Killer Sams’ sick secret confession
CHILLING NEW DOCUMENTARY
THE unearthed confession of onelegged Nottinghamshire murderer Michael Sams’ confession will soon air in a new documentary.
After a high-profile, month-long trial, Sams was given four life sentences and has now become one of Britain’s oldest prisoners.
During the trial, the toolmaker insisted he was innocent of the kidnapping and murder of Julie Dart. The teenager had vanished from the streets of Leeds.
He did, however, confess to the abduction of estate agent Stephanie Slater, who he held ransom for £175,000 in his Newark workshop.
But only days later the lead detective on the case received word that Sams wanted to speak to him.
Detective Chief Superintendent Bob Taylor met Sams in the dining hall at Full Sutton Prison in East
Yorkshire, where the murderer confessed to bludgeoning and strangling 18-year-old Julie.
Sams, now 80, claimed that Julie was a prostitute, and that he had taken her only as a “dummy run” for the kidnap of the estate agent six months later.
According to the Daily Mail, Sams told Mr Taylor: “When I went out to kidnap Julie Dart, there was only one intention, and that was to kill her. There was no intention whatsoever to keep her alive.”
DCS Taylor had hidden a recording device in his briefcase and, unknowing to Sams, recorded the entire confession. The recording has been kept under lock and key for nearly 30 years, but this July Sams’s confession will be heard by the public for the first time.
A now-retired Mr Taylor continued: “The cockiness he had shown in the past wasn’t there. He walked in – a criminal who had been Britain’s most wanted man... dragging his leg.”
The recording forms part of a new documentary, Michael Sams: Kidnapper Killer, which will stream on Discovery+ from Sunday, July 31.
Sams, who lost his right leg to cancer while serving a previous jail sentence, explained that he drove to the red-light district of Chapeltown, Leeds, on July 9, 1991, where he found Julie.
A post-mortem examination of her body revealed that Sams had strangled her, crushing her windpipe with his bare hands. He kept her body for a week in a green wheelie bin before transporting her decomposing remains in a sheet and ropes and disposing of them under an oak tree in Easton, Lincolnshire, ten days after her disappearance.
Six months later, Sams adapted his methods for his next crime, abducting Stephanie at knifepoint while posing as a house buyer in Birmingham and imprisoning her in a wheelie bin in the same workshop. Sams avoided capture, making off with the £175,000 ransom, but was later caught after his ex-wife saw an appeal on the BBC’S Crimewatch.
DETECTIVE’S COVERT TAPE AT HEART OF
The cockiness that he had shown in the past wasn’t there. He walked in dragging his leg
Former detective Bob Taylor