them when I started working on them a little over two years ago as an experiment Well, I like it way, way more than I ever hoped I would And the feedback has been tremendous I want to start writing books. I want to start doing more with these stories, you know, converting them into different formats, but to do that, I need a lot more time, time I definitely do not have right now. Camp after this year will partially be a casualty of me creating more space for something new. That said, I am so looking forward to camp this year. I truly am Every year, so many special moments have been made. I expect no difference this fall U you know, no different. So if coming to camp this year is an option for you or if you know, we're really hoping to come to camp at some point in the future Well you want you're going to want to do it now If you want to join us for the final camperw blowout tickets are still available until august third. Camp is going to be september tenth through the thirteenth in Equinok Pennsylvania I think Woodstock of the Fed Music Festival. it's it's nearby that. We will be there full of gratitude for the years of Mmories made. It's gonna to be fucking awesome. It really is such a unique and special event. I don't know of any other podcasts who have put together something like this you know over and over And again, I'm so grateful that we were ever able to do it even one time So a huge thank you to everyone who has come in years past and everyone who will be coming this year I hope some of you will end up enjoying some of the new things I will be working on starting next year. I have a really good feeling about them. Sorry to be a little cryptic U But I don't want to share anym more about next year right now Please go to badmagicprouctions dot com scroll on down to the graphic for wet hot, bad magic Smmer camp twenty six to learn more if you are interested. Okay I know that was a lot But now Let's dig into Another wild one Not going to say much before the timeline today If you haven't heard of this story, you know if you're not familiar with it, I think this is going to be more entertaining than if you had It'll be captivating Very confusing in moments But by the end I think you'll be like Oh Okay. Now it all makes sense. Holy shit If you've heard of this before, I think you'll find new details about this story revealed here that didn't make the final cut in various DocU series and other media about this all It is such a ridiculous story And I'll tell it all chronologically in today's Time suck timeline Trap on those boots, soldier We're marching down a time suck timeline Chloe Ayen was born on july fourteenth, nineteen ninety seven in Coleson a town of about twenty five thousand people in the South London borough of Croydon. While Croyd itself has a lingering reputation for being a little rough around the edges Colleston is generally seen as a quieter, more pleasant commuter town. It's right on the very outer edge of Greater London. So while it is technically inside of the London Metro area, it is not the London that most of us probably picture. This is not an urban area. It's decidedly suburban Tetering towards rural along its outer edge That is very close to the ceremonial county of Surrey. a county bordered by the Ger London to the northeast And therefore, its residents have quick and easy access to the countryside golf clubs, the woods, a bunch of British pubs. But nearly everybody in England has access to a bunch of British pubs, I guess U Chloe's mother Beiata is Polish Her father was English But he wasn't in the picture for most of Chloe's life. In fact, he largely abandoned Chloe and her mother and didn't get back in touch until Chloe Aliens started making all the, you know newspaper articles TV shows because of this abduction So he sound like a really cool de Uh what, my daughter's famous now? Oh shit. Well I guess she might be worth checking in with Oh, maybe she's rich too Everybody needs a new pair of shoes I would share his name, but his identity has never been publicly revealed. So Chloe was raised by a single mom. Polish. Single mom So you know that life was super hard for. She was essentially raised by wolves or rather a wolf someomeone mentally incapable. fully learning a human language. Someone barely able to walk upright, more beast than human, a creature of the night who undoubtedly ate mostly raw meat Sityard. And literally howed to the moon No actually, her mama has seemed to be consistently awesome. Hardworking, caring, smart, attentive, strong, beautiful woman An hot. I love the way so many Polish women look. My Polish Lucifina and Lindsey being the top of the list What is it about Polish women? I swear didn't do or I swear didn't know, excuse me that Chloe was Polish before deciding to do this topic by the way had not heard his tale before a researcher suggested. Anyway, Chloe and her mom are but a few of many polles around London. The Polish community actually currently forms one of the largest foreign born populations in the entire country. Estimates range between six hundred fifty to seven hundred fifty thousand Polish citizens currently living across the UK with the vast majority residing in England and the largest concentration where roughly one hundred and twenty seven thousand Polish nationals live right there in London. Massive wave of migration began after Poland joined the EU, the European Union in two thousand four Seven years after Chloe was born, when the UK immediately opened its borders Polish workers Now enough pole talk. This isn't the fucking pole talkk cast, okay h desespite dad not being in the picture She, her mom, and others have said that she was a very, very happy child Al giggling, always smiling. the sort of kid who made adults stop and comment on how cheerful she was primary school teacher even used to call her smile prettyre adorable It was a fitty nickname because Chloe Chloe rarely cried found crying to be very embarrassing And if she did need to shed a tear, she would typically wait until she could behind closed doors and alone so no one else would see her Chloe also didn't read people the way other kids did when she was very young, the way most other kids did. She didn't pick up on the hints and social cues that most of the kids around her you know noticed and picked up on She needed everything spelled out very directly notot good with sarcasm or absurdity Her mom would accompany her on school field trips when she was little, partially because she was worried that her daughter would not be able to properly communicate what she needed or even realize if she was in trouble Chloe herself said that when she was a kid somebody could tell her off, right? They could blatantly bully her and she would be blissfully unaware of that fact and just smile back at them M on why she is emotionally and mentally wired like this at the end of the episode As a teenager, Chloe, an only child, by the way, attended Woodcoe High School and South Croydon. She did well there. She got good grades. The only subject she failed was history, which she later has said that she hated. Painfullyor And I do get that I love history But I will say there are definitely some boring ass history teachers out there, which is a shame And sometimes' not their fault because they're handcuffed by their you know administration by what they're allowed to kind of teach and how to teach it And it's a bummer because so much of history is so naturally exciting and wildly intriguing You know, like you have to fucking work hard to suck the fun and interesting aspects out of history lessons Chloe said she would sit in history class, staring at the clock, waiting for it to be over. She did not see the point in studying the past. She preferred to focus on the future No, Chloe, look at the past. You can actually help with the future, H you predict it help you understand the present as well, right? It can help you handle adversity, As you look forward, as you realize no struggle is truly new and patterns repeat Gring up as Chloe began to read people a little better She began to tend to deal with problems in a very matter of eff fact way or matter of fact way She was a problem solver who did not get caught up in emotion She do not dwell on things, tended not to overthink or sit with uncomfortable emotions In fact, she hated talking about big feelings and preferred to keep everything happy and surface level It was wood code where Chloe met her best friend Tony The two girls quickly became inseparable They were like sisters and came up with matchy nicknames for each other Chloe called Tony Toenail And Tony called Chloe Kloa Lo a good nickname, right? Solid work In high school, Chloe became the kind of girl, not surprising at all for a future model who put a lot of time and energy into her appearance carefully styled her hair every single day before school, get her makeup just right as well. She would transform her long blonde hair into a quiff hairirstyle, which was, you know, very popular in the two thousand tenens If you would ask Chloe back then what she wanted to be when she finished school She would have told you without hesitation that she wanted to be a successful model that she wanted at least a hundred thousand followers, that she wanted to travel and see the world's most beautiful places, that she wanted to make her own money in a bunch of it One of those people rare in my experience who knew who they were, knew what they wanted to be, what they wanted out of life, you know, at an early age. Growing up in Colldeston, Chloe would walk her dogs around the streets of the you know, suburbs and up into Surrey And look at all the grand houses with pillars. She loved big houses with pillars specifically She would look at them and think, I want one of those. And unlike some people, she actually believed that she could get one of those. Her mantra was that if you want something badly enough, you will get it because you will not stop trying and you will not accept anything less. She trusted she could make all her dreams happen. She just had to work hard for them She was prepared to do whatever it took to become famous This ambition of hers. would help lead a lot of people in the wake of her kidnapping to think that she had staged it out Maybe, you know, according to some people, too honest, too transparent about her ambition. Though better at reading people in high school, she was still far from great at it She was a beautiful girl, didn't always realize others' intentions towards beautiful girls When Chloe was around fifteen, one of her teachers, grown ass man, obviously and in a position of authority above her Astro out to lunch And she accepted a quiet table at the back of the restaurant Luckily, her best friend Tony was a lot more street smart than Chloe was. She came along to keep an eye on things. She immediately thought the situation was bizarre and inappropriate, which was It was obvious to everyone that this teacher was what they were trying to do, obvious to everyone except for Chloe She didn't think there was anything wrong with a male teacher taking his minor female student out to lunch far away from the school just to two of them in a little quiet spot to her. That was just lunch Not an obvious date. She never went anywhere alone with that teacher again after that. Not sure if you ever got into trouble for that. Sadly probably didn't Probably just was it what Inappropriate. I just wanted to talk to her about her studies. G, you you can't put a little extra energy into teaching now into taking care of kids W to make sure she feelt good about the assignments. You know? Why are we trying to turn this into something that's not I was hoping to bring her back to my place where we could talk about school in privates, you know, without the distraction of our clothes. I mean, other people around Chloe describe herself Den has being incredibly naive I truly believed that the world was full of mostly good kind people She thought that if she just stayed out of people's way, didn't bother them, then nothing bad would happen to her. That worldview lasted through most of her teenage years. Lasted until she started modeling. And then, well, then things changed rather quickly Before modeling Not long before at the age of sixteen. Chloe completed her GCSEs, the UK's main standardized exam is roughly equivalent to finishing tenth grade here in the States And then moved on to what's called sixth form, where British students spend two years studying just a handful of subjects before university. W with hopes to becoming a lawyer. if her modeling career didn't take off, she chose law, business, and psychology Soil I wouldn't fin Life had other plans eararly twenty thousand fifteen, she got pregnant summer before her final year of high school while on a holiday in Spain She'd met a man named Connor Kees, a carpet fitter from the UK. Sounds like he's about the same age as her from references to him made in the media. Within a year of her age, sounds like so they were both kids The two had an on again off again, Dalliance. By the middle of twenty fifteen, the relationship was over, roughly six months after Ashton was born. Some sources say they broke up earlier than that, you know before she gave birth. So I guess that would have been pretty the broke up between the middle of twenty fifteen and early twenty sixteen, actually U in November of twenty fifteen, Chloe had Ashon When she's still seventeen And her and Connor since the breakup have shared custody Maybe evenly think Probably There was a lot of British tabloid speculation about all this includluding about exactly when she had her kid. According to an article in the U.K's Daily Star, Connor has largely raised Ashton Or at least was mostly raising him back in twenty seventeen. He was quoted as sayaning shortly after her kidnapping that year She can come and see him whenever she wants to thing is I am still waiting for her to do that And he also maybe said She wants to be a model And she can't do it when she's forty But for now, she's young and dumb Since I was with her, she has changed. She's already doing stuff that she didn't when I was with her. Did he really say that? Is that true? The Daily star is like the US' Star magazine when it comes to its level of journalistic integrity mayaybe slightly more reliable than like the weekly world news And a UK Daily Mail interview, another tableloid, There's so many fucking tableloids in the UK. mr. Keys described Chloe as being, quote, one hundred percent focused on her modeling career and said that their son Ashton spends much of his time with him because Ms. Aileen. is often too busy abroad on photo shoots So maybe that shit was true Or maybe he's a fucking loser and is jealous of over and spiteful. Who knows? Regardless of the custody situation, studying on top of trying to raise a child and start a modeling career proved too much for Chloe and she failed her A levels A legal career now off the table at least for the moment So she decided to really get serious about modeling. However, even when her body had returned to its pre pregnancy shape There was still a big problem for her modeling career at five foot six. Chloe two inches below the industry minimum for women looking for runway in high fashion work She is also quite curvy which is frowned upon for high fashion cover models One of the reasons I've always found girl next Door types, non runway models actually far more attractive and sexy than runway models If you're a runway model, no offense. Obviously, most of the world thinks you're incredibly gorgeous. don't I don't think're fucking ugly at all. far more attractive than I am. It's just not my my type I recognize again Runway models often very beautiful, J just not the look for me Isn't it wonderful By the way, the beauty is so subjective for all of us Anyone struggling with her self esteem, appearance wise, man or woman? just remember that Right? You don't need to conform to somebody else's look to some other standard. You need to find somebody who loves your look. And they are out there beaten off or diddling away to thoughts of your sweet naked ass Where a size it happens to be right now goo fucking get it Stf good hygen Put a little effort into your appearance Have some pride You know, just fuck that shit about it about pride coming before a fall. Have a have a little pride. And go get it Anyway for Chlo for lack of height and having well, hips and boobs Manted a modeling career in Glossy magazines, Hot Coutour. Catwalks was Pret unlikely ost agents wouldn't even consider her for that Un Fortunately, modeling, not just high fashioned runways, there's all sorts of modeling. Hand modeling. Do you guys know I was a hand model? Fitness modeling. Did you know I was I was a fitness model You knew I wasn't glamour modeling And that's what Chloe chose, you know, for which Chloe, a curvy figure blonde hair was a natural fit In this kind of modeling, the goal is not to sell clothes, it's to sell the fantasy of the person wearing them. Lingerie shoots, swimmer campaigns, men's magazines, calendars, topless stuff, maybe fully nude stuff. Chloe started doing test shoots, built up a portfolio. signed with her first agency and quickly became high in demand Le' first major break came in December of twenty sixteen appeared in a YouTube video on the JMX YouTube channel titled One goal equals remove one piece of clothing football challenge seventeen million views of this recording, probablyro infuriating A lot of content creators out there G People spend fucking years putting together a standu up special or You know, all this time creating a song and awesome music video. and they're like, oh my Godd, a million views is fucking incredible This guy' like I to play a a fucking strip soccer match with just me and a buddy and two girls, seventeen million U nothing will ever sell better than sex. In the video Chlo along another model They they took turns kking socceralls into a goal It's not even like a good camera they used. There's production value is very low for every goal they missed. had to take off an item of clothing. the video wentviral Some people called it exploitative. Others loved it, you know, but their opinions did not matter to Chloe Wh who didn't take off much by the way Uh, just like just like a shirt You know, she had uh something else underneath it a a lingerie type of thing a Lacy Camisle, I think, I'm not great with identifying various types of clothing. Despite not revealing much, the video going viral in tandem with her personality and natural looks led to her Instagram following exploding time the video had run its course Chloe had around two hundred thousand followers And that led to some amazing new job opportunities. She started booking out a bunch of modeling jobs, making around six hundred pounds a day for these jobs nineteen years old, right? That's some serious bank. However, all this newfound attention, you know, came at a cost Aording to her buddy Tony, O toenail. As Clonell's social media following grew, so did being DMed by a bunch of creepy, delusional mostly older men Uh the kind of guys who think sending a young woman or any woman pick of their dick. along with a not so clever line like W to write it Down to fuck actually lead to real life sex I'm not kidd back in twenty sixteen, so around the same time I was hosting a show down in Los Angeles for the Payboy Channel, the Plboy Morning S show. I hosted it in twenty fifteen, twenty sixteen We have nude models doing silly campy games four days a week And the models liked me platonically. I was al dating Lindsy was engaged actually and not trying to fuck them. A lot of them, they were really funny and they would tell me these wild stories including stories about guys that message them all the time And I was shocked back then to hear these sties. I wasn't jaded by times so yet But they would tell stories about how many guys, you know literally sent them pictures of their fucking boners. Unsolicited photo after unsolicited photo of a weird dude holding his hard nick in his hand U you know, plus some, you know, little message of like, Hey, what are you doing? You like what you see And they werent joking They weren't doing it for shock value. They were just like, this is like, oh, this is how you flir Uh alwaysways a curious person, I ask them all kinds of questions One being, does that literally ever work B as I can recall, not a single model. Dozens and dozens on the show literally ever went on a single date with the guy who did that I don't remember a single of them ever saying that they even liked it, that they liked getting unsolicited picks of dicks It didn't matter how nice the dick looked. Apparently if you've got a real aesetic, you know, Dick. they still don't want to see it Uh Not just a random fucking photo just out of nowhere. J bam. You want that? You like it? You want to suck it? No, they don't like that Uh, you know, not not once where they're like, o, mama likeike M I wasn't horing a moment ago But after seeing that unsolicited hard cock, O. Muma's about to drown his jeans. by twenty seventeen Chloe getting, you know, she's getting some fame, know, on the internet. She'd signed with Supermodel aggency in London. suupermodel agency founded by Phil Green in nineteen eighty seven represented glamour and commercial models promotional personnel, actors across the UK. Many of its higher profile models also doubled its influencers. as the internet is changing Uh So it was a perfect fit for Chloe. And Chloe and her agent, Phil quickly became close. To Chloe Phil was a father figure. He offered the kind of stability and older male wisdom that she had not had growing up She great She said she trusted him completely Uh, and it does seem like like maybe He's a good guy At least notight doesn't seem like a terrible guy. There are for sure a lot of Harvey Weinstein type creeps amongst modeling agents and producers I got a lot of those stories too from the models I used to work with, sadly. I wasasn't surprised, but I can't find any dirt on Phil green And he's been doing it a long time Still Chloe's trust in him would soon be tested and broken. as her following grew So did her profile and reputation within the industry. And in Fbruary of twenty seventeen, less than a year after she had started modeling, Chloe landed her page three debut in The Daily Star for glamour models in the UK back then Page three was not just a job. it was, you, it was a badge of honor, a sign that you had attained a certain level of, you know, fame within that niche industry. The rough equivalent of a vogue cover for a high fashion editorial model. The shoot was photographed by Jeannie Savage, The blurb on her printed photoshoot read Kurvy Chloe, making her page three debut today and what a frilly thriller she is The nineteen year old Suri Sweetie is studying who fucking writes this. Studying to be a lawyer, but always had a secret yearning to appear in briefs in your favorite paper. I added that Dick laugh. She wasn't actually starting to be a lawyer by the way. I guess they thought that sounded cool The iconic Tpless page three model tradition has largely ended recently in mainstream British print media The sun officially stopped publishing Tplus models in prrint in twenty fifteen, they transitioned to clothed or lingerie clad photos, which are now primarily hosted on page three d. com And the Daily star would shift away from topless images to bikini style shoots in twenty nineteen then officially dropped photographs on page three entirely Chloe's debut, page three C not be topless I started in London for a semester way back in nineteen ninety seven. Yes, I'm ancient. And I distinctly remember flipping through a tabloid and seeing a topless model in print like that for the first time and my Pitish ass being being a little embarrassed And then of course later in private, maybe I remember beaten off in a bathroom. I was nineteen, okay Wh am I kidd? I still might sneak into a bathroom with a page three pick today. I was shocked though, that their tabloids sold all over the place to everyone had nudity Now I think it's and now I think it's probably a better way to go, right? We make nudity too taboo in this country, my opinion. you know, makes us too many of a sex negative, makes nudity seem so shameful overly secretive female and male bodies. Just bodies. So many of us are such weird pureotanical prudes over here I know I've said this before, but I stayed with a totally average British family when I studied there and in the middle of a photo collage of the fam hung on the wall in the living room Mom, dad, three kids. There was this one picture of mom on a topless beach Hitss out. Big tits out. I should add, actually pretty fucking fantastic U I thought it was so fucking weird I remember like there was another American student with me and just like you'd be like, dude, what the fuck, lookook at this But the kidst think it was weir No one else in the family thought was weird. Looking back, they all had a much healthier view of sexuality than I did I theirdo Anyway, when it came to glamor modeling the page three spot put Chloe on the map A month later march twenty seventeen, her agent Phil receives an inquiry from a man calling himself Andre Lazio Claiming to be an Italian photographer who wanted to book Chloe specifically for a motorcycle and leather theme shoot in Paris Chloe was absolutely thrilled Her dreams of being a model traveling the world are coming true. As her agent, Phil, he handles all the logistics and the vetting Yes, Andrea, all the regular followup questions, checks out his website, confirms a studio address, place called Belisma Fqu and requested shoot dates and examples of previous work The M models back at Playbable used to fly around the world for various photo shoots like this as well. man, it used to make me so nervous. Even back then, I guess I had some anxious papa bear energy in me. They did not always have agents They fortunately rarely went alone, usually insist on going with at least one other model that they knew, but not always. Sometimes it is fucking winged it got on a plane, flew to some other country, just hoped the fucker, you know picking them up at the airport wasn't some rapey creeppe I mean, I think they usually at least ask for references contact other models who had worked with them previously, but still. So glad neither one of my kids are doing this kind of work I don't have moral sexuality based judgments about this kind of stuff. I really don't, but on a basic safety level. I would probably be riddled with ulcers My hair would fall out. after you know, a year of just the stress and worry if my kids are doing this T any creeps in the world. Green, however Phil Green had no concerns about Chloes safety for this particular shoot. Everything looked to be above board And what's more, Laio paid part of Chloe's fees and part of the agency's fee nine hundred pounds upfront along with all the travel expenses later though looking back. But there was one detail Phil thought he should have questioned. Of all the bookings Phil Green handled, the Paris job was the only one where the photographer had requested Chloe by name Uually the way modeling castings normally work or at least did then was an agent pitching a selection of models to a photographer. a photographer narrows it down, then multiple girls go out for the same job. A single name request from a first time booker Hly unusual especially since Chloe had never worked with this photographer before And wasn't that well known He hadn't even met her in person or hat he. On april twentieth, twenty seventeen, a Thursday Chloe boarded a flight flew from London to Paris She's nineteen years old She hadn't, it doesn't seem traveled much outside of the country before at this point. She's a small person. She is not skilled in self defense, admittedly naive Still not great at reading people's intentions and social situations and she's alone Yikes The photos shoot was scheduled for Friday. So on Thursday she was free to do as she pleased and she' been at doing what she'd always dreamed of doing, exploring a city she had never seen on somebody else's dime Right so far so good. But then that evening at around nine PM, a gray Audi pulled up alongside a police van on Avenue D Jean Aliai big broad, famous street known for its theaters, cafes, luxury shops to finish the Tour de France, the cycling race for its annual Bastilee D military parades driver, thirty nine year old Kareem Shafi, stepped out carrying a Kashkof gun and shot a police officer twice in the head, killing him before opening fire on surrounding police officers on the pavement, wounding two more and then injuring a German tourist Safi then tried to flee on foot, did not make it far before he was shot dead by responding officers Central Paris goes into lockdown. Metro stations are closed, tourists and locals flee the area, sirens and armed officers are smother in the streets. No one knows if this is part of a bigger coordinated attack or not Luckily it was not shhortly after news of this broke. Chloes phone rings It's agenthill Gen. He had heard there was a terror attack in Paris, He told her to get off the street Do love that Chloe ran to her hotel, which was actually very close to where the shooting had occurred From her hotel room, she could hear sirens outside. Phil told her to stay inside and she did next day, Andre got in touch. He told Phil, he was very sorry but his studio had been ransacked in the chaos Photo shoot would have to rescheduled taxi on the way to take Chloe to the photo shoot, but now it would instead take her to the airport. ed up her things, got into the waiting taxi, and then when she arrived at the airport, Andre was waiting for her He was wearing sunglasses and a hat He handed over ninety pounds in cash to cover some of her expenses. She never really got a proper look at him And then she went home Back in England her life resumed normally The paris job was filed away in Chloe's mind is nothing more than bad timing, an unlucky tragedy for those actually caught up in it did not impact Chloe emotionally, and she was able to easily put it behind her But the Daily star couldn't. the day after the San's Alliger attack. They ran a story about the shooting and illustrated it. Now they used a topless page three shot of Chloe headline read, Page three model forced to flee Paris's terrorist attacks. And then the subheader read a top Daily star, Page three model was left terrified after getting caught up in the drama of the Paris terrorist attack last night Chleyater insisted that she had no say in this coverage that she didn't ask for it They just used a photo of her that'd already taken before the attack that they had rights to Now it's out there and soon this will matter more than she could have ever possibly known. Less than three months later In early July of twenty seventeen, Andre Lazio, sameame guy from the from the Paris shoute contontacts Phil Green again Sing he wants to reschedule a shoot for the eleventh of that month. This time, he suggested Milan He asks Phil again for Chloe's measurements so he can order more sexy leather clothes for her, and he sends pictures of his new studio with the same Bismafique sign And Andrey wrote, I'm looking forward to seeing Chloe in better circumstances than last time Howoe is stke But her momom, Biata. She has a bad feeling about thealan job, She begs her daughter not to go, but Chloe trusts Phil. This is his industry. He is a veteran and she again, right? She trusts his judgment. I'm not sure how old Phil is, but he had founded this agency back in nineteen eighty seven, his agency So he had been working and modeling for at least thirty years at this point and probably a lot longer. I imagine he worked for somebody else's agency, built up his name before he ever founded his own agency. Chloe promised her mom that she would send her regular updates throughout the whole trip Then Off she goes And we will learn all about this trip right after today's first of two Mid Show sponsor breaks If you don't want to hear these ads ever again, please sign out to be a space liizard on Patreon, help us make monthly charitable contributions, get the catalog ad free episodes three days early and more For a small business owner, every day is full of surprises Some greatade Some not so great Like when a client cancels their order at the last minute And here's a surprise you will like Progressive provides small business owners with thirty customizable coverage options to help keep their business going strong So go ahead. surprise yourself. Get a quote in as little as eight minutes at progressivecommercial. comot gressive casualty insurance company and affiliates and third party insur, coverage is not available in all states or for all vehicles and coverage selections Ryan Reynolds here from MintMobile with a message for everyone paying Big wireless way too much. Please, for the love of everything good in this world, stop. With Mint, you can get premium wireless for just fifteen dollars a month. Of course, if you enjoy overpaying, no judgments, but that's weird. Okay, one judgment Anyway, give it a try at mintMobile dot com slash switch. Upront payment of forty five dollars for three month plan, equivalent to fifteen dollars per month required, introate for three months only, then full price plan options avail. tax and fees extra, Sfil terms at MintMobile d. com dot Rock Stardom doesn't just create stars, it creates monsters, martyrs, and myths Who are the conspiracy theorists accusing Lady Gaga of murder I'm Jake Brennan. And on the Disgrace Land podcast I explore the wild lives of rock stars and unbelievable true crime stories from music history Disgrraceland is now part of the exactly right network in Harart podcasts New episodes, Tuesdays, bonus episodes, Thursdays, and reewinds on Sunday. Listen to Disgraceeland on the IHart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts Thank you for listen to our sponsors Now let's headed to july tenth, twenty seventeen, when Chloe Ailen flies to Milan, Italy for the most dramatic, terrifying and life altering trip of her life On july tenth, twenty seventeen Chloe barely twenty years old now. boarded a flight to Milan When she landed, she checked into the hotel Galize, headed out to dinner had an early night Day one Everything great The next morning, july eleventh, a day of the scheduled shoot, Chloe wakes up early, makes her way to the studio for an eight thirty AM start time When she arrives, she calls the studio number to let them know she's outside. Man answers. He says his name is Daniel She tells her that Andre, the photographer, not there yet Go ahead and come on in She hangs up, opens the door to the studio and steps inside. curiously No one is there to greet her Now this Daniel fella is nowhere to be found She paused in the entryway, a little confused, uncertain which door to go through next And then shit goes off the rails, and her eagerness for her first Italian photo shoot quuickly turns into terror She feels a gloved hand clamp over her nose and mouth from behind She can't breathe as she sees another man step in front of her, holding a syringe were wearing a mask, they complete covered his face. Both men wearing masks, and both men wearing gloves She moves to injector. Chloe panics, she struggles to get the hand off of her face so she can breathe. She's fighting, she's wriggling, doing everything she can to avoid being injected. But again, she's a small human These are two larger, stronger grown men and they've snuck up on her cut her off guard, shocked and confused and terrified her Last thing she remembers from this interaction clearly is the syringe going into her right forearm She then feels a bizarre sensation almost like she's sinking into water, and then shortly after that, she blacks out a nightmare When Chloe regains conscious, her terror increases she comes to in the trunk of a car, Stuffed inside a black hold all sports bag Holy shit. Now even more alarmingly, her jeans, shirt and shoes are gone She's been undressed She's also been put in some other clothes She's now wearing nothing but a pink bodysuit and grreay socks Her wrists and ankles are bound, adhesive tape covers her mouth And there's only a small breathing hole poked into the back Chloe will later say I can still remember some parts of it so visually I was so heavily drugged, but waking up, I can still remember the feeling of wasas I on a boat or was I on a ship Like it was a crazy dream As Chloe slowly emerges from a drugged unconsciousness, the car winds through unpaved mountain roads driving from Milan northwestward toward the Piedmont region Not that she knew any of that at the time. She is fortunately able to move her bound hands up to her face, pulls off the tape, pulls it off her mouth. She can breathe a little more easily She starts screaming, dririver, driver. Soon the car pulls over and stops. She can see barely a bearded man's face to a tiny opening in the zipper the bag she's in. thenen a few moments later, the bag she's in is unzipped to masked gloved men. Same manant from before, looking down at her She starts yelling questions. Where am I? Why are you doing this? What's happening? don't respond. One of them leans forward and again puts tape across her mouth. tighten the handcuffs on her wrist, zip her back up Slammed down the trunk Get back in and start driving again Soon, she's able to get the tape back off her mouth and she starts yelling again And once again, they pull over sllow to stop Op the trunk She tells him she's thirsty. they open up a bottle of water, pour some of it in her mouth She is covered in sweat from being stuck inside this fucking bag. Now they take her mostly out of the bag, take off her handcuffs, but then handcuff her again with her arms now behind her back. She gets a glimpse of a partially opened empty black suitcase in the trunk whileall this is going on. wonders if that's for her Is her dead body going to be stuffed inside it after she's been raped, tortured and killed, she wonders Then they again put tape across her mouth Same piece of tape from before. And when they start driving again, she basically is able just to move her mouth around and shake it off afterfter yelling again now They pull over a third time And now this is fucking weird One of the masked men gets into the trunk with her is basically spooning her now So strange This will all make sense by the end the episode, at least to me, but what the fuck U Once he's behind her, he also takes off his mask so he can talk to her He tells her not to worry, she's not going to be hurt. There's no need to yell. He speaks in broken English in an Italian accent, but something else She asks where they're going. He says he says he doesn't know She asks more questions. She continues to say he just doesn't know And now she starts to cry. tries to reassure her. Don't cry, noody's gonna hurt you. don'try Uh She complains about how bad the handcuffs are hurtting her wrist stillill crying. the man of the trunk yells to the driver, Key, key He hand it to him Now the man takes her off her handcuffs, but says onlynly for journey Finally, after approximately two hours of this of this driving, the car pulls up into this remote cottage near Vu A remote Alpine Italian village located away from the mountains around eighteen miles northwest of Tern in the Piedmont region, a charming mountain town, known for sweeping scenery, hiking trails, access to alpine peaks and lakes. It's an isolated retreat far removed from any urban center Only about a thousand people live there Soon after the car stops, the trunk opens again, guy with with her in the trunk puts his mask back on, gets out Now the two mask men handcuff Chloe again stuff her back into the fucking duffel bag essentially, the big duffel bag after giving her a few more sips of water Then they carry her inside the cottage and up some stairs. She's taken into a dimly lit bedroom Next to a bathroom After letting her use the toilet, they then chain her by the wrists and ankles to a heavy wooden chest of drawers in this bedroom They give her a sleeping bag to leay on top of and then they leave the room They locked the bedroom door You know, she's left alone, they go downstairs and she hears a bunch of fucking yelling in some of other language. She's terrified U She's also somewhat grateful that so far it seems like they have tried to be somewhat gentle. Rough They had not done anything perverted, hadn' groped her, hadn't made any threats of rape or violence. Still though, how would you be doing about now I would be freaking the fuck out Later in a twenty twenty five doccus series about all this, Chloe Ailey, my unbelievable kidnapping Chloe explained she was still feeling the effects of being drugged curious and scared as to what was going to happen next She still hoped that this was you know, not about sex trafficking. Not about her being a woman, She genuinely thought or at least wanted to think they'd probably gotten the wrong person This was a case of mistaken identity. I probably would be thinking that I was as good as dead And that before I was dead, some really bad shit was going to happen to. Meanwhile, this evening, july eleventh When Chloe fails to return on her flight to Gatwick Airport, just south of Greater London Her mom Biata Phonees, Phil green tells them that her daughter has not come home like she was supposed to Phillil at this point. to work He presumed that Chloe's phone had likely just died. You know, She'd probably been on it a lot. That's why her mom wasn't able to get a hold of her calling people all day, taking lots of photos U Maybe things went so well she decided to stay a little longer than originally she had planned Terribly uncommon in this industry ata, not convinced she knows her daughter very well, including knowing she is still far too trusting of people. she pushes Phil to take this more seriously He relents He checks up with the airline sees that, you know, Chloe had not in fact boarded her arranged flight He also knows that she has a photo shoot scheduled in the gorgeous Spanish island on the gorgeous Spanish island of Abizza. Biza july thirteenth two days away Phil wonders if, you know, maybe she flew straight to Spain He tries again to call her, but it goes again straight to voicemail The next day now Wednesday july twelfth, twenty seventeen There is still no sign or word from Chloe, and Phil and Biata, they call the police meananwhile back in Ital Chloe is trying to stay calm The night before, back on the eleventh, one of her kidnappers had come into a room without his mask now, and the bearded man had asked her in the dim light if she remembered him from Paris He was the guy He'd gone then by Andre. who had set up that previous photo shoot The man she did not get a great look at when she had handed over ninety or when he had handed over rather, ninety pounds in cash to her to cover her expenses at the airport. When she asked him directly if he was Andre the photographer He smiled cryptically and said definitely not a photograp Now she's getting pretty scared This is not an accident. This is not mistaken identity. He had targeted her. He had been intending to kidnap her for months Then he said, those stupid Romanians They weren't made to take you Now she's confused. They can't understand English, he continued. Stupid Romanians. They couldn't understand the difference between Mas and Masant She asked him if she could just go home. He tells her, not so simple She for sale. Holy fuck He also tells her that she can call him MD now MD explained to her that most girls who end up you know, in her position are screaming, hysterical. He's surprised she's not obviously freaked out. that's just not in Chloe's nature, not in her nature to panic She knows if she becomes emotional. She she freaks out, she won't be able to think clearly. So she is able to remain calm. She starts asking MD more questions, right How is she for sale He tells Chloe, I work for an organization called Black Death R This violent organization of Romanian human traffickers that run a business on the dark web He says these Romanians had sent him a photo of her made it clear that they wanted her thought should be very valuable and good to sell She told Chloe she had been kidnapped to be sold into a sex trafficking ring that she was scheduled to be auctioned away on Sunday four days away explained that there were only two possible outcomes for her now. She would either be sold to the highest bidder who would then use her as he pleased probably very roughly you know, in her lifespan would be very short or somebody she knew would pay the opening bids price to release her And that opening bid was three hundred thousand US dollars Holy shit, can you imagine how you would feel now in this situation You don't know who these people are U You don't know where you are. You've been drugged. You've had your clothes taken off you while you were unconscious. You've been tied up, driven in the back of a fucking car, putting a bag for hours You know, taken somewhere, you don't even know where somewhere in a country that's not your home. Now you're being told unless you come up with three hundred thousand dollars in four days US dollars, you are going to be somebody sex slave, somebody who will rape and then very you know likely kill you. It's like you're the star of a very upsetting movie. You're inaken E except there is no Liam Neson You don't know anybody with a special set of skills to come in for you Chloe told him that she couldn't pay that she didn't have anywh near that muchoney. Neither did her mother or her agent, Phil Green I mean, Phil probably did have that kind of money but she's, you know, aw he's probably not going to hand it over to this guy. MD told her to come up with three names, three people in her life who might be able to pay to release her So she comes up with three. he gives like fifty minutes to do this. She comes up with Rory McCarthy, a close friend who, you know, she thought would help if he could. Dave Reid, a celebrity agent who did PR for sixty six magazine, a publication she'd modeled for. Paul Chaplin, the owner of looaded magazine A men's magazine should also work for She wrote her names down said that u, you know, u And then he said, excuse me that he would email her agent Phil these names and see if he could get the money together before Sunday or she gets auctioned Later that evening, he lets her brush her teeth, go to the toilet again, gives her some food and then locks her back in the room, leaves her alone terrified and exhausted And finally, in this state, she falls asleep The next day, Wednesday the twelfth, again, Phil opened his inbox to find the following email. High fill green I go by the name MD I'm a mid high level contract killer working for Black Death Group. Chloe has been taken and is currently under my wings. And as long as I live, nothing will happen to her. I give my word. Enail goes on to say that Chloe would be auctioned off as a sex slave on the Dark Web unless Phil can raise the funds from the three men that Chloe had named Two of whom Phil recognized his clients and the other Rory an investment banker. The sender using used an encrypted account and went on to tell Phil that contacting him put his life at risk Still, he said he had no choice but to follow the rules He could not release Chloe. Penalty for that would be death for myself and Chloe No merchandise, Leave Black Death on pay So' respond to this email, which is a singled Received Later that day, MD brought Chloe some rice cakes after she woke up U I guess, you know, also early that day it wasn't that late. I sat him down beside her, then sat on the bed in the room, then started to tell Chloe more about who he was, what he did U all sorts of shit, all sorts of tall tales. starts telling her. they kill people Poison was his cleanest method, preferred method. No one ever questions a heart attack, he said. He loved to talk about himself. A lot of grandiose, I'm of very important and ruthless and feared man stories But also did they told the stories in a way that seemed more like he was trying to impress her than scare her Make her think that he was, you know, the baddest mother fucker of all time, but also could be a sweet bad guy who had a soft spot for her. So weird. He acted like he felt sorry for her in a lot of moments You know, acted surprised that Phil had only sent back that one word email, which crushed Chloe by the way Did he just not give a shit about her At one point, he said he hoped a deal could be reached that maybe Black Death would take less than three hundred grand. You know, whatever whatever her family could afford. He said he talked to his bllack death boss, CK about it. also said that he himself had plenty of money. He could easily pay thousand dollars. But the black debs, they wouldn't allow that It against a rule for him to pay it. It just wouldn't be fair. to the other trafficking victims. So strange. This whole fucking kidnapping section is gonna to be strange, by the way He will tell her so much crazy, often contradictory, sometimes nonsensical shits always making himself look like a very big deal. So much over the top, you know, bragging is definitely weird kidnapping I've ever read about And making it all stranger is that whatever he says, Chloe believes him Again, she is not good at reading people. She accepts a lot of what people say no matter how absurd at face value Whenever Chloe asked him something She said he would go into long detailed explanations He told her how common these kidnappings were, how the group operated, how they've been getting away with it for years accccording to him, they've been taking three, four girls a week Mostly from Eastern Europe, but you know, sometimes from the UK for years It made it seem like Black Death was a truly massive, nearly all powerful organization with agents all across Europe. He made her feel that it would be pointless to ever go up against them. evenven if she did escape They'd find her They find her mom They find her son Ashion might kill them all. Uh, you know, her price it had to be paid or there was going to be terrible consequences At one point, he shows her a black death pamphlet some sort of official document that made the group appear to be, you know, more legit You know, a true international sex trafficking network. This scares her Also, though, what kind of clandestine international terror trafficking group has a fucking pamphlet Why would they need that? What are they doing with this pamphlet? They sticking it under the windshield wipers of parked cars and You know, grocery store parking lots Attention Death is in town. We're probably going to take some of your sexy young women. That is how we do And we just want to let you know. Well that's not the damn thing you can do about it because we're bllack death, baby mostost powerful, ruthless, mostly Romanian, group of psych killer kidnappers in the world. Go ahead Call police. I dare you Some of those cops probably already work for us They'll arrest you. hand you over H your daughter over maybe mom to black death Got any questions If you do, email us at I am scared at blackdeath. b orr come to our Q and A in basement of Elkwatch. Thursday eight PM. maybe. We're black death, baby. We don't have to do anything we don't want to do And one more thing Want to be a bllack death agent? Emailess I am very dangerous and tough at blacktad.B. Thank you for your attention to this matter He shut her He showed her this weird fucking black death pampht and'scared Al alsoso, as he spoke. All Chloe could think about was her mom and her son, what they must be going through, guilts begins to creep in. She blames herself for wanting this life for chasing it despite knowing there are risks She feels stupid for not being more aware that there were seey people like this in the world. You know, why she needed more? Why couldn't she just been content with what she had Why did she have to be so ambitious in this way point the UK metetropolitan pololice. are made aware of concerns over the welfare of a woman overseas. Her agent Ph and her mom again had contacted the authorities after Phil got the email onn the UK side Now The case was assigned to a detective superintendent with thirty years behind him working in counter tterrorism, organized crime, intelligence and cyberrime He did not get permission. to have his name or face used or shown on camera and interviews about him So let's just call him detective Richard Bacon Bacon The call to Dick Bacon came in from the National Crime Agency A twenty year old woman from Croydon had been kidnapped in Milan The first thing Detective Dick Bacon did was build a profile of Chloe Aling who she was, what she did, what kind of life she lived pulled up her social media looked at her career what he found introduced a complication for him. according to Dick Bacon Chloe was a young woman who really craved the spotlight She'd been in Paris during the terror attacks and afterwards, she'd appeared to the media about it. Maybe she got a taste for that kind of attention and wanted to replicate it. Bacon was under the impression that she had used the moment of a terrorist attack for her own personal gain, and now he wonders Is this a genuine abduction Or is this a young ambitious model? Engineering a story to get herself back into the news after realizing how being associated with a shocking crime was a quick and free way to gain a lot of exposure exposure she can monetize morning of Thursday, july thirteent Bacon walked into the office at eight AM, half expecting to hear that the Milan kidnap case had resolved itself overnight. It hadn't In fact, what was waiting for him instead was a second email this one came with attachments Three J Pg images of Chloe lying in a valure jumpsuit. Makeup smeared on her face, left breasts hanging out of her jumpsuit a little bit, eyes open but seemingly unconscious I've seen the pictures, they're fucking creepy Uh Dick Bacon's first thought Loo at the photos is that she's already dead Underneath the images is a kind of listing It read Chloe Born in UK abducted in Italy held in Germany eighteen years old. Caucasian 's not a team thirty two double deep. twenty five inch wasaist, thirty five inch chips, beginner model Starting bid three hundred thousand Auction takes place Sunday july sixteenth, twenty seventeen Germany added to the mix, you know apparently to throw investigators off for relocation Chloe had also been told by MD that u She was no longer in Italy by the way. And now mostly based on the photos Detective Dick Bacon Whs this might actually be a real kidnapping that she might actually be auctioned and their life is actually in danger. couldn't afford to simp brush it off as an attention grab a situation she might be in was potentially deadly. If he got it wrong, if he underestimated it, you know, the cost would not just be professional could be her life. So soon a coordinated operation is underway Officers from the East Midland Special Operations Unit arrive at Phil Green's home, take over all communication with the kidnapper or kidnappers, specially trained negotiators will remain in and around Phil Green's house working around the clock for days now Meanwhile, in Milan The case is picked up by two Italian officers Januca Simantache And Sarina Farrar, fuck y bro Sina Far That's the kind of Italian name I was hoping for Mazati Bughetti, the spaghetti, Antony Benz, Santina Fani. The officers are briefed about the situation. What the UK side is working with A young British model in an alleged dark Web Romanian auction and a deadline just a few days away The the Italian investigators, the idea of a dark web ouction like this is completely unfamiliar territory. They had nothing to compare it to They went to the address where the photoshoot was supposed to take place, found no functioning studio Just a storefont, an empty warehouse like space Inside, they found Chloe's belongings scattered across the room, her phone, her wallet, her suitcase, even a pair of white Aditas sneakers with shimmer stripes Sure send in the Ferrari is' freaking out should not know what to do next stop meanwile, Still ched inside the cottage. Iolated with no clearear sense of what's going to happen to her. And the story MD is telling her keeps changing F firstirst as I've mentioned, MD told her he was part of a group called Black Death. R? These ruthless remaining traffickers. He he led her to believe he had worked for them for quite some time that he was also a ruthless cold blooded killer This is all just business for him, but then He starts to relax a little It begins letting her go to the bathroom without being handcuffed said she didn't consider trying to escape because she didn't know others might be nearby, also worried that he would kill her for trying. He made a point to tell her. he's armed with a concealed handgun Then he offers to lay let her lay on the bed with him. She said she didn't worry about him trying sexually. She hadn't indicated he would do anything like that He continued to act like she was just a product He wouldn't want to damage it and face repercussions from the Romanians There would be penalties for him If went if you were to quote, devalue her, sometimes he acts like he's a subcontractor for B black death, not part of bllack death Uh so she begins to lay on one side of the bed. he lays on the other And now she's not tied up to anything This guy is so fucking weird This whole situation is so fucking weird MD kept talking talked and talked and talked. She asked him how he would lure in girls who weren't models He said he's getting girls the time. He said he'd go to nightcubs, you know, get him drunk, maybe drug them, walk them outside, load them into a van He told them for a week, you know, put them up for auction, then transport them, typically to the Middle East. He told him he' taken girls as young as fourteen You know, young virgins were the most valuable And they got the most money auction Then he started talking about how he usually didn't stay with captives though. N Not anym moreore N bro Now he that was int a long time ago in the past. He was now way too high up in the Black deeath hierarchy for that shit He's u he's like, he's higher than a lot of the Romanians actually big fucking deal in the organization when you you come to think about it Also three times a day, morning, afternon and again at night, he'll check his email to see if anybody had paid for her And then soon he starts to talk about how he wants out of the Black death He's all over the place He starts saying that his fate and Chloe's are actually bound together And he speaks to her about how he'd relect to help her, actually pay for her himself, he wishes he could. but to free her and to also buy his own way out of the group Hed have to raise about, I don't know, three hundred thousand euros. So I guess it's weird that it's the same fucking price essentially for him to get himself out and her up and to do that to get the three hundred thousand euros He would have to sell a bunch of properties, he claims to own And he doesn't know if there's going to be time to do that before Sunday And you know, if they can't pull it off, well, then they're both dead And yeah, earlier, he did say he had plenty of cash, just cash and could pay for her obviously, but that was against the rules You seen a lot confusing contradictory nonsysical shit Uh, M D MD excuse me would most certainly be killed if he wasn't carefully told her Chloe, if a buyer did end up taking her after MD had tried to buy her but was not successful Well, then she'd obviously be fed to tigers onnce the owners grew bored of her, of course. Then the story changed yet again, Cy changing. MD told Chloe that the higher ups in Black Death were actually angry that she had been taken at all She should have been taken. Because she was a mother of a young child and that made her a liability, harder to sell, bad for business for one eight hundred business, ethically off limits even by their nefarious standards. He explained that they hadn't known she was a mom initially, but then they looked further around in her social media feed, and then they saw oh shit, okay pictures of her and baby boy, Oh fuck. deaths are cutting corners, I guess When it came to the Instagram intntel gathering. Then he reassured her that he would find a way to free her And at one point he suggested a deal He'd payid part of the money himself Chloe would cover the rest, you know as soon she got released. Kind of definitely sounds like he was making all this shit up as went along, doesn't it? Soon MD claimed he had He had not kidnapp her at all. No, no, no. T low ranking Black deeath foot soldiers snatched her from Milan. He was a senior Black death figure. clearly. He rushed in the moment he heard that she'd been taken because he knew She was a young mother. The original kidnappers then recognizing his rank well they just fucking handed her over and left. They didn't want to get killed Is he mentallyill? We're not a good lie MD then reiterated that Black death agents were everywhere They're watching the farmhouse, right at that moment. Escape not an option She had to trust him. because he's risking her life for her now. in Chloe's own words, he always made out that he was the one who saved me. I looked at him like, what could I do without him? He said that if I escappeed not only would I die, he would as well He was the only person who seemed to care that I could be free or that I would be free. It's like you read a book aboutockholm syyndr I wanted to see how quickly he could scare or confuse somebody in developing Stockholm syndrome for him. It's like you've seen a photo of her online become obsessed with her And then thought, I what if I can kidnap her convince her that her life is in grave danger then convince her that I can save her from that danger And then she will fall in love with me And also we willll get money for people paying to save her, and we will live happily ever after Se night in bed together, Chloe said he again did not try and touch her. Seps on her side, he sep on his, and she quietly cried herself to sleep The next day on Friday, july fourteenth, now, Chloe was allowed to take a shower She changed into an old t shirt and a pair of boxer shorts. said she the key MD did not was her shower But did make her keep the bathroom door open When she was done, she was informed. She still had to remain upstairs could only move about the bedroom and the bathroom Also, by the way, she hasn't seen the second kidnapper in quite a while now It's just MD By this point back in England, Phil Greene has finally heard back from three people, Chloe head named to pay for her release. Only one of them was in a position to even consider pain The only two couldn't or would not pay the third person was Rory McCarthy, the investment banker Some tabloids would later describe him as Chloe's ex boyfriend, she has said that is not true They've always just been friends According to Chloe, they had known each other since twenty fifteen, two years before the kidnapping U weren't even speaking at the time she was taken It had some kind of argument So when he offered money, she was surprised and touched But Rory said he can only pay twenty thousand pounds MD had, of course, made it clear in moments that he needed to pay three hundred thousand US dollars When she found her that nobody could pay the money, Chloe accepted she was going to have to rely on herself and only herself to get out of this strange mess. And she was starting to lose hope. She desperately wanted to believe that MD could save her. But his story was so confusing You know, he was only a small part of a much bigger and more dangerous operation There were other more ruthless people far above and in bllack death with more power and reach. Why would anyone up the chain agree to just let her go around this time and be now told her how he come to be involved with the Black Death. He said even a soldier in the army He liked it Very good at it. And someone introduced him another soldier to the organization When he spoke with them, he was told that thanks to his military experience he would not have to start at the bottom I know you told Chloe that most new recruits start at level one which makes sense The highest rank, by the way is level twenty Does thisound real to anybody listening sounds to me like a in cell fantasy fever dream MD said he was able to start out on level eight And that after five years of working for Black death or being part of bllack death, you kept going back and forth He was now at level twelve And what do level twelve Black Death soldiers do? you may wonder Mostly assassinations Totally cool story bro And this motherfucker man, he had been assassinating people left and right God if only he had a nickel for every fool he assassinated. He spoke about killing people with no more emotion than someone who worked at a grocery store, talking about stock and shelves He literally told her that he had killed You ready for this Thousands of people assassinated thousands of people You just don't turn it off 's a one man arm Killing machine. 's a terminat Around the time, Chloe realized that MD was romantically interested in her When he started talking yet again about how he wanted to help her He alluded to his own mother. Having once been kidnapped and trafficked and that he had never seen her again By Glly he sure wished it someone Some kind of I don't know hero. could have helped save her. And that is why he wanted. to help Chloe We only another n! I need a hero! So MD is a cold blooded black death motherfucker who has killed thousands of people and has helped traffic hundreds, if not thousands of girls as young as fourteen for around five years. But also did all of that Kowing that the same kind of shit had happened to his mom, but now understands how wrong this all was and wants to be Chloe's hero and saavor. Got it afterfter he shared all that nonsense Uh MD leaned in try to kiss Chloe She's surprised. she pulls away slightly then she tells him, this isn't the right place for this. This she's not the right headspace for romance. Not now But maybe probably Almost certainly If he were to release her, if you were to be the hero and save her Well then they would be in a relationship She's falling for him too. And now MD probablyably stands for I don't know Melvin Dipshit. He likes to fuck up tellelling me there's a chance U This was the moment Chloe Later said everything changed Now she knew what gamees she had to play. afterfter the foiled kiss Chloe later said she started talking to Melvin about her future about what the two of them, you know, what they could be together when she was out Her only strategy is to make him believe in this version of the future that he wants That is truly possible If and only, she is released Over the days that follow, he will ask many, many times you know when they might become a couple. And she she just keep saying In the future when I'm released Now the tone of the abduction shifts towards Chloe and My working together And they hatched a new plan Push back on the black death level twenty bosses Negotiate an alternative pay shortly after release rather than upront, no auction Okay, I took a while to come. Okaykay, All right. after much brainstorming And what I can only imagine was one of the dumbest conversations of all time. MD agrees to take their case to the people above him The next twenty four hours will be the most stressful yet Chloe keeps telling Melvin That whatever Black Dath requires for her release, she will do it. She will pay. and Melvin, he believes her because he is for sure a fucking dip shit He acts more and more convinced as the Black Death let her go She will truly follow through on every condition, He thinks she cares about him He tells her that when he presented her case for release to Black Death, that you know, he backed her, he argued for her freedom But he told her he checked his email on Surday night july fifteenth he still hadn'tard Another night in captivity Another night laying side by side in bed with his freak And thankfully, another night when he does not touch her. And now let's take our second of two Mid showow sponsor breaks before exploring the big day the day of the Black Death auction Sunday, july sixteenth, twenty seventeen For a small business owner, every day is full of surprises Some greatade Some not so great L like when a client cancels their order at the last minute But here's a surprise you will like. Progressive provides small business owners with thirty customizable coverage options to help keep their business going strong So go ahead, surprise yourself. Get a quote in as little as eight minutes at progressivecommercial. comot aggressive casual insurance company and affiates and third party insurers, coverage is not available in all states or for all vehicles and coverage selections. Byan Reynolds here from MintMobile. I don't know if you knew this, but anyone can get the same premium wireless for fifteen dollars a month plan that I've been enjoying. It's not just for celebrities, so do like I did and have one of your assistant's assistants switch you to Mint Mobile today I'm told it's super easy to do at mintmobile dot com slash switch. Upfront payment of forty five dollars for three month plan, equivalent to fifteen dollars per month required. intro rate first three months only, then full price plan options available. taxes and fees extra. Feful terms at mintMobile dot comot Rock Stardom doesn't just create stars, it creates monsters, martyrs, and myths Who are the conspiracy theorists accusing Lady Gaga of murder I'm Jake Brennan. And on the Disgrace Land podcast I explore the wild lies of rock stars and unbelievable true crime stories from music history Disgrracaceeland is now part of the exactly right network in IHR podcasts New episodes, Tuesdays, bonus episodes, Thursdays, and reewinds on Sunday. Listen to Disgraceeland on the IHart Radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts Thanks for listen to our sponsors. H hope you heard deals you like. Now, let's head to the day of the alleged bllack death sex trafficking auction Sunday, july sixteenth, twenty seventeen Soon the clock struck midnight Flip the calendar over to the payment deadline of Sunday No money coming through UK investigators led by Detective Dick Bacon feeared Chloe was about to be put up for auction No one had a clue yet where Chloe was or if she was still alive Th around three in the morning an email landed in the investigator's inbox just three words sent from presumably Melvin Dipsit She's gone, mate And that's it Chloe is being auctioned. invvestigators didn't know where she was headed, how long she would be held, what she was about to endure but they're very worried it's going to be very bad. For Dick Bacon, this is one of the lowest moments of his career He hadd been handed one responsibility to bring Chloe home And as far as he knew now, he had failed and she had died But in reality,loe was still inside the Italian farmhouse where she'd been the whole time And around nine AM on Sunday morning, she took a little trip into some local town near where she was held in captivity. MD walked her into a clothing store that she later described as a mountain hiking type of place. She said Melvin walked her out the front door of the farmhouse after she put on some sort of tracksuit She hopped into the passenger seat of his car, a Kbalt blew ititan, and MD began to drive Nowhere ride in the trunk, nohere handcuffs, nothing But he did remind her he's armed And he would shoot if he had to After fifteen or so minutes, they made it close to the little shop she spoke of, then they park, they walk away together before entering the shop. On the way as they're walking, she said Melvin reached out to hold her hand. Of course, she took it She is not in a position to reject him. She still needed him to think they're going to be together soon Then they walk inside, smiling, holding hands She's laughing at his jokes. She buys her some shoes back to the car get some fruit from a little stand along the way still smiling, laughing then they get back in the car, drive back to the farmhouse there they eat the fruit, hang upstairs, wait for word from Black Death At six PM, Melvin said that the answer finally came back or he pretended to had Black death h. againainst all odds agreed to let her go. O If she accepted four conditions The first was that she not speak to the police about any of this fucking ever. feels reasonable The second, any police investigation that had already begun needed to cease L at you, Dick bacon Third, she would publicly promote Black Death as a leading terror organization In his words, you're from the UK. and we don't an audience there So un need you So I needed to promote B black deeath That might be the most absurd thing he's done yet. What? how is she supposed to promote Black deeath through Instagram post Hi I'm sex model Chloe Aye I do sexy shoot all over the world because I'm sex I nearly got kidnapped and auctioned off into sexual slavery by the world's leading terror organization, Black Death The' very scary If you are also sexy model would like to be kidnaed and auctioned off into sexual slavery, head to Milan and book a photo shoot with Belis Mafique Studios T am I saying you Uh, they will kidnap the shit out of you. They can also be hired for assassinations, anybody you want dead but don't want to kill. They will do it. They'll kill anyone Find them and follow across all socials. Be sure and click the subscribe button What the fuck? Fourth condition is within a month of her release, she has to pay fifty thousand dollars in Bitcoin Oh sweet Christ. now it' fifty thousand dollars instead of three hundred thousand dollars Chloe agrees to the first three straight away. On the last one makes her hesitate. She doesn't know she has that kind of money, but then she's like okay, I'll get it And She of course, said yes to, she has to She has to say whatever she need to say to get released They go to bed that night around ten PM. sideide by side, again, no funny business MD tells Chloe, it's going to be a long drive the next day. he wants to head out at four AM Monday morning July seventeenth to four AM. The two leave the house again They drive and drive to the Italian countryside, down a bunch of whiny roads. Then after a while, MD turns to her and asks Did you ever think I was lying to you I was just doing all this to trick you She' know he's talking about. So MD tells her a story about a supposed former Black Death Level twenty final boss of his. Oh shit who had dumped something like this once before promised a girl that she was going to be released Then he drove her not to safety, not to a consulate but to a small air strip Somewhere she be load onto a plane flown to a nasty buyer in the Middle East Chloe sits very still. She does not want him to see the fear. She now feels She tells him that no, no, she she trust him And then she lets her eyes half closeed as if she's tired. and she rests her head against the window un bothothered on the outside, terrified on the inside car keeps moving, she watches the street signs 're heading back toward Milan. When they reach the city, MD navigates through the tight corners, weaving past scooters, trams, aggressive drivers on the way to work The plan is for him to drop her about twenty minutes from the British Culate Far enough away to stay clear of cameras, but Chloe does not like that idea at all She doesn't want to be left alone. She actually wants him right beside her. I relied on this man totally She said later When he wanted to drop me off twenty minutes in the consulate I couldn't bear to think about being separated from him. Be I thought other members of Black Death would get me in the time it took to walk there when it is so fucking sad. she's scared by this When they reach the consulate, it's still closed. notot gonna open for another two hours can't just wait around outside, right? They need a different plan So Chloe and Ey they go to a cafe near the consulate and have breakfast together Witnesses will later tell reporters the two of them were laughing and joking As Chloe put it I can see why people think it's weird In my eyes, he is the guy who saved me After their breakfast, MD decides on a riskier move. he'll walk her straight inside the consulate now He coaches her on what to say that he was just her only friend in Italy And then after escaping her kidnapper, she borrowed a stranger's phone and called him for help and he answered She was to say that his name is Daniel Zwata Melvin Dipschit figured that he would just hand her over and just walk Paluck out freeeman Because he is truly fucking stupid U Once the conulate opens, Mty drives up to the gate in his car, with Chloe ailing in the passger seat beside him, CCTV shows the two arrive together, Chloe smiling in front seat, looking relaxed, Mty leaning out to press the button for a parking ticket The automated gate lifts, they drive ono the into the underground car park. My and Chloe get out of the car, they walk together through the underground car park into the consulates Chloe wearing oversized jersey, her hair piled on top of her head in a messy bun. They walk up to the front desk together. Chloe introduces herself, telling Staff she has been kidnapped with MD standing at her side, posing as this friend, Daniel Zwata. The staff already knows who she is News of her disappearance has been a huge story, right for days locally They take Chloe to an empty room to talk privately. MD moves to follow her in But the embassy staff tell him No, you're not allowed in there. Chloe then begins to rattle off the agreed upon cover story. that she' had been kidnapped When she escaped, she borrowed a stranger's phone, called the only friend she had in Italy, Daniel and that he had picked her up and driven her to the consulate The consulate alerted the police and they arrived quickly First question they ask is a simple one So what's Daniel's phone number Chloe doesn't know it sy overlooked a pretty important detail there. This of course made no fucinking sense. If Daniel was her only friend in Italy, If she had memorized his number well enough to recite it to a stranger and asked to borrow a phone, right just that same fucking morning She should have one hundred percent for sure been able to recite it to police now, but she can fucking pull any of the numbers out of her ass Chloe then turns to Nicota, the translator and says, I need to get this off my chest, but I am scared And now she tells her the truth but not the whole truth. doesnn't tell them about shopping with MD And that admission is about to catch up with her Police asked Chloe where she had gotten the new clothes she's wearing. She replied to the farmhouse. And while that was true of the tracks, it was not true of the sneakers Chloe Alien also did not tell Milan police. She' been held to one location Sarina Farada She's from Marada U and doesn't mention Elou having left the house She did tell them about the syringe two men, the fooe romance, the auction and more Her story' so unusual So far outside, anything Italian investigators had ever seen, they struggled to believe it as it unfolded. Of course they did It's a fucking insane story. She has been fed dozens of hours of maniacal borderline gibberish for days The officers kept asking Nicoleta, interterpreter to repeat and double check Chloe had said More than on sested Are you sure that's what she said Sadina Finadi She's freaking. Are you sure that's what she is talking about? It making no sense out They just't believe they're hear Yeah I bet. Each time Nicolleta confirmed though, yeah, no that was that was what she said This goes on for hours and hours and hours, roughly ten to twelve. And then after all this, the police bring out some CCTV footage. They tell Chloe They had footage of herself and Daniel Uh, you know, this Daniel MD character out and about shoe shopping holding hands. They showed her the footage, made her watch it Also presented Chloe with a statement from a saleswoman who said that she had sold shoes to the model the day before. Chloe watching the footage played back to her. She breaks down sobbing It was, she would later say devastating She just spent about twelve hours giving the place every detail she could think of, but she hadn't told them that and now they're going to use it to say she's not telling the truth A lot of people will analyze all this and quickly point to the shoe shopping footage combined with not telling Italian authorities about the shopping excursion immediately as proof, definitive proof she made all this shit up She was, you know, part of this supposed abduction When asked later why she didn't tell police about the shoes, Chloe explained. It was the end of the interview I've been speaking for twelve hours. I just wanted to leave. I thought that would be another whole load of questions and it would drag on for so much longer. so I just didn't mention it Italian lawy Francesco Pesa Much later defend the strangers of the shopping footage in his ownds saying, She did it to testify that she went out to her capt at the batt of shoes, the bat of gloceries. She does appear to be strange. I start this. I will continue to respond to this. She was a torborous man. there are many people of this black dath organization around her. Even th if she tried to flee, she could I know I' mean be ridicul For the time, p polleice This mission open up a question that will haunt Chloe Alien for years. D Hus her in fact. Did she stage her own kidnapping, right question will not be answered in the British Culate in Italy that day won't be answered for many months and then it'll be answered in court The onene thing, Italian police are sure of the evening of Monday, july seventeenth is that the man who hadd walked in with Chloe is an obvious suspect Either he is her kidnapper or part of a plot Chloe may or may not have been a part of Nxt morning Tuesday, july eighteenth, twenty seventeen. After being held for twenty four hours, question for much of that time, Melvin Dipsit. offfficially arrest charg with kidnapping for extortion When officers searched him, they found what looked like some sort of Polish ID in the name of Daniel Zwata, but Italian police later discover that no legitimate document existed under that name. Melvin also carrying a business card the card read permanent solution. One side has a logo of the Grim Reaper Other side has a complicated dark web style email address printed across it. Oh, one out hundred business vibes And now while Chloe is again being questioned in one room, Mel is in another, tue his version of events At first he sticks to the story, he and Chloe had supposedly cooked up, but it doesn't take long before his story starts to fall apart because it's garbage and he's a fucking idiot Eventually, Melbin admits he was involved in a plot to kidnap Chloe Meanwhile, investigators run all of his suspected aliases through their systems. when they trace Andre Lazio, the name used to book Chloe's photos shoot in both Paris and Milan and to rent the fake studio with the abandoned shopfront she was sent to. they don't find a clean identity Instead, they uncovered a trail of layered fake IDs and aliases, all pointing back to one real person. Lucash about Melin Dipchitzs real name Luas Sherba is a Polish born man who'd actually been living in the UK for years, working as a computer programmer sometimes h He lived in Oldbury. I was connected to nearby Tiverdale, two industrial towns at the heart of the Black countountry, a region in the West Midlands of England roughly one hundred and fifty miles northwest where Chloe was living He shared a flat with his older brother Michael and on Facebook, he claimed to be the chairman of a tech company called Karmac Tarmark There's no such company Story keeps getting weirder Lucish opens up more and more about his supposed part in the plot in the investigation room and insisting his role is limited He tells them that he was only involved in renting properties around Europe, such as the shopfront in Milan and the farmhouse in Bu to store garments that some group of Romanians who had hired him We're supposedly sell Black Dath In addition to extremely lucrative sexual trafficking, and I would think lucrative assassinations as well, since Melvin, I mean, Lucish has person killed thousands They're also in the garment business Even though a bunch of garments, We were never found at either location What the fuck is wrong with Lucas Herba This idiot now tells police the kidnapping was orchestrated by a group of Romanians. paid him five hundred thousand pounds. man, lot of money in the garment business The onlyn reason he agreed to take part, he says is because he has leukemia He needs the money to pay for medical tment. That's such a preposterous lie Why would you fucking tell that lie If you have any brain in your head. As if they can', I don't know, Melvin, quickly check your fucking medical records Easily prove you don't have. I've never had leukemia. Well, when the police press him on leukemia C just can't give them the name of a single doctor. cannot provide any evidence whatsoever that he're sick, you know because you're not sick Also, not once in this entire interview Does Lucas Herba ever mention the words Black death Lucason confirms the police that he met Chloe Mons earlier in Paris. He said he cancellled the Paris job when he realized that there were three Romanians, these garment fucking motherfucker who intended to kidnap Chloe back then. According to Luckish, he called Chloe's hotel pretending to be the photographer, claiming his equipment had been stolen in order to cancel the shoot. and get her back home to safety He's a hero He's a hero And then once Chloe was abducted in Milan, Lucas told police he came to her aid when he saw her photos posted with an online auction How would he know? where the Romanians were keeping her if he had just fucked over the Romanians previously in Paris He also said that she was free to go once the Romanians had abandoned the farmhouse. She just stayed Be I guess you loved him. eanwhile When she heard about Herba being arrested, Chloe actually got confused. At this point, she still believes that he has rescued her from black death She will later tell the Guardian, I was grateful to him. I felt sympathetic to the fact he was in jail and the Romanians were still out there While Chloe was feeling sympathy for Herba and town investigators were still looking into the possibility that Chloe and Herba were collaborating. That did it together. We don't know yet Uh at this point. They started to ponder whether the case was bigger than just the two of them In fact, the police were actively looking for as many as four accomplassices Around the same time, Chloe's pathology tests come back Her urine shows no trace of drugs in the past couple of days would suggest she had not ingested anything Very recently Or been, you know,, you know, stuck with a needle But then her hair tests positive for Kedemy Drug I was supposed to take a few month ago. I mean, the powerful horse Tank liiser That fast acting, disassociative, anesthetic sometimes referred to as a psychedelic that alters perception, pain, and consciousness The drug that while historically used as a surgical sedative for humans and animals has also emerged as a widely prescribed, highly effective treatment for severe mental health conditions and a drug There's also used recreationally around the world, a drug that maybe I got my hands on some more of that's actually clean and'll be trying soon. What? Forget I said that. The drug that if you are given a high enough dose can k hole you into fucking oblivion and leave you technically unconscious in a state of disassociative anesthesia, maybe looking like somebody lying half, you know looking dead with their eyes open in that photo that was sent to the police earlier So circum back. Chloe had clearly taken the drug at some earlier point, maybe by choice, not necessarily by choice. But then they found a puncture mark on her wrist consistent with a knal and bruises on her wrists and ankles consistent with being handcuffed for an extended period of time Meanwhile, the time police sifting through thousands of hours of CCTV footage And they find footage of Luucish walking the streets with another man who looks a lot like him. Also find a set of fingerprints that likely belong to a close relative pointing towards his brother Michael working with the Italian authorities, Brit police search a house in Oldbury Thank you, Dick Bacon, for your assistance A house link to the brothers and they seize computer equipment for forensic analysis At this point, they are still not sure just how big this operation is and how many accomplices might be out there After several days of police interviews, the Italian prosecutor and officers decide Chloe needs to stay in Italy while they continue their investigation There is no clear timeline for when it will be over. She simply told she has to remain in the country until further notice They can't decide if she is the victim of a crime or the suspect a suspect in committed a crime. Now she's placed in a safe house Where other victims of crimes like kidnapping are housed when their safety needs to be guaranteed where they can access mental health support Chloe arrives the safe house, finds two females sleeping on two single beds more like cots, almost. There's a third single bed in the middle That's hers The rooms very stuffy No air conditioning, very hot. smells After all that she's just been through, she doesn't want to stay there can't blame her at all. When she talks to Italian police, they tell her that if she wants a hotel instead, she'll have to pay for it herself She doesn't have any money because she doesn't have her credit cards, ATM cards, et cetera. that she lost in the abduction. So now Chloe calls her agent Pil The first time they've spoken since the kidnapping, she tells him she has to remain in Milan for further questioning. She's been housed at women's shelter. She does not want to stay in pays for a couple of nights at a hotel, neeither of them know how long she's going to be there Next day, she picks a lawyer from a list of English speaking attorneys She chooses a Francesco, Peso When we heard a quote from earlier Hes she knows reason for He admits to the Associated Press that the case looks and sounds totally bizarre and unbelievable He acknowledges that investigators have, quote, more than understandable doubts A a story According to Pesch, he seems incredible. A man of kidnaps togetheret with oers, a girl out of a weeak Sing particular lasons at a company's head ins Sata Cola that practically has all to the pola Well, the Italian and British police Sorry, that's annoying Gam but I amuse myself. whileile the Italian and British police continue to ponder over whether or not Chloe is a victim or accomplice, So he has no idea that that is what's happening. According to her, she is still living insside the rules of the kidnapping at this point still believe she owes the black death or bllack death. E that they told her or that, you know, he told her fucking dipshit that she owed them, The silence, the fifty thousand euros in Bitcoin, the very confusing promotion of their services in England, all of it U Sure, she's ten been technically been released, but she doesn't feel relieved. notot even close. She's terrified that when she finally gets back to England She's only going to have a small amount of time, you know with her family and friends before they come for her again or, you know, come for her mom or for her baby boy, Ashon fear consumers. You know, she's not worried or thinking about what the police, what the press, what the public are thinking about all this right now. The idea that people might not believe her hasn't yet crossed her mind But then Italian police lay out their concers to face to face. and for the first time, she understands peopleople are' buying their story The Italian police admit they're struggling to make sense of all this They tell her look, mayaybe your story is genuine But you got no documents, no video, no witnesses. All we have is your word. They also today they find it strange how composed she is she's able to speak about it all with no emotion Just a matter of fact in a clear and steady vice that doesn't waver. Within days of her turning up in that consulate, dozens of officers have been assigned to the case. And the Italian police decide to run a test now Chloe back to every location she mentioned in her statement and watch and see how she reacts. This is this is so very t A remarkably calm Chloe pulls a pair of blue forensic gloves on, takes the investigators on a tour her kidnapping. first they drive Chloe to the fake studio where she says she was taken They watch her closely As she retraces the route, describe the initial tack in detail. They watch her body language, her facial expressions, they look for a sign of trembling hands or fear or tears. Right? They're all body language experts now apparently whole time Chloe remains incrediblyalm And then they drive to the village where she and Lucish had gone shoe shopping Rracing the route step by step where he parked a car the walk to the shop They'reout back place where they bought fruit Next they drive to the house where she' been held captive and inside, Chloe points out the floor on the floor where she was made to lie, the spot where the sleeping bag of in place before she ended up sleeping next to Melvin Dipsit the place where her hands had been handcuffed and finally she breaks down Italian police watching her closely. I don't know. She look a pesada to me now. She's definitely crying. She mustn't be innocent For days, right? She's been impossible to read all matter of fact, dry eye to a story that should have ried anyone or at least they felt it should have ried anyone But as many of us know, or at least I hope many of us know, the way humans react to tragedy differs wildly Thanks to all the neurod divergence and broad spectrum of emotional makeup and upbringing, et cetera Stand in the room Where she had been held, Chloe became visibly shaken and the Italian police rightly or wrongly believed that emotion appeared genuine At that moment, than change for the intntel investigation. They now started to trust that what she was recounting could only come from someone who had actually experienced something deeply traumatic Despite having the Italian police now on her side e still can't leave Italy though And she claimed she grew more and more terrified day by day than one of the Black death's henchmen. We were going to come hunt her down. She becomes convinced That, you know, some level twenty big boss end game motherfucker was going to bribe a hotel receptionist to let you know, to be let into the room takeer. doesn't trust that the police can catch all of them She believed that there would always be more accomplices out there and they would come for her just a matter of time Mewhile, the Italian police still have Luucas in custody However, they still don't know if he's acted alone or if there's a whole network out there men like him that they don't know about So detectives start to dig into their existing leads on dark web activity. tryrying to figure out where Chloe could have been sold, what platforms, what internet auction spots the Black Death may have used But this is a near impossible task because the dark web does not work like the regular internet As I learned, when I researched a Dark Web episode in the early days of Time Suck and got pretty freaked out and deleted Tor or the onion router from my computer Sites are not indexed. You don't know what you're going to find until you fucking just get there sometimes. You can't just type a name into a search bar and find a bunch of stuff. Each you know place is hidden behind a jumble of random characters You can only get there if somebody gives you the exact address That means most the Dark Webbs's legal activity lives on a small number of hidden sites that only insiders know about Outsiders will never be able to find them unless somebody gives them that exact address The Italian police, they search through all the known dark websites on their radar, come up empty There's no listing for Chloe, no black death link platform they can identify after a few weeks of investigating now. The case breaks. Over the weekend of august fifth, Italian police and prosecutors lay it all out, the kidnapping, the mysterious black death group, the online auction, the miraculous escape described in full detail at a press conference press picks up the story immediately. They also runed alongside the raunchiest photos they can find of Chloe from her social media very British tabid It doesn't take long before the public starts to raise serious doubts about all this Chloe is finally cleared to go back to England though. and on Sunday aug sixth, twenty seventeen, about a month after she first flew to Milan for what she thought was going to be a photo shoot, Chloe arrives home in Coleson, South London. There's cameras and reporters waiting on her street outside her home. The story of Chloe's abduction by this point has gone global. And again, many people, including many reporters, if not most, they don't believe her So for all she's gone through She does not get a sympathetic welcome She gets ridiculed. instead of celebr And she just desperately wants to be left alone Shortly after Chloe arrives home, she conns with her friend Rory, who gives her some advice. The only way to get the reporters and photographers to go the fuck away. is to give them something. You gott to say something, give them what they want Ployd does know what to say So Rory gets out a pen of paper writes a note for, she skims through it And she goes outside and she reads it Only an hour after Chloe has arrived home, she steps outside her front door holding a piece of paper. The dog runs out of the house behind her. She's wearing hot pants, low cut top A lot of people found odd and inappropriate She's smiling. Do doesnn't appear shook up or upset at all hair's looking great, all done up or make up some point. She looks like she's ready for photo shoot She clears her throat, reads a brief statement to the reporters I'll play that for you now so you can just hear it in her words. I've been through a terrifying experience, Ive feared for my life second by second, minute by minute, hour by hour. I am incredibly grateful to the Italian and the UK authorities for all they have done to secure my safe release. I have just arrived home after four weeks of being in Italy. I haven't had the time to gather my thoughts, so I'm not at liberty to say anything further until I haveve been debriefed by the UK police After that She smiles, poses with her dog for a flashing camera And then she goes back inside the house. Later, journalists and reporters covering this case will talk at Nauseum about how strange they found her demeanor Most women expect her to look very haggard. Little withdrawn. undernder the weather, but rather Chloe you know, had only landed an hour or so earlier and she steps straight into the media circcus, smileiling posing, seemingly composed, self assured And before moving forward I'd like to refer to the playlboy models I worked with again around the same time Well, maybe you would not have dressed like Chloe in that situation, I'm one hundred percent positive. that most of them would have Some of the models regularly had to be told to put their cameras down and stop taking selfies so that our shows photographers could take more photos of them And then once those photos were done being taken, they would immediately take more pictures of themselves with their phones. And why It is literally their jobs to be filmed looking sexy And many of them, I'm sure, would have practically rather died during the kidnapping than to have looked haggard after being released. Truly obsessed with their appearances, notot making a judgment call about this, is what it is Obsessed with looking as hot as possible as often as possible to a degree. don't think most people can relate to Qality turn now in the courourt of public opinion On august eleventh, twenty seventeen, just five days after Chloe landed back in the UK, the Court of Milan issued a European arrest warrant. from Michael Herber A lookish his older brother Thealian police now believed he was in the car with her on the initial drive to the farmhouse and played a part in her abduction. He was a second man The second man she was attacked by when she was injected with ketamine Because he again was based in the UK, the warrant is certified by the UK's National Crime Agency the next day. Thank you, Dick Bacon. Meanwhile, Luke Kush remained in custody in Italy And then on august sixteenth, British police moved and arrested thirty six year old Michael Herba at an address in Tivvedale He denied any involvement in Chloe's kidnapping, and the next day in Westminster Magistrateates's Ct he announced he was going to fight his extradition to Italy Speaking of Italy, a court there now heard how the alleged plot to kidnapoe Chloe was financed Lucish had taken out a loan too cover the logistics, of course Dip she did He had rented the fake studio facade in Milan. He had rented the farmhouse in the mountains all under aliases. He and his brother Michael had bought a car in Poland, shipped it all the way to Italy And tellingly, the Italian police found absolutely no communication whatsoever between Lucish and Chloe after rigorously searching phone, email, and social media records, et cetera for weeks and weeks, nothing at all to suggest she was ever a willing partner in any of this Acording to prosecutors, she was abducted primarily as an intended investment to very stupid men sunk real money into an operation they were betting they would recoup the moment somebody paid Chloe's ransom But was that all? Of course not. If this was only about to money Why give up so quickly when no ransom is paid? Why did Lucas so eagerly conspire with Chloe to help her not have to pay the money, or at least not most of it? Why did you let her go Obviously for the possibility of a romance So delutional eanwhile, Chloe was doing the rounds on the UK media circuit She was interviewed by the Daily Mail, then appeared on television, the British talkk show this morning And as Chloeat across from interviewers and told her story, she failed to win over the British publics sympathy They were suspicious If Chloe was telling the truth, why had she been caught on CCTV footage in an Italian village Why does she seem so chirpy one moment? Devastated the next Why when her kidnapper took her to buy shoes? Didn't she just run? Why when she was finally freed did she not mention the shopping trip to the police And most pzzing of all, why did her kidnapper just let her go She had seen his face she knew where she had been held Chloe insisted that she was let go because he found out she was a mother. But the British public did not buy that answ It all sounded too strange. It didn't make sense. You know, we know that nothing about any of this made sense because of Luucas's bullshit. But reporters either weren't willing to do their due diligence to find that out or could not access that information yet Or just didn't care because it would not give them the polarizing story that they wanted to fuel ratings There was also concerns over the ketamine. Chloe said, of course, that she had been injected with it. But in some of her interviews, it was pointed out that ketamine was a very popular party drug in the UK at the time She could have easily taken some As She was in the party scing herself or strongly was assumed to be but Chloe denied she had drus, said she barely even drink. doesn't buy Most seemingly have now made up their minds that this whole thing was nothing more than a disgusting publicity stunt And that is exactly what Lucas Herba will now claim in court that he and Chloe orchestrated the entire thing together In October, three months after the kidnapping, the British public still has not moved on. neeither has Chloe. She agrees to appear on Good Morning Britain, where hosts Piers Morgan and Susanna Reid are waiting to question her And I will preface this next part by saying I have long fucking hated Peers Morgan truly find him to be a despicable human being I do not understand why anyone everver likes him ever ever ever I watched this interview before reading over the preliminary research assembled for this episode, and I got so fucinking mad I literally typed into my Google Chrome search bar,Qote Here's Morgan is a cu I just wanted to see if that judge's statement resonated with anybody else out there Immediately, I was given the following AI overview N Joking This is what a shot back batim That is an extremely common sentiment Millions of people find him insufferable and he has made a massive career out of being intentionally provocative, loud, and argumentative, to drive up his engagement and ratings Clearly Even whatever AI fucking Google Chrome is using hates him. And that's saying something Millions of people find it insufferable I'm not even sure if that's true, robot But I like you claiming that it is I'm gl we both't stand him. Here's an excerpt of them talking about the shoe shopping the CCTV footage, eyewitnesses who saw Chloe Lockish laughing together in the village square. But one of the reasons that people I think have been skeptical. is because this information has come out that you Light police about a pretty It hasn't just emerged. it was already in the police report. So they already knew about that. They're just trying to make me look like a bad person to get readers. That's what the papers are portraying the story in something that it's not and that's what's creating The papers were portray you with some skepticism and then it emerges this week. But it didn't emerge. it was already right there. Well, it's been published as it' been reported that you lied to the police. and that's the problem is that no one can quite get their head round Why you would lie to the police about such a key I just wasushed it off I was shopping It's like's not insignificant is it to be going shopping with one of the alleged kidnappers and buying new shoes? No no one understands the reasoning. Unless you were in my position and actually went through what I've been through, no one can tell me how I should have behaved with a kidnapper or how I should be reacting now. Exactly At another point, Pierers tells Chloe If you're going to conduct media interviews where you're being paid money and you're in a book for thousands of pounds before there's even been a trial, I think we're perfectly entitled to ask you difficult questions. And then Chloe says If I was just a normal twenty year old, not a twenty year old model, do you think people would have the same opinions? The interview goes viral And the comment section under the Good Morning Britain Facebook post tells you a lot about British sentiment surrounding Chloe Ailing at the time But also you know there' are a lot of people who don't fucking hate peers Morgan, which I think says a lot about them He like if you're like, I fucking love Piers Morgan, I have concerns. I don't think you and I could ever be friends Um But yeah, here's the sentiments. This certainly doesn't pass the smell test to me at all. If I'd been drugged and kidnapped, I'm more than one hundred percent sure I would be more traumatized than she appears to be Okay, it's a fucking hard take U Get her on the Jeremy Kyle showhow for a lie detector I smell bullshit, just a gold digging fame starved wannabe. Don't believe her at all You wouldn't be on TV if this had happened. and you wouldn't be dressed like how she's been dressed in all her interviews I feel sorry for her child. Wonder who looks after him slash her while she's doing all this Yeah how dare a mother work She'll be on. I'm a celebrity. Get me out of here next year Total lie If I found out, oh, excuse me, if found out to be lying, she should be banged up for real Well I hope other young models do not see her and her story as a way of making money. But she seems too relaxed and polished to be lyine, but then again This reminds me of Taking. okay. , Chloearing on televis The negative personal stories are being leaked to the press. Her former boyfriend, Conor Kees, the father of her young son Ashton, tells the press, as I mentioned earlier, Chloe has not come to see her son since she has returned. he too cast a shadow of doubt over her story and behavior Th then a Facebook detail emerges that she that some of the tableloids cannot let go of. Chloe and Lucish had been Facebook friends for a couple of years before the kidnapping D da That was really bad, dun d d d d. Still kind of bad. Chloe explains it's the only way she can She was naive, she says. If people wanted to be Facebook friends, fine, the more she had the higher her profile She accepted everybody And I can see to some how that could have looked suspicious However A long time ago when I was trying to build up a Facebook profile, Excuse me to raise my follower account before I ever had a fan page. I think before fan pages even existed you had to accept or deny each person I also accepted literally everybody. Be the more followers I had, the easier it was to get bookings and keep my career going. It was incredibly common. It was the norm back then to accept literally everyone if you're in her position And the jouralists, they fucking knew that. Around this time Chloe dropped Phill Green as her agent, sign with a new representative, Aden Sington of the Kruger Crown aggency. Hington is a publicity agent, not a modeling agent. His specialty is media strategy, book deals and public facing campaigns. and he brokered a book deal for Chloe's Blink publishing Phil Greene also appeared on Good Morning Britain, saying he was hacked off AA very anoyid. Slash anger I being dropped as their agent Lloy will later say that she dropped him as her agent because she believed he had compromised her safety by setting up a photo shoot that led to her being kidnapped And I will say regarding that He should have asked for referrals speak with other models, who'd work for him work for this, you know, Andre person But he didn't And that also might have been the industry norm. You know, I've had a lot of agents over the years, and I have found most of them frankly to be fucking lazy Uh, wayay more talk than action. not my favorite group of people overall. more concerned over, you know, where they're having lunch, who they're being seen by, what they're driving than, you know, doing like real work In the twenty twenty five docu series, Chloe Aliling My unbelievable kidnapping, Chloe's new agent, Adrian Sington describes the choice he and Chloe faced in their. PR first agent client relationship Sington says he essentially gave Chloe two paths. She could become a poster girl for anti slavery and women's abduction campaigns or they could focus on making money and controlling the narrative Chloe chose the ladatter choice would also prove to be controversial How dare the young mother try and make money Chlo's critics this was another sign of her ruthless ambition to become famous at all costs. A young glamour model abandons her old aggeent, signs to the publlicers within weeks of the kidnapping Shopping agents, by the way when a better one comes along. standard practice in this industry. Chloe insisted she never really wanted the publicity, not for this anyway it was only after talking with Adrianne that she decided that after having been through such a terrible ordeal, something good should come from it for her What the public does not see in any of this is this version of Chloe that lived at home with her mom at this time. For the first few months she told the Guardian in twenty eighteen, I stayed up while my mom slept. And with then sleep during the day. Every little noise I heard at night, I would run into her room. At one point, I even pushed the chest of drawers against the door because I was so scared the rest of the year, leading up to a February twenty eighteen trial in Italy for all this. Chloe kept herself busy, traveveling a lot to Milan, New York City three times to LA, Miami, Vegas, Dubai, the Maldives giving interviews and also being paid for photo shoots her explanation outside of this literally being her job. ote, I've traveled so much to put it all to the back of my mind as much as possible At some point during this time, Chloe heard that Lucas Herba was violently beaten in prisoned by other inmates because of his involve in a crime against a woman and that scared her more Because in her head, Lucish still the man who saved her from black death who she claims she still believed in the existence of if he was locked up, and worse if he was getting hurt in there. Who is going to protect her? she thinks That fear allegedly lingered right up until the pretrial hearing when the Italian police finally told Chloe the truth The police sat her down and explained to her that she did not need to live in fear of black death because after months and months of looking into it They were absolutely certain that there was no group of traffickers Never was No group of killers called Black Death And you knew that by now, right? We all doew that Chloe also learned that the photos of her lying on the floor half naked and drugged and unconscious were found on Lucas's phone you shock thought how was it possible? he wasn't even at the studi right, That's we told her He told her so many lies. She she also learned that the police had concluded that only two people were involved in her abduction, Lucas Herba and his brother Michael There were never any Romanians. There was no second team, no mysterious criminal syndicate Lucish and Michael alone had orchestrated the entire thing It wasn't until Lucas's prerial hearing that the remaining pieces for all this had fallen into place The prosecutor revealed that Lucas had bought the ski mask used during Chloe' abduction himself, matching the men Chloe described that he had created a so called Black Death pamphlet. Wite that fucking weird docent used to convince her that she was being held by an international trafficking network They also presented drafts of ransom emails pulled from his computers, including one sent to her agent, Phil Greene message Lucas sent to his brother instructing him to quote, clean the boot of the car so that her hair will not be found in car' trunk It strongly appeared that based on all the gathered evidence, Lucas only his only real accomplished was his brother Michael But Lucas was not getting down or, you know, going down, excuse me, without telling another story It was leaked by his defense team that Lucas would take the stand at his trial and claim he had fallen in love with Chloe and that the two of them had staged the entire kidnapping together not as a hoax for notoriety, but as a desperate scheme to pull her out of financial trouble after the birth of her son Lucas was plenty to testify that he had used his supposed involvement with Black Death to scare her into compliance He wanted to believe she was in danger, so she wouldn't back out of this plant What? That defense strategy is crazy So She conspired with him to stage his kidnapping hoax, to get publlicity, to then become famous and make more money modeling to provide for her son then changed her mind. And then he decided to scare her into going through with it anyway Uh despite being afraid that she's going to be raped and killed and that's going to get him acquitted Is his lawyer as stupid as he is The trial of Lucas Herba opens in M on february seventh, twenty eighteen, and Chloe's not there While the case first unfolds, she is reported to be in Switzerland, Si T her critics yet another damning piece of evidence against her herer lawyer, Francesco Pesa. He argued she should be excused from testifying that after six days of being terrorized, threatened with death, abused, both mentally and physically Putting her in the same room as her about would only traumatize her b' lawyers fought that They wanted her on the stand. But the court sided with Pesha and Chloe stayed away. prosecution open with prosecutor Apalas Tarar Panton aokush as a quote fantasist Here's a hereere's a fantasist with a narcissistic fantasies He's a mythalaniac adventure. Now he did say that he was a mythomaniac adventure whose entire criminal persona was built on grandiose self inflated lies. The prosecution pointed to a tendencies to create elaborate over the top stories, including the fact that he had actually built a website where he advertised women being sold to the highest bidder and described himself as a killer for hire who had worked for the FBI and the CIA and Musan. You just don't turn it off pattern of self mythologizing I think that's how I said that word, ran all the way down to the small details Like on Facebook where he claimed to be the chairman of that fake tech company, right one hundred business baby And And this was all before he had met Chloe Aain, this dude' fucking nut The court heard how Italian police recovered from hererb's phone and from his rented properties, the following evidence two ski masks. again, Herbera purchased before the kidnapping, matching Chloe's description of the men as masks who first grabbed her. phhotographs on Herba's phone of Chloe lying drugged unconscious, partially nude, a printed black death pamphlet The document Herba had used to convince Chloe, she was being held by an international trafficking network Drafts of ransom emails, including the on sent to Phil Greene, finally a recovered message, Lucases into to his brother Michael, instructing him to again, quote clean the boot of the car so that her hairon't be found The court also saw the physical evidence, lab results reporting ketamine traces found in Chloe's hair and injection mark from her right forearm. Are into it, the deep bruising on her wrists and ankles Lucas's defense led by Katia Karawaska Instead of denying the knapping They accept that it happened. The evidence, the photos, the messages, the ransom emails, the ketamine traces, the ski masks, it all made it extremely difficult to dispute The defense argued that the kidnapping was in fact a publicity stunt and that Chloe Ayen agreed to the scheme to boost her career. But if that was true Why make the stupid fucking black death pamphlet? Why email the brother to clean the car? Why actually inject her with ketamine If they're all in on it it's just' going to be a publicity stunt. Isn't that a lot of overkill orr at least regarding the pamphlet, shouldn't she have taken it and given it to investigators? you know, compleplete with having memorized some dark web addresses where they could then, you know, punch that in Find this website or websites about bllack death. buildild out its mythodology make it seem possible. This defense is weak as fuck. Also If they were really all in on it, in no world does Lucas go with her to the consulate, right? He shouldn't be found. ever if that's the plan They should have never walked into the village, bought the shoes. All of that reeks of a weird delusional guy trying to get her to fall in love with him as opposed to what the defense is claiming Lucas Lucas' lawyers Point to CCTV footage of her holding hands with him as they stopped for shoes during captivity is proof, even though as I just laid out That actually hurts this claim If you think about it for a few minutes And Italian courts De defendants have the right to make a personal declaration without being cross examined. Lucas, Herba, used that right He claimed to have been in love with Chloe Ailing, telling the court, quote I never hurt the girl I was not violent with her. If she felt forced verbally in any way, I am very sorry, but it certainly was not as Chloe has described. I was in love, I was hoping that once her fame took off, she would repay me with feelings He would share the money. This guy's a fucking maniac. I hope M a time that if she go famous, she repay me with feelings. I just want feelings with her and we share money He said he met Chloe on Facebook in twenty fifteen Fll love with her He didn't meet her. She fucking she accepted your friend request, you fucking' weirdo He also said the two had met in person at least once before the kidnapping. Yeah, I bet you approach her on the street and we're like, Hi, Are you Chloe? She's like, Uh, yes, and then just took off Then during closing arguments, Lucas' lawyer cited an email she had received from US. film producers that Chloe's story closely matched the plot of a movie titled by any means, whichich was released only eight weeks before the twenty seventeen kidnapping The IMDB logline for this film reads a seeless celebrity gets kidnapped and held hostage after a nightclub appearance. When the police interrogate the man she accuses, they question whether she's after justice or a front page story Here is the trailer for this extremely low budget Terribly mixed Aysmal looking production Truly, almost no one watched. What's this for? prove you're alive. Cold it, Mb it nice Well let's just bring it back to Mimi. What do you make of this media frenzy? Oh, I think it's an actually outrage. She's supposed to be America's eight girl. My name is Mimi. Wyatt? they Wyatt? No way. Right now, you've gotta get out there more.. We've seen enough It has no rating, or listen to enough has no rating in of rotten tomatoes because literally not a single actual critic ever reviewed it. Do doesn't have an audience score because no audience members bothered to review it either because it was never shown in theaters neverever streamed on a proper platform It basically might well be a home movie. Lucas' deffense argued that this movie that no one saw Was there inspiration And then Lucas himself confirmed that by any means served as a bllueprint for what unfolded I highly doubt he watched it I highly doubt he would have ever even heard about this film had the film's actual producers one of the fucking very few people like small like a group of the very few people on eararth who haveve actually seen this movie if they had not sent him an email Although one one of two film festivals it was screened out was in Poland but a small one and he was living in England In his closing speech, prosecutor Paolo Ser Tre apart the publicity stunt defense by breaking down the numbers again The ten thousand pounds, herb is spent on property rentals, travel, ski masks, fake studio that he turned to the court and asked Why would a m love would a young im modo blow us over ten thousand euros on all of thatu? For a st I was supposedly give him anotherhing in theana. that have made no economic sense madeade no sense of any kind, didn't add up olo Storare requested sixteen years and eightths in prison for Herba, citing the very real possibility that Chloe could have died at numerous points. She could have stopped breathing from the ketamine, suffocated in that fucking bag in the trunk of the car. He argued the sense needed to reflect not just what Herba did, but what could have happened On june eighteenth, twenty eighteen, four months after the trial began, the Milan courourt delivered its verdict The court found Alukca Aahaba is a gst y' of aggraimated a kidnapper for the purposes of extortion He receives the recommended sentence of a sixteen a years and eight months up Luc's defense lawyer, Katia Kolokaska announced her intention to appeal, arguing the sentence should have been limited to one to eight years, given that Chloe emerged unharmed loye's lawyer Francesco Pescha announced he would seek five hundred thousand dollars in euros in damages in separate civil proceedings Although conceded that that was unlikely because Lu Luuckas probably not able to pay In a statement, Chloe said I'm so very happy this is all over. I'm very pleased and relieved by the outcome of today's hearing and feel that justice has been served and I can get closure on what has been a terrible time for me I am desperate to put this ordeal behind me, move on with my life, and forge a new path now that the world can see I was telling the truth Luc's brother Michael also sends to sixteen years eight months for helping kidnap and drug Chloe B good they are both tips shits. Both Chloe and her former agent Phil Green have since written memoirs about the ordeal In july twenty eighteen, Chloe Alien's memoir kidnapped the untold story of My abduction was published. Just weeks earlier, Phil Greene published his memoir in confessions of a model agent. In it, Phil insisted he did everything in his power to help Chloe. Writing about Chloe's time in Italy after the kidnapping, Phil describes himself as her lifeline, saying her calls to him sometimes two or three a day last up to an hour each But according to Chloe she fel she had no real option except callul Pil And she was one responsible for booking her hotel She also claims her mother told her that Phil actually had been rather difficult to deal with and had told her to stop calling while she was trying to find out where her daughter was Chloe ultimately held Philill responsible for what happened, arguing that he had failed to carry out the basic checks any agent should have done before sending her abroad to meet a photographer she did not know Phil, however maintained, he did everything he was supposed to do. Augustteenth, twenty eighteen Chloe entered Celebrity Big Brother UK as a day one housemate During her short time in the house, much of the attention focused on her flirtation with former footballer. Jermaine Penant did not disclose to her that he was married The two grew close, even breaking house rules by exchanging handwritten notes using Chloe's eyeliner Chloe is ultimately nominated to be evicted by her housemates who complained about her not participating in chores and general disengagement around the house She was evicted on day thirteen, making her the second housemate to leave. After her eviction, Chloe said she was shocked to learn that Penant had been married in twenty fourteen insisting she had no idea he had a wife. Once again, this gives more fuel to her detractors who continue to insist she was part of a kidnapping plot despite all evidence presented at the trial and the conviction for kidnapper. They just think that she's a terrible human january twenty twenty, an Italian appeal court ruled to reduce Lucas Herb's sence because he quote acted compassionately during the kidnaps kidnapping. In its judgment, the court noted he had acted out of love Okay, adding that he had not abandoned her in an isolated area when he released her and drove her to the British Consulate Milan All right, this meant that Luucas would now serve twelve years in one month. instead of sixteen years to eight month I mean I guess he did, you know, return her. Maybe they thought that they're reducing the sense would give future kidnappers incentive to release people on hearart Next year in March of twenty twenty one, a Milan Aeal courourt cut Michael Herb's sentence all the way down to five years and eight months, downgrading his conviction from kidnapping for extortion to simple kidnapping since he was not the primary planner And then Michael end up being released eighteen months earlier than that Back in twenty twenty four I don't like it, neither to Chloe I think you should have been in prison for a lot longer Aileen told the BBC of Michael in August of twenty twenty four, she added, The fact that they still don't take accountability and still want to make lies and not be responsible for what they did is even more annoying Backing up a bit in April of twenty twenty three, BBC three announnce a six part drama based on the abduction made with Chloe's blessing English actress Nadia Parks played Chlo in the series. Head of the launch, Chloe said that she hoped the series quote, encourages people not to doubt victims based on the way they react to a traumatic experience based on the way they dress, their job or what they do to survive I hope it encourages people to look deeper than headlines, not to judge a situation or story based on what you read, not to be so easily influenced by media, and to keep an open mind before jumping to conclusions Yeah, Pere's Morgan, you've daffed fucking Tat But twoo months after the BBC drama aired, Chloe's former agent Phil Green gave his most extensive interview yet to Lad Bible He walked a reporter through the original Andre Lazio contact The due diligence he says he carried out in the moment he received the Black Death email Then he got to what everybody wanted to hear What did you think of Chloe? On the one hand, he said he was empathetic because there was no way the kidnapping was staged He was critical of what came afterwards, the way Chloe behaved post release, Phil said made it look as though she loved the attention. The press, the TV interviews, celebrity bigig Brother. in his view, she had made some bad decisions. And so no wonder people came away thinking she was just in it for the money He also offered a theory about why she'd been targeted in the first place Social media Instagram in particular Models, he said, put everything online, and he had no doubt the attacker had been following her For seeen how large our audience was assuming a bigger ransom was within reach eople don't always know who is watching them, he warned and he thought that made it all a little dangerous And I couldn't agree M was still there. that that BBC drama still was not enough to convince everyone that Chloe was telling the truth And so in August of twenty twenty five three part documentary referred to throughout this episode, Chloe Ailey, my unbelievable kidnapping premiered on BBC three and BBC I Pler In its third and final episode, the series sururface something that reframed Chloe's entire experience somethingomething that I alluded to talking about before this episode was over much earlier, right at the beginning of the timeline. the reason for Chloe's inability to pick up on certain social cues Uh, why she trust of the wrong people Why she didn't show what other people thought were appropriate emotions? Why she seemed so cold illogical when others thought she should be, you more emotional Chloe had been formally diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder It all started when a primary school teacher emailed Chloe explaining that she thought Chloe might have autism that it could be affecting the way she behaved That was why people could not relate to her or understand her reactions to things. Wh she could not always understand why her peers behavave in certain ways. Chloe sought out an assessment and the assessment came back positive. the documentary, Chloe describes that for her entire life, she quote had a lot of difficulties with the communication I was being told off I would smile I just had the wrong reactions to things She added for ages, I said, I'm not an emotional person But now I realize that no matter how hard I try, I just can't show it My calmness saved me in the kidnap fired in the press How about that, huh? Again, fuck you, piers, Morgan, your piece of shit a guy who never apologized for tearing into her Of course not, Pompous ass Uh I would not give a shit if he was kidnapped somed Right, Get black death, sell his ass. notot that you could probably get much for it. Chloe's diagnosis explained everything the British public had been bitching about, the chirpy demeanor in interviews, the smiling on her doorstep, the flat affects As she described her own trauma, The fact that she was, you know, never very emotional on television. you know? In twenty twenty five, Chloe told a journalist for sttylist magazine Autism plays a big part in the way that I reacted And that was confusing to neurotypical people. However, there are other reasons why people could react in the way that I did or in an unusual way that doesn't fit the normal box People disassociate with events that have happened or have a delayed reaction, especially after trauma So it can't all be put down to a diagnosis and that shouldn't affect the way people treated me. Someday when I have more time I would like to get tested myself. I have also been told Uh My own emotional reactions, especially by everybody I've ever been in a romantic relationship with of any significance, they are not normal that my flat affect in certain situations where others are often emotional confuses people that I have very delayed responssees to thing thingsings in particular, I rarely express a lot of obvious excitement and joy over good news. Lindsey, Lindsey for sure thinks. pretty autistic Uh yeah and I've struggled that I guess, you know for a long time I'm glad there's more terms for it now You know, we really do all have different kinds of brains that produce all different kinds of reactions to, you know, similar events. In the documentary, Chloe says the fallout after the kidnapping had impacted her just as much, if not more than the kidnapping itself. Even years later, she said she still got regular abuse online. Heople still call her a liar also recently did something that by her own account brought her the closest thing to real peace she has felt since twenty seventeen She moved away from the Eedge of London to Snowdonia, North Wales Nedonia, a mountainous, gorgeous region. The National Park in North Wales homeom to only three towns within the park's boundaries A bunch more immediately beyond it The populous town has, you know, not quite three thousand people All inspiring landscape is dramatic, rugged mountain ranges, jagg peaks, deep glacial valleys, waterfalls, lakes shaped over hundreds of millions of years including by ancient volcanic activity. In quier months, especially midwk, the trails feel almost empty. So if you live there that Chloe, you know,, people like her They have the waterfalls, summits, lakes pretty much to themselves. For Chloe, main appeal is the isolation and natural beauty She found a house that she loves that overlooks the water Bought it. on her. How often is her son there? Not sure I didn't look that hard. She clearly wants to keep that part of her life private and good on her. Lucifine is proud And now After that pretty happy ending It's all this madness. Let's get out of this timeline Good job, soldier. You've made it back B What an insane story such a unique and crazy convergence of a delusional self aggrandizing pathological liar, kidnapping a love interest. who is neurod divergent in a way that makes it very hard for her to understand just how nonsensical and full of shit he is H Llad that that did not end a lot more tragically than it did eyaly has said in some of her most recent interviews that she can see in hindsight why many people have doubted her She admits some of her own choices and inconsistencies didn't help but also thinks the backlash went deeper than that. People saw her smiling and assumed that that meant she was not traumatized. and she says that a lot of the public judgment came from the fact that she was a model and I think she's right o online and poke around. L of inceell dudes love to hate on pretty girls And so many insecure women also love to hate on pretty girls I mean, holy fuck do they get it from all sides? It is truly pathetic Fuck do you care? If an influencer is wearing a tight tank top at the mall, showing some cleavage. Are you mad because you don't have her tits Are you pissed because you know she'll never let you play with those kits Either way. Grow the fuck up, loser. worry about yourself. Stop acting like a fifth grade bully. You know, stop being a pathetic keyboard warrior douche Would you go up and say what you just typpe to someone's face, you know, in real life? No, then probably don't type it I say a lot of shit You know, on here on this podcast is's negative But I really try and limit it to people who act in negatively egregious ways, right? Look at you, peiers, Morgan He would never give me the time of day, but I would fucking love to say a bunch of shit to his face Even if you do go after Chloe She probably won't care She's pretty logical Analytic She knows that odds are, her life is probably better than yours. if you're that kind of person Right She's living in a natural splend in a home she owns overlooking the water, making good money, probably having hot sex What are you doing with your days pissed off that mom burnted another casserle. frrustrated that your dick keeps getting chafed from beatating off too many times with a cheap lotion Trolling is a dead giveaway. that you're a miserable fuck. and that your life is probably in shambles. Thank every morning D, give it away testles because we see this do every day. Every day U We really this dude. So interesting story, right There are still questions that haven't been answered, at least not for some people. Why did Lucas truly let her go Chloe still doesn't know. Maybe he believed they had a future together. Maybe he didn't know what to do next. Maybe he was just crazy. I mean, one of his demands was for Chloe to publicize bllack deaths Even though doesn't exist, so he's truly nots The going theory is that Lucas Herba had orchestrated an extraordinary kidnap plot in an attempt to win the model's affection. Or perhaps kidnapped her in the hope of getting a ransom But in the process of planning the abduction, became romantically obsessed with her by posing as her savior. He was hoping that Chloe would fall in love with him and the two could start a relationship. And I feel like that is correct Right? He has some kind of serious personality disorder Its truly mentally you I think he stopped her. kidnapp her thinking that his bat shit crazy ramblings would somehow get her to fall in love with him H primary motivation, you know, was to get three hundred thousand dollars or I'm sorry, I'm sorry. hisis primary motivation was to get her to fall in love with him his secondary motivation, you know to get three hundred thousand dollars And then when the money was not going to come, you know, he pivoted I hope he could still at least get fifty grand. But most importantly, you know, her undying affection and devotion I think it's a dangerously deranged in cl with no proper understanding of how romantic relationships work in real life And to refer back to those playboy models I worked with around the time Chloe was kidnapped, I remember a number of them talking about dealing with crazy stalker type fans who are nuts like him I feel bad for women in that way Right? There are a bunch of people out there, men and women who just do not fucking get how life works And they delude themselves into thinking that because somebody once accepted their friend request or liked their comment or replied to their DM that one time, person feels the way about them that they feel about this infuencer model, musician, etcer And with female models Th those fans highly sexualized, more prone statistically to violence So if you're a sex related being sexy for a living, Lucifina begs you to be Careful There's a lot of variations of Lucas Herb out there Looking back, Chloe wishes she had done things differently, was more protective of herself. She's a little older and wiser now. She's thought a lot about what You know, whether bringing somebody with her to that shoot, how that might have changed everything Has anything positive come out of this experience according to Cho It's made me a lot strong And I'm a lot wiser I'm more paranoid and cautious G Chlo Hope you thrive. Ifough fing your dian Time for todayays. Takeaways. Time suuck, top five takeaways Number one, Chloe Alileen grew up in Coleson, South London rais raised largely by her mother single mom He became a mom her se to the teenager gave birth to her son Ashon. She was barely a year into her modeling career when she was taken. She' been work in the glamour and page three end of the industry and signed with Phil Greens's aggency in pursuit of bigger jobs and a bigger social media following Num two lo was abducted in Milan, Italy in July of twenty seventeen. after being lured to a fake photo shoot, grabbed by two masked men, injected with ketamine, stuffed into the trunk of a hired car or trunk of a car and then driven to a remote farmhouse near Turin where she was held for six days. ors claimed to be working for a dark web crime syndicate called Black Death who one of them said would auction her off as a sex slave unless three hundred thousand dollars US was paid as ransom But the Black Death does not exist The whole thing was an elaborate plot orchrated by two brothers, Lucish and Michael Herba because Lucish had fallen in love with a model he did not know Number three. Chloe Ayen's primary kidnapper, Lucas Herbo, was a Polish computer programmer who prosecutors determined to be a narcissist A fantasist obsessed with concocing elaborate delusional, fanciful stories. in which he always emerged the hero It was a one man killing machine In his mind, in reality a sad insufferable delusional loser Number four, despite a criminal conviction, confirming her account Large parts of the British public refused to believe Alien had been kidnapped at all The doubt centered on her demeanor. She smiled, posed for photographers, was unemotional retelling her story to many of the this behavior read as, you know, somebody who had staged the whole thing for publicity. To alien it was the behavior of someone doing whatever it took to survive by making her captor believe that she had feelings for him too In a documentary about her case, Alen revealed she had been formally diagnosed with autism, the diagnosis offered a new framework from which to assess her supposedly odd behavior Number five, new info Want to support Chloe's modeling career today She's on only fans. at Barely Chloe offering some kind of a limited free trial for thirty days over a thousand pieces of media, all natural peach and melons according to her emojis Proably not promoting this well If you think it's weird that'momoting her only fans, please hear one last reference my days working with the playboy models They were only paid, I think, a hundred dollars in appearance to come on the show They were not paid more when their photos were repurposed online or you know, magazines sometimes. Some of them also did porn We're paid next to nothing for that Even when they were flown to exotic places for photo shoots, they were often not paid much more than travel expenses. people who took their picks, the people who made the videos, well, they got to monetize that content however they wanted in perpetuity Prior to Oly Fans, exploitation and adult content was off the fucking charts Everybody was making money except the women getting naked. So many horror stories But with only fans in similar sites, suddenly models like Chloe, they got a way to monetize their social media followings. Suddenly they don't have to be taken advantage of by some shady producer or shady agent, of which there are many, They get to keep eighty percent of their subscription costs Iidiotic moralists want to destroy sites like O fans, and I guess just let those women be financially taken advantage of again same mentality people have with abortion, right? shutting down abortion clinics It doesn't end abortion just pushes it further into the shadows where it's infinitely more dangerous Porn will never ever, ever, ever, ever go away. So to me, the obvious maybe autistically and unemotionally logical choice is to not push it into the shadows Let somebody like Chloe control her own narrative, her own business, right? contontrol every aspect of her own photo shoots, own the content buuy her own equipment, own her own studio, hire her own camera operator, or just do it herself. Never have to worry again about work for some psychotic creep who might rape her or kill her or pretend he's going to auction her off, auction her off D deeath Heail, Lucifino, motherfuckers. Time shuck, Tough wild takeawways. Black death, the bizarre kidnapping of Chloe Alien has been suck Thank you to Bad Magy Productions for the team here for help making time suck Thanks to Queen of Bad Magic, Lindsay Cumm Thanks also to Logan Keith, helping to publish this episode, designing the merch for the store at badmagicproductions. com where again you can get those summer camp tickets. Thanks to Laura Woods for the initial research and let me know about this topic Also thanks to the All seen eyes, moderating the culture Curious private Facebook page, the Mod squad for making sure discord keeps running smooth and everybody over the time sucks sububbredate and bad mic crred it And now let's head on over to this week's Time sucker Updates. Get your time sucker updates Mathematical Matsack Michael Broughton send a message to Bojangles at Timesook podcast dot com with the subject line of Two and three stars versus three to five stars One of many people, I should add who wrote it with a similar message And Mike wrote, Damnit Dan Three out of five equals zo point six or sixty percent Two out of three orz six six seven or or sixty six point six percent, Hell Satan He rated you higher Not lower Not sorry at all. Mike, former math teacher. I suspect a new fan who wrote in also is Damn Mike I was so confident when I act like two or three stars was less than three out of five stars Fucking fractions This reminds me of a story that my son Kyder lik to tell in the nineteen eighties. exc me to compete directly with McDonald's wildly successful quarter pounder. AndW introduced a one third pound burger for the exact same price offer more meat Even beat the quarter pounder in blind taste test. Despite that, the burger flopped Why Fractions ANW hired a market research firm to investigate the poor sales, found that a large number of customers incorrectly believed that a quarter pound burger Bigger. Th a third pound burger becausecause the number four is bigger than the number three And I've laughed at that so many times and then I did the same shit. thinking for a second that because five is bigger than three, three out of five must be bigger than two out of three. D' Cap activated. Now for something silly Uh, known drug user Lise Stampper sent a message with the subject line of acid and sharks This in regards to me talking about how tripon on acid actually sometimes reduces anxiety And I was able to tread water out the ocean because everything felt so beautiful U when sober, there's no fucking way that happens ever Lee writes Hi Dan mentioned being terrified a shark, so I decided to share the story In my early twenties, my whole extended family rented out some cabins at Pacific Beach in San Diego I decided to do acid, swim in the ocean, combining two of my favorite things I am not afraid of sharks, but the whole time I was in the water, I was convinced I was going to be eaten by sharks. Every piece of kelp that touched my leg sent me into a panic. But I was too scared to go back to shore because I didn't want my family to see my eyes and know I was on something So I spent hours during the peak of the trip just floating, terrified that sharks were going to eat me At one point a few of my cousins swim out to me and I kept swimming away from them, so they wouldn't know I was tripping. which was ridiculous because they would not have care at all And really that just made me seem like a complete weirdo At some point, I became aware I was getting very sunbururned to get out of the water. and an idea struck me I wear sunglasses. Nobody will see my eyes Such a idea So I threw my shades on And I went back to my family, I love that took you hours to come up with that when you were tripping Uh I went back to my family and nobody noticed a thing. The downside was that I saw my sonburn in the bathroom mirror and spend the next few hours convinced I'd permanently disfigured myself The takeaway here is apparently my social anxiety overwhelms any fear of sharks. I was willing to die rather than have an aunt or uncle know that I was on acid. Thanks for everything you do, sincerely Lee manan, thanks, dude U David is sending that message, Lee They really make me smile and laugh. So funny to think that you were truly willing to be eaten by sharks rather than have some family members find out your trip and balls. But now one more from Furious Sack Meghan Magle Letxt with the subject line of how dare you make me feel my feelings? U and then Meghgan writes