An estate agent who was kidnapped and held hostage for eight days is the subject of a new Channel 5 documentary that looks back at the horrendous crime that shocked the nation.
Stephanie Slater was an estate agent from Great Barr in the West Midlands, described as a “popular, outgoing person” who loved her job. But in January 1992, what should have been a normal day at work went horrifically wrong.
Stephanie, then aged 25, was scheduled to attend a viewing at a property in Birmingham with a potential buyer. But after arriving at the home, she was greeted by Michael Sams, who then abducted her at knife point.
Stephanie was bound, gagged and driven from Birmingham to Sam’s workshop in Newark, Nottinghamshire, where he handcuffed her and attached electrodes to her leg. He then imprisoned her in a wooden coffin-style box inside a locked wheelie bin.
During this time, Sams would occasionally let Stephanie out of the box to give her food. During this time, she attempted to build a rapport with her kidnapper in an effort to stay alive.
She was eventually released after her employer, Shipways Estate Agency in Great Barr, West Midlands, paid a £175,000 ransom fee. He 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. 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.
Sams 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 Sams’ 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.
The Girl in the Box: The Kidnapping of Stephanie Slater airs on Thursday, March 27 on Channel 5 at 10pm
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