Kidnapped Stephanie Slater survived 8 days of being raped and locked in a ‘coffin’… but pals say captor Michael Sams killed her in the end after she dies at 50
The estate agent was snatched by a man posing as a house buyer in Birmingham before being kept prisoner in a makeshift coffin, then handcuffed naked to a mattress and raped by a wooden-legged killer
FOR eight agonising days, the nation held its breath.
Estate agent Stephanie Slater had been snatched by a man posing as a house buyer in Birmingham and nobody knew a thing about him — or where she was being held.
It later emerged that she had been kept prisoner in a makeshift coffin, then handcuffed naked to a mattress and raped by wooden-legged killer Michael Sams.
Now, 25 years after her ordeal shocked the nation, Stephanie has died, aged 50.
She was diagnosed with cancer just 11 days before her death on Thursday.
Close friend Fiona Foskett, 52, told The Sun last night how Stephanie had visited doctors after falling ill, was diagnosed with liver cancer and spent her final few days in hospital.
Fiona said: “What happened to her lived with her until the day she died but she was a strong woman. She was an inspiration to us all.”
Stephanie feared for her life while being held captive, but Sams — now 76 and serving a life sentence — released her after her boss paid a £175,000 ransom.
SMILE SO HAUNTED
By Sun district reporter, who interviewed Stephanie
STEPHANIE’S lovely smile was often on show as she put on a brave face to the world after surviving her ordeal.
But behind the facade I sensed a young woman damaged for life by the kidnap drama that shocked the nation.
And a woman who was keeping a terrible secret.
I spent hours with the bubbly estate agent after The Sun told her exclusive story of the kidnap.
We sat down together at her kitchen table to a celebratory fish supper I bought from the local chippy in Great Barr, Birmingham, on the day Sams was caged for life in 1993.
Steph wept tears of joy and told me: “That man was the devil and he has now gone to hell.”
But I was convinced she was holding something back.
Of course, the terrible secret was that Sams had raped her while he kept her in captivity.
Steph revealed it in a book she wrote several years after her kidnap.
Before that she had been unable to tell anyone about it — her parents,the police,the jury at the trial. No one.
But looking back I believe it was the reason Steph would, just occasionally, stop smiling and silently sob to herself.
Then she would whisper: “Sorry about that. I’m all right.”
The captivity was over, but it was an experience that would haunt Stephanie all her life.
In a tribute last night, her pal Stacey Kettner said: “It took him 25 years but Michael Sams finally killed my best friend Stephanie Slater.
“I am heartbroken.”
Stephanie had been working for the Birmingham-based Shipways agency for just six weeks when she went to meet a “Mr Southwall” to show him around around a property in the suburb of Great Barr in January 1992.
But the man was actually Sams, who had already abducted and killed another woman.
The 25-year-old thought nothing of going to meet him at 153 Turnberry Road that fateful day. “I didn’t worry about safety. It was first thing in the morning,” she said later.
Recalling their meeting, she said in 2014: “He was looking around. I didn’t think he was that interested so I waited in one of the rooms.
“I started to walk down the stairs. At this point he said, ‘What’s that up there’. I had to walk past him to look. It was a hook on the wall.
“He suddenly changed. He seemed to be flying through the air at me. His face was contorted.”
Sams pulled out a knife and chisel. She recalled: “I thought he was going to cut or rape me.”
He held the knife to her throat before blindfolding her and driving her 70 miles to his workshop in Newark, Notts. Before they arrived, the loner stopped and called her office, telling a receptionist: “Stephanie’s been kidnapped. A ransom demand will be in the post tomorrow. If you contact police, she will die.”
Sams demanded £175,000 and even made Stephanie record a message on a cassette begging the police to co-operate with him. He had come up with the kidnap plan in a bid to make enough money to escape his failing business and third marriage.
That evening, he forced her to strip naked, then raped her.
Stephanie recalled: “I just lay there like a dead thing. He said: ‘I can’t believe you are so calm.’
“I was mentally detaching myself from what was happening to me.”
Stephanie was then handcuffed and locked in a wooden box, which he stuffed in a wheelie bin.
She remembered: “On the first night he put electrodes down my trouser leg and said: “If you move you will be electrocuted.’
“He pulled my hands above my head, attached them to a metal bar under boulders and said: ‘If you pull your arms down to try to escape, the boulders will crush your skull in.’”
Sams ran a tool repair shop and Stephanie could hear customers as they came in. She said: “I was just a few feet away in a box and I’d think: “Do I shout for help?” I knew if I stepped out of line he’d kill me.”
Stephanie told The Sun in 2011: “To this day I believe I am alive because I didn’t fight him.”
Her actions almost certainly saved her life. Just six months earlier Sams had murdered Leeds prostitute Julie Dart, 18, in his workshop after she became hysterical when he tried to also put her in the “coffin”.
Every night, Stephanie was left in the cold box as Sams went home to his wife. Then, on the eighth day, her boss Kevin Watts paid the ransom and Sams dumped her at the end of her road where she lived with her parents.
Bizarrely, he told her: “Get back to your normal life as soon as possible. I’m really sorry it had to be you. Give me a kiss then.”
Just six months earlier Sams had murdered Leeds prostitute Julie Dart, 18, in his workshop after she became hysterical when he tried to also put her in the ‘coffin’
But life for Stephanie would never be the same again.
She refused to tell police she had been raped when they asked her in front of her mother, who suffered a heart attack two days after she went missing. I wanted to protect my dignity, and also my mum who’d been ill,” she later explained.
She also said: “I tried to go back to my old life but it was as if the old Stephanie was dead.”
After an appeal on Crimewatch, Sams’ first wife Susan Oake identified him after recognising his voice on a recording of his ransom call. He was arrested and jailed for life in July 1993 for kidnapping Stephanie and for the kidnap and murder of Julie.
Stephanie returned to her old job but it lasted just three days as she suffered panic attacks.
Her relationship with boyfriend David, an ice-skating instructor, also floundered.
She told the Sun: “Before this happened, I had a boyfriend, a job and a company car. I had loads of friends and a social life.
“But he took everything and destroyed the next 20 years of my life.”
She said in another interview: “I lost Stephanie on January 22, 1992. I changed my name by deed poll to Phoenix Rhiannon because I didn’t want to be her any more.”
In a bid for a fresh start, Stephanie — who later reverted to her original name — moved with pal Stacey to the Isle of Wight where she had holidayed as a child.
“I had fond memories, and every time I thought of the island I thought of safety, comfort and happiness,” she said.
She got a part-time job as a tour guide and seemed to be coping.
Yet she could never escape Sams.
She wrote a book about her ordeal, Beyond Fear: My Will To Survive, publicly revealing she was raped. After it was published in 1995, Sams threatened to sue her for libel, but was unsuccessful.
It sparked a mental breakdown.
She recalled: “It felt as if I was being raped all over again. I was taking anti-depressants and drinking heavily to try to stop the flashbacks and nightmares. I was drinking two bottles of wine a night in the hope of sinking into some kind of oblivion.”
After her kidnap, Stephanie worked closely with police to help them understand how to treat kidnap victims, and helped victims overcome their terrible experiences.
But tragically, it seems, she never got over her own.
AN EVIL MADMAN
Exclusive by Martin Lipton, Deputy Head of SunSport, who covered the trial
AT Nottingham Crown Court in July 1993, I was just yards across from the dock as Michael Sams stood to give evidence.
He admitted kidnapping Stephanie but denied the murder of Julie Dart, a Leeds woman who worked as a prostitute.
Sams stood in the dock, bold as brass, insisting his intellect and brilliance was proof that he was innocent of the killing.
His message was clear: “I am so clever that if I had done it, you couldn’t possibly have caught me. So that proves I didn’t do it.”
All the while, Stephanie and her family looked on, staring into the eyes of an evil, calculating madman.
No wonder Stephanie was haunted by the ordeal for the rest of her tragically short life.
Sams looked like the man in the street. That made him all the more terrifying.