Stephanie Slater was kidnapped and held hostage in a coffin-style box for eight days after she was duped into meeting with a ‘potential buyer’ for a home she was trying to sell
Estate agent Stephanie Slater started her morning like any other day, heading to work for a viewing at a property in Birmingham with a potential buyer. Instead, she was greeted by Michael Sams, who abducted her at knife point and held captive her in a coffin for days.
Known as a “popular, outgoing person” who loved her job, Stephanie, from Great Barr, West Midlands, was just 25-years-old when she attended the viewing. Sams arrived and introduced himself as a man called ‘Bob Southall’. But his ruse didn’t last long – Sams attacked Stepahie in the property, dragging her into a vehicle and driving her to his workshop in Newark, Nottinghamshire.
When they arrived, Sams blindfolded and gagged Stephanie, put her in handcuffs, bound her feet and put her in a coffin that was pushed inside a wheelie bin. He then imprisoned her in a wooden coffin-style box inside a locked wheelie bin.
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“It was freezing cold. You’re in absolute agony, and you’re terrified for your life, and you’re just thinking, ‘What the hell has happened to me? What am I doing here? Is this some sort of nightmare?’ The fear is absolutely indescribable”, she recalled.
During her captivity, Sams would occasionally let Stephanie out of the box to give her food. But those were the only glimpses of the outside world. Her captor pushed electrodes up the estate agent’s trousers and told her she’d be electrocuted if she tried to escape, the Metro reports.
Despite her horrific conditions and looming threats, Stephanie bravely tried to build a rapport with her kidnapper in an effort to stay alive. Recalling the attack in 1992, she told news interviews: “His whole body, his whole face, his whole demeanour changed completely. He just looked absolutely evil.
“He suddenly came flying at me through the air. I can remember seeing flashes of silver. He had a knife and a file with a hook on the end… and they were just flaying in front of my face. He was screaming at me to shut up and not scream and be quiet and don’t fight, or he’ll kill me.”
She was eventually released after her employer, Shipways Estate Agency in Great Barr, West Midlands, paid a £175,000 ransom fee. Sams dropped Stephanie home and left her two streets from her house. She had been missing for eight days.
Following the shocking ordeal, Stephanie could barely walk or see due to the restraints that had been used to imprison her. She said in 1992: “His whole body, his whole face, his whole demeanour changed completely. He just looked absolutely evil. He suddenly came flying at me through the air. I can remember seeing flashes of silver. He had a knife and a file with a hook on the end… and they were just flaying in front of my face. He was screaming at me to shut up and not scream and be quiet and don’t fight, or he’ll kill me.”
Sams, a tool maker who had married three times, avoided arrest until his first wife recognised his voice from a telephone recording played on BBC’s Crimewatch. He pleaded guilty to kidnapping and imprisoning Stephanie in 1993 and making a £175,000 ransom demand on her employers. Stephanie later helped convict him of the 1991 murder of Julie Dart, 18, from Leeds.
Sams kidnapped Julie on July 9, 1991, after driving to a red light area and picking up the 18-year-old girl. She was blindfolded and taken to Sams’ warehouse where she was placed in a coffin-like box and chained to the floor.
According to the kidnapper’s later confession, Julie managed to free herself from the box but was unable to leave the room. Sams, who had wired an alarm to the box, returned to chain her to the roof beam.
The following day, he forced Julie to write a letter to her boyfriend demanding a random of £140,000 or “the hostage would never be seen again”. After the note was written, he murdered her with a hammer and dumped her body in a field in Easton, Lincolnshire.
Since it was never likely that her ransom would be paid, it has always been suggested that Sams had always intended on killing the teenage sex worker.
He later claimed that killing Julie was a “practice run” for the kidnapping of Stephanie, telling officers he had planned to murder the estate agent before deciding to release her.
Sams was sentenced to life in prison and is now aged 80. Sadly, Stephanie died aged 50 in 2017 after a battle with cancer. Prior to her death, she had written a book on her experience and worked with police forces to advise them on how to deal with kidnap survivors, and with survivors themselves to help them recover from their ordeals.
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