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In July of 1991 things looked promising for eighteen year old Julie Dart. A bubbly spirited teenager with wavy brown hair and a white smile, she had recently finished high school and was hoping to fulfill her lifelong dream of joining Britain’s Armed Forces.
Julie had grown up in Leeds, the largest city in the north and English county of West Yorkshire, where she still lived with her mother.
On Tuesday July 9 1991 Julie spent the day with her boyfriend, 20 year old Dominic Murray, who lived in the nearby suburb of Gibson. At six o’clock in the evening the couple went to Dominic’s sister Rose’s house where Julie helped prepare a meal of roast lamb and Yorkshire pudding.
After they’d eaten, Julie excused herself to start a night shift at the hospital where she’d recently started working as an orderly.
At 7:45 p.m. she kissed Dominic goodbye and departed wearing a black skirt with a pink and black jacket.
At 9 p.m. Julie phoned Dominic to say she would be working until 11:30 p.m. and would then return to her own home. Dominic noticed that there appeared to be music playing in the background as though Julie were calling from a pub.
Two days passed and Dominic didn’t hear from Julie. Then on the morning of Friday July 12 he received an unexpected visit from his sister Rose who had found a handwritten envelope addressed to him amongst her mail.
There was a letter inside written in Julie’s handwriting which read:
“Dominic help me please I’ve been kidnapped and am being held as a personal security until next Monday night please go and tell my mum straight away love you so much Dominic mum phoned the police straightaway and helped me have not eaten anything but I have been offered food feeling a bit sick but I’m drinking two cups of tea per day mum Dominic helped me love you all Julie.”
Upon reading the letter Dominic called Julie’s mother Linda who rushed over to read it for herself. She noticed that despite being penned in Julie’s handwriting some of the words and phrasing didn’t sound like her daughter at all. Moreover Lyn couldn’t understand why Julie would be abducted and held for ransom as their family had little money.
Lyn immediately called the police to report her daughter missing and gave them the letter.
Police began looking into Julie’s life. Born on March 1 1973 Julie Dart was the first child of Lynn and Alek Hill who went on to have a son named Paul two years later. When Julie was four years old Alek left his young family and in 1978 Lynn remarried an electrician named Ian Dart. Both Julie and Paul were close to their stepfather calling him dad and adopting his surname.
Lynn and Ian separated when Julie was 16 years old but Ian maintained a relationship with his stepchildren.
Although Julie was bright she wasn’t a dedicated student and instead preferred to focus on her athletic abilities. A talented runner she participated in school and county competitions accumulating a number of trophies which her mother proudly displayed in the family home.
In her spare time Julie liked socializing, dancing and performing karaoke with her friends. While she was still at school she got a part-time job at a cafe which was where she met Dominic, a co-worker who was two years her senior. They dated for three years and when Julie was just 17 they became engaged.
Julie moved out of her family home to live with Dominic in his flat which her mother Lynn didn’t approve of. Julie had confided in her younger brother Paul that she and Dominic often argued and these altercations sometimes became violent.
By the end of 1990 the relationship ended and Julie returned home. She and her mother had always been particularly close but they both had strong personalities and living together sometimes resulted in clashes and disagreements.
Julie longed for the day when she could live independently and start a career. Her longtime dream was to become a physical training instructor for the army. She had always been fit and healthy though she was claustrophobic and suffered from mild asthma as a child.
In December of 1990 she visited the Army recruiting office in Leeds to apply for a role as a driver in the Women’s Royal Army Corps. After several months her application was accepted under the condition that she sat a final selection examination on Friday June 7 1991.
One week before she was due to take the exam a 41 year old man named Michael Walter called the Army recruiting office. He had befriended Julie several years earlier when she was employed at the cafe and had eventually offered her a part-time job as a cleaner.
Michael was calling to notify the office that Julie had recently stolen two of his bank cards and used them to withdraw 660 pounds. She had since signed a liability form agreeing to repay the money to the bank but Michael was worried that if she joined the army before settling the debt the money might never be repaid.
The recruitment officer who took the call was concerned as it was essential that all new recruits were free from financial liability. When questioned by the officer Julie denied owing any money and proceeded to excel at her final exam. She was subsequently accepted for the Army’s September intake.
Michael Walter repeated his concerns that if Julie didn’t settle her debt the bank would initiate criminal proceedings. Julie continued to deny ever taking the money but agreed to pay the bank what was owed to enable her to join the Armed Forces by September.
However on Thursday July 4 the recruitment officer went to Julie’s high school to confirm her final grades and discovered that she had forged her academic records. This resulted in Julie’s application being rejected. The recruitment officer sent her a letter explaining the situation that same day but it is unknown whether Julie ever received it.
Lynn told the police that there had been nothing happening in Julie’s life that had given her any cause for concern. She said that about a month prior Julie had started experimenting with her physical appearance by trying out different makeup styles and coloring her hair however she had dyed it back to its natural color when her grandmother didn’t approve.
Julie had told her mother that she had recently started a night shift job sterilizing syringes at a laboratory and had been spending nights at the home of an old friend. Police questioned this friend who revealed she hadn’t seen Julie in four months.
It soon became clear that Julie and Dominic had reconciled their relationship but had been keeping it a secret from Julie’s family. Dominic often divided his time between the homes of his two sisters and Julie had occasionally been staying with him while telling her mother she was with her friend.
While Lynn believed Julie had a job sterilizing syringes at a laboratory Dominic was under the impression she worked as an orderly at a hospital. The police inquired with both workplaces but neither had ever heard of Julie Dart.
After filing her report Lyn walked the streets of Leeds over and over showing people Julie’s photograph. At night she visited the city’s pubs asking punters whether they had seen her daughter. A number of people recognized Julie’s picture and said they knew her but none had sighted her within the last week.
The police decided to speak with vice squad investigators from the Leeds suburb of Chapeltown which at the time was a red-light district popular with sex workers. From 1975 until 1980 the area was a hunting ground for notorious serial killer the Yorkshire Ripper.
Although the vice squad had no record of Julie they soon established that multiple witnesses had seen her hanging around the district in the three weeks leading up to her disappearance. She had apparently told some sex workers that she was new to the industry and had asked for their advice on where to take clients and how much to charge.
A former classmate of Julie’s also came forward claiming he’d seen her in Chapeltown on Tuesday July 9 the night she went missing. He had been driving through the area at 8:15 p.m. when he spotted Julie standing on a street corner with another girl. They briefly made eye contact but Julie turned her head away as though she didn’t want to be seen.
She had been dressed in light blue denim jeans and a white blouse which was different to the outfit she had been wearing when she left Dominic half an hour earlier.
Inquiries revealed that shortly after this Julie caught a taxi to a pub with two other young women and at 9:00 p.m. she phoned Dominic from the pub’s phone. She then had a few drinks and played the jukebox before all three women caught a cab to the Chapeltown street of Spencer Place to engage in sex work.
There Julie spent roughly 20 minutes with a client before buying a takeaway kebab. By 11 p.m. both of her friends had gone home leaving Julie standing alone on the corner of Spencer Place and Leopold Street.
The discovery that Julie had been engaging in sex work troubled the vice squad.
On Friday July 12 the same day that Dominic received the kidnap letter from Julie the West Yorkshire Police had received an envelope addressed to Leeds City Police an outdated name that hadn’t been used since 1974. Inside was a letter typed in red ink informing officers that a young sex worker had been kidnapped from the Chapeltown area and would be killed unless the police paid 140,000 pounds in cash.
The author also demanded that 5,000 pounds be loaded onto bank cards. Instructions for the handover read:
“Next Tuesday July 16 a woman police constable will drive to Birmingham New Street Station with the money and await a phone call at the phone terminal in the waiting room on platform 9. She must wear a lightish blue skirt with the money in a shoulder bag. She must be there by 6:00 p.m. and await the call at 7 p.m. She will then be given the location of the next phone call.”
The letter instructed the constable to drive from pay phone to pay phone where she would receive further directions along the way. Eventually at the last site a dog leash would be hanging from a tree ready for her to clip the money to. The cash was to be wrapped in polythene and debris on paper then tied with nylon cord.
The author threatened that if these demands weren’t met a fire bomb would go off at a major store in an English city at 5:00 a.m. on Wednesday July 17.
According to the postmarks on the envelope of this letter and the one sent to Dominic both had been sent at 7:00 p.m. on Thursday July 11 from the town of Huntingdon located 135 miles south of Leeds.
Realizing that they appeared to be dealing with a genuine kidnapping investigators decided to run an operation in accordance with the kidnapper’s instructions.
At 6:00 p.m. on Tuesday July 16 Constable Annette Cygnus went to Birmingham New Street Station as instructed carrying the money in a shoulder bag. Undercover officers surveilled Constable Cygnus as she waited for the phone call at the phone terminal in the waiting room at platform 9.
At six minutes past seven the pay phone rang. Constable Cygnus answered it but the caller on the other end was silent and then disconnected the call after several seconds. Constable Cygnus waited another 20 minutes but no other calls came through.
With no further instructions from the kidnapper investigators were left waiting to see whether the individual would make contact again.
Despite the kidnapper’s threat to firebomb a city building if their demands weren’t met the following day of Wednesday July 17 passed without incident.
Early on the morning of Friday July 19 51-year-old farmer Bob Skelton was preparing for his day in the rural village of Easton 92 miles southeast of Leeds. Bob’s farm spanned 579 acres and included a disused railway line. His plan for the day was to relocate his cattle to fresh pastures with the help of his 18-year old son and another young employee.
At 7:45 a.m. the three men were in a field located alongside the abandoned railway line half a mile from the A1 motorway when they noticed a pink and white striped sheet lying on the grass. Assuming it was carelessly dumped rubbish they moved closer and saw that the sheet was bound with lengths of teal colored rope and something appeared to be wrapped up inside.
Bob’s son used his penknife to slice the rope and cut a 6-inch hole in the sheet revealing another layer of sheet. Bob thought he could see the outline of a human arm and all three men smelled a strong unpleasant odour.
Bob decided to drive back to the farm to call the police while the two younger men stood guard over the grisly discovery.
Officers arrived at the scene and unwrapped the sheet. Inside they found the naked and significantly decomposed body of a young woman.
The corpse was taken for autopsy by Professor Stephen Jones who noted that the only item the victim was wearing was a gold wishbone ring on her right ring finger. Her head was entirely bald and there were several injuries to her skull including one at the back of her scalp another above her left ear and a fracture below the ear. These injuries had likely been caused by a hammer-like weapon but were not the cause of death.
Around the victim’s neck was a ligature mark indicating she had also been strangled. Her right ankle featured chain like bruises suggesting she had been made to wear some sort of leg restraint.
Due to the state of decomposition Professor Jones was unable to determine whether she had been sexually assaulted. It was determined that the victim had likely been killed a week prior to being discovered but the grass beneath where the body had been found showed no discoloration indicating it had only been dumped hours earlier.
Using clear adhesive tape forensic scientists recovered a number of fibers from the sheet including yellow wool and brown nylon fibers which appeared to have originated from a mustard colored carpet. These same yellow and brown fibers were also found in the rope that had been used to tie the sheet.
An electronic message was sent out to police forces around the country to inform them that an unidentified body had been found. The message caught the attention of Detective Chief Superintendent Bob Taylor of the West Yorkshire Police who had been investigating Julie Dart’s disappearance.
Julie had a chipped tooth leading Superintendent Taylor to inquire whether the unidentified victim shared this characteristic. When it was confirmed that she did Julie’s dental records were summoned and on Saturday July 20 the victim was positively identified as 18 year old Julie Dart.
That night Superintendent Taylor went to Lynn Dart’s home to inform her of the news bringing with him the gold wishbone ring recovered from Julie’s body. The devastated mother identified the ring as a gift she had given Julie for her 18th birthday four months prior.
Witnesses who had seen anything suspicious in the area near Bob Skelton’s farm were encouraged to come forward. Several individuals reported that two hours before Julie’s body was found they had been traveling on a bus along High Dike Road in Easton when they noticed a red car up ahead and to the right. The vehicle was approaching the road from a track next to the pasture where Julie’s body was found and it was being driven by a white lone male.
Police had initially considered whether Julie’s boyfriend Dominic Murray could be responsible for her murder however he didn’t own a car and two days before Julie’s disappearance he had sustained an injury that would have made it impossible for him to dispose of her body alone.
At 2:00 a.m. on Sunday July 7 he and Julie had been walking home together after a night drinking at the pub. An off-duty constable noticed that Julie could hardly stand and that her face was swollen and her lip was bloody. Dominic who was propping her up and slapping her so the constable intervened and Dominic fell breaking his ankle. He and Julie were taken to the hospital and kept there overnight with Dominic having a cast put on his left foot.
Julie’s older friend Michael Walter who had alerted the army recruitment office to her theft of his bank cards was also considered a suspect believing he had a motive. Police arrested him for questioning a week after Julie’s disappearance. He was released on Thursday July 18 but police ordered that he be kept under constant surveillance. As he was still being monitored when Julie’s body was discovered the next day he was ruled out as a suspect.
Three days after Julie’s body was found the police received another letter claiming to be from the kidnapper. This typed message had been sent from Leeds railway station and was postmarked Sunday July 22.
It read:
“We’ll never be able to express my regret that Julie Dart had to be killed but I did warn what would happen if anything went wrong. At the time of this letter there has been no publicity. If you do not find the body within a few days I will contact you as to the location. She was not raped or sexually abused or harmed in any way until she met her end. She was tied up and hit a few blows to the back of her head to render her unconscious and then strangled. She never saw what was to happen never felt no pain or knew anything about it. The firebomb was not left as promised as the sealant around the combustibles must have got knocked in transit and smelled badly so it was never placed. Owens furniture store in Coventry was to be the target. I still require the same monies as before under the same conditions. If you want to avoid a serious fire damage and any further prostitutes lives place an ad in the personal column of the Sun to read ‘let’s try again for Julie’s sake.’”
Convinced the letter was genuinely penned by Julie’s killer on Saturday July 27 the police placed an ad in the Sun newspaper as instructed.
On Tuesday July 30 they received a handwritten letter from the kidnapper acknowledging the ad and warning that another hostage would soon be taken. He instructed Constable Lynette Cygnus to travel to a particular payphone alongside the M1 motorway in the County of Leicester that evening and await his call.
Constable Cygnus waited by the payphone as directed. When the call came instead of speaking directly into the phone the kidnapper played an audio recording. Constable Cygnus explained that she was unable to hear the message over the noise of the traffic but the line went dead.
Two days later on Thursday August 1 the kidnapper sent another letter ordering Constable Cygnus to return to the same payphone in Leicester on Tuesday August 6. She followed these instructions but no call came through.
Three days after that police received a letter from the kidnapper explaining that he’d been unable to find a suitable hostage in time. He told Constable Cygnus to return to the phone booth on Wednesday August 14 at 8:15 p.m. threatening:
“This will be the last time you will receive a call at the usual location. Should anything go wrong you will not then be given the location of the incendiary device or the prostitute’s body.”
On August 14 the call came through as promised and the kidnapper spoke to Constable Cygnus directly claiming to have abducted a sex worker named Sarah Davies from the town of Ipswich. He provided directions to another phone box near the M1 motorway and told Constable Cygnus to be there by 9:45 p.m.
She arrived in time but when she answered the call the kidnapper said he’d encountered some problems and would call back in half an hour. The phone rang again 30 minutes later but the phone’s cradle had jammed and Constable Cygnus struggled to answer it. By the time she was able to pick up the receiver the caller had hung up. Constable Cygnus waited for another half hour but the phone didn’t ring again.
The West Yorkshire Police checked whether anyone named Sarah Davies had gone missing from Ipswich but no reports of this nature had been made. They concluded that the caller had lied about the kidnapping in order to increase pressure on police.
The following day some men were walking underneath the disused railway bridge on the M1 motorway near the phone box that had jammed when they found what appeared to be a small bomb. The device was shaped like a tin can and attached to one end was a wire and a small red plastic cube.
Responding officers from the South Yorkshire Police were unaware that their colleagues in West Yorkshire had been interacting with a possible extortionist and suspected the device was a fake. This was confirmed by a bomb disposal officer who arrived on the scene to investigate.
Nearby police found a brick that had been painted white and had an envelope attached that was marked with the number 3. Inside a hand stenciled message read:
“Next bridge 400 meters detector on panel carry money.”
When the news spread to the West Yorkshire Police they were certain the items had been left by their suspect and that the disused bridge was his intended location for the money drop.
To test their theory they carried out a reconstruction at the site. Had Constable Cygnus been able to receive the second phone call the police deduced that she would have been directed to the bridge and to the fake incendiary device. From there she would have placed the device which the suspect had referred to as a detector on her car dashboard and driven to the next bridge 400 metres away. There as per the kidnapper’s original letter he would have intended to stand on the bridge and lower a dog leash for Constable Cygnus to clip the bundle of money to. The kidnapper would then have hauled up the money and attempted an escape.
Ten days later a discovery in the South Yorkshire town of Barnsley revealed that the kidnapper had planned yet another step which police had missed. An envelope labelled with the number two was found taped underneath a shelf in one of the town’s phone booths. Inside was a note providing directions to the fake incendiary device and a white brick.
Investigators determined that the kidnapper had actually planned to direct Constable Cygnus to this payphone first to receive the instructions but his plan had been thwarted when the phone receiver jammed at the previous phone booth.
On Monday August 26 1991 the kidnapper wrote:
“Games now abandoned Crimewatch UK will tell me most of what I wanted to know. You’ll have to file your papers until I try again. As you know I never picked anyone up in Ipswich or planted a device I didn’t need to. Following Julie’s unfortunate death you’d cooperate with anything I wanted. For your records Julie was picked up on Tuesday July 9 11:30 p.m. The reason the body deteriorated so quick was that it was kept in a wheelie bin in a greenhouse for two very hot days. Her head was wrapped in a towel but when this was removed to clean her up before dropping her her hair came away stuck to the blood on the towel.”
As none of these details about Julie’s body had been released to the media the police forwarded the letter to a pathologist to verify the kidnapper’s claims. Professor Stephen Jones confirmed that the state Julie’s body was in was consistent with having been stored in a plastic bin inside a greenhouse as the killer described.
In order to gain further insight as to the type of individual they were dealing with police retained criminal psychologist Paul Britton to create a profile of the suspect. Britton concluded that the suspect was likely aged in his late 40s or early 50s and was a careful planner. As his letters were riddled with grammatical and spelling errors he likely had a secondary level education but no university degree. In terms of occupation he likely worked in a field that required a high level of technical knowledge but not a high level of technical skills.
He wanted to be taken seriously by police and have them engage him as a high level adversary. Although murder wasn’t the primary aim of the crime and the suspect probably hadn’t killed before Britton concluded that he would kill again unless he was caught.
As the suspect’s letters had been posted from various locations it was clear that whoever had sent them had the time and freedom to travel. They were sent to a forensic document examiner in Birmingham who determined that the typed letters were written using an Olivetti manual type bar typewriter that had damaged typefaces. Several keys were missing particular elements including the lower left portion of the number zero and part of the lowercase F. Consequently it was estimated that the machine was between 20 to 30 years old.
The handwritten letters were mostly penned using messy capital letters possibly by the kidnapper using his non-dominant hand. Despite his obvious attempts to disguise his handwriting consistent features were noted in how he drew particular letters of the alphabet. Furthermore given that he referred to the West Yorkshire police by their old name of Leeds City Police it was suggested that the kidnapper could be an older individual with a grudge against the force.
An examination of the fake bomb revealed it had been crafted from a container of fish food that had been painted silver. The white painted brick was harder to identify. It wasn’t of a standard brick size and was originally blue instead of a typical red color. Chemical and mineral analysis revealed that the brick had been made from a particular clay found at a quarry in the county of Staffordshire. Only one company in the country manufactured this sort of brick which was used to construct the road cutters.
On Wednesday August 21 the police held a press conference to share some of the details about Julie’s murder that they had intentionally been withholding. They revealed that one of the kidnapper’s letters contained indentations from another message that had been written on a sheet of paper placed on top. It read:
“Mavis will not be in on Tuesday Phil on Thursday.”
On September 12 Julie’s case was covered by Crimewatch a monthly BBC program that shared information about unsolved crimes and requested viewers assistance in solving them. Reconstructions depicting Julie’s last known movements were aired along with the red car that was spotted by the field where her body was found.
The coverage prompted 400 viewers to phone in with information including one man who claimed to have had a sexual encounter with Julie one week before her disappearance. He said the two had met in a Leeds pub and he later gave Julie a lift in his car. They chatted for an hour during which Julie revealed she had taken up sex work to repay a debt so that she could join the army.
Another man called asking to speak to Superintendent Bob Taylor directly before abruptly hanging up the phone. This led police to consider whether the caller had been the kidnapper himself.
On October 16 1991 after two months of silence the police received another handwritten letter from the kidnapper. It read:
“As you are nowhere near on my tail the time has come to collect my 140,000 pounds from you. I do not get any bigger sentence for two murders and prostitutes are easy to pick up.”
He ordered Constable Cygnus to go to a payphone at the Carlisle train station in northwest England at 8:00 p.m. on Wednesday October 21 and wait for his call. Investigators were confused as October 21 was actually a Monday not a Wednesday moreover the phone box the kidnapper described had been relocated years earlier. Nevertheless they sent their crime squad to the location on both Monday and Wednesday but received no further contact from their suspect.
On October 15 a menacing letter had also been sent to the London headquarters of British Rail the state-owned company that operated most of Great Britain’s overground rail transport. It had been sent five days prior from the city of Stoke-on-Trent in Staffordshire. Over two typed pages the author threatened to derail a high-speed train unless 200 thousand pounds in cash was delivered by two female employees on Wednesday October 23. The employees were directed to go to a payphone at Crewe Station in Cheshire to receive further instructions with a stenciled message warning:
“Your females will be in danger if money not real.”
Throughout the letter the pronoun “we” was used repeatedly giving the impression that more than one person was behind the extortion scheme.
Detective Chief Superintendent Pat Fleming from the London Metropolitan Police was assigned to coordinate the railway threat inquiry and began looking into possible links with other blackmail schemes including the Julie Dart case.
On Monday October 21 senior officers from both investigations compared their respective letters and discovered there were a number of similarities. Both included stenciled writing the use of technical language and diagrams and instructed women to act as couriers to deliver money. In a similar fashion as the British Rail extortionist was requesting that money be delivered on the same day that officers from the Julie Dart inquiry would be carrying out their own operation police suspected the perpetrator was attempting to tie up their resources.
At 7 p.m. on Wednesday October 23 a female police officer went to Crewe Station to await the extortionist’s phone call. Eight minutes later a call came through during which the caller repeatedly asked “hello” before hanging up. The phone rang again shortly afterwards but stopped before it could be answered and the operation was subsequently aborted.
On Monday October 28th another letter arrived at British Rail stating:
“Congratulations you have now qualified for retribution.”
The extortionist threatened to take down a section of a train line and remove an electric locomotive pantograph which is an apparatus that connects a train to a line overhead.
A week later on Monday November 4 British Rail track charge man Dennis Parton was conducting a routine inspection of the West Coast line which runs from London to Glasgow. He was focusing on an 8 mile stretch that ran south between Crewe Station and Stafford Station. When he came to a bridge near the Staffordshire village of Mill Meece under the bridge Dennis noticed that a broken concrete block some sandstone and a piece of rope were lying between the rails.
He notified the British Transport Police who determined that the extortionist had likely tied the concrete to one end of the rope and the sandstone to the other. Using the concrete as an anchor he then threw the sandstone end over the train line with the intention of damaging a passing train’s pantograph. If this plan had succeeded the train would have lost power and potentially caused significant damage to both the train and to those on board.
On Thursday November 7 the Julie Dart inquiry was formally linked with the British Rail case and the West Yorkshire Police were awarded responsibility for both investigations.
That same day Julie’s funeral was held in Leeds. Almost four months had passed since her body was discovered and three hundred mourners gathered to pay their respects including a number of police officers who had been working tirelessly on solving her case.
Julie’s family were devastated by the revelation that she had been struggling with finances an abusive relationship and her army application and had chosen to keep these troubles to herself. Her maternal grandparents Margaret and Harvey Aiken had always told their grandchildren to come to them anytime they needed help. Margaret later stated:
“I think of Julie every day. It still breaks my heart that she couldn’t come to us and tell us what was wrong.”
Police continued to work the case but no substantial leads emerged.
On January 16 1992 an inquest into Julie’s death was held with the coroner ruling her death had been an unlawful killing by person or persons unknown.
Six days later on the morning of Wednesday January 22 1992 real estate agent Stephanie Slater was preparing for work. The 25 year old lived with her parents in Birmingham and had recently started a new job at Shipways Estate Agents an offshoot of one of England’s largest insurance groups.
Things were going well for Stephanie. She liked her new job she had a boyfriend and an active social life and had just booked a two-week summer holiday with a friend. The pair were planning to visit the Isle of Wight a picturesque island south of England that Stephanie had often visited as a child.
By the time Stephanie was ready for work her parents had already left for the day. She gave her two pet cats a quick pat before heading out the door. Her first appointment was scheduled for 10:30 a.m. where she would be showing a client named Bob Southall a rundown 2-story semi-detached house located at 153 Turnberry Road in Birmingham.
Bob had called Shipways two weeks earlier seeking a list of houses for sale in the 60,000 pound price range. He had visited the office in person to collect the list before sending a letter confirming which house he wanted to visit. This was unusual as most prospective buyers typically booked their viewings via telephone.
Stephanie arrived at the office at 9:00 a.m. and spent the first part of her morning checking her mail and following up on client inquiries before driving to meet Bob at the Turnberry Road property.
Shortly before noon Stephanie’s manager Kevin Watts and another colleague were on their way to a meeting when they drove past 153 Turnberry Road and noticed that Stephanie’s car was still parked out the front. They remarked that she’d been at her appointment for an unusually long time.
20 minutes later the phone rang at the Shipways office. Receptionist Sylvia Baker answered and a man on the other end stated:
“Listen Syl Stephanie Slater she’s been kidnapped. There will be a ransom note in the post tomorrow. Contact the police or anybody and she’ll die.”
He then hung up.
Stunned Sylvia immediately called Kevin Watts at his meeting and he quickly returned to the office. Stephanie’s co-workers called the number Bob Southall had provided but it turned out to be connected to a phone booth at a petrol station. Kevin and a colleague then hurried to 153 Turnberry Road. Stephanie’s car was still parked out the front but the house was empty. In the hallway they found Stephanie’s car keys as well as the keys for the property. On one of the key rings there were several spots of blood and a single long hair.
Kevin phoned the police and uniformed officers were immediately dispatched to the house on Turnberry Road to conduct a search. In the upstairs bathroom and at the top of the stairs they found drops of blood as well as a larger blood stain on a wall near the kitchen.
Officers interviewed Shipways employees and installed a phone at the office that could record and trace incoming calls.
When Stephanie’s parents Warren and Betty Slater were notified they both collapsed in shock and required sedation. They couldn’t think of any reason why Stephanie would be targeted nor did they believe she had any reason to orchestrate her own disappearance.
Detectives from the West Midlands Police were assigned to the case and immediately realized it had been a mistake to send uniformed officers in response to the report as the kidnapper had warned Sylvia not to call the police. The uniformed officers were quickly withdrawn and replaced with undercover investigators.
Shortly after 3:00 p.m. another call came through at the Shipways office. A man with a northern accent stated:
“Just listen. Stephanie’s dropped her keys to their house in the hall so going to lock it up.”
The call was over so fast that it was unable to be recorded.
An incident room was set up and a media embargo was enforced to prevent the story from going public. Shipways agreed to pay whatever the kidnapper demanded and police were granted permission to sort through the post that Birmingham’s Royal Mail sorting office in an attempt to find the ransom letter as soon as possible.
At 5:00 a.m. on Thursday January 23 they found an envelope addressed to Shipways that contained a letter and a micro cassette tape. The letter explained that Stephanie would only be released if Shipways agreed to pay 175,000 pounds in unmarked bills that were free from tracking devices.
The microcassette featured a female voice saying:
“This is Stephanie Slater. The time is 11:45. I can assure you I am okay and unharmed. Providing these instructions are carried out I will be released on Friday the 31st of January.”
She explained that her manager Kevin Watts was to deliver the money on Wednesday January 29. He had to use his own car and would be given instructions at various points along the way.
West Midlands Police were aware of Julie Dart’s murder and the extortion attempt against British Rail and wondered whether Stephanie’s disappearance could be connected. The similarities between the three crimes appeared to be mounting. Both Julie and Stephanie’s kidnapper had used recorded messages and misspelled the word ransom by adding an e on the end. Moreover in all three crimes the perpetrator provided very specific instructions about how the money was to be bundled.
Investigators began carrying out covert operations in the neighborhood where Stephanie had been abducted. They door knocked houses on Turnberry Road explaining that there had been a break-in nearby and asked whether neighbors had seen anything unusual on Wednesday January 22.
One mentioned seeing a red van revving its engine and turning into a laneway to the rear of the houses. Another had noticed a man standing outside of 153 Turnberry Road who appeared to be in his early 50s. He was short and wore a coat with a badge on the left breast pocket.
With little in the way of leads investigators were forced to wait and see whether the kidnapper would make contact again.
At 2:00 p.m. on Sunday January 26 four days after Stephanie had vanished the phone rang at her parents home. Recording equipment had been set up in anticipation of this moment and Stephanie’s father Warren immediately started taping the call. A male voice on the other end told Warren to listen and then played a pre-recorded message featuring Stephanie’s voice.
She said:
“Hello it’s Stephanie here. They’ve allowed me to make a message to you just to let you know that I’m all right and unharmed. I hear that West Bromwich Albion lost yesterday to Swansea three two. I want you to know that I love you. I’m not to say too much and whatever the outcome I’ll always love you. Look after the cats for me.”
The results from the recent football match indicated that Stephanie was still alive. Her parents were both relieved and distraught while investigators believed that if they followed the kidnapper’s demands they might have a chance of bringing Stephanie home safely.
Stephanie’s manager Kevin Watts agreed to help and investigators provided him with strategies to speak with the kidnapper to minimize threats to his own safety.
As the kidnapper had already demonstrated that he was capable of traveling throughout the country 1,000 detectives from the Midlands police forces Scotland Yard and the Metropolitan Police were enlisted to be positioned throughout various motorways during the operation. Investigators would follow Kevin from all directions with backup ready just in case. Four female detectives who would be on standby to care for Stephanie if she was returned safely while another 30 officers were prepared to spring into action if she was found to be deceased.
Shortly before 5:00 p.m. on Tuesday January 28 the day before the ransom drop the phone rang at Shipways Estate Agency. It was the kidnapper demanding to speak to Kevin. He asked if Kevin had the money and in response Kevin inquired who was calling. The kidnapper responded impatiently:
“Never mind. Have you got the money for tomorrow?”
Kevin confirmed that he was getting it and the kidnapper told him to expect a message at three o’clock the following day.
The next morning Kevin said goodbye to his wife and daughters using his finger to write “I love you” in the air before getting into his car. At the office he put a bulletproof vest on beneath his work suit. A two-way radio was installed in his vehicle and the ransom money was delivered to the office in a sports bag that had a tracking device sewn into the lining. He was to keep the bag with him at all times so that the police could constantly track his whereabouts.
At 3:25 p.m. the kidnapper called and instructed Kevin to go to the railway station in Glossop a town almost 298 miles north of Birmingham. There he was to head to the payphone in the station’s entrance hall where the kidnapper would call to provide further instructions.
At 7 o’clock Kevin departed for Glossop with undercover officers trailing behind. As he drove he used the two-way radio to keep the police informed about the route he was taking. He arrived at Glossop railway station shortly before 7 p.m. and waited nervously by the phone booth the kidnapper had described.
Eventually the kidnapper called and told Kevin to leave the station turned right and to go to another phone box about 200 yards away. There he would find written instructions taped beneath a shelf.
Kevin followed these orders and found an envelope in the phone booth marked with the letter A. Inside was a typed note directing him to drive 22 miles east towards the town of Dodworth where another letter was waiting in a phone booth.
Kevin got back in his car and started driving but within a minute heavy fog fell all around him making it difficult to see. The limited visibility hindered his progress but he made it to the isolated phone booth by 8:15. A note inside pointed him towards an off-road lane 150 yards away and warned:
“This route will show if you are being followed.”
Once there Kevin was to look for a red and white traffic cone near a small building. There would be a bag next to the cone which he was to place the money into.
Kevin returned to his car again and turned left onto the lane passing a small wooden sign that read Shipways. The track was rough and framed by hedges and low stone walls but he soon spotted a shed with a cone and a large black bag in front of it.
Kevin pulled over grabbed the bag and stuffed the cash inside. He found a note directing him to continue to the end of the lane and then on to another pay phone several miles away where another note was waiting.
Kevin kept driving forward noticing that the stone walls on either side suddenly loomed much higher. Within 300 yards he unexpectedly encountered another cone with a stenciled message attached. It explained that a wooden tray with the sensor inside was perched on one of the walls. Kevin was instructed to place the bag with the money in the tray and if the sensor didn’t buzz he could leave the money and go.
Kevin walked over to the tray noticing a silver rectangular device in one of its corners. He jammed the bag inside and was relieved when the sensor didn’t make a sound. Nervously he then headed back to his car.
Meanwhile the investigators who were monitoring Kevin’s movements had struggled to find a parallel route along the narrow lane and had lost contact with the tracking signal that had been fitted into his bag. By the time Kevin delivered the money they had lost sight of him altogether.
Kevin had used the two-way radio to let the police know that he was about to hand over the cash but a technical problem had prevented them from receiving the message. As Kevin drove away from the drop-off site he used the two-way radio again to inform police that he’d successfully dropped off the money. This time his message went through.
Investigators were horrified to learn that they’d lost contact with their courier at the most crucial moment as it meant the kidnapper had likely managed to escape with the money. Worse still they had no idea where Stephanie was or if they had just lost their only chance to save her life.
When West Yorkshire detectives heard that their prime suspect for Julie Dart’s murder had slipped through West Midlands Police’s comprehensive and elaborate sting they were furious. Investigators set about detaining and interrogating everyone they encountered in proximity of the drop-off zone but there was no sign of the kidnapper or of Stephanie Slater.
Eventually at 11:30 p.m. police reluctantly held a press conference to announce that their operation had failed. Although the media embargo on the story was still being enforced investigators admitted the money had been handed over but they had not managed to recover Stephanie.
Detective Inspector Adrian Bowers had been tasked with looking after Stephanie’s parents while the operation was carried out and was waiting with them in their family home. The past eight days had been incredibly distressing for Warren and Betty Slater and the news that Stephanie had not been saved during the operation further added to their grief.
At 12:50 a.m. there was a loud banging at the Slater’s front door accompanied by the doorbell ringing. Detective Bowers raced to answer it and found a disheveled looking young woman whom he didn’t recognize standing on the doorstep. Warren later rushed up from behind pushed the detective out of the way and pulled the woman into the house shouting to his wife:
“It’s our Stephanie! She’s home!”
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Stephanie’s parents were eager to embrace their daughter. Detective Bowers held them back explaining there might be crucial evidence on her body. He asked Stephanie where her kidnapper was to which she responded:
“Oh he’s long gone.”
It turned out that the kidnapper had driven Stephanie home himself dropping her roughly 200 feet from her house. There had been no security detail outside meaning the kidnapper had managed to elude police twice that night.
Investigators and doctors arrived at the Slater’s home and Stephanie underwent a physical examination. Though confused and disoriented she didn’t have any serious injuries. She revealed she had been blindfolded for a long period of time and the doctors confirmed that her eyesight was temporarily damaged as a result. Blood and hair samples were taken and physical evidence was collected from underneath her fingernails. Her clothing was also taken into evidence.
Stephanie denied that any sexual assault had taken place meaning that it wasn’t necessary for doctors to conduct a rape kit. After being allowed to shower she was transported to a private hospital for monitoring where her parents were allowed to stay in an adjoining room.
When she learned that her kidnapper was also suspected of having murdered Julie Dart she was overcome with grief at the thought of what Julie had endured.
The eight-day media embargo was finally lifted and the next morning Stephanie’s story featured on breakfast news and radio programs throughout the country. West Midlands Police Assistant Chief Constable Phil Thomas thanked the press for their cooperation throughout the operation and said that while the kidnapper had escaped with 175,000 pounds police had achieved their primary objective of bringing Stephanie home. He stated:
“We can now openly get on with the investigation to catch this man. Our inquiries are now well in hand and we have gained a lot of information which we didn’t have before.”
The media interest in this story was intense and later that afternoon Stephanie appeared at a press conference to answer questions about her ordeal. When asked how she felt upon realizing she had been abducted she stated:
“I’d call it sheer terror. You can’t put that sort of feeling into words unless you’ve actually been through it.”
Stephanie said she was eager to thank her manager Kevin Watts in person and hoped that she could return to her normal life as soon as possible.
Following the press conference Stephanie returned to the hospital where she spent the next 10 days providing evidence about her ordeal to three female officers who were specially trained in debriefing victims. Her recall was excellent and she managed to provide a detailed account of the events that unfolded after she met the man claiming to be named Bob Southall at 153 Turnberry Road.
When Stephanie arrived at the address Bob was already standing by the front door. She described him as aged between 40 and 55 with an average stocky build and tanned complexion. He had been wearing thick black framed glasses and a jacket that had a badge picturing a train on its left pocket. He spoke with a northern accent indicating he wasn’t local to Birmingham.
When they entered the property Bob asked a few questions about the house but didn’t appear particularly interested. As they headed upstairs to see the second story Bob pointed to a window and inquired whether it was double glazed. Stephanie replied that it was.
Stephanie waited nearby while Bob explored the upstairs rooms. As he entered the bathroom Stephanie began to walk back downstairs but Bob suddenly pointed at the wall opposite him and asked:
“What’s that up there?”
Stephanie went into the bathroom and realized he was pointing at a hook which she explained was to hang a towel on. She turned around to leave but Bob suddenly flew towards her. He was holding a 10 to 12 inch knife in one hand and a long flat chisel with a hook in the other.
A struggle ensued and Stephanie received a small nick to her face from the knife. She grabbed both weapons and managed to bend the chisel rendering it useless. Stephanie screamed and Bob attempted to cover her mouth with his hands. He then jumped on her and grabbed her long hair from behind wrenching her head back and pushing her over the side of the bathtub.
Stephanie caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror and saw that Bob was holding a knife to her throat. He threatened to cut her throat if she started screaming to which Stephanie responded:
“All right calm down. You’ve got me. Don’t kill me please don’t kill me please remember I’m human.”
Bob tied Stephanie’s wrists together with what appeared to be rope from a washing line and placed a noose around her neck made from the same material. He forced her downstairs yelling angrily whenever she looked directly at him. At the bottom of the stairs he blindfolded and gagged Stephanie using her own scarf then tied her legs with a rope just below the knees.
He then stood her through the back of the house and into the garage where he forced her into a vehicle at knifepoint. Stephanie was made to lie down on the passenger seat which had been moved into a reclining position. Her face was then covered with a blanket and a line of rope was tied across her neck to restrict her from sitting up. Bob held a knife to her stomach and started driving.
In order to determine where they were going Stephanie focused on noises the quality of the roads and the turns Bob was taking. He eventually pulled over in a quiet isolated area and forced Stephanie to record the ransom message that he later sent to her employers. He also explained that his name wasn’t really Bob but instructed Stephanie to continue calling him that to make things easier.
By evening they reached a rough dirt track. Bob parked the car and guided Stephanie along a gravel path. He pushed what sounded like a metallic sliding door and led Stephanie into a room with a stone floor where he tied her to a wooden chair.
He left the room and returned shortly after with some chips for her to eat. He then forced her to change into men’s clothing and remarked:
“I hope you’re not claustrophobic.”
Bob explained he was going to place Stephanie inside a box that was placed inside another box. She was forced to lie down and shuffle feet first into a long narrow container which required her to twist her body into an uncomfortable corkscrew position. Once she was in Bob tied Stephanie’s handcuffed wrists to a metal bar above her head and warned that if she pulled on the bar boulders placed above would fall down and crush her. He also placed a wire inside the box which he explained was attached to electrodes that would shock Stephanie if she moved.
Bob told Stephanie he couldn’t understand why she was so calm to which she responded:
“I’m not calm. I’m frightened to death.”
Bob closed the lid over the top of her head and said:
“See you in the morning.”
Then Stephanie spent the night in physical agony. It was freezing cold and her body was in pain from the awkward restricted position she’d been forced into. Terrified she lay awake throughout the night convinced she would die from suffocation or hypothermia. At her most distraught point she noticed the speck of a light that appeared to grow and move towards her. As it came closer Stephanie realized that it resembled the face of Jesus Christ. As she was not a religious person the vision took her by surprise and she wondered whether she had died.
The following morning music started playing from a nearby radio. By this stage Stephanie’s entire body was wracked with excruciating pain and her extremities were numb. Bob opened the box and seemed surprised to find her in such agony. He removed Stephanie from the box and set her onto a chair rubbing her arms in an attempt to lessen the pain. After giving her a cup of tea and some porridge he explained that his plan was to keep her hostage until the following Wednesday January 29 when he would collect his ransom money. If she behaved Bob told Stephanie she would be home within a week.
Instead of returning her to the box Bob then allowed Stephanie to stay on a mattress on the floor while he went to work provided she didn’t make any noise or attempt an escape.
After he had left Stephanie began reflecting on Bob’s behavior. Although he had been threatening and violent he had also shown a more humane side and Stephanie wondered if she could appeal to this part of his personality. Deciding her best chance of survival was to be compliant and polite she resolved to put her strong people skills to use.
Over the following week Bob returned every morning and evening to give Stephanie food and to let her use the toilet. At night he would also pack her into the box. During his visits Stephanie attempted to humanize herself by chatting with Bob about the TV programs she liked to watch. She told him about her boyfriend whom her mother hoped she would marry one day. On one occasion Bob brought a German Shepherd puppy with him and Stephanie revealed her love of animals. She also confided that she had been adopted at 6 months old because her parents were unable to conceive children and Bob appeared moved by this revelation.
Although Stephanie was kept blindfolded and bound a majority of the time she managed to pay close attention to her surroundings. During her first day in captivity she heard muffled voices nearby followed by a short ringing sound and then silence. This pattern repeated several times and Stephanie realized she was likely being held out the back of a store. The sound of an electric saw and banging led her to believe it could be an engineering workshop. In addition she knew there was a microwave nearby as it made a dinging sound every time Bob made her porridge. A radio was also close by which played all day and was permanently tuned to BBC’s Radio 2 channel. Stephanie also heard a bell on what sounded like an old-fashioned cash register and the ringing of a rotary style phone. The sound of trucks lorries and trains could also be heard regularly passing through the neighborhood.
During one conversation Bob told Stephanie that he was carrying out the ransom scheme with a male accomplice whom he referred to as his mate. He described the man as a nasty piece of work and told Stephanie she was lucky not to be stuck with him.
Bob appeared to grow somewhat fond of Stephanie and repeatedly promised that she would be going home. Yet he also appeared to take pleasure in scaring her. On one occasion Stephanie told a joke that made Bob laugh after which he remarked:
“I’ll have to get rid of that bin now.”
When Stephanie asked which bin he was referring to Bob explained there was a plastic wheelie bin in the corner that he had planned to dispose of her body in.
On Sunday January 26 Bob made Stephanie record a message that he could play for her parents. He had her mention the result of the recent West Bromwich Albion versus Swansea football match to verify that she was still alive.
The next day he confirmed that she would be going home on Wednesday January 29. On Stephanie’s final night in captivity Bob let her sleep on the mattress instead of inside the box.
On the morning of Wednesday January 29 Bob told Stephanie he would be collecting the ransom money from her manager Kevin Watts that night and would be back to release her between 8:00 and 9:00 p.m. He then remarked:
“I was thinking that it would be nice to have a photograph of you you know something to remember you by.”
He told Stephanie to remove her blindfold but keep her eyes closed while he snapped a picture of her. Stephanie was then secured back into the box where she remained for the rest of the day. The radio was kept on allowing her to keep track of the time via the hourly news bulletins.
9:00 p.m. eventually came and went with no sign of Bob and Stephanie began to worry that he wasn’t coming back after all. She became increasingly panicked that she would be left to die a slow painful death alone in captivity. To escape such a fate she contemplated taking her own life by smothering her face with the duvet that had been left inside the box with her.
At 10:45 p.m. Bob finally returned. He released Stephanie had her change into new clothes and reassured her that he was taking her home. His initial plan was to leave her at a police station or a phone box but he drove her back to Birmingham instead and dropped her off near her home. Before he left he asked for a kiss goodbye.
After being blindfolded and restricted for over a week Stephanie found it difficult to see and walk but she managed to stumble home where she was finally reunited with her parents.
The police were impressed by the level of detail in Stephanie’s recollections and set about having a sketch artist create an impression of the perpetrator.
Meanwhile an investigation of the money drop site revealed that the narrow lane with large stone walls that Kevin had been sent to was actually a bridge above an abandoned railway line. Underneath the bridge officers recovered a rectangular device that had been painted silver as well as the tray that Kevin had placed the money in which was a wooden drawer with a length of washing line attached.
It appeared that the kidnapper had waited under the bridge then dragged the drawer with the money in it down after Kevin had left. Investigators theorized that he may have escaped on a motorbike to avoid police roadblocks.
The site of the abandoned railway line was part of a country walking trail known as the Dearne Valley Trail. It was just three miles down the track from the bridge where the painted brick and false incendiary device were found in relation to Julie Dart’s case.
The two cases were formally linked and West Yorkshire Assistant Chief Constable Tom Cook was appointed as the head of the investigation.
Stephanie’s neighbors were questioned to see if they had noticed anything unusual on the night of her return. A spray painter named Les Barnaby recalled that he’d been watching a film in bed around 1:00 a.m. when he heard the sound of a car engine revving outside. He looked out the window and saw a red Austin Metro in the street below. It was old and muddy and the passenger door was slightly open. After a minute a young disheveled looking woman stumbled backwards out of the car and staggered down the street in an awkward run.
On the evening of Tuesday February 4 six days after Stephanie’s return police released the first sketch of the suspect. It depicted a middle-aged white male with short dark hair wearing square black framed glasses. His face was broad with a square forehead and a straight nose.
Within an hour of going public more than 500 people phoned in tips to the police but none generated any promising leads. Assistant Chief Constable Tom Cook told the media he was almost expecting to hear from the kidnapper directly:
“Perhaps he might like to boast about it if he feels he has been successful.”
On Thursday February 6 a letter arrived at the offices of the BBC Yorkshire television the Sun and the News of the World newspapers the West Midlands and West Yorkshire police and at the workplace of Julie Dart’s mother. It claimed to be from the kidnapper who admitted to abducting Stephanie but denied murdering Julie or blackmailing British Rail. He wanted to clarify this out of concern for Stephanie’s well-being as he had previously told her that he’d never killed anyone and was worried about how she might feel if she thought he had.
The letter read:
“The fact that I could and did carry out the crime extremely successfully is my only satisfaction. I am ashamed upset and thoroughly disgusted at my treatment of Stephanie and the suffering I must have caused to her parents even now my eyes are filled with tears. I wake up during the night actually crying. With a little luck Stephanie will get over it shortly myself I do not think I ever will.”
The letter contained spelling and punctuation errors that matched previous correspondence from the kidnapper. The phrase “with a little luck” had also been used in one of the letters sent to British Rail. This indicated that the same person was indeed responsible for all three crimes and on Friday February 7 snippets of the letter were published in the country’s newspapers.
Two days later Stephanie finally left the hospital and was able to return home. A number of reporters had set up camp in the fields opposite her house to cover her homecoming. She agreed to pose for the cameras with her parents and pet cats and was met at the front door by a police officer carrying a bouquet of flowers. Detectives took shifts guarding the family and escorting them everywhere they went while police dogs and their handlers patrolled the land between the house and the nearby motorway.
Media interest in the case was unrelenting and Stephanie was inundated with large financial offers in exchange for an exclusive interview. Police advised her to negotiate a deal with one newspaper as this would prompt all other outlets to back off. She decided to sign a contract with the Sun newspaper as it was the paper her father read and also had the highest number of readers.
Stephanie wanted to use her experience to alert women to the possible dangers they face and suggest ways they could protect themselves.
From the outset of the investigation police had intentionally withheld significant details from the media and they eventually chose to release this information on an episode of BBC’s Crimewatch. The show aired on the evening of Thursday February 20 with 15 million viewers tuning in to watch. For the first time it was publicly revealed that the kidnapper drove a red Austin Metro that he appeared to have a connection with British Railways and that Stephanie had been held hostage in a workshop environment. The recorded phone call between the kidnapper and Kevin Watts was also played prompting 1,000 phone calls to police and to the Crimewatch headquarters.
48 year-old Susan Oak had been out when the show aired but she had taped it so she could watch it later. On the case had caught Susan’s attention as the sketch of the suspect resembled her ex-husband Michael Sams who also drove a red car similar to the one witnessed near the location where Julie Dart’s body was found. Furthermore the suspect had reportedly worn a railway badge on his coat and Michael loved trains. However Michael had one leg amputated 13 years earlier and the suspect wasn’t said to have a limp so Susan deemed it unlikely that her ex could be responsible.
She primarily wanted to see the Crimewatch episode to lay her suspicions to rest. At 11:00 p.m. on the night the episode aired Susan played the tape. Upon hearing the voice of the kidnapper she leapt out of her chair and shouted:
“It’s him! That’s Mike!”
Michael Bennerman Sams was born on August 11 1941 in the West Yorkshire town of Keighley. He had a conventional middle-class upbringing and was a bright child who did well at school although struggled with spelling and grammar.
At the age of 20 Sams joined the Merchant Navy but returned to his hometown a year later and trained to work as a lift engineer. He met his first wife Susan when he was installing lifts at her workplace. The young couple married on July 18 1964 and went on to have two sons.
By 1970 Sams had started his own business servicing central heating boilers and was often so busy that he rarely saw his wife and children. He dedicated any spare time he had to trainspotting a term used to describe the hobby of watching trains. Sams was fascinated by rail transport. He collected train memorabilia and displayed a model railway in a spare room.
In 1973 Sams suddenly became ill and was rushed to hospital. Doctors suspected he had meningitis an inflammation of the membranes around the brain and spinal cord but tests were inconclusive. Sams managed to make a recovery but thereafter he was prone to mood swings and violent outbursts. He and Susan argued frequently with Sams often becoming physically and sexually aggressive. He started raping his wife and subjected her to humiliating sexual abuse.
In 1976 Susan left Sams taking the couple’s two sons with her. Sams begged her to take him back while also threatening:
“If I can’t have you nobody else will.”
On one occasion one of Sams’ employees told Susan that Sams had offered him money to kill her. Sams had also bragged to the employee that he knew how to carry out the perfect kidnapping.
Sams and Susan divorced in 1977 and that same year Sams stole a car resulting in his first recorded criminal offense and nine months in prison. While serving his sentence Sams began experiencing significant pain in his right knee. He was diagnosed with cancer and to prevent the disease from spreading his leg was amputated above the knee.
Sams was released after serving six months. Three weeks later he married a woman named Jane whom he met through a lonely hearts personal ad. However Jane soon became unhappy in the relationship and ended the marriage in 1981.
The next year Sams began work as a power tool repairman for Black and Decker in Birmingham. He met his third wife Tina after she placed a personal ad in a local newspaper and he soon opened his own tool repair shop in the town of Peterborough Cambridgeshire.
Sams often criticized Tina and pestered her for sex which caused their marriage to deteriorate. Within a few years he once threatened to go to Leeds to find a sex worker saying he knew which areas they frequented. Despite being unhappy the couple stayed together and eventually moved to the village of Sutton-on-Trent which was approximately halfway between Leeds and Birmingham.
Sams started his own business repairing power tools and had a shop in the nearby town of Newark.
Susan Oak had little to do with her ex-husband though her sons still saw him occasionally. In mid February 1992 Sams’ father died and Susan attended his funeral where she saw Sams for the first time in four years. He appeared strange and evasive refusing to make eye contact or give Susan a lift to the cemetery in his red Austin Metro. His odd behavior was still clear in Susan’s mind several days later when she watched the Crimewatch episode and she had no doubt that he was responsible for the crimes.
She immediately called the Crimewatch hotline but it was busy so she reported her suspicions to the Julie Dart incident room in Leeds instead. One of her sons also called Crimewatch to back his mother’s report.
Among the hundreds of calls that were coming through the West Yorkshire Police quickly prioritized Susan’s information and two officers were dispatched to her home. By 2:00 a.m. Michael Sams had officially been placed on the suspect list along with four other individuals.
At 10:40 a.m. on Friday February 21 four high-ranking officers were dispatched to Sams’ residence in Sutton-on-Trent. His wife Tina answered the door and explained that her husband was at work. One of the detectives noticed an abundance of railway paraphernalia hanging on the walls of the house including photographs of trains and salvaged engine nameplates. There was also a moped a German Shepherd and a fish tank. These details were significant as a fish food container had been used to construct the fake incendiary device found in the Julie Dart case. Stephanie had also been shown a German Shepherd puppy while in captivity and police believed the kidnapper may have driven a motorbike of some kind when picking up the ransom money.
The officers told Tina they would return at 5:00 p.m. but then rushed to Sams’ shop 8 miles away in Newark hoping that Tina wouldn’t alert him to their visit. They pulled up at the address where a hand stenciled sign read T and M Tools. Sams’ red Austin Metro was parked outside and a railway line ran nearby which could account for the trains that Stephanie heard during her time in captivity.
Inside tools were hanging on the wall and a cash register sat on the counter but nobody was there. A number of other features aligned with Stephanie’s recollections. There was an old rotary style telephone a microwave a bell above the door and a radio playing that was tuned to BBC Radio 2.
One of the officers called out and Sams emerged from behind a curtain stating:
“I’ve been expecting you. What is it you want?”
The officers explained that he was under arrest for suspicion of abduction and murder relating to Julie Dart and Stephanie Slater. Sams retorted:
“You’ve got the wrong man. You are making a big mistake.”
He was taken to the nearest police station and held for questioning. A young constable tasked with guarding Sams asked what he was in for. Sams replied:
“Suspicion of murder and abduction. Didn’t you watch Crimewatch last night?”
The constable said that he hadn’t and asked whether Sams was referring to the Stephanie Slater case. Sams responded:
“Yes the evidence is in the workshop. I didn’t do the murder. I don’t know how they’ve linked the two.”
Startled the constable asked Sams if he was responsible for Stephanie’s abduction. He replied:
“Yeah but I didn’t do the other one.”
Sams was taken to the station sergeant to repeat his admission. He stated:
“I’ve done the kidnapping. I’ve not done the murder. I promised Stephanie that she’d go home and she did.”
Following this confession Sams was stripped searched and given new clothes with his own sent off for forensic testing. As he was moved throughout the station he continued to provide further details to the young constable whenever the two were left alone. Sams explained that he was annoyed when the real estate agency sent a woman to the property at 153 Turnberry Road as he would have become less emotionally attached to a male hostage. He also boasted about successfully hiding the fact that he had a prosthetic leg from Stephanie and added that he only carried out the kidnapping because he was bored and too lonely.
Sams’ first formal interview commenced later that afternoon. He repeated his confession and explained that he’d buried most of the ransom money after dropping Stephanie home. He said that he only asked for 175,000 pounds because it seemed like a realistic amount that would be manageable to carry.
By the time the interview ended news had broken about the arrest. Sams was transferred to a police station in Birmingham where angry crowds were waiting out the front to hurl abuse as he was rushed inside.
Meanwhile forensic investigators had been inspecting Sams’ workshop for evidence and found 19 thousand pounds in cash. They discovered that the chamber he had kept Stephanie in was a custom-built timber box that had been placed inside a sideways plastic wheelie bin. A number of human hairs matching Stephanie’s were found while other dyed strands of hair looked like they could belong to Julie Dart. A diluted blood stain was found on an old curtain which someone appeared to have attempted to wash away with water. There wasn’t enough blood to obtain a DNA profile but the blood type was identified as the same as Julie’s. Brown nylon fibers on the workshop floor also matched those found on the sheets used to wrap Julie’s body.
An inspection of Sams’ computer revealed a disturbing Word document written in the style of a police statement. It explained that he had picked up a young sex worker named Julie from Leeds who said she worked at the Leeds General Infirmary. She mentioned having a boyfriend whose name began with D but she stopped herself before revealing his whole name. The two had sex during which Sams noticed that Julie had a number of bruises on her body. Afterwards she wrote the name Julie D on a business card and told him:
“I will be around here some evenings. I get dropped off about 10:45 and collected around 11:30.”
Sams claimed he’d returned to the area a few days later but didn’t see Julie again.
Investigators also searched the tool repair shop in Cambridgeshire that Sams had run several years earlier. There they found a number of unusual bricks that matched the one found during the Julie Dart investigation. That brick had been painted white and had an envelope attached with instructions and a forensic examination revealed that it had been made from blue coloured clay. The bricks found at Sams’ former shop were of the same size and color.
Sams’ wife Tina told investigators that she and her husband had watched the latest episode of Crimewatch together and that Sams had commented that the suspect sketch looked like him 10 years prior. Tina had agreed and joked:
“You’ve got a Metro and you live near a railway line. It’s a good job you’ve got a tin leg.”
When Sams’ mother was questioned she said that he and Tina had visited her on July 21 1991. This matched the date that Julie Dart’s killer had posted a letter to the police from Leeds railway station. Tina confirmed that she and her husband had stopped at the station during their trip. While other journeys Sams had made also aligned with dates that other ransom letters had been sent.
Sams’ ex-wife Susan Oak was shown some of these letters and confirmed that the spelling and grammatical errors matched those she’d seen before in Sams’ writing.
On Saturday February 22 the police continued to formally interview Sams about Stephanie’s kidnapping. When talking about Stephanie he often started crying saying that he couldn’t bring himself to hurt her. Sams adamantly denied having anything to do with the Julie Dart murder or being familiar with the Chapeltown red light district insisting he was incapable of hurting a woman. When the police pointed out that Julie’s body was disposed of in a wheelie bin and that he had made a similar threat to Stephanie Sams dismissed this as a coincidence.
The day’s interrogation concluded and police applied for a 36-hour extension on Sams’ detention so they could continue questioning him about Julie.
The following morning Sams provided investigators with a lengthy written statement in which he claimed to have an accomplice in Stephanie’s kidnapping. He said he paid the accomplice 20 thousand pounds to drive him to the Glossop railway station which was the first site that Stephanie’s manager Kevin Watts was directed to leaving Sams with a moped and other equipment. After Sams had successfully obtained the ransom money the accomplice picked him up and insisted that Stephanie be killed. Sams refused and a violent argument broke out between the two men. The accomplice only relented when Sams offered to give him a majority of the money.
Sams claimed that it was his accomplice who was responsible for blackmailing British Rail and for murdering Julie Dart. The accomplice had allegedly kept Julie tied to a bed in a chalet on the east coast of England and had beat her with a hammer when she tried to escape from his sexual abuse. Sams also claimed that his accomplice had a key to Sams’ workshop and had used his computer on multiple occasions. Sams refused to name this individual out of fear he might harm Stephanie in retaliation.
Investigators didn’t believe that another individual was involved. Instead they were convinced this was Sams’ way of explaining the evidence that linked him to the other two cases.
They obtained a writing sample from Sams and had an expert compare it to the handwritten letters from Julie Dart’s case. The sample featured a number of notable similarities to the letters including 14 identical spelling errors. The expert concluded that Sams was the author of the letters.
On Monday February 24 Michael Sams was formally charged with the kidnapping of Stephanie Slater as well as unlawfully holding her prisoner and demanding 175,000 pounds from her employer with menaces. Two days later he was also charged with the murder of Julie Dart and with demanding 140 thousand pounds with menaces from West Yorkshire Police.
Sams was remanded in custody pending trial during which he continued to undergo interviews with the police. During one interview he suddenly confessed to another failed kidnapping attempt. Sams admitted that one week before Julie’s disappearance he made an appointment to view a house with Nottingham real estate agent 42 year-old Carol Jones. He went armed with a knife and drove intending to abduct her but his plans were foiled when a builder working on the house next door started chatting to him while he waited for Carol to arrive. Sams ended up leaving before Carol got there.
Investigators spoke with Carol Jones who remembered that her client was a no-show that day. One of her colleagues Karen Langdon recalled going to meet a client at that same Nottingham property. Upon her arrival she had been approached by a man carrying a clipboard who was wearing glasses similar to Michael Sams. He walked away at the last moment and Karen noticed he walked with a slight limp.
Both Carol and Karen were shocked to learn they had escaped a brush with a kidnapper. Karen was particularly shaken as she had resigned from her job after Stephanie Slater’s abduction out of fear of the risks involved.
Michael Sams eventually admitted to writing the ransom letters but claimed his accomplice had forced him to do so. As he maintained that this individual had the majority of the ransom money finding the cash became a priority for investigators as it would disprove Sams’ claims about a second perpetrator once and for all.
Two witnesses had reported that in July of 1991 they saw a man with a walking stick on a disused railway track less than one mile from where Julie’s body was found. Sams denied ever visiting the area except for one occasion when he visited a popular trainspotting destination named Stoke Summit.
Police then spoke with a retired colonel from the Special Air Service who had specialized in finding arms caches. He advised that the money would likely be buried in a remote location that was close to public access. Based on this advice and the witness sighting police honed in on the Stoke Summit railway embankment located 1.7 miles from where Julie’s body had been dumped.
On December 2 1992 just over ten months after Stephanie’s kidnapping they used ground probing radar to dig in the area. Eight inches below the surface they found a black tray wrapped in polythene topped with a newspaper dated February 6 1992. Inside there were stacks of banknotes.
When Sams heard about the discovery he told police the parcel was one of two he’d prepared but claimed that it must have been buried by his accomplice. Two days later buried 16 feet away from the first police recovered the second parcel of money. All up they recovered all of the ransom money less 12 and a half thousand pounds which was never found.
Michael Sams’ trial commenced at the Nottingham Crown Court on June 9 1993. He pleaded guilty to the charges relating to Stephanie Slater but not guilty to Julie’s abduction and murder and not guilty to the attempted extortion of British Rail.
Over two and a half days the prosecutor delivered a dramatic opening speech detailing what he dubbed Michael Sams’ campaign of crime. Julie Dart was known to be terrified of confined spaces and was described as someone who would have fought back against an attacker. The prosecution’s theory was that Julie had likely attempted to escape from the box Sams held her in and Sams had then killed her out of fear that she had seen too much.
The prosecution believed that Stephanie had survived because she had played along with Sams’ demands.
When Stephanie took the stand to deliver her testimony she kept her eyes to the ground while Sams sobbed in the background.
The defense called Michael Sams as their first witness. He maintained that his accomplice had murdered Julie Dart and had forced Sams to write the ransom letters. As for Stephanie’s kidnapping he claimed he was financially motivated to commit the crime because he wanted to buy a nice house for his wife in an attempt to mend their relationship.
During cross-examination Sams refused to name Julie’s killer saying he would only do so at the conclusion of the trial after proving himself innocent. The prosecutor accused Sams of lying stating:
“You cannot bring yourself to admit that you killed Julie Dart and are like a little child. You have invented this friend.”
The trial ran for four weeks and on July 8th the jury retired to consider their verdict. They deliberated for three and a half hours before declaring Michael Sams guilty of all charges including Julie’s murder and the British Rail extortion attempt.
Those seated in the public gallery applauded and cheered while Stephanie Slater cried and mouthed thank you to the jury. Julie’s mother Linda cried out:
“You bastard!”
before bursting into tears. Sams showed no emotion as the judge addressed him directly saying:
“You are an extremely dangerous and evil man. The jury has convicted you of the murder of Julie Dart. That was murder in cold blood a kidnap gone wrong because she saw more than she should. Undeterred by the horror of what you had done you tried to turn her death to your advantage. When Stephanie Slater was kidnapped I have not the slightest doubt that she was in desperate and mortal danger. The ordeal that you inflicted on her is something that the rest of us can only imagine. Her survival in my judgment is entirely due to her own remarkable moral courage.”
For his crimes against Julie and Stephanie the judge sentenced Sams to four life terms. He also received concurrent 10-year sentences for each of the blackmail attempts and the attempted extortion of British Rail.
When Stephanie was later asked how she felt she remarked:
“Well he shouldn’t have done it should he? If he was going to cry like that after what he has done I can show him tears. I can show him lots of tears. Stronger upsetting natural tears.”
Outside court Linda told reporters:
“I know we will never have Julie back. I also know that justice has been done at last and that beast Sams and that’s what he is has got what he justly deserves.”
Sams was sent to serve his sentence at Full Sutton Prison in Yorkshire. Four days after his conviction he requested to speak with West Yorkshire Detective Superintendent Bob Taylor who had been in charge of the Julie Dart inquiry. Sams told the detective that he had seen a photo of Julie Dart’s headstone on television and noticed that it didn’t have an exact date for her death. Consequently he had decided to come clean as he wanted Julie’s mother to know when her daughter had died.
Sams confessed that he had lured Julie into his car at 11:30 p.m. on Tuesday July 9 1991 under the guise of hiring her for sex work. When she leaned forward in the passenger seat to remove her shoes he placed the noose around her neck and drove her to his workshop. There he stripped her clothes tied her to a chair and forced her to write a ransom letter to her boyfriend. Sams then confined Julie in the box inside the wheelie bin like he did with Stephanie.
The next day Julie managed to smash her way out but Sams had set up a trigger mechanism that sent him a phone call to alert him to any escape attempts. Shortly before 6:00 p.m. the trigger went off and Sams raced over to the workshop. Using a hammer he knocked Julie unconscious before strangling her to death.
Although she was no longer alive Sams proceeded with his extortion attempts by continuing to send ransom letters to the police.
After Sams’ confession Detective Superintendent Taylor met with the Julie Dart family to share this new information. Linda was finally able to update her daughter’s headstone with Julie’s exact date of death. She told Yorkshire Television:
“Sams has known for two years that he did it. He knew all through the trial that he was guilty so why does he now decide to come out and say it? He’s just warped and twisted. He is twisting the knife and rubbing salt in the wound as well. It is just another game in his book.”
One month later portions of a letter that Sams had written to his now estranged wife Tina were published in newspapers throughout Britain. In it Sams revealed that he had always intended to release Stephanie and had always planned on killing Julie.
Based on this information investigators theorized that Sams had likely abducted and killed Julie as a trial run for his subsequent abduction scheme.
From the moment Stephanie Slater was abducted comparisons were made to the 1986 disappearance of Suzy Lamplugh which was covered in episode 48 of Casefile. Suzy was a 25 year old British estate agent who vanished after going to show a house to a client named Mr Kipper and her case has never been solved.
Stephanie had been well aware of Suzy’s disappearance and as a real estate agent herself she had initially started carrying a personal alarm when she was out showing houses. However by the time of her own abduction in 1992 the memory of Suzy’s tragedy had faded and Stephanie no longer carried the alarm.
During her time being held hostage Sams had assured Stephanie that he had nothing to do with Suzy’s disappearance but after his arrest the media speculated that he may be responsible. Police dismissed this theory stating that Sams wasn’t a likely culprit but had likely been inspired by the case.
In 1994 Sams allegedly sent a letter from prison confessing to Suzy’s abduction but it was dismissed by police as a sick hoax.
The following year crime writer Christopher Berry-Dee published a book titled Unmasking Mr Kipper: Who Really Killed Suzy Lamplugh which argued that Sams was responsible for the crime. The Lamplugh family were never consulted about the book and were unhappy about its publication. Suzy’s mother Diana publicly stated her belief that Berry-Dee was using her daughter’s disappearance to sell his book which was far more focused on Michael Sams than on Suzy.
Stephanie Slater found it difficult to return to normal life after her abduction. She was unable to return to her job struggled to socialize with friends and ended her relationship with her boyfriend. As a result of being kept in the wooden box she suffered from chronic back pain as well as anxiety nightmares and panic attacks. People recognized her everywhere she went so she altered her appearance and temporarily changed her name in an attempt to create a new identity.
Stephanie also struggled with the fact that she had survived while Julie Dart hadn’t been so lucky. She met Julie’s mother and grandparents and went with Linda to place flowers on Julie’s grave.
In an attempt to find closure Stephanie decided to go back to the workshop where she’d been held hostage and agreed that television network Central Television could film the visit. Seeing the workshop unblindfolded for the first time she was surprised by how small it was and how close it was to a main road. Though she found the experience unnerving it didn’t provide the resolution Stephanie was looking for.
In need of a fresh start in October 1993 she decided to relocate to the Isle of Wight with her best friend Stacey Kettner. Stephanie had spent many happy summers there as a child and described it as her own personal heaven on earth.
The following year she began working as a part-time tour guide at a historic castle. This helped to give her life focus and encouraged her to speak to strangers again. Stephanie developed a close-knit circle of friends and attributed her recovery to the support of her loved ones.
Stephanie decided to write a book about her ordeal in the hopes her story might help others titled Beyond Belief: My Will to Survive. The book revealed that Stephanie had in fact been raped by Michael Sams during her first night as a hostage. She had originally withheld this information as she was terrified that the truth would devastate her mother who had health problems and had suffered a heart attack following Stephanie’s kidnapping. On the night Stephanie had been released from captivity her mother had begged her to say that the kidnapper hadn’t touched her and Stephanie decided not to raise the issue. In the months and years that followed the only person she told about the rape was her friend Stacey.
While Stephanie was in the process of writing her book it was reported that Michael Sams also intended to write a book claiming that he and Stephanie were in love and had a consensual affair. Stephanie was incensed by the claims later stating:
“It felt as if I was being raped all over again. I was taking antidepressants and drinking heavily to try to stop the flashbacks and nightmares. I was drinking two bottles of wine a night in the hope of sinking into some kind of oblivion.”
Stephanie’s co-writer eventually convinced her not to let Sams bully her and she persevered with telling the truth in her book. She later said that this decision was:
“The best thing I ever did. I just wished I’d have done it earlier.”
When the rape became public knowledge following the book’s publication in 1995 Michael Sams threatened to sue Stephanie for libel but was prevented from doing so by the Prison Service.
On October 24 1995 probation officer Julia Flack was in her office when Michael Sams entered without warning armed with a sharpened metal rod he’d stolen from a prison workshop. Julia screamed for help and depressed an alarm button but Sams threw a lunch tray at her and proceeded to headbutt her. Another prisoner heard the attack and came to Julia’s rescue. He managed to overpower Sams before prison officers arrived seconds later. Due to this quick intervention Julia only required minor medical treatment.
Sams was transferred to the prison’s segregation unit and charged with false imprisonment and attempted murder. In February 1997 he opted to defend himself at trial. Sams said he had committed the attack because he was angry that the Prison Service had prevented him from suing Stephanie. He had also wanted to sell some paintings for charity but these had been confiscated. He claimed to have entered Julia Flack’s office to stage a peaceful demonstration and had planned to hold her hostage until police were called at which point he intended to take his own life.
Jurors found Sams guilty of false imprisonment but not guilty of attempted murder and he was sentenced to a further eight years.
He is now among the oldest and longest-serving life sentence prisoners in England and Wales.
Over the years Stephanie Slater continued to use her traumatic ordeal to help others. She helped various police departments improve their interactions with kidnapped victims and provided support to other survivors of crime. In 2011 she said:
“Before this happened I had a boyfriend a job and a company car. I had loads of friends and a great social life but Sams took everything and destroyed the next 20 years of my life. But now I am ready to begin again. Most people begin their lives in their 20s and 30s but those years of my life were destroyed.”
In a 2012 interview with the journalist Keith Wilkinson Stephanie said:
“I ran away from my name Steph for a long time because of everything that was attached to it but the thing was I didn’t realize when I was running so fast that I’ve actually come back into contact with her again. This time around I’m proud of what she’s done and I’m proud of what she survived and I’ve embraced it again. I’m not going to run away from Stephanie Slater anymore because I found her again and it’s me. So now I take on board what happened to me. I use it and hopefully help others through it.”
Stephanie continued living on the Isle of Wight where she and her best friend Stacey made plans to start a ghost tour business using a restored 1966 camper van.
However in August 2017 Stephanie was diagnosed with liver cancer at the age of 50 and died just 11 days later. Her funeral was held at the Isle of Wight crematorium on September 14. Mourners traveled in her vintage camper van while her coffin was carried in a second silver camper.
Stephanie’s friend Stacey Kettner said:
“We have had a unique and epic friendship for over 25 years and shared so much together good and bad times. I know that she truly never got over the events that shaped her life so dramatically in January 1992. It’s been an honor and a privilege to be Stephanie’s best friend.”
The West Midlands Police also paid tribute to Stephanie in a statement that read:
“To Stephanie’s courage and bravery over the years and for the work she did in helping police officers and victims by sharing her experience.”
Journalist Keith Wilkinson who worked with Stephanie on a documentary in the 1990s said:
“There’s no doubt her efforts helped pave the way for better support for victims. She also helped to raise awareness of the possible dangers faced by estate agents meeting clients alone. For her bravery and campaigning work many people owe Stephanie a great debt of gratitude.”
