Stephanie Slater, the estate agent who was kidnapped during a house viewing and held in a cramped wooden 'coffin' for eight days in 1992, has died of cancer aged 50. Slater, then 25, was abducted at knifepoint by killer Michael Sams, who posed as a house buyer in Birmingham, in a case that shocked the country.
She was eventually released after her employer, Shipways Estate Agency in Great Barr, West Midlands, paid a ransom. Slater had been bound, gagged and driven from Birmingham to Sams' workshop in Newark, Nottinghamshire. He handcuffed her and attached electrodes to her leg, then imprisoned her in a wooden box inside a wheelie bin.
After receiving the ransom and releasing her, Sams, a tool maker who had married three times, avoided arrest until his first wife recognised his voice from a telephone recording played on BBC's Crimewatch. Sams pleaded guilty to kidnapping and imprisoning Slater and making a £175,000 ransom demand on her employers.
Slater later helped convict him of the 1991 murder of Julie Dart, 18, from Leeds. In her evidence at Nottingham Crown Court, Slater told how she had attempted to befriend him to make it more difficult for him to harm her. She wrote a book, 'Beyond Fear: My Will to Survive', about her time in captivity, and worked with police forces to improve the treatment of kidnap victims.
Slater, who lived on the Isle of Wight, said in 2011: 'Before this happened, I had a boyfriend, a job and a company car. I had loads of friends and a great social life. But he [Sams] took everything and destroyed the next 20 years of my life. But now I am ready to begin again.'
Sams, now 76, and originally from Keighley, West Yorkshire, was given a life sentence in July 1993 after being convicted of the murder and kidnap of Dart, and two attempts to blackmail police. West Midlands police paid tribute to Slater's courage and bravery, and for the work she did in helping police officers and victims by sharing her experience.
