Kept in a coffin for eight days – how Stephanie Slater survived her kidnapping

It was 34 years ago that estate agent Stephanie Slater disappeared without a trace after turning up to an address on Turnberry Road, Great Barr, in the outskirts of Birmingham, one cold January day.

There to show the property to a client – an ordinary-looking man who introduced himself as ‘Bob Southall’ – she could never have imagined what the stranger had in store for her. 

It soon became clear however, that ‘Bob’ didn’t seem interested in the house after all, so Stephanie, who was 25 at the time tried to hurry the appointment along. 

Then, as they made their way upstairs to view the bathroom, the man attacked her before dragging her away and kidnapping her for days.

Somehow, Stephanie survived the horrific ordeal. Recalling the attack in 1992, she told news interviews: ‘His whole body, his whole face, his whole demeanour changed completely. He just looked absolutely evil.

‘He suddenly came flying at me through the air. I can remember seeing flashes of silver. He had a knife and a file with a hook on the end… and they were just flaying in front of my face. He was screaming at me to shut up and not scream and be quiet and don’t fight, or he’ll kill me.’ 

Despite her attacker’s threats, Stephanie did in fact scream and fight back, but when she saw her own blood leaking from her body, she realised she was in serious trouble. Her assailant had ripped her hand open, overpowered her and pushed her into the bath.

‘He had the knife to my throat, and he said: “If you move, I’m going to kill you.”’ she told BBC podcast The Kidnapping of Stephanie Slater.

In the next few seconds, a book she had read flashed into her mind – Dr Miriam Stoppard’s Girls’ Guide to Growing Up. ‘In it, is said if ever you’re attacked or raped or mugged, be calm. Be compliant, remind the person that you’re human,’ Stephanie explained.

‘And as he’s knocking me down into the bottom of the bath and pushing the knife against my throat, I say to him, “Okay, you’ve got me. Calm down. Just remember I’m human.’

‘Bob’ – who was really a toolmaker called Michael Sams – did calm down. He took Stephanie down to the garage where he’d parked his car, lay her on the reclined passenger seat, tied her up, put a heavy blanket over her, positioned a knife between the chair and her thigh and told her again he would kill her if she moved. Stephanie did as she was told.

He drove off and 10 minutes into the journey, Sams, from Sutton-on-Trent, Nottinghamshire, told the estate agent she’d been kidnapped.

‘I almost laughed to be honest with you, because I thought, well, my family’s got no money. Why are you picking on me? And then he told me he was going to ask £175,000 pounds from my employers, and he wanted my boss to deliver the ransom money in eight days’ time,’ Stephanie later told the BBC in an interview.

Sams then recorded a message from her for later use, and made the long journey to his workshop in Newark, Nottinghamshire.

When they arrived, he blindfolded and gagged Stephanie, put her in handcuffs, bound her feet and put her in a coffin that was pushed inside a wheelie bin. Even more horrifically, he pushed electrodes up the young woman’s trousers and told her she’d be electrocuted if she tried to escape, and that boulders would fall on her, crushing her to death.

‘It was freezing cold. You’re in absolute agony, and you’re terrified for your life, and you’re just thinking, “What the hell has happened to me? What am I doing here? Is this some sort of nightmare?” The fear is absolutely indescribable’, she recalled.

Meanwhile, Sams called Stephanie’s employers Shipways estate agency to tell them she’d been kidnapped and that a ransom demand would arrive in the post. The firm made a report to the police, who intercepted the mail and found a small package addressed to the estate agents with the cassette tape inside.

It contained the message the kidnapper had forced Stephanie to record: ‘This is Stephanie Slater. The time is 11.45. I can assure you, I’m okay. And on providing these instructions are carried out, I will be released on Friday, the 31st of January; next Wednesday.’

She had also left instructions of how the money was to be delivered by her boss Kevin Watts.

 Over the following eight days, Stephanie was kept in the dark, cramped coffin, allowed out only to eat, drink or use the toilet. Sams fed her on fish and chips, KitKats and cups of tea. In the moments she was released from her horrific confinement, remembering Stoppard’s advice, she tried to connect with Sams, talking to him about Coronation Street and even giving him a hug.

Meanwhile, the police were working out how to retrieve Stephanie while maintaining a media blackout, so as not to jeopardise the investigation.

On the day of the handover, Kevin followed instructions to travel to Glossop and onto a secluded country road with the cash.

He was wired up and surrounded by surveillance officers following at a distance, but the operation, hampered by thick fog, went horribly wrong and Sams got away with the cash. 

With his hands on the money, he then released Stephanie from the coffin, drove her home, and dropped her two streets from her address. However, eight days of being blindfolded let her unable to see properly which made getting her bearings difficult as she ran from the car. Finally finding her parents’ house, she banged on the door only to be confused when a family liaison officer answered.

Inside, Stephanie found her dad Warren, but when she called out to her mum for a cuddle, police officers at her address told her they were forbidden from touching as they didn’t want to compromise any evidence.

‘I was terrified. I didn’t know what was going on. You want to hug your parents, but to a police officer, you’re a walking crime scene,’ she remembered in the interview. 

As she sat un-comforted and alone on a chair in her home, Stephanie dug her nails into her arms, desperate to feel that she was awake and that her nightmare had ended.

Now that Stephanie was finally free, a manhunt for her captor ensued. The blackout was lifted and when a recording of Sams call to the police making a ransom demand was played on BBC’s Crimewatch, his ex-wife recognised his voice and called into the show. 

Sams was arrested at his workshop and the police investigation found that not only had he abducted Stephanie, but he had also kidnapped and killed Leeds 18-year-old Julie Dart in 1991, leaving her body in a field near Grantham, Lincolnshire.

Stephanie’s evidence helped bring Sams to justice and he was jailed for life in 1993. The killer was last turned down for parole in April 2023.

 However, the horrific ordeal had left Stephanie traumatised. She was unable to go back to work, suffered flashbacks, and was unable to socialise. When wheelie bins were introduced to her area in the nineties, she said she initially couldn’t bear to have one at her home.

Stephanie went on to campaign for women’s safety and that of all lone workers. She wrote a book about her ordeal – Beyond Fear: My Will to Survive – and tried to rebuild her life. She shared how Sams had raped her, but that she didn’t reveal this to the initial police investigation to protect her mum, who had a heart condition.

Behind closed doors, Stephanie continued to struggle and eventually moved to the Isle of Wight with her best friend Stacey Kettner. 

‘Stephanie never felt clean, and she used to shower multiple times a day. She would scrub and scrub and scrub herself until she was red raw,’ Stacey later told the BBC podcast. ‘She would change her clothes multiple times a day, her underwear multiple times a day. This girl who’d been this wonderful, vivacious person was broken. Ultimately, she never recovered.’

Stephanie’s life was cruelly cut short when she died of cancer in 2017 at the age of 50. Her final years were spent in isolation and she was diagnosed with PTSD.

Reflecting on her harrowing experience, Stephanie told a BBC interview 2008: ‘The horror never really goes away… I’m still here. I’m still on my own, I’m still single, and where do I go in all this? Where do I fit in all this? 

‘You’ve got a really big gap in your life, and yes I’ve survived and I’ve got through it, but where the hell has my life gone? You do feel quite cheated.’

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