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Michael
SAMS
Classification: Murderer
Characteristics:
Kidnapping
- Extortion - Rape
Number of victims: 1
Date of murder: July
10, 1991
Date of birth:
August 11,
1941
Victim profile: Julie Dart (prostitute)
Method of murder: Hitting with a hammer - Strangulation
Location: Leeds,
West Yorkshire, England, United Kingdom
Michael Sams
(born August 11, 1941) is an English rapist, kidnapper
and extortionist murderer who kidnapped Julie Dart on
July 9, 1991 and Stephanie Slater on January 22, 1992.
In 1992, he was sentenced to life
imprisonment in Full Sutton Prison. He is known to be
serving four life sentences. His minimum term has never
been made public, though he is still behind bars 16
years after his arrest.
Since going to prison he has
continued to offend, attacking a female probation
officer with a metal spike. He received an addition of
eight years to his term for this act.
In addition he has won £4,000 (approx.
$USD 7,867) damages when the prison service lost his
artificial leg when moving him from one prison to
another. He is one of several convicted kidnappers and
murderers whose name has been mentioned in connection
with the disappearance of Suzy Lamplugh, who vanished
from London in July 1986 and is believed to have been
murdered.
He also attempted to sue Slater for
libel claiming that he never raped her. He has also
brought a civil case because he thinks that his prison
bed is too hard.
Sams made the news again in April
2007 when, in a letter to Inside Time, he claimed that "OAPs
in prison are far better off than those in the community."
Sams was a competitive middle
distance runner before contracting the disease that
caused him to lose his leg.
Several years before killing Julie
Dart and abducting Stephanie Slater, Sams had been found
guilty of car theft.
Michael Sams
Round about 4th July
1991 eighteen year old Julie Dart, who was working as a prostitute in
the Chapeltown area of Leeds, West Yorkshire, vanished without trace. On
Friday 12th Julie's boyfriend received a peculiar letter from her. He
took it to Julie's mother Lynn. The letter stated that she, Julie, had
been kidnapped. A ransom was demanded, and the Police, under Detective
Superintendent Bob Taylor, were brought in. However, on 19th July 1991,
Julie Dart's body was discovered in a field in Lincolnshire. She had
received three blows to the back of her head and strangled.
On Wednesday 22nd
January 1992 Stephanie Slater, who worked for Shipways Estate Agents
in Birmingham, disappeared while she was showing a prospective
client, who called himself "Mr. Southwell", around a house in the
Great Barr area of Birmingham. Ransom letters soon confirmed that
Stephanie had been kidnapped by the same person who had murdered
Julie Dart.
For the next week
Stephanie was kept against her will - locked inside a wheelie bin
every night - and her kidnapper raped her. His ransom demand of
£175000 was agreed by the police, as was his demand that the money
should be dropped off by a work colleague of Staphanie, Kevin Watts,
on Friday 31st January. Plans were put into place to track Mr. Watts,
but they went awry, and the kidnapper escaped, undetected, with the
money. He did, however, keep his promise - and he drove Stephanie
back to her home that very evening.
Once
Stephanie's release had been ensured, the police set out to
capture her kidnapper. They played a recording of his voice,
taken from a telephone conversation, on the February edition of
Crimewatch UK three weeks later. It was heard by Susan
Oake, who telephoned giving details of her ex-husband, Michael
Sams. Sams was traced to his workshop in Newark, Nottinghamshire
- the place where both Julie Dart and Stephanie Slater had been
held captive - and arrested. He was jailed for life in 1993.
Is it possible
that Michael Sams was the Mr Kipper who was thought to
be behind the disappearance of Suzy Lamplugh, also an estate
agent, in 1986?
TRIVIA
In 2003 Bob
Taylor hosted a kind of Reality TV programme entitled The
Murder Game. In one episode, broadcast on Saturday 12th
April 2003, my sister Anita made an appearance: she was doing
her job - working in a chemists in Witham High Street.
Notleynet.freeserve.co.uk
Sams receives further 8 years for cell attack
By Nigel Bunyan
Telegraph.co.uk - Friday 14 February 1997
THE killer Michael Sams was cleared of
attempting to murder a probation officer yesterday but jailed
for a further eight years for holding her hostage with a metal
spike in his prison cell.
Sams, already serving four life sentences for
murdering Julie Dart, a prostitute, and abducting the estate
agent Stephanie Slater, was convicted of holding Julie Flack
after a four-day trial at Durham Crown Court. Sams, 55, who
conducted his own defence, was cleared of trying to murder Mrs
Flack, 50, the wife of the Rt Rev John Flack, Bishop of
Huntingdon, who was attacked as she held a surgery at Wakefield
Prison, South Yorks, on Oct 23, 1995.
Mr Justice Morland told Sams: "Although I
accept that you never intended to harm her, you threatened to
kill her unless she did as you said and you armed yourself with
a metal object, sharpening it to terrorise her. You also had
tape to bind her. She was petrified, traumatised and in a state
of shock."
The jurors were told only at the end of the
trial that Sams was already serving four life sentences. Julie
Dart, a prostitute from Leeds, was struck repeatedly with a
hammer and then strangled on July 10, 1991. Miss Slater, his
second victim, was held for eight days in a coffin-like box
while Sams, who seized her after posing as a prospective house-buyer,
demanded a £175,000 ransom.
Sams spent this week's trial handcuffed and
flanked by four prison officers. Afterwards, Mrs Flack spoke of
her relief that the case was over. Looking strained but composed,
she said: "This week has been a considerable ordeal, but
nevertheless it was important for me, as part of my own recovery
process, to be part of it. Although he is already serving a life
sentence, it was right that he was prosecuted for an attack
which did threaten my life. His conviction gives a message to
anybody working in prisons that the law will uphold the right
not to face intimidation or assault from violent prisoners."
Mrs Flack said that, although she would be
prepared to return to working in a prison, "that is not up for
discussion at the moment". During the trial she recalled how
Sams had lunged at her within moments of warning her: "Touch
that alarm button and you're dead."
Sams said that his intention had merely been
to shock Mrs Flack. "I had said the same thing to Stephanie
Slater," he told police. "I threatened her with a knife and she
froze and did everything I told her. She might have said in her
book that she struggled, but she never."
He had carried out the attack on Mrs Flack
partly to focus attention on his claim that the Prison Service
had prevented him from suing Miss Slater for accusing him of
raping her. He was also angry about a refusal to let him sell
his paintings for charity. Mr Justice Morland said he
acknowledged that Sams had "genuine grievances" against the
Prison Service.
After the case, Det Supt Bob Taylor said of
Sams: "Sometimes what he does is for fame. During the latest
incident the Rose West trial was on, and I suspect he didn't
like being knocked off the front page. He has nothing to lose by
playing his games - he's got nothing else to amuse him."
