Stephanie Slater, an estate agent, was attending a property viewing like any other day at work.
Unbeknownst to her, the man posing as a potential buyer was one of the UK’s most notorious kidnappers.
Who was Stephanie Slater?
Stephanie Slater, born in 1966, worked as an estate agent in Great Barr, West Midlands.
She was a well-liked, outgoing individual who was the life and soul of any social gathering.
However, in January 1992, a seemingly normal work day turned into something terrifying that would shape her life for the next 20 years.
What happened to Stephanie Slater?
Stephanie, 25, attended a viewing with a potential buyer at a property in Birmingham on January 22, 1992.
Michael Sams, the man posing as a buyer, abducted her at knifepoint.
He then drove her to his workshop in Nottinghamshire’s Newark-upon-Trent.
She was about to go through an ordeal that would scar her for the next two decades.
Sams handcuffed, gagged, and blindfolded Stephanie and placed her in a coffin-style box.
The box was then placed in a wheelie bin and locked.
Her kidnapper only let her out on rare occasions to give her food to keep her alive.
When she was allowed to leave her box-like prison, she realised she needed to do something to try to stay out.
She tried to build a rapport with the depraved Sams by starting conversations with him, so he didn’t see her as a disposable object he could kill and discard.
Her captor dropped her home, leaving her two streets away, after evading police to collect the £175,000 ransom he had demanded from her employers.
She’d been gone for eight days.
Stephanie was unable to walk or see due to the restraints that had been used to confine her.
Her testimony assisted police in apprehending Sams and convicting him of the kidnapping and murder of a Leeds teenager.
Sams only admitted to police later that the murder of the teenager was a “practise run” for the kidnapping of the estate agent and that he had no intention of collecting the ransom.
His only goal was to murder her.
When did Stephanie Slater die?
Stephanie died in 2017 after a cancer battle.
She became ill close to her home on the Isle of Wight.
In the years leading up to her death, she wrote a book called Beyond Fear, which was later adapted into a television film.
Her bravery and openness about her ordeal raised awareness for others and gave victims of similar ordeals the strength to carry on.
