Episode 5: Beyond Fear: The Abduction for Ransom of Stephanie Slater
It was January 1992, when a young Birmingham-based estate agent met a mysterious man posing as a house buyer at a vacant property in north-west Birmingham. Within minutes, the man had attacked and subdued her, forcing her into a waiting vehicle at knifepoint. He drove her to a filthy workshop, where he would hold her captive for ransom for the next nine days. He kept her in a crudely constructed wooden coffin - a box within a box. But she was not his first victim.
The Final Day:
It was 11pm on 31st January 1992, and nine days since Stephanie Slater had been abducted by an unknown assailant. Her abductor had chained her inside an elaborately booby-trapped wooden box inside a box, taking her out only to eat and drink. This was the longest period of time that she had been continuously confined to the box, and she was in agony. She had been placed in the box at 8am. Her abductor assured her that he would return by 9:30pm, once he had collected her ransom payment. She waited. She began to panic, then she heard some noises in the distance. She didn’t know what she would face once her kidnapper opened the padlock and removed her from the box.
The Day of the Abduction:
Stephanie Slater was born in 1966 and was adopted by Warren and Betty Slater, a working-class couple living in Birmingham in the West Midlands in England. In December 1991, 25-year-old Stephanie started a new job as an estate agent at Shipways Estate Agents on Walsall Road, Great Barr in northwest Birmingham. She was doing well in the role, and had made a positive impression on her colleagues, and her manager, Kevin Watts.
Wednesday 22nd January 1992 began as an ordinary day for Stephanie, but she could not have imagined the ordeal she was about to endure. Stephanie arrived at a two-storey property on Turnbury Road for a pre-arranged appointment. She approached the middle-aged man standing by the front door, and the two stepped inside to begin the house tour. It was an unremarkable house that had been on the market for several months.
Sensing that the client wasn’t really interested in the property, she encouraged him to view the top floor in a bid to end the viewing more quickly. It was cold and the house was unheated. She wanted to get back to the office.
The man asked her, ‘what’s that up there?’ and she turned back to where he was standing to see what he was referring to. When she turned back to face him, his demeanor had changed completely. He lunged at her with a knife. Stephanie participated in an episode of Crimes That Shook Britain in 2008, and described the incident as follows. She said:
‘He seemed to grow bigger. Huge! He seemed to be flying through the air at me. His face is all contorted. It takes a couple of seconds for your brain to register that this is danger. And it was absolute and total sheer terror. Because you realise now, oh my God, that’s the only thing that goes through your head is, oh my God!’.
She wanted to defend herself but realised that there was nothing around her that she could grab to use. Her face was cut superficially in several places, and some of her hair that had gotten in the path of the blade had been cut. She could see it falling around her.
Before long, Stephanie had been subdued and ushered into the bathtub in the upstairs bathroom. From this position, she caught her reflection in a mirror hanging high on the wall and knew that the situation was now dire. At the bottom of the stairs, he blindfolded her, put sunglasses over the blindfold and pressed the knife into her side. He forced her into his waiting car and drove off.
Eventually, he stopped the car and told her to sit up. He removed the gag and said: ‘I don’t know if you realise it or not, but you’ve been kidnapped’. She told him that her family didn’t have any money. He then told her that her employer, Shipways Estate Agents would be paying her ransom.
After the Abduction:
At 6pm, the vehicle Stephanie was being transported in came to a final stop. She was removed from the car, and pushed into a filthy workshop. Here, the man sat her handcuffed on a chair, securing her torso with a thick rope. Her abductor had constructed a crudely constructed wooden box inside a wheelie bin, or trash can, placed horizontally in the far corner of the workshop. He forced her into the makeshift coffin, attached her handcuffed wrists to a bar within the box, and placed heavy rocks on the outside of the contraption.
The man pushed something sharp up Stephanie’s trouser leg. He explained that they were electrodes, and that if she moved, she would be electrocuted. He secured the lid of the wheelie bin with a padlock. Stephanie said that as the night wore on, she didn’t care if she lived or died anymore. She ‘felt nothing’.
Police Investigation:
Within two hours of her abduction, Stephanie’s colleagues became concerned that she hadn’t yet returned. This was meant to be a routine house viewing that should not have taken more than thirty minutes end-to-end. Her colleagues Kevin and Jane drove by the property on Turnberry Road and saw that her company car was still parked outside. They reasoned that she would be back at the office soon enough.
At 12:22pm, the receptionist at Shipways Estate Agents received a shocking phone call on the main office line. A man claiming to have abducted the company’s newest employee was demanding a ransom of GBP £175,000. She was told to expect a package with a ransom letter and further instructions very soon. Kevin Watts contacted his own boss, and both men agreed to contact authorities.
They contacted the West Midlands Police to report the situation, and to advise them that they were not supposed to know about the crime or have any involvement in the case. Yet, this caveat seemed to be ignored by all involved in the investigation. Within five minutes of the crime being reported, uniformed officers had arrived at both the Turnberry Road property, and also at the Shipways Estate Agents offices, fully visible to the public, and to anyone else who could be watching.
Police examining the crime scene found evidence of a struggle in the upstairs bathroom. There was blood in the bathtub and other forensic evidence scattered throughout the top floor. Police assigned a Family Liaison Officer to stay with the family for the duration of their ordeal. Fully aware that this could mean Stephanie’s safe return, or the alternative, that she could be dead, and they may never recover her body.
An immediate media blackout was called to maximise the chances of recovering Stephanie alive. Listening devices were set up on the Slater’s landline phone, and the phone lines of her employer, Shipways Estate Agents. Police attempted to intercept any package intended for Shipways directly at the postal sorting centre. They worked into the night and eventually found a letter and a cassette tape from Stephanie’s abductor.
When they played the tape, they heard a woman’s voice speaking the words dictated by her abductor. The voice on the tape stated:
‘This is Stephanie Slater. The time is 11:45. I can assure you I am okay and unharmed. Providing these instructions are carried out, I will be released on Friday 31st January’.
West Midlands Police had jurisdiction, as the initial crime took place in Birmingham. They knew that it was likely that the suspect had fled the area, and Stephanie could now be anywhere. They reached out to West Yorkshire Police to collaborate on the case. West Yorkshire Police had dealt with a similar kidnap-for-ransom case just six months earlier. Julie Dart, an 18-year-old sex worker had been abducted in July, and police had received a ransom demand. Her badly beaten body was later found decomposing in a field. The ransom had not been paid.
The Ransom Drop:
On Friday 31st January, Kevin was preparing to deliver the ransom, as per the kidnapper’s instructions. The kidnapper had told Kevin to go to a kiosk just inside the entrance of Glossop railway station at 7pm and to wait for instructions. He was given specific times that he was to be at specific places, and so began a convoluted journey, undoubtedly plotted to confuse anyone who may try to follow him.
It was approximately 9pm when he arrived at what would be his final destination. There, he found instructions directing him to a nearby laneway. He encountered a handwritten sign with Shipways on it, directing him on the correct way to turn. The sign led him to a narrow and isolated laneway, where he transferred the ransom money into another bag, and placed it on a wooden tray on a wall. It was dark, and Kevin Watts didn’t realise that the wall was part of a bridge, with a 60-foot or 18.3-metre drop on the other side of it.
Below the bridge, camouflaged by the dark, Stephanie’s abductor was waiting. He could scarcely believe his luck, or that every facet of his plan had, so far, come together so seamlessly. He had earlier attached fishing wire to the wooden tray, and rigged it so that when he pulled it, the tray, and its contents would fall to where he was waiting below. He now had the ransom money in his possession. He got on his moped and travelled back to his parked car before making his escape into the night.
Release:
It was 11pm when Stephanie’s captor arrived back at the workshop. He unlocked the padlock and pulled her out of the box, freeing her handcuffed wrists from the bar. Stephanie, crying and hyperventilating, collapsed into her abductor’s arms. He told her that he was going to take her home, but she had no reason to believe that he was actually going to follow through.
A little after midnight, a red metro car pulled up two streets from Stephanie’s home in Great Barr. She ran to her front door and began banging furiously on the glass, but there was no answer. Suddenly, the door opened, and a blonde stranger stood in the doorway. It was the Family Liaison Officer that had been assigned to her family. He didn’t recognise Stephanie. Her parents ran to greet her.
Police launched a nationwide hunt for her abductor. Three weeks after Stephanie’s release, police appealed for witnesses on BBC’s Crimewatch UK. They played the audio recording of the kidnapper and asked the public if they recognised it. One woman, Susan Oakes called, identifying the voice as being that of her ex-husband, Michael Sams. When they arrived at his workshop in Swan & Salmon Yard in Newark, Michael Sams immediately confessed to Stephanie’s abduction. He was arrested and charged with Stephanie’s abduction and Julie Dart’s murder.
Michael Sams:
Michael Benneman Sams was born in Keighley in West Riding of Yorkshire in August 1941. He was reportedly dyslexic, and joined the Merchant Navy when he was 20. He was discharged after three years. When he was 23, he worked as a lift engineer, eventually training to become a central heating engineer, which he worked at until his arrest in 1976 for car theft and making a false insurance claim.
While in his early twenties, Sams married a woman called Susan, and they had two children together. The marriage had reportedly broken down in the months leading up to his incarceration in 1976, and they divorced soon afterwards. While serving a prison sentence for the car theft and insurance charges, Sams developed cancer, and was advised by doctors to amputate one of his legs to save his life. He used a prosthetic leg for the rest of his life. He went on to marry twice more, and by 1992, was living in Sutton-on-Trent in Nottinghamshire with his third wife, Tina. His workshop in the Swan and Salmon Yard was located 11 Km away in Newark-on-Trent.
Julie Dart:
Julie Dart was born on the 1st of March 1973 and grew up in the city of Leeds in Northern England. On Tuesday 9th July 1991, Julie was soliciting for work in the Chapeltown red light district in Leeds, when she was approached by Michael Sams. After his conviction for Stephanie’s abduction, Sams gave a full confession on tape to Julie’s murder from Full Sutton Prison in East Yorkshire. In it, he described how he pulled up alongside Julie, and she told him that it was her first night out working the streets. He coaxed her into his car and transported her back to his workshop. He placed Julie in a make-shift wooden box and chained her to the ground and attached a wired alarm to the box. Later, Julie managed to free herself from the box, but found herself unable to escape the workshop. Before long, Sams, alerted to the tripped alarm system, returned.
The day after her abduction, Sams forced Julie to write dictated letters, including a letter to her boyfriend, Dominic, and one to the police with a ransom demand. In the letter to the police, he demanded a ransom of GDP £140,000, or ‘the hostage would never be seen again’. Her body was discovered ten days after she had gone missing. In addition to the violent abductions of Julie and Stephanie, Sams also attempted to extort GBP £200,000 from British Rail. He wrote letters demanding money, or else he would cause a train derailment. He abandoned these extortion schemes to concentrate on the abduction of Stephanie Slater in early 1992. At the time of Stephanie’s abduction, Michael Sams was 49 years old.
Trial:
The trial took place in Nottingham Crown Court in 1993. Sams admitted to Stephanie’s abduction, but at first denied having anything to do with Julie Dart’s death. Despite this, he was found guilty on all charges, including a sentence of life imprisonment for Julie’s abduction and murder, and Stephanie’s abduction. Sams was also found guilty on four charges of blackmail of the police and British Rail. In total, he received four life sentences. Police began an operation to locate the ransom money. Using ground-penetrating radar, they uncovered a bag containing GBP £150,000. The remaining GDP £25,000 was never found. Michael Sams remains in prison to this day. He was denied parole in April 2023, and is one of the longest-serving prisoners in England and Wales.
Stephanie was unable to return to her position as an estate agent due to the trauma that she had endured. She moved to the Isle of Wight in 1993, where she eventually opened a gift shop. In a 2011 interview, Stephanie discussed how her life had been utterly changed after her ordeal. She said:
‘Before this happened, I had a boyfriend, a job and a company car. I had loads of friends and a great social life. But he [Sams] took everything and destroyed the next 20 years of my life. But now I am ready to begin again. Most people begin their lives in their 20s and 30s but those years of my life were destroyed’.
In 1995, Stephanie wrote and published a book called Beyond Fear: My Will to Survive, that detailed her ordeal and how she overcame it. Stephanie said that she wrote the book for women like her, ‘women who are in danger’. She said, ‘I wanted to speak out, a voice in the wilderness, because nothing seems to be done for women these days, nothing has been done since I was kidnapped’. She began to work with police and became a victim’s advocate. She trained police on how to treat and interact with survivors and gave talks about her experience. Sadly, Stephanie died of cancer in August 2017. She was just 50 years old.
Sources:
Bruder, Shanine, ‘Taken Too Soon: Who was Julie Dart and what happened to her?’, The Irish Sun, 28th February 2023.
https://www.thesun.ie/news/10303700/who-was-julie-dart-michael-sams/
Crimes That Shook Britain: The Kidnap of Stephanie Slater (2008), Dir. Mike Le Han.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2366757/
Davies, Caroline, ‘Stephanie Slater, estate agent kidnapped in 1992, dies aged 50’, The Guardian, 1st September 2017.
Ferlita, Gabriella, ‘One of the UK’s most notorious kidnappers apologised to his victim when he returned her home’, Lad Bible, 4th December 2022.
https://www.ladbible.com/news/michael-sams-kidnapper-killer-apology-592910-20221204
‘Kidnap victim Stephanie Slater dies following cancer battle’, ITV News, 31st August 2017.
https://www.itv.com/news/central/2017-08-31/stephanieslater-birmingham-kidnapvictim
Kirby, Terry, ‘The Michael Sams Trial: Kidnapper who killed teenager is jailed for life’, The Independent, 8th July 1993.
‘Michael Sams’, Wikipedia.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Sams
Rogers, Jon, ‘Inside eerie yard where Stephanie Slater was held hostage in wooden coffin and raped in horror kidnap ordeal’, The Irish Sun, 2nd March 2023.
https://www.thesun.ie/news/10318635/yard-stephanie-slater-held-kidnap-raped-michael-sams/
Scheer, Victoria, ‘What happened to Stephanie Slater? Her tragic death after terrifying Michael Sams kidnap’, Examiner Live, 1st March 2023.
‘Stephanie Slater, kidnap victim – obituary’, The Telegraph, 5th September 2017.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/obituaries/2017/09/05/stephanie-slater-kidnap-victim-obituary/
‘Suzy Lamplugh’, Wikipedia.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disappearance_of_Suzy_Lamplugh
Whittaker, Andy & Watson, Greig, ‘Stephanie Slater: The kidnap victim who faced a second ordeal’, BBC News, 4th December 2022.
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-nottinghamshire-63680955