Kidnap horror still a curse

It is 15 years since West Midlands estate agent Stephanie Slater was kidnapped by murderer Michael Sams, but her ordeal is far from over. Mark Andrews reports.

She spent eight days held hostage by a man who had already killed, but in reality Stephanie Slater has been a prisoner for 15 years.

She has changed her name, her home and her career, but try as she may, she is unable to escape the ordeal inflicted on her in February 1992 at the hands of Michael Sams.

"I have spent the past 15 years not being part of society, not doing the normal, run-of-the-mill things - getting up, going to work, going out for a drink," she says.

Stephanie Slater was a vivacious 25-year-old estate agent when she was sent out on a call to show a scruffy middle-aged man around an empty house in Birmingham. Sams abucted her at knifepoint, and took her to his workshop where he raped her handcuffed and naked on a mattress in his workshop, before keeping her in a booby-trapped makeshift coffin, bound, blindfolded and gagged.

Eventually Sams freed Stephanie - after her boss paid his £175,000 ransom - and astonishingly told her: "Get back to your normal life as soon as possible. I'm really sorry it had to be you. Give me a kiss then."

Unsurprisingly, getting back to her normal life has not proved easy for Stephanie, who is now known as Phoenix Rhiannon. "I have been in limbo for 15 years," she says at her home on the Isle of Wight. "If I don't get back to some sort of normality now, I will lose my place in society."

She says her recent 40th birthday was a time of reflection. "I have been though my late 20s and 30s, and tried to see the kidnap as in the past and dealt with. But it was always on my mind."

Last week's 15th anniversary of her ordeal has also brought back memories of the ordeal.

Stephanie has spent the years since her release writing a book about her ordeal, and giving advice to police on how to handle kidnappers.

When Stephanie was freed, her initial feeling was one of joy at being alive. Leeds teenager Julie Dart made the mistake of trying to escape from Sams' clutches, and paid with her life.

Stephanie quickly returned to her job at Shipways estate agents, but soon found it impossible to suppress the details of her ordeal. She did not tell police about the rape because he told her not to, and anyway, she was so repulsed by the act she did not want anyone to know.

But Sams, a one-legged misfit toolmaker, seemed to revel in the attention. In 1995 he claimed he had been having an affair with Stephanie, and tried to glamourise his crimes, claiming Stephanie fell under his spell while she was captive and had consensual sex with him.

When she finally revealed the details about the rape, he even wrote a letter to Stephanie arguing about her claims.

"It really upset me because he was there, in my house. I felt: 'Won't you ever leave me alone? You start talking about this love affair that never happened. I built up a rapport because I wanted to save my life. I was nice to you because I didn't want you to hurt me or kill me.'

"You say I consented because I lay still and didn't scream. Well, I tell you why I lay still and didn't scream. It was because I was terrified'."

Her tactic of befriending Sams, who called himself "Bob" during the kidnap appeared to have worked. He told police he had never been happy with a woman before, and how much he enjoyed Stephanie's company.

"I talked to him about astronomy and TV programmes and history and he enjoyed it," she says. Astonishingly, the night before Stephanie's release, he asked her if she would stay with him for another week.

"That was so freaky. I told him I couldn't because my parents would be so worried, and he said that would be all right." He even took a photograph of Stephanie before she was freed.

Today, Stephanie's life revolves around her pets. She has two dogs, Mulder and Roswell, birds Paz, Chicken and Mushroom, and a cat called Twiglet. Since the kidnap she has shared a house with her best friend Stacey Kettner, and she is also close to her father Warren.

She likes living on the Isle of Wight, but is considering a move back to the mainland in the hope of meeting her dream man.

"There are not many men here," she says. "We don't want to be like this forever, single and living on our own with a menagerie of birds and things, and lusting after Johnny Depp and James Bond."

Stephanie's thoughts have now turned to a career, and she says she would like to become an estate agent again. "I hope people won't be put off by the kidnap," she says.

Sams, now 65, received four life sentences for his crimes, and another eight years was added to his sentence in 1997 after he held a female prison officer hostage.

He will be eligible for parole in 10 years' time, but Stephanie hopes that day never comes.

"He gave up the right to a life when he killed Julie Dart," she says. "I am not frightened of him, but I don't want to see him again - ever."