Estate agent locked in box by kidnapper dies of cancer at 50
KIDNAPPED estate agent Stephanie Slater who survived eight days locked in a box by killer Michael Sams has died aged 50 of cancer, just 11 days after it was diagnosed.
She was snatched in 1992 after meeting Sams, who posed as a potential buyer of a house in Great Barr, Birmingham.
Bound and gagged, she was driven 100 miles to his workshop in Newark, Nottinghamshire, and kept prisoner in a box inside a wheely bin.
One-legged Sams, who had already murdered his first victim, told her that she would be electrocuted if she tried to escape.
Ms Slater, then 25, was released after a £175,000 ransom was paid by her employer at Shipways estate agency. She moved to the Isle of Wight the next year.
She later revealed that Sams, now 76, had raped her but she had kept the secret until her adoptive mother Betty died some years ago because she did not want to upset her.
Sams was jailed for life after being convicted of her kidnapping and the murder of 18-year-old prostitute Julie Dart, who was snatched in Leeds a year before in what police believe was a dummy run for his ransom demand.
Close friend Stacey Kettner said childless Ms Slater, who wrote a book Beyond Fear: My Will To Survive about her ordeal, never got over it.
She said: “We have had a unique and epic friendship for more than 25 years and shared so much together, good and bad times.
“It’s been an honour and a privilege to be Stephanie’s best friend.”
Chief Inspector Kerry Blakeman, who worked on the case, wrote on social media: “So sorry to hear about the death of Stephanie Slater – a victim of a truly awful crime.”
ITV News journalist Keith Wilkinson became close to Ms Slater after making a TV documentary with her.
He said: “Stephanie suffered with terrible nightmares, great trauma.
“She lived in fear that one day Sams would be freed on parole. The terrors of what happened never left her.” Stephanie Slater and, inset, evil Michael Sams. Right, a police reconstruction, with the box in which she was kept inside a wheelie bin