Stephanie never got over what she went through ..the terrors of 8 days in a coffin never left her
– FRIENDS REMEMBER BRAVE STEPHANIE SLATER AND HER ORDEAL
Everything about her horrific eightday imprisonment in a makeshift coffin – a wheelie bin – was painful for estate agent Stephanie Slater to recall but there was one moment especially she struggled to explain.
Released momentarily to swallow the scraps her kidnapper had brought her, she found herself begging him for a hug.
It is one of the most heartbreaking details in the catalogue of horrors Stephanie endured in 1992 after being snatched at knifepoint by Michael Sams, a murderer posing as a house buyer.
And as it was announced yesterday she had passed away at 50, after a short battle with cancer, pals sadly confirmed the ordeal always haunted Stephanie.
She was so desperate for human contact during that time, even Sams’ repulsive touch was bearable for a second. It was also part of her remarkable plan to make herself human to him, to keep herself alive. “I was desperate for reassurance, even from him. I held my arms out towards him. ‘It will be all right, won’t it? I am going home, aren’t I? Please say I am’,” she later recalled.
It worked. When Sams finally set her free, after her employers met a ransom demand of £175,000, he said with twisted compassion: “I’m sorry about all this. None of this was your fault. Get back to your normal life as soon as possible.”
One-legged Sams, now 76, was handed four life sentences in 1993 for her kidnap, and for the kidnap and murder six months earlier of 18-year-old Julie Dart from Leeds. He remains behind bars in Whitemoor prison, Cambridgeshire.
Yet Stephanie was plagued with back pain from being imprisoned, making it difficult to work, and could not continue her relationship, instead living with her “soulmate”, best friend Stacey Kettner.
She moved to the Isle of Wight and even changed her name to escape herself. She later changed it back for
another stab at embracing life as Stephanie. Yet even her health refused to give her a fair chance. She died only 11 days after her cancer diagnosis.
Stacey said yesterday: “I know that she truly never got over the events that changed her life so dramatically in January 1992.”
Another pal, ITV reporter Keith Wilkinson, who made a documentary about Stephanie, agreed. He said: “She suffered with terrible nightmares, great trauma. 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. Stephanie’s life wasn’t all doom and gloom but the terrors of what happened to her never left her.” She was 25 when Sams tricked her into his clutches. In her 1995 autobiography Beyond Fear: My Will To Survive, she told how he pounced in the bathroom of the property she was showing him in Great Barr, Birmingham. Stephanie said: “In one hand he was brandishing a homemade knife with a blade about 9in long. In the other... a long, flat chisel, about 12in long.” Overpowered, she fell into the bath. He blindfolded her, shoved material in her mouth and marched her to his car, then made her speak into a tape recorder, to plead to Shipways estate agents for a ransom. They then drove to a warehouse in Nottinghamshire, where he worked as a toolmaker.
It was only when Stephanie wrote her book she revealed the horrific rape he then inflicted on her. Sams denied it, and could not be charged, but it was one final detail Stephanie could not at first face the world knowing.
He stripped her, handcuffed her then forced her on to a mattress. She said: “I felt horribly exposed as I stood there naked and blindfolded... I could hear him breathing shallowly what seemed like only inches from my face.”
He bit her breasts violently before raping her. After that came the “box within a box”. Feet cuffed too, she wiggled into a narrow container inside the bin at Sams’ command.
He said stone boulders above would crush her if she moved and a wire edging the box would electrocute her. But Stephanie was wedged too tightly to move. Sams would visit daily. He’d bring chocolate and boots for her cold feet, then talk menacingly of a friend who planned to kill her – while assuring her he wouldn’t allow it.
He would get her out of the box daily and gave her breakfast and water to wash with.
Thankfully, the ransom, left by a bridge near Barnsley, South Yorks, sated Sams. He drove Stephanie to her adoptive parents’ street.
He was caught after his third wife recognised his voice from a tape played on BBC’s Crimewatch, then linked to Julie’s murder.
Stephanie told how Sams left her feeling dirty. She said: “I used to have a bath twice a day, shower three times a day, scrub myself until I bled. I had very long hair that had to be cut off because he had touched it.”
Just 10 years ago she admitted living in “limbo” and having debilitating panic attacks. In 2011 she said: “I want to go out more. I want to meet someone special.”
Yet she worked tirelessly with police to help them treat female victims more sensitively than she felt she’d been. West Midlands Police yesterday praised her “courage and bravery”.
And she had unending support from Stacey, who said: “We’ve had a unique and epic friendship for over 25 years and shared so much together. It’s been an honour and a privilege to be Stephanie’s best friend.”