Kidnap victim Stephanie Slater dies of cancer at 50
STEPHANIE Slater – who was locked in a makeshift coffin for eight days in a terrifying kidnap ordeal – has died from cancer.
Miss Slater was working as an estate agent in 1992 when she was kidnapped at knifepoint by Michael Sams during a house viewing in Birmingham.
The one-legged toolmaker drove her, bound and gagged, to a warehouse 100 miles away in newark, nottinghamshire, where she was forced into a makeshift wooden coffin inside a wheelie bin. electrodes were attached to the 25-yearold’s legs and she was handcuffed.
Miss Slater was released when her boss paid a £175,000 ransom but she said the ordeal had ruined her life.
Describing her terror, she said: ‘He told me there were boulders above me and if I tried to escape they’d crush me to death. My hands were attached to a metal bar. He put electrodes on my leg and said if I moved they’d kill me.’
She tried to befriend her captor, talking to him about television programmes.
Miss Slater said: ‘ To this day I believe I am alive because I didn’t fight him.
‘I asked him why he had taken me. I talked to him about Coronation Street, Red
‘The terrors never left her’
Dwarf and Blackadder, my favourite programmes at the time. I think he started to look at me as a human being rather than a thing.’
She later moved to the Isle of Wight and worked with police forces across the country to help victims of kidnap.
Friends said the 50-year-old, who died 11 days after being told she had cancer, never recovered fully from the kidnapping. Journalist Keith Wilkinson, who made a documentary about the case, said: ‘She lived in fear that one day Sams would be released on parole. She had a lot of back ache and blamed this on the awful pains she felt during her abduction.
‘In very cold and dark conditions, she was locked up in a wooden box, which was inside a wheelie bin. She was ordered to keep still or face electrocution. Stephanie’s life wasn’t all doom and gloom but the terrors of what happened to her never left her.
‘They had an awful impact on her and her parents.’
Miss Slater’s friend Stacey Kettner said: ‘I know that she truly never got over the events that changed her life so dramatically in January 1992. It’s been an honour and a privilege to be Stephanie’s best friend.’
Sams, now 76, posed as a buyer to lure Miss Slater to an empty Birmingham home.
Six months earlier, he had murdered Leeds prostitute Julie Dart in his workshop after she became hysterical when he tried to put her into the coffin. When the ransom was paid, Sams dumped Miss Slater near her parents’ home in Great Barr, Birmingham.
He was caught four weeks later when his ex-wife recognised his voice in a police appeal on BBC Crimewatch.
He was jailed for life for the kidnap and the murder of 18-year- old Miss Dart. After his conviction and sentencing, Miss Slater revealed she had been raped by Sams, but he denied the allegations. Sams remains behind bars at HMP Whitemoor in Cambridgeshire.
West Midlands Police said: ‘ Stephanie has worked tirelessly with police forces across the country to help them understand how to treat kidnap victims, also working with victims themselves to overcome their harrowing experiences.’