Crime Weekly - S2 Ep69: Julie Dart and Stephanie Slater: A Grubby Little Man (Part 2)

Episode Date: March 18, 2022

During the 1970’s, a brutal serial killer terrorized the women of Manchester and West Yorkshire England. By the time he was apprehended, Peter Sutcliffe, known as the Yorkshire Ripper, had claimed the lives of thirteen young women and girls, and had attempted to kill at least eight more. Many of them sex workers he had picked up in red light districts. His killings created a culture of fear and suspicion in England. Every man was looked at with a side eye; whether he was your neighbor, teacher, bus driver, or father. Even after Sutcliffe was arrested in January of 1981, there was still a lingering dark cloud, causing women who were walking alone at night to pick up their pace, and glance over their shoulders. But by the early 90’s, the fear had subsided and Peter Sutcliffe and his horrendous crimes had faded to a cold memory. But when the West Yorkshire police received a letter from an anonymous man in July of 1991, alleging that he had kidnapped a prostitute off a street in Chapeltown, those distant, cold memories began to grow more vivid. The letter claimed that unless a ransom of 140 thousand pounds was paid, the girl would be killed, and the clock on Julie Dart’s life began to tick down. Become a Patreon member -- > https://www.patreon.com/CrimeWeekly Shop for your Crime Weekly gear here --> https://crimeweeklypodcast.com/shop Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/CrimeWeeklyPodcast Website: CrimeWeeklyPodcast.com Instagram: @CrimeWeeklyPod Twitter: @CrimeWeeklyPod Facebook: @CrimeWeeklyPod

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Selection varies by location. Hello, everybody. Welcome back to Crime Weekly. I'm Stephanie Harlow. And I'm Derek all to you guys. Thank you so, so much. And if you follow us on Instagram, where's our Instagram at? Crime Weekly Pod. Follow us on Instagram. Within, I don't know, I would say a week or so, you're going to see some great pictures of us celebrating this YouTube button. So is it a button? Button, right? Play button, yeah.

Play button, yeah. So go follow us on Instagram. So when those hit, you will be ready and drop us a line and say hello. Absolutely. I told some of you guys beforehand, I had saved that spot for a play button. I told Stephanie this in the very beginning. I'm like, when we get our first hundred, that's where it's going. And now it's officially up. Stephanie, we both got our own play button. We took photos with it. We're actually, I think you just said it, but we're around 125,000 already. So we're already on our way to 200,000. I haven't forgot. I said, if I got 200 that I would put on the dino costume and skate,

I will do it. If it comes, if we get there, I'll do it. Um, as long as I'm not too old, by the time we get there, I'll do it. Whatever season it is. He might be roller skating. He might be ice skating. Yes, I will do it. But as Stephanie said, thank you so much for the support. We couldn't do it without you guys. We know how hard it is to gain subscribers. It's not easy. A lot of people try it and they don't get there. So we don't take it for granted. Thank you so much. And I'm rocking that plaque with pride. It will be right behind me. Although most of the time, it'll probably be behind my head, but that's only because I couldn't find anywhere else for it. I think it looks great and they know it's there and we don't take it lightly. We owe it all to

you guys. Thank you guys. Thank you so much. All right. So let's dive in. Last week, we covered in detail the abduction of 18-year-old Julie Dart from Leeds in West Yorkshire, England. Now, the man who abducted Julie would send one letter to her boyfriend, Dominic Douglas, and several more letters to the West Yorkshire police demanding money in return for Julie's life. While all of this was happening, the state-owned railroad company British Rail, they were also receiving letters threatening violence if they didn't pay a large ransom. But when Julie was found dead 10 days after her abduction, the letters to the police did not stop because this man, her abductor, her murderer, he hadn't gotten his money. He hadn't gotten his ransom yet. Months of letters and threats and complicated scavenger hunts had still left him empty handed.

So Julie's killer would need to try again. On the morning of January 22nd, 1992, 25-year-old real estate agent Stephanie Slater was getting ready to leave for her job at Shipways, a real estate company in Great Bar. Stephanie lived with her parents, Warren and Betty, in Birmingham, and work there, and she'd already developed close relationships with her coworkers. Life was looking good for Stephanie Slater. She had a lot of friends, she'd been seeing a new boyfriend, a skating instructor named David, for a while, and it was getting serious, and she was also planning a two-week trip the following summer to the Isle of Wight with one of her close friends. I think that she was in a place that a lot of us can relate to, focused on the future, planning and building, and feeling happy that everything seemed to be falling into place. So there was no way she would have even considered that on this run-of-the-mill Wednesday morning,

as she said goodbye to her two pet cats, that her life was going to change forever. Stephanie arrived at the Shipways office at 9 a.m. She wanted to answer some emails and fill out some paperwork before she drove to a Birmingham address to meet a client named Bob Southall, who had contacted Shipways two weeks prior, asking for a list of houses in the area that were selling in the £60,000 price range. Bob Southall had come into the office to pick up the list in person, and then he sent a letter to Shipways expressing a desire to see a two-story house located at 153 Turnberry Road.

Stephanie was scheduled to meet him at the property at 10.30 a.m. to let him in, show him around, and answer any questions he might have. This was not the first showing that Stephanie had ever done, and as she drove to the address, her mind was preoccupied with the fact that she was running a few minutes late. An hour and a half after Stephanie was scheduled to arrive at the house, her shipways supervisor, Kevin Watts, drove by 153 Turnberry Road on his way to another meeting, and he noticed that Stephanie's car was still parked at the house, which was odd because showings typically didn't last that long, but he assumed she had a good reason for remaining at the address, so he kept driving.

Just before 12.30 in the afternoon, the phone rang at the shipway's office and the receptionist, Sylvia, picked it up and she said hello. A man's voice on the other end of the line stated, quote, 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. End quote. And Sylvia was frozen in shock as she heard a click indicating that the caller had hung up. And I'm sure we have some people that are listening or watching who are real estate agents. And I've always thought about it. And this isn't the first part. But that aside, there's a lot of cases where real estate agents are attacked by these suspects who they're basically able to get these individuals to respond to a place that's not occupied. It's inside. So you can't really see or hear what's going on in there. And they can pinpoint the time, place, when it's going to happen. And a lot of these agents respond alone.

And I get a lot of calls from people who are asking for better ways to protect themselves. I know we talked about like the Keep You Safe kits and carrying mace and all these different things because these real estate agents are really in a tough spot. And I know recently there's been some things where they're doing the virtual ones where they're basically creating these three-dimensional open houses for the preliminary walkthroughs. And then if they vet the person, then they're going. But I do think one thing that we can do with this, because I get a lot of questions about it, is instead of it just being taken at face value where someone calls and says, hey, I'm Derek Levasseur. I'd like to come see this house.

I think there should be some vetting of that person if you can to try to confirm who they are. Sometimes you can send like a license or something like that that you can kind of confirm they are. Again, nothing's perfect, but something to mitigate the possibility of this happening. And then as always, I know it gets hectic out there, but if you're in this field of work, don't ever assume that it's going to be okay. Always try to use the buddy system.

Always try to make sure there's someone else there with you because that in and of itself might serve as a deterrent for these cowards who usually like to capitalize on a situation when you're not paying attention. So you might have your back turned and that's when they do it because they're cowards. But if someone else is there, again, they might be more afraid to do that. So that's no perfect system. People got to work. But I do hear about this a lot.

And it's not necessarily a person who's killed multiple people. It could just be a one-off. And it doesn't have to even be murder. Sometimes it's sexual assault. Yeah. I think that if another person was there, the attacker probably wouldn't do anything at all. But it's such a slippery slope. And it's a lot easier said than done. My brother's in real estate and

I know it's so competitive. It's so hard to say no to somebody when they're like, I want to see a house, just hoping that you might make the sale. However, I have been, not now, but I was home shopping in the past couple of years. And a lot of times now, real estate agents will need or necessitate a prequal. So they want to, and not maybe even for safety, but just to make sure you're not wasting their time. You actually can afford to buy this house. So that's probably been happening a lot more now. I know I never was even able to see a house without a prequal. Yeah. Terrible situation though, because it really does put the victim at a disadvantage because they, the offender has

everything planned out to the minute you're going to be punctual. So they know when you're coming, they know the house, they can probably see pictures of the house on the inside before they even get in there. They know the area, they know them, they can map it out their escape plan, who they would be seen by. They can case the place, look for outside cameras on other people's homes. There's so much they can do and really nothing the victim can do at that point because they're unsuspecting. We always can try a little better, but just be safe. That's all we can say is be safe out there because sad world we live in, a lot of dangerous people out there. Yeah, I agree. I always get worried. I'll go to get my nails done too. And sometimes I'm there

late because I work all day. And then I leave my nail girl and she's all by herself in the salon. And I'm like, are you good? Can I walk you out? And she's like, no, I still have to clean up. I feel nervous. I don't want to leave you here alone. So it's always very stressful. So Kevin Watts and another Shipways employee, they immediately drove to 153 Turnberry Road, where they found Stephanie's car still parked at the front of the house. When Kevin had called the number that Stephanie's client, Bob Southall, had left on file, he discovered that it wasn't a real number at all. It was attached to a payphone outside of a gas station.

And so Kevin expected the worst by the time he entered the house, calling Stephanie's name. Stephanie's car keys, as well as the keys to the house, were laying in the hallway, and Kevin saw one long brown hair attached to the key ring, along with several spots of blood. Even though Sylvia, the receptionist at Shipways, had been instructed not to call the police. Kevin didn't really know what to do, so he did call law enforcement, telling them about the bizarre phone call and what he had found at the property. Uniformed police officers arrived and began searching the house, finding more blood on a wall near the kitchen, as well as in the bathroom

upstairs and at the top of the stairs. Officers went door to door telling neighbors that there'd been a break-in in the area and asking if they'd seen or heard anything suspicious on that morning of January 22nd. One man said he had seen a red van revving its engine and driving down a road that traveled behind the row of houses that 153 Turnberry was a part of, and another witness claimed to have seen a man standing outside the house that morning. The witness said that this man looked to be in his early 50s, he was kind of short, and he wore a coat that had some sort of badge on the left chest pocket. So a couple quick questions.

You said here this is January 22, 1992, correct? Yes. And with Julie Dart, it was July 9th, 1991, right? So about five, six months after a little less than that, this occurs. So a little bit of time, not too much, but this Turnberry Road, in relation to where Julie's situation went down and where he was kind of having the cops play cat and mouse, how far geographically was it from the area? Is it like completely out of bounds or is it somewhat in the vicinity? So Julie Dart lived in Leeds and Stephanie Slater lived in Great Bar.

They're not really close to each other. It's about a two hour, seven minute drive, 120 miles away. They're 120 miles apart. So still in, you know, obviously the UK, but they're not super close to each other. All right. So there's a window there that's, you know, extended period of time. It's not immediately after, and you have some distance. So the reason I asked that is it probably didn't raise flags immediately. We're just getting into Stephanie's case, but to see the correlation there, I don't know if you would, other than the fact that I'm assuming this is our guy only because we're talking about these two cases together. That's just an assumption on my part. Maybe you'll throw a curve ball at me, but just immediately off the start, it's just not like this is around the corner from where Julie's situation went down.

No, like you said, it's going to be a different police force, right? Yep. Expanded the scope for sure. And almost half a year has passed. Exactly. And I mean, if you look at it, Julie Dart was a sex worker. Stephanie Slater is a real estate agent that lives with her parents. Completely different types, completely different women. And after

Julie Dart, the ransomer, the man, the abductor, the killer, he had threatened to take another sex worker, but Stephanie Slater wasn't a sex worker. Was not. And modus operandi is a little different as well. The first time there was letters, both by the victim and by the offender, this time it's a phone call. Maybe that's intentional. Maybe it's just a change up, but he didn't put his stuff on paper again, which can be dissected and analyzed, et cetera. So a little bit change in his MO as well. So all points to be noted when considering how do you connect the two if you're the law enforcement officials on the ground at that time. Difficult. Yeah. Well, they're not going to right away. And I can see that. Yeah. And at this point, there was nothing left to do but wait for Stephanie's kidnapper to contact Shipways and give them instructions on what to do next. And I imagine I mean, I've never been in this position. Obviously, I'm not a cop. I'm not a detective. I don't work in crisis teams. But I imagine how frustrating it would be for law enforcement when you have a kidnapping victim and then the ball's out of your court.

You know, you've got to wait for this asshole now to tell you what to do next. And, you know, hopefully they're serious and they'll return her safely if you do what they say you should do. But there's always that chance that you'll do exactly what they say to do and she'll still die and she won't be returned home. It's true. The ball's in their court. Obviously, they're not sitting on their hands, but they are limited in what they could do, especially when you're talking about that timeframe. There wasn't find my iPhone or GPA like there is now. So without good witness testimony to point them towards the direction of a car, a possible license plate, they are really handcuffed, especially if, and I'm going out

on a limb here, I'm going to assume this person, you said his name was Bob, right? Bob Southall. Yeah. Not a real person. Not his real name. Bingo. Yeah. So that's all they got. Not a real phone number. Yeah. Right. So I'm sure they looked that up and realized very quickly the person doesn't exist. So now what do you have? Nothing. You've got a missing girl and two parents who are like freaking out at this point, right? So I'm sure they looked that up and realized very quickly the person doesn't exist. So now what do you have? Nothing.

You've got a missing girl and two parents who are like freaking out at this point, right? Yeah, not a good situation. So detectives placed recording and tracking devices on the phones at Shipways, as well as in the home of Stephanie's parents, Warren and Betty, who were obviously absolutely distraught when finding out that their daughter had been taken from a residential neighborhood in the middle of the day. And that's also crazy, you know. You know, with Julie Dart, she was on the street. She was sort of looking for Johns. So it would be easy for her abductor to just pull up and say, hey, get in my car. But with Stephanie, it's the middle of the day. She's going to do her job. And he's acting very bold at this point. So just after 3 p.m. that day, the kidnapper called again. And he said

simply, quote, just listen. Stephanie's dropped her keys to the house in the hall. So go and lock it up. End quote. He was on the phone so briefly that they were unable to track the call, but the police noticed that the caller had a northern accent. The next day, January 23rd, Shipways received an envelope with a letter and a microcassette tape inside. On the tape, Stephanie Slater's voice could be heard. She said that she was okay and unharmed, and if her kidnapper's instructions

were followed, she would be released on Friday, January 31st. The letter demanded a ransom of £175,000 in unmarked bills to be delivered by Stephanie's supervisor in his own vehicle on Wednesday, January 29th. What does it mean when they say unmarked bills? I always hear it and I need to look it up, but I don't. So there's a couple of things I guess it could mean. I don't know what he meant by it, but I know for me, I always assume that. So basically we have a pack of $100 bills. What will happen is we'll record every single one of those serial numbers for those bills. So they're essentially marked that we can track them where if those bills are used or found in a person's home, you can identify them

as the bills that were put into this kidnapper's suitcase that we had given them. So it could be used in court of law later to say, hey, listen, we had bill number 1526766. We believe this was our guy and we went to his house. His wallet had that bill inside of it. We make photocopies of every single one of those bills. Now, by the way, we do it for drug deals as well, where we'll photocopy all the money. Another thing could be, I guess in that time, I don't know if dye packs were big, you know, you could put dye packs in the, in the thing where if they tried to open it, it shoots ink all over them or, you know, technology wise, I don't think there's tracking devices that wouldn't be noticed they'd probably be pretty big at that point so i would think unmarked would be you know some identifiable mark that could be put on the bill

as well you ever see those markers yeah to the counterfeit ones right there's also markers where you can put a special ink on there that's only identifiable by a certain light so there's a couple different things it could mean but i would think the most simplistic way of describing it is the bills are marked and tracked and photocopied before being transferred to the offender. How would he know if they recorded the serial numbers of the bills though? He wouldn't. So it could be that and it could also, I mean, he's just making the threat, doesn't mean they have to follow it. It sounds like something that he heard like in a movie, you know, unmarked bills. Yeah.

I mean, now it's really simple. Like there's microchips, like the tracking devices can be so small, like it's embedded in the lining of the suitcase. I mean, it's like, well, now nobody's even getting like ransoms and cash, you know, it's like, send me Bitcoin or something. Right. Yeah. Yeah.

That too. It's untraceable. Yeah. Money's not the way to go. Cause it is trackable. You know, it is something that they can they can trace back to the person who's using it to buy something. All right, let's take our first break and we'll be right back. Stephanie's supervisor, Kevin Watts, and the police began to make preparations. A major incident room was set up, which was to operate in complete secrecy. A media embargo had been put into place, and those involved in the investigation were given specific instructions to tell no one what was going on, consisting of trained intelligence operatives and analysts who would go over the information provided by the kidnapper with a fine-tooth comb, hoping to glean something from his words and to build an offender profile. Now, once again, as we talked about earlier, as you had mentioned, they hadn't initially put two and two together, that the killer of Julie Dart was also the kidnapper of Stephanie Slater. But when they got that first letter, they realized they were probably dealing

with the same individual because he had also spelled the word ransom with an E on the end, just like in the letters to the police about Julie Dart, as well as the letters to British Rail. Now, the reason for this delay in putting two and two together was simple. You talked about it earlier. You know, the West Yorkshire police had been dealing with Julie's case while the West Midlands police were in charge of Stephanie's abduction, and this happens a lot when one offender operates in multiple jurisdictions. On Saturday, June 26th, Stephanie's parents received a phone call at their home around 2 p.m., and when they answered, they heard their daughter's voice. But Stephanie was not on the phone. Her kidnapper was actually

playing them a pre-recorded message, and in this message, Stephanie once again confirmed that she was okay and unharmed. She even provided the score of a football game from the night before to show proof of life. At the end of the message, Stephanie said, quote, 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. End quote. So this is an interesting tactic.

It's a smart one on the offender's part because he doesn't want something to be said that's obviously not filtered through him. So he's having her pre-record it. He's able to listen to it and maybe I'm giving him too much credit, but I would want to pre-record it not only so she doesn't say something that I don't want her to say like what I look like or anything like that, but also you kind of see it in the movies, but it's real. What if like there's a certain noise that's specific to the area that you're in that gets recorded in the background or someone hears in the background and they're recording it on the law enforcement side of it. So now there's might be this horn or this church bell or something specific to the area you're in where they can narrow down your coordinates of where you are. So a lot of reasons why you would do this. Maybe

he wasn't thinking any of that. You're so smart to pick up on that though, because we're going to find out in a little bit, but he had her record that message when he wasn't at the place he was taking her. There you go. So you're not giving him too much credit. He put a thought into that. He was like, we're going to do it here, not there. Because of those exact reasons, I don't want there to be any background noises that somebody might be able to put two and two together.

Right. Just something distinguishable. I remember last episode, we talked about a greenhouse and all these things added together. It'll be interesting to see if there's any correlation between where he's ultimately, once he's identified, if they've ever looked into the fact of where he was conducting his business, what he was doing. He might have multiple locations for all we know. But it makes me feel like the greenhouse thing is a red herring, right? Because he's so careful about these prerecorded messages. Why is he

going to give away any details that are going to give the police a way to narrow down his location? It's a good point. It's almost like he gets off on that though, right? He does, yeah. He gets off on giving you a nugget of where if you're smart enough, you should be able to figure it out, but I know you're not. So you won't. Yeah. Like what was the point in calling the real estate office and saying she's been kidnapped and then calling again to say, Stephanie dropped her keys, go and lock it up. That's a game playing. He's taunting them. Yeah, for sure. What a weirdo. He definitely enjoys this. He likes this game.

And I said last episode, you know, he's motivated by money, which is clearly part of it. But he's also motivated by the thrill of the chase. And I think that this is probably somebody who has super low self-esteem, super low self-confidence, and they want to be taken seriously. So they have to make these uneven power dynamics in order to feel superior in any way. No, I agree. Spot on, for sure. So on January 28th, the day before Kevin Watts was supposed to deliver the ransom money, he got a call from the kidnapper at the Shipways office right before 5 p.m. The man asked Kevin if he had the money, and when Kevin said he did,

the man told him to expect a message at 3 p.m. the following day before hanging up. On the morning of January 29th, Kevin Watts kissed his wife and children goodbye before driving to his office where he was fitted with a bulletproof vest and handed a bag of money that had a tracking device sewn into the lining. 1,000 police officers would be on surveillance duty that night. Following Kevin's route, using the tracking device, as well as physically following him as much as they could without being noticed by anyone who could be potentially watching. Real quick before you continue. So a couple of things. Kudos to Kevin. This is someone who has some, you know, an employee who works for him. He's

risking his life to save theirs. You don't have to sign up for that, but he's willing to do it. He's going to go meet with a potential murderer to save someone else. Kudos for that. That's not something that should be undersold. It takes a lot of courage to do that. And she'd only been working there six weeks. That's what I'm saying. And he's risking his life for hers.

You're putting your neck out there for somebody you haven't even known two months. That's admirable. And the significance of him kissing his wife and kids, knowing that, crazy anything could happen and then also i'm glad you mentioned so apparently 1992 there is a tracking device that they feel they can get away with now there might they might have had the help of the fbi not the fbi wouldn't be the uk but obviously in you know they're there they're gonna make sure we're in the right country yeah right gotta make sure we're in the right country but they might have higher entities involved at this point,

assisting with better technology because if they're putting it in the lining of the bag that they're providing, it's gotta be pretty minimal because they're gonna assume this person's gonna check. And if they find something, they're gonna kill her.

So if they're willing to risk that, clearly they feel confident about it. So it's fascinating. 1992, a GPS tracking device small enough that they believe can be hidden. So that's something I didn't know. So you know what I think now that I'm thinking about James Bond? So I was wondering, is the FBI Interpol in Europe? And then I was like, I don't know.

But wasn't James Bond the equivalent of the CIA? And he was M16, right? MI6. MI6, yeah. So I think the FBI is MI5. Sure. I honestly don't know. I should know that. You guys let us know. Our UK people, let us know. I think it's one of those things you know, but then you forget. It might be. I mean, I don't know. I'm not even going to take a stab at it. I'm just going to make myself sound dumber. There's going to be people in the comments like, how dare you even talk about this if you don't know what you're talking about? And I would just say I focused on my stuff, but yeah, I don't know it. You got me there. I'm

stumped. But those of you who are nice and you live in the UK or you know, let us know, yeah, I don't know it. You got me there. I'm stumped. But those of you who are nice and you live in the UK or you know, let us know, because I think MI5 is like the FBI and MI6 is like the CIA. If there's a thousand police officers there, I'm assuming that this police department wasn't that big. I'm assuming some of those officers were agents and not officers. They're like the top of the top, the cream of the crop. They brought in specifically because this is a highly sensitive and very delicate situation and you want the best of the best dealing with it, not just some local detectives. So my assumption is a thousand agents on scene, a thousand officers on scene. Some of them are highly skilled at what they do and dealing

specifically with incidences like this. Yeah. So they're using this tracking device that's in the bag. I think they're hoping that the person who is asking for the ransom takes the bag and then they can track him, but they also want to track Kevin. They want to follow him because they're hoping to arrest this guy tonight. Right. Of course. And they're hoping the bag gets to the location where Stephanie is before he finds it. Yeah. Or they can, you know, yeah, that's tough because what do you can't just arrest him on scene because then what if he refuses to tell you where she is? You sort of have to follow him. That's another tricky thing about abductions and ransoms and things, because this guy's a freak, you know, but if you pick him up

and arrest him, he could just refuse to tell you where she is or used as leverage in some way. Real quick, I was just looking it up. I think we might be onto something here. It looks like, obviously, FBI agents are stationed overseas and they're in the UK and they could be involved. But also, as you mentioned, MI5, MI6, those are also intelligence agencies that are over there that may be involved as well. So the answer is it could be a combination of all three. For all we know, a thousand people, it probably was. The most important thing out of all of this to understand, though, is the best James Bond was Pierce Brosnan, without a doubt. Shaken, not stirred.

I don't care what anybody says. That's him. I mean, listen. Pierce Brosnan. You're very passionate about it. I'm going to go with that. I love Pierce Brosnan. I would hope so with that conviction.

Still to this day, the man has a great head of hair. I mean. He has a wig. No, he does not. I almost got you though. There was a second there where your life left your body and everyone just saw it. I was like typing like G-O-O till I Google it. Yep.

Your life literally left your body for a second that everyone saw it. Would have changed things for me. So anyways, these 1,000 agents, they're following Kevin, not only with the tracker, but they're physically following him, but they got to keep a good distance because I'm sure the kidnapper is going to assume that somebody is going to be following him, especially if he was watching that house that he took Stephanie from, because then he would have seen all these uniformed officers arriving there even though he told them not to call the police. So this is a tricky thing. He knows more than they know and they don't know what he knows. They

don't know if he knows they've already called the police. They don't know anything. So they have to be very careful about it. But they also gave Kevin a two-way radio to keep in his car so that he could communicate with law enforcement, giving him the ability to tell the, where he would need to wait by a payphone at the entrance to the station, and that call would come at 7 p.m. Kevin did as he was told, and when the call came in, he was instructed to leave the station and turn right, where he would find another phone booth about 200 yards away. And there, at that phone booth, Kevin discovered an envelope with the letter A written on it, and it was taped beneath a shelf in the phone booth. The typed note inside

instructed Kevin to drive 22 miles to another phone booth and to another letter. But on this leg of the journey, something happened that no one had anticipated and no one could control. The weather turned bad, and a thick, impenetrable fog rolled in, making it very difficult for Kevin to see the road and forcing him to slow his pace. The dark night became even darker when a torrential downpour began, accompanied by gusting winds. Kevin still managed to reach his next destination in time, and a letter at this phone booth instructed him to turn off the main road and drive down an isolated bridle path. So for those who don't know, a bridle path, it's usually this unpaved sort of path. It's made out of like dirt or stone, and it's used for horseback riding or people on horseback. And the letter told Kevin

specifically that when he took this route, it would show whether he was being followed or not. So the undercover agents who'd been keeping up with Kevin to that point, they were forced to hang back, not wanting to risk being spotted on this narrow path. But Kevin Watts continued, committed to seeing this through and getting Stephanie home safely. The letter had told Kevin to drive slowly down the path until he spotted a small building. Outside that small building, Kevin saw a red traffic cone, and next to that traffic cone, there was a bag that Kevin was instructed to put the ransom money into. Inside the bag was another letter telling Kevin to take the bag and drive to another payphone a few miles away, but he hadn't driven far when he

spotted another red traffic cone that had a Shipways sign. There was like Shipways signs, the real estate company, planted all around this red traffic cone so that he couldn't miss it. And this cone had another note taped inside of it. This note told Kevin to search for a wooden tray that had been placed on one of the high stone walls that towered over the road on either side. Kevin found this tray and he noticed that there was a silver rectangular device in one corner. The letter told him that this was a sensor of some kind, and if Kevin placed the bag of money in the tray and the sensor didn't buzz, he was free to go. So Kevin jumped on his two-way radio and he told the listening detectives where

he was and that he was making the drop at that moment. But unfortunately, the detectives were not listening. Something had gone wrong and the radio was not transmitting. They never say exactly why the radio malfunctioned, but it could have had something to do with the bad weather messing with the service or maybe Stephanie's kidnapper had chosen this area of road because there was like high walls on each side, knowing that it would be harder to get like an electronic message of some kind out. But either way, Kevin's like, hey, guys, I'm making the drop. Here's where I am, because he knew that they had fallen back. And he's like, it's happening now. And he just didn't get that message at all. When you were saying it, it just brought back so many memories because I can tell you and

I was in the 2000s as a police officer and we had tracking devices and we had radios that weren't like our regular like police radios, but something that's a little bit more discreet and we even have wires. It got to the point where it was so bad. I didn't even wear the stuff anymore when i was undercover because it didn't work it never worked like the littlest thing like glass windows in a car would bounce off the frequent the the signal and a car could be they could be five feet behind me in a car directly behind me and later after we're done like yeah we couldn't hear any of that so we would always have a backup with like hand signals like i would tap on the outside of the the door of the

window like if i was driving we had to have a bunch of like redundancies in place because it was like a miracle if the transmitter ever worked. And again, that's in 2010, 2012, all the time, never worked. I would usually keep a phone on me and sometimes I would just open, if I was the only one in the car or only one around, I would just open my phone and call one of my buddies who were my eyes on me and just say, while I'm still driving with the phone down, like, yo, we're turning on the Slater Street right now because the transmitter never worked. So I can empathize with this so much because it was like literally this theme of every case we ever did.

We never got good, never got good audio. And I'd imagine if you're undercover, it's almost safer to not have that stuff on you if it's not going to work because in case somebody searches you or tries to see if you're wearing a wire, at least you don't have to worry about that because it's not working half the time anyways. For sure. I'll have to tell you off camera, a lot of people thought it was like a taped wire on your chest because you see that in the movies. And sometimes it is, but I won't say it on camera because I don't want to get any police officers out there hurt. But it's not like a wire. Like you think it's, it's hidden in plain

sight, but I'll explain it to you later. Sorry guys. I wish I could tell you, but I gotta, I know there's a lot of, I know like a lot of the devices that I was using are still used today. And I don't want, you know, any bad guys who might be listening to this to, to be on the lookout for those things. Especially now. Right. Yeah. Because we just did that case and you know with michelle martinko where they had like a camera and a coffee mug you know yeah there's yeah that's that's that's something and but there's also devices again we'll explain it off but just know that it's not like you see in the movies always because as stephanie just said it's really easy, Hey, lift up your shirt and there's the wire. It's like taped with like ACE bandage tape. Yeah. Yeah. I see that all the time and I'm like, I never, I never did that like that, but still there's actually devices that people have that

can like detect when you're wearing stuff and it's like sensors gets high speed when it's like a higher clientele, like the bigger bad guys that there's a lot of money involved. Very, very dangerous. Very risky. I mean, I don't know. I've never been like wired, but I have had like a mic put on me for appearances or like television. And it's super awkward because like some guy you don't even know, he's like sticking his hand down your shirt. But those are more obvious, right? Let's try a little bit more yeah all right so kevin gets to this this tray with like this metal plate in it and he's being told by the kidnapper like if you put the money in the tray and it doesn't buzz like you're good to go so kevin held his breath and he placed the bag of money into the wooden tray. And he obviously felt a huge rush of relief when the

sensor didn't buzz. So he rushed back to his car. He got in. He slammed on the gas. He got back on that two-way radio to let law enforcement know the drop had been made, like move in now, you know, follow this guy. And the detectives were able to receive this communication, but obviously they freaked out because they lost track of Kevin after he had turned down that bridal path and they'd been out of communication with him. So they were not exactly close to the place where the kidnapper had told Kevin to leave the money. By the time they arrived, the money was gone, and so was the man who had requested it. And this would be the first of two times that law enforcement would narrowly miss apprehending Stephanie Slater's abductor that same night. The wall where Kevin had left the money was part of like a bridge parapet and it loomed over an abandoned railway

line. So Stephanie's kidnapper had been below the bridge. And when Kevin had left the scene, he'd simply pulled the end of a long rope that was attached to the wooden tray. And it caused the bag of money to like fall down to him. That silver sensor in the wooden tray, it wasn't really a The kidnapper got away, but, you know, there's a tracking device sewn into the bag of money. You know, but he's obviously like kind of smart in this and he clearly anticipated that. Not long after this, a man named Andrew Shaw was walking his three dogs when he came across a bag with 2,500 pounds in it. Andrew Shaw did not call the police. Instead, he took the money, he left the bag, and he used his new windfall to pay off some bills. Later, he found out about this. I'm not trying to give Andrew Shaw a hard time because, man, I might have done the same thing. I can't say if I would have or not, but 2,500 pounds, I have some bills that could be used to pay off.

But he heard about the kidnapping and stuff after the media embargo ended. And he like went to the police and he was like, sorry, I took the money. But obviously when they found the bag, it was empty. There was no money in it and it had been discarded. West Midlands Police Chief Superintendent Mike Layton, he remembered the moment that they all realized Stephanie's kidnapper and Julie's murderer had slipped through their fingers, saying, quote, It was an extremely tense time, and I felt for the senior officers who were tasked with making massive split-second decisions in such a charged environment. The moment when the cash disappeared, along with the attacker, was a black moment, which was felt personally by everyone, whatever role they were performing. The next move would be in the hands of the kidnapper.

And now that he had the money, people feared the worst, end quote. All right, we're going to take a quick break and we'll be right back. So we're back and obviously tough situation situation you know black you know technology failed them they went down this long path where what we would call it is like cleaning yourself off so there's times where you'll be you'll be following a suspect and we'll be in a snake formation behind them where basically we're all in different cars and we'll basically leapfrog each other so that the suspect doesn't see the same car behind them as they're driving. But that usually only works in a populated area. If they clean themselves off by going down a side street or a dead end

road where you basically have no business being down there unless you know someone down there or you live down there, if they see three cars following them, they're going to know. And the same thing applies here where if they were all to follow him down that road, it would be very obvious to the offender who they have to assume is watching that he's being followed by police officers. And to be fair, they probably know that the offender knows he is being followed and that the police are involved and they're trying to catch him. Like they're not just going to let this happen. So it's a, it's kind of a cat and mouse game and it does happen and it's unfortunate. But as you said, the, the suspect is very prepared. He assumed that the, uh, the bag would have some type of device in it. And also I would, I would say that the 2,500 pounds that were left

behind, even though it wasn't the case, he probably, the offender probably looked at that money and said, this looks a little off. I'm going to leave this money because something's different about this pile than the other pile. And they might've tampered with this. This might've been the trackable pack where they recorded it and it's been taken out of the band and then put back in. So for whatever reason, he left 2,500 pounds behind because he thought something was off about it. I don't think he left it there just for the sake of leaving it there. Or I was even thinking, you know, it's dark. Maybe the bag was dark. He's in a rush, obviously, because he thinks he's covered all his bases, but yeah, it could be that simple. He's paranoid. So he's like grabbing the money, putting it into

whatever bag he brought in. Might've just missed it because 2,500 pounds, it sounds like a lot, but when it's in like large bills and it's wrapped up, it's really not that much. And in the grand scheme of 175,000 pounds. So you're right. It could be, it could be that. I mean, I guess we'll, well, maybe we do know by the end. I don't know, but. I mean, it reminds me of that horrible bosses scene where they go and they try to get like the hit man to kill their bosses. And then he's like, I want $10,000 and in a briefcase. And they like open the briefcase and there's just like one small stack of bills in the middle of the briefcase. So I think that's that might be what happened. But that night, the police held a press conference at 1130 to tell the public pretty much what was going on and that they had failed. And they also called off the surveillance team

that had been watching the Slater home, which ended up being a mistake. At 12.50 a.m., Detective Adrian Bowers was sitting in the living room of Stephanie's home trying to console her grieving parents, which, I mean, at this point, could you imagine being in their position? Like, you're hanging your hopes on, you know, the ransom money being delivered and your daughter's home safely. And then all of a sudden the police lose the suspect and you have no idea what's going to happen now. So they were upset. But he's sitting there with them and he hears the doorbell ring. And then right after the doorbell rings, he hears this frantic pounding on the door.

So he rushed over to open the door and outside he saw Stephanie Slater. She was disheveled and dirty, but alive. Stephanie may have been home, but she was not in good shape, mentally or physically. She'd been gone for eight days. And for most of that time, she had been blindfolded, which had left her essentially blind for the next several days. Detective Bowers understood that Stephanie and her parents wanted to reunite, but he could not allow them to touch each other until evidence had been collected from underneath Stephanie's nails or until they had taken the clothes that she was wearing into evidence. After this, Stephanie was allowed to shower, and then after that, she was brought to the hospital and examined. It was there that Stephanie

was told that she'd been kidnapped by the same person who had murdered Julie Dart. And remembering the terrifying eight days she had just endured, Stephanie felt her heart break for young Julie. She said, quote, I think of Julie Dart. She was only 18. She was just a kid. She must have been so frightened. And I know that fear. The poor the police was bone-chilling. She said she had arrived at the house on Turnberry Road to meet with Bob Southall, and at first everything seemed completely normal. He was waiting outside for her when she arrived, and she said he was just a normal-looking man, even if he was a bit grubby. Stephanie said that the man calling himself Bob Southall was shorter, average to stocky build, with a tanned complexion. He was probably between 40 to 55 years old.

He wore thick, black-framed glasses, spoke with a northern accent, and was wearing a jacket with a train badge on the left chest pocket. Once inside the house, Stephanie began showing Bob around the downstairs, and he asked a few questions about the windows and things like that, but he didn't seem overly focused on the house, so Stephanie began to feel that he wasn't interested in purchasing it. After showing Bob the upstairs bedrooms and bathroom, Stephanie began to descend the stairs to wrap up the showing, but Bob caught her attention, asking her, what is that? When Stephanie turned around, she saw that he was pointing to something on the wall of the upstairs bathroom, so she entered the bathroom to get a closer look. Stephanie started to tell Bob that it was just a hook on the wall that you could hang a towel or a bathrobe on,

but as she turned back towards her client, she found herself in an unthinkable situation. The normal grubby man was now holding a long knife in one hand and a large chisel in the other. Remembering this moment, Stephanie said, quote, all of a sudden his face contorted and he had these huge weapons in his hands, a knife about 12 inches long and a tool with a big metal hook on the end. He suddenly charged. He seemed to be flying through the air at me. As the adrenaline rushed through me, I thought, get out, get past him, get around him, just

get out. But he was so big and seemed to fill the whole room. This grubby little man was suddenly this huge monster. End quote. Yeah, this is what we talk about, right? Where essentially they get you in a tough situation like a bathroom. Why did he do that, right? He wanted to get her in a narrow area

where there was only one way to go and that was past him and you know it puts him in a very favorable position but terrible i will also say because i give witnesses a lot of shit on the show if i remember the witness testimony from earlier that this individual they had seen outside the house had a possible badge or something on their jacket and they nailed it. So kudos to that witness for really being on the money with that. Because that's a small detail. Right. And I'm wondering how this train badge is going to play into this whole thing because we've seen railways mentioned numerous times in both these cases and now there's this train badge. Is this just something he's fascinated with? Is there a connection to it from previous employment? I'm fascinated to see how that one plays out.

You're going to find out. I'm going to find out. So Stephanie, to her credit, she tried to fight back, but he'd gotten the jump on her. Like you said, he's got her cornered and he has two weapons in his hand. So even if the only way out is past him, she's not going to go past him when he's armed to the teeth. So he forced her back into the bathroom and he forced her to get into the bathtub where he tied her hands and he wrapped a rope around her shins and he blindfolded her with her own scarf, all the while pressing a knife into her throat. The man then led Stephanie down the stairs and out the back door, forcing her into his car, which he had parked inside a garage. Stephanie was strapped into the reclined passenger seat of the vehicle, and then a heavy

object was placed on her chest to prevent her from moving. She later found out that this item was a large toolbox. After this, a blanket was thrown over Stephanie and the toolbox, and all the while, the man had a knife pressed into her thigh, telling her that if she moved, if she screamed, if she tried to escape, he would stab her. When the car started moving, they drove for a little while before the car stopped, and Stephanie's captor demanded that she record a message for her employer demanding ransom money. Stephanie said that at this point, she felt her heart sink because she knew that her family could not afford such a large ransom. And at this point, she didn't even

know that it mattered because she felt her attacker was likely going to kill her, whether he got the money or not. And this is understandable because, I mean, this is a violent person you're seeing. He's threatening to kill you. He's got a knife on you the whole time. As a normal person, you're going to think this is a guy who likes violence and will have no problem taking my life. After recording the message, the car began to move again, and the man told Stephanie that his name wasn't actually Bob Southall, but she could continue calling him Bob if it made things easier for her. What a stand-up guy. Thanks so much, Bob. That's nice of him. Stephanie remembered that after driving for some time, they started down what she felt was a rough dirt road. And when

Bob parked, he guided her down a gravel path and into a room where she could feel a stone floor under her feet. She was then tied to a wooden chair and her attacker left her like this for a short time before returning with some food for her to eat. Now, when Stephanie returned home, she would tell the police that she had not been sexually assaulted. But the truth was, Stephanie was brutally raped that first night. After she'd eaten the sandwich that Bob had brought for her, she was instructed to undress, and at first, she refused. She felt that so much had been taken from her already, she didn't want to give away her last shred of modesty, but Bob told her that if she didn't

cooperate, he would kill her. She remembered being pushed down on a dirty mattress, laying on the floor, and even though Bob was forcing himself on her and biting her on her face, her neck, her shoulders, and her chest, she refused to cry out or scream because she didn't want to give him the satisfaction. Stephanie remembered that Bob commented on how calm she was, and she responded that she wasn't calm at all. She was frightened to death. In a later interview, Stephanie said, quote, I just lay there like a dead thing.

What I was doing was mentally detaching myself from what was happening to me. I thought, if I don't think about it, I can pretend it's not happening. After raping her, Bob took a damp cloth and wiped her down all over before giving her new clothes to wear, and she felt that these were men's clothes. And as she was getting dressed, Bob said to her, quote, I hope you're not claustrophobic, end quote. And he said, and that won't happen again, not that it will much. And this changed me, the rape. It changed me completely because I wasn't scared anymore.

I wasn't frightened anymore because I felt so dead inside. And as a woman, he's kind of done everything he can do to me now to hurt me. I wasn't frightened anymore because I felt so dead inside. And as a woman, he's kind of done everything he can do to me now to hurt me. There's nothing else. I fell indestructible now because you know what? I really didn't care anymore. Wow. That's crazy.

But, you know, it makes sense what she's saying, right? Like he took her body from her, you know, and he used it the way he used it. And I know, I don't know what it would be like, but I would assume that a lot of people would probably take death over being raped. Honestly, like they'd be like, just, just kill me, you know? And so it's so interesting to hear her say that because she felt indestructible after it, because even though in his mind, he probably felt like I'm doing you a favor. I'm only doing this, not killing you.

And she's looking at it like at this point, I don't care either way. Do what you got to do. You've already killed a portion of me. I have nothing left to lose. So what does it matter at this point? That that's, that's to hear her and her,

the way she said it, that's, that's something. I also feel like if you're in that situation, you're going to almost have to detach yourself. You're going to almost have to get to that point where you're outside your body because you don't know. Is it going to happen again? Is it going to happen again tonight? How long am I going to be here?

Is it going to happen every day? Is this my life now? And if you start to think about that, you'll spiral. You'll go crazy. You have no control over your life, your body, your soul anymore. And so you just, you have to depersonalize everything. Is it safe? Was she still blindfolded at this point?

She was still blindfolded. She was blindfolded for the entire time. Okay. So he was still obviously trying to hide his identity, you know, for the obvious reasons, right? In case, you know, she goes back, she's not able to identify him through photos or whatever. So, okay. Interesting so far.

Yeah. And I'm going to revisit this whole blindfolding thing in the final part, because initially I thought, you know, if I'm Stephanie, I'm going to have hope, at least at at this point that I'm still blindfolded. He doesn't want me to see his face, which means he may let me go. Exactly. Yeah. I didn't even want to say that because it's like, we're talking about this poor woman being raped, but that is the silver lining to it, right? If he's, if he's making an attempt, if he's using certain things to try to keep his identity from you, common sense is there may be a potential that you get to go home. But now, once I got through the rest of the case and I researched and I found out what happened to Julie Dart, because we do find out what happened to Julie Dart.

Oh, okay. We get more details about that. Yeah. I think that he was just worried about her escaping. And being able to navigate the way out of it. And being able to then identify him. Yeah. Okay.

So Bob told Stephanie that she would be spending the night in a box that he had created. And that box was placed inside of another box. Stephanie remembered laying down in what she thought was some sort of long container. And there was a rope tied around both of her legs as well as a manacle placed on her right leg. The only way she was able to get into the box was by twisting herself into a very unnatural and uncomfortable position. He said you've got to get into it like a sleeping bag. So I get halfway down I can't get any further. It's too narrow it's too tight. And I told him this and he said that's rubbish she said you've got to go in there I got

in there early when I tried it out he said um it's easy push yourself in get down you've got to go in he said no two ways about it then he told me there were boulders above the bar above my head and if I pulled on them they come down and they crushed me to death and then my hands were pulled above my head and if I pulled on them they come down and they crush me to death and then my hands were pulled above my head to the left of me and via the handcuffs chain they were attached to a metal bar that went across the top of the box so I'm in a corkscrewed kind of position totally twisted my back was in terrible terrible agony and now he's pushing something very sharp up my right trouser leg he said can you feel that and i said that is really hurting and he said good it's

supposed to those are electrodes you move around in that box and they'll electrocute you they'll kill you instantly that's i mean jesus wow this guy guy's, uh, he's a piece of work, huh? He's sadistic. Yeah. Not a profile by nature, but he seems like he, again, he's the, the gratification now is a bunch of different things, right? Like there's no need you can, there's a way to detain her properly, right? Where she can't escape and not have to do this.

So why is it, is it out of fear that she might escape or is he enjoying it maybe a little bit of both you know i mean it seems a little excessive even considering what we're talking about these other things the boulders the electrodes um the the positioning of it um it seems like is he sitting outside this box watching the whole time? Maybe. You know, who knows? I mean, given what we know about his fake metal plate and his fake bomb and things like that, probably they weren't real electrodes. But she would have no way of knowing that. It's all fear tactics.

He's trying to control her through fear, just like he's trying to control the police through fear, just like he tried to control Julie Dart through fear. That's all he can do because he's a little small man who hates himself. Little tiny man. Little grubby man. Little tiny dirty guy. And I am claustrophobic, incredibly claustrophobic. And I can't imagine. No, it's actual torture.

It is. I can't imagine. No, that's it's tort. It's it's it's actual torture. You know what? What he's doing is actual torture, which is why I'm saying what I'm saying, where it's like not many claustrophobic or not. I mean, just the positioning he put her in these other variables that she laid out. There had to be some type of gratification to it for him to put her in such a compromising position where he's sitting there, like you said, control-wise, putting her in that situation, knowing how bad it is and being like, I'm in charge here. I'm in control. And I think there's an element of gratification to it, which is why he's doing it. Or he could have just tied her up to a bedpost or something, handcuffed her to a bedpost. Yeah, right. How's she going to get

out of that? Yeah. Exactly. So to do all of this extra stuff, I think is definitely an indication that there was some gratification out of it. Well, he likes to play games. I mean, look at the way he's doing the ransoms. Go to this phone booth, go to this phone booth, an envelope marked with an A, an envelope marked with a two. Like he's extra, man. No, I agree.

I agree with you for sure. Unreal, unreal what she went through though. I mean, just to think about this, not only the rape, but then this right after it. I mean, horrible situation to be in, to have the courage to come out. I don't know when this footage was taken that we're watching right now or listening to if you're on audio, but to be able to speak about it publicly. She's stronger than I am. That's for sure.

Well, I think we all need a little break after that. We'll be right back. So Stephanie was left in this position all night, and she said, quote, the worst thing was the cold. There was no heating. There were rats running around, which kept me awake, and creaks and noises. I was dropping in and out of sleep, but the slightest noise and I think, oh God, he's back. Terror is the only word to describe it. Sometimes I didn't know if I was already dead. When I lay there in the dark, most of my body was going numb because I wasn't moving. You can't see anything. There is nothing to connect you to the world. End quote. At one point,

Stephanie began to wonder if she was already dead or in the process of dying because she saw a small pinpoint of light through the pitch black. And as it got closer to her, it got bigger and more in focus. And Stephanie thought that it was the face of Jesus Christ. And then I saw a white light in the corner of the box.

And I said to myself quite openly, oh, right, now you're losing your mind. You're blindfolded in a black box and now you're seeing a light. And inside that light was the face of Christ. As I say, I don't go to church. I'm not religious and I felt quite privileged to have seen this. And I just felt at ease all of a sudden and felt peace. I thought I'd died. I'd simply fallen asleep. In the morning, after a fitful night of drifting in and out of sleep while her body ached and eventually went numb,

Stephanie was woken up by the sound of a radio playing somewhere nearby. Not long after this, she heard the sound of the box being opened, and she was suddenly pulled from her tiny prison and placed into a chair by her captor. Bob was surprised to hear that Stephanie had experienced a very rough night, and that she could not even stand on her own two feet, because they were completely devoid of circulation. I honestly think to this day, he was really shocked that how close to death I probably looked

and how ill and pale I probably was. And he had to half carry me to a chair. And he sat me on the chair and he gave me a cup of tea. He must have been watching me. He said, you can't move your arms at all. And I said, I was frozen in that box last night and then the tea was abruptly taken away from me and i thought oh damn i've complained i've said something you are treading on eggshells all the time and then i didn't know where he was i

couldn't sense him i couldn't hear hear that footstep or any movement. He was down on his hands and knees. And he takes my left arm and he rubs it hard. I say, there you go. Is that better? Can you feel that now? Is that better? Is that getting warmer? How about this one? Moves around. That one. How's that arm? As surreal as this was, and it was very strange, I suppose it was at this stage, initially I thought, maybe, just maybe, there's a spark of humanity in him. Maybe there's something worth working on. This guy's got me confused, man. He's all over the place. Yeah, all over the place. place you know the only thing i can think about is like i hear these you know stories and i've read books where you have these um serial killers who as as children would torture animals but then also try to revive them try to save them try to bring them back to health that's the that's the

first thing i thought of when i heard this where it's like he wants to push his victim to their very limit and then wants to try to be the hero and bring them back now to normalcy. He's going to be their shoulder to cry on, so to speak, at the end of it, but he's the one causing this pain. That's the only thing I can think of, although who knows what's in the mind of this guy. Well, to me, it's once again a control thing. I choose whether you live or die. I choose your comfort level. It's like being in an abusive relationship. Your boyfriend hits you and then he apologizes and gets you a present. You know, it's this constant back and forth.

It's keeping you off your feet. It's keeping you unbalanced. Like she said, you're always walking on eggshells. You don't know what's coming next. And that can be incredibly, you know, confusing. And you're constantly wondering what's going to happen to me. And somebody like that, they enjoy that. And I also do want to say that I don't believe people are all evil or all good. I think there's a little bit of everything in each person and

he may have felt bad. He may have been like, oh, I didn't know that was going to happen because he said he got in the box that he put her in, but he probably wasn't in there for the damn whole night, you know? So he probably thought like, yeah, this is this is OK for like five minutes. But he wasn't in there for eight, nine hours in this horrible corkscrew position like she was. I mean, she lost all circulation. So maybe he was like, oh, I didn't realize that it was this bad. Yeah. I mean, who knows? Your guess is as good as mine. I mean, either way, it does seem like there was something in the way she described it, where it's like this abruptness where he pulls away the coffee, like, oh man, maybe I went a little too far. Okay. Maybe I miscalculated that

one. So it's like the thing you were talking about serial killers as children, like sometimes they were great to animals and sometimes they were torturing them. It's that act of playing God. You know, you get to live, but you don't. And it's my decision. It's my call. It's how people who feel very low about themselves regain some sort of, you know, power. And it's gross. No, it's terrible. Can't imagine. But like you said, you know, it wasn't much, but this was a small act of human kindness that gave Stephanie hope. You know, she had hoped that maybe if she was able to be friendly to him and appeal to any heart that he had, she could force Bob to see her as an actual person who had value in the world. So, she attempted to become friends with her kidnapper. Stephanie said, quote, I got the impression that he was a sad, lonely man who

didn't have any friends. I thought if I could just get him to see me as human, he might let me go. End quote. Every morning, Bob would bring her a cup of tea and some breakfast, and then at night, he would force her back into the tiny box prison. But while he was there during the day, Stephanie began to talk to him, and soon he began to respond. She told him her favorite show was Coronation Street, and Bob said that he liked that show too. She told him about her boyfriend and how her parents wanted her to marry him, and she told him that she was adopted and what kind of struggles she had gone through with that, which he seemed to feel bad about. Stephanie also talked about her love of animals, and one day, Bob brought her a German Shepherd puppy, and he allowed Stephanie to pet it and play with it. Stephanie said that Bob liked to chat about anything, from hobbies to holidays, and eventually he started coming in and taking her out of the box just so they could talk.

During her first day in captivity, Stephanie paid close attention to the things that were happening around her. She was blindfolded, but she still had her ears, and she would occasionally hear the sound of muffled voices in the occasional ring of a telephone. The radio was always on, set to BBC Radio 2, and sometimes she would hear the sound of an electric saw or the pounding of a hammer. Stephanie also noticed that every time Bob made her food, she could hear the dinging of a microwave, and once or twice she thought she heard the bell of a cash register. Stephanie began to realize that she was being held in the back room of someone's office or a place of business,

and as she was trapped there, customers were coming in and out during the day. She considered screaming for help, but she was too afraid that no one would hear her, and she would destroy all the trust she had built with her captor. During their conversations, Bob constantly reassured Stephanie that she would be going home soon, and he told her that he was working with another man, a man who was his friend and partner, but who wasn't very nice, so Stephanie should feel lucky that she was with Bob instead of that guy, because Bob had never killed anyone. One time while they were chatting, Stephanie cracked a joke that caused Bob to laugh out loud and then he commented that he was going to have to get rid of that bin now. When Stephanie asked him what bin he was talking about, he told

her it was a plastic garbage can on wheels and he had been planning to put her dead body in it. And this was a sharp reminder that although he was capable of behaving like a normal guy, he was also willing to kill her if he had to. Stephanie became so lonely and devoid of comfort that she found herself desperate for human contact of any kind, including from her own kidnapper. She found herself asking Bob if he would be willing to wrap his arms around her and give her a hug. And later she said, quote, I was desperate for reassurance, even from him. I held my arms out towards him.

It'll be all right, won't it? I'm going home, aren't I? Please say I am. End quote. It really feels like Stephanie's an extremely intelligent person and she was playing a psychological game with him and she very well may have saved her own life because I do think he was planning on killing her and you alluded to this a little bit earlier and she might have slowly won him over with this psychological warfare that she was performing by lowering his guard, making him

feel like she was a friend, not someone that he had captured to be with her and i think he i think she really broke him down i think she started to really really break him down where he started to develop uh feelings for her uh that were more than just she was a means to an end for him you know a an opportunity something to dangle to get money yeah and you know he could have killed her at any point and still gone through with his plan because they wouldn't know if she was alive or not. And he didn't do that. He kept her around and he's risking being figured out every day that he has her there because according to what she's hearing at this point, this is in some type of business establishment

where all it would take is for someone for some reason to come back there and his plan is completely foiled by her being there. So to take that risk, she was very calculated in what she did. And I mean, maybe we'll find out by the end of this, but it really seems like in spite of everything that was going against her, she was able to stay poised and controlled and focused on what the goal was, which to, which was to, to break down his wall, to break down that barrier and to keep herself alive. And obviously we know now she did that, but it was mainly due to her own actions, nobody else's. Well, they do tell you if you're kidnapped, you have to humanize yourself to your captor.

You tell them your name, your birth date, the names of your children, like she did, your favorite show, just things that make them view you as a person instead of, as you said, a means to an end. And that's exactly what she did. And remember, you know, I agree with you. I think he was probably planning on killing her. I absolutely do, because we know he already killed Julie Dart. Right.

He's definitely capable of it. He's definitely capable of it. He definitely can do it. Even though he told her he'd never killed anybody. That's a lie. He definitely did. He's talking about this man he's working with who's not so nice. This man doesn't exist.

It's just Bob, if that's his real name, which it isn't, which we know. No, it's fascinating what she was able to accomplish because everything would say he's going to kill her at the end because that's the best way to ensure he's not apprehended. And yet he doesn't. So why is that? What's different about her? We don't know exactly. I think you said you're going to get into some of it. What happened with Julie? How was it different? But this goes back to the whole, a lot of these serial killers, they will, as a child, harm animals. They're able to separate it because it's an animal, right? It doesn't, like you said, doesn't have children or family members or feelings or like certain shows that you may like. So it's easy to desensitize yourself to that death. But when you start as the victim, divulging information about yourself and finding commonalities with your attacker, your offender, it's harder for the offender to just look at you

as just another animal for them. So it is good advice. If you do find yourself in that situation, try to open up to them so that they realize what they're doing here and the significance of what might happen and who you're leaving behind if they kill you. Yeah. And just to clarify, Derek wasn't saying that animals don't have feelings. I can see the comments now. Oh, no, that's a good point. He was actually speaking from a serial killer's point of view or like a psychopath's point of view. Like, oh, it's just an animal. They don't have feelings, you know, because a psychopath doesn't care about anybody's feelings, really. So he's not saying animals don't have feelings.

Derek loves animals. Yeah. I mean, as Stephanie knows, I'm like, I don't even hunt nothing like that. I mean, I own firearms, but I won't even hunt. I don't even kill like bugs in my house because of things that I've been through. Neither do I. Remember? Well, I told you this before. Remember?

You were like, yeah, neither do I. Oh, yeah. But yeah, no, I wasn't. I wasn't. For the most of you out there, you already know that. But when you're with an animal, obviously they can't talk back to you. That's basically what we're taking it away from it. It's easy to separate yourself and say, they're not on the same level as me because they're

an animal. And I do think that there's probably a part of these serial killers that when they kill their victims, they look at them no different than an animal in the sense that they're not allowing them to speak or give information about themselves that may humanize them. And Stephanie was able to break through that. So on January 27th, Bob told Stephanie that she would be going home in two days. And on her last night of being his prisoner, he allowed Stephanie to spend the night on the mattress on the floor instead of in the box, as long as she promised to be quiet and

not try to run away. As she laid on the mattress that she had only laid on one previous time during her rape, Stephanie heard Bob ask her if he could do what he had done to her the first night they were together, and that's rape her. But when she said no, he said okay, and he didn't push the issue. The next day, Bob arrived to give Stephanie tea and breakfast, and he told her that he was getting the ransom money that evening and he didn't push the issue. The next day, Bob arrived to give Stephanie tea and breakfast, and he told her that he was getting the ransom money that evening and he would be back to take her home between 8 and 9 p.m. Before he left, Bob told Stephanie he'd been thinking that it would be a nice thing to have a picture of her to remember her by, and he removed her blindfold, telling her

to keep her eyes closed as he snapped this photo. Before he left that night, Bob put Stephanie back into the box and he left the radio on so Stephanie was able to keep track of the time as she waited. He always had the radio on. I don't mean he left the radio on so she could keep track of time. He always had the radio on. Stephanie said that. And she was able to track time because of it. Because every hour they'll say like, oh, it's 9 p.m. now. I mean, no one listens to the radio anymore, but that's what they used to do. So when Bob was not back at 8 p.m., Stephanie began to grow concerned. And when 9 p.m. came and went, she began to panic. All the terrifying possibilities

were flying through her brain. What if he'd been injured or killed during the ransom collection? No one would know where she was and she would die alone in that box. What if he'd been injured or killed during the ransom collection? No one would know where she was, and she would die alone in that box. What if Bob had gone to get the money, but figured out that law enforcement was involved, causing him to become angry? Would he be so angry that when he returned, he would just kill her? Stephanie considered just ending her own life, going out on her own terms. Bob had left a duvet cover in the box with her to provide her some warmth, and she began to debate smothering herself with it. But Bob arrived back to collect her just before 11 p.m. He let her out of the box, he gave her new clothes to change into,

and he told her that she was going home. She was still blindfolded as they drove, but when the car stopped, the blindfold was removed, and she found that she was just 200 feet away from her house. At this point, Bob turned to her and said, quote, I'm so sorry about all this. None of this was your fault. Get back to your normal life as soon as possible, end quote. And then he asked her for a goodbye kiss. Stephanie was able to stumble home, and obviously we already know what happened there, but that was when the work of the police began. They took Stephanie's description of Bob Southall to a sketch artist, and they began trying to figure out who he really was so that they could stop him before he did this to another woman. West Yorkshire Assistant Chief Constable Tom Cook was assigned to head the investigation, which started with another door-to-door canvas, this time in Stephanie Slater's neighborhood. The police wanted to know if anyone in the area

had seen or heard anything unusual that night. A man who lived on the street told police he'd been watching television in bed when he'd heard the sound of a car engine around 1 a.m. When he looked out the window, he saw an old and muddy red Austin Metro parked in the street with the passenger side door cracked open. As this man watched, he saw a young woman emerge from the car and she began to wander down the road, slumped and unsteady on her feet. So we're going to take our last break and then we'll be right back. So this was something where before you just hit this last spot about the witness, I was going to ask you just to make sure I'm on the same page here.

When he took her out of the car and turned toward her, she had the blindfold off at that point? No. He still kept it on her, but she was able to see his face. When she had her eyes closed for the photo or whatever, she could probably still see a little bit, right? No. She was afraid to open her eyes. The only description she's able to give was from when she saw him at the house that first time before he attacked her. Okay. So the description is from the real estate, the actual transaction at the house where they were, you know, she was showing him the house for sale also. So then the question I was going to

ask secondly, which is, did you see his car when you were walking away from the car and walking up to your house? No, you didn't. However, the witness did. And that was the reason I was asking, because just to bring you guys back to part one one our witness from part one had seen a red vehicle leaving the area where julie dart was found and so i was wondering if this is the same guy which we all believe it is would he change vehicles it's only been six months he doesn't seem like someone who's um well off financially can he switch out cars like others could maybe not but just based on how we ended before the break there it does seem like he might be in the same car that he used to transport julie dart as well which is mind-blowing to me when you consider how calculated and how cautious

this man has been this whole time that in six, he decides to stay in the same car that may have been seen by witnesses in the first case and obviously be able to tie him to Julie's death. Even if he didn't think that anyone saw him, you think he would still change out the vehicles. So that's crazy to me that he didn't. That's the weird thing about him is he seems overly cautious in some areas and very haphazard in others. And I think that's a sign of somebody who thinks they know what they're doing and may to some extent know what they're doing, but they're not a professional by any means. No, he's careless for sure in this

mind, unless he really likes red sedans. That's possible too, but I'm willing to bet it's probably the same car. Yeah, it's the same car. And not only that, it's the same car this dude drove around in his regular everyday life. Yeah, no, stupid. But I mean, happy for us, good for us, bad for him, which I'm quite all right with. Quite all right. I like stupid criminals. Yes.

So when the police sketch of Stephanie's kidnapper was released to the public on February 4th, it brought in a lot of tips, but none that led to anything concrete. Two days later, the same letter was mailed to several different companies and agencies, including the BBC, the Yorkshire Television Station, The Sun, the News of the World newspaper, the West Midlands, and the West Yorkshire Police, as well as to the workplace of Lynn Dart, Julie Dart's mother. The letter writer took full responsibility for the kidnapping of Stephanie Slater, but denied any involvement in the death of Julie Dart or the extortion of British Rail. A portion of the letter read, quote, 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. End quote. What an asshole.

I know this is crazy, but is there a possibility he's denying the the murder of julie dart and he's very apologetic about what he did to stephanie in his screwed up mind and that's not the word i wanted to use do you think he's writing this letter hoping that stephanie will see it and accept his apology yeah like maybe there was a connection yeah and he's hoping that this is his letter to her for sure because okay because he's so like delusional that he actually thought her being nice to him was because she wanted to uh-huh yeah crazy yeah it feels like he's writing to her and the the work to me like i just want to kick him in the balls hopefully she'll get over it i never will dude stop stop i can't stand oh yeah not job no but like that's that's delusion that's like you have no self-awareness you raped her you took her away

from her life you shoved her in a box for eight days hopefully she'll get over it soon but i never will i cry at night like oh geez cry me a river and then drown in it dude i second that i hate him but uh and and you know what like i'm gonna tell you because you're you don't know this case like i do you're not at the end of it but like initially i was like man maybe he feels bad but then later i'll just tell you now okay to to just take away the suspense. Later, when Stephanie admitted that she had been raped, he was like, nah, it was consensual. He's already in prison by this point, right? And he says, no, it was consensual. I can't believe she's saying this about me. Like, just pour salt in the wounds. It was consensual that she was kidnapped too.

Yeah, for sure. Idiot. So I can't take it. But this is the kind of person that's unsalvageable. Even if he has small glimpses of humanity, he's broken. He can't be fixed. Oh, I would agree. He's exactly where he needs. Well, he's probably not exactly where he needs to be, but that's a different conversation. No, he's not drowning in a river of his own tears. So he's not exactly where he needs to be. He's not. He's not. That is true. of murder because he'd reassured her that he had never taken the life of another person and he didn't want her to think that she had been lied to. So he's like, no, I did not kill Julie Dart. Like you said, that's that's for Stephanie's benefit. He did kill Julie Dart, but he doesn't

want Stephanie to think that he did because he told her he had he was not a murderer. So like your priorities are way off here, man. Just a little bit. To the public, law enforcement put forth a face of confidence. Arthur Rees, who had been the head of the Staffordshire police in the 1970s, told the Evening Mail, quote, This man is getting a bit too clever. He's beginning to think rather a lot of himself. He will get reckless, and that is when he will trip himself up, end quote. On February 20th, Crime Watch aired a segment about the mysterious man that was now linked to a kidnapping, a murder, and an intricate extortion scheme, and some details that had

previously been withheld from the public were revealed. Stephanie's kidnapper most likely drove a red Austin Metro, and they believed that Stephanie had been held at a place of business, most likely a workshop of some kind. The police also had something invaluable that they'd kept in their back pocket for several weeks, a recording of the man's voice. In a few minutes, you'll hear the voice of the man who kidnapped Stephanie Slater. Want to speak to Kevin what, quickly, please? Who's calling? Never mind. Hello?

Have you got the money? Who's this, please? Never mind. Have you got the money? Interesting. Really interesting. They kept that. Good job by them.

So that was when he called Kevin, remember, the day before the drop, and he was like, do you have the money? And Kevin was like, yeah, who is this, blah, blah, blah. And the guy's like, never mind. Do you have the money? Like, that's all I want to know. They had recorded it because they put a recording device on the phone at the office of the real estate agency. And so they have his voice now. And this is what's ultimately going to be his undoing.

Yeah. I mean, there's a lot there. There's a lot of things for people who are watching at home, and I'm sure everybody was watching this at this point you know red metro um you have the voice workshop and then also i don't know if it's going to come back and i can't remember the names but you had those indentations on that notepad of two names i believe it was phil and the other name began with an m i believe i think i have it on my notes mod or something but there was two names maybe it's irrelevant but there was there's a lot of stuff here no dude that was a red herring he purposely did that those people don't exist so he wrote on the pad before it to kind of throw wow i mean gotta give credit where credit's due i mean no you know to be fair you know listen the guy's a complete scumbag no for sure yeah but i mean like you have too much time on your hands at this point.

So he admits later that he made the impressions on the paper before so that people would go down that path and try to find these two individuals. Yeah, dude. And he got a kick out of seeing like it being talked about on the news and knowing that it was just like a false lead. And you know what the sad thing is? Even if the police considered that, which I'm sure they did, you still got to go through with it.

You still got to treat it like it's valid yeah which sucks because you're it's thousands of man hours spent on it knowing it could be fake and that's that's the game right there yeah i mean that's that's a pain in the ass yeah you get it so among the 15 million people who had tuned into that episode of crime watch was 48 year old-old Susan Oak, and she'd already been following the case closely because she had thought that the sketch of the suspect looked very much like someone she knew well, her ex-husband Michael Sams. And as soon as she heard the voice played in the clip, Susan felt shock spread throughout her entire body. At 11.15 p.m., Wayne Greenwood, who was manning the phone line at the Julie Dart incident room, received a call

from a panicked woman identifying herself as Susan Oak. And she said, quote, I've just heard a recording of his voice and I know who it is. His name is Michael Sams. I've been married to him. You don't have to look any further. End quote. Within an hour, two detectives were sitting in Susan's living room, listening to her talk about her ex-husband, Mike, who owned a tool repair shop in Newark. I felt like I was betraying my children because I knew that this was their father and I knew it was going to hurt them and I knew it was going to hurt me, but it was something I had to do. So it's mixed emotions because I was thinking of his mother and his wife. Every emotion it's possible to feel, you feel all at once, but you know that you've got to do it.

So you just get on and do it. Great. Good for her. Good for her. And the thing I took in, took away there. He's got kids. I know, right? Scary to think. And a wife. And a wife.

And a wife. Terrible. Who clearly has no idea what he's up to in his spare time. Right. And for everybody listening, because I want to stay consistent. This is the debate that Stephanie and I have all the time. And this is an argument right here that I know Stephanie would use to say, see Derek, and I get it because this is a case that wasn't five or 10

years old. It just had happened. They had this recording, which some police departments would choose not to share with the public. And yet this case was solved by good police work with the recording. We'll give credit where credit's due on that. But ultimately, someone who knew this person coming forward and doing the right thing. And if you hadn't shared that information, like the sketch and the recording, maybe we never catch him. Or maybe by the time it's played, it's not as relevant. It's not in the news. It's not as, you said, 15 million people watched. Maybe people aren't as concerned about it because time has passed and maybe his wife isn't watching. So this is a feather in your cap right here to say, this is why information like this, once the police have done their due diligence, if they don't have someone yet, you got to put it out there and allow the public to work for you.

So there's two arguments to be made. And I'm sure this is one that you would make, that you'd go, see. Here you go, Derek. But I mean, even then, right, like we have Delphi. We've got a recording of that guy's voice. Yeah, it's not always going to work. Yeah, you're right. But what do you do? Do you not do you not share that information? You know, do you hold it and then find out that it could have been helpful? You know, I don't know. I agree. I think that the public should have access to these sorts of things because it does help. Like you're just basically expanding your net of little detectives out there. And you also had the car, you know, his job, things like that, that go in conjunction with the voice, which with Delphi, we don't have that. We just have this nameless, faceless voice with nothing to connect it to. Right. And I do think with this and the concern for a lot of police departments is a possible prosecution down the road that would lead to a mistrial because of

information that's out there. But with a voice or a photo or a video, ultimately, it's not going to be altered. The voice is the voice. The photo is the photo. So as long as you're not giving details about the case that can be used for guilt knowledge or something like that later, I don't think you have to be too concerned about a fair jury trial that could lead to an acquittal. This is a photo and it's a video. It is what it is. It's in stone. So I think in most cases you will see now, like you're seeing with Delphi, where if they have a photo or video or audio recording of the alleged suspect, I do think more police departments now are going with the whole, let's disseminate it to the public and see if they can help.

Yeah, but I will also say that I think in the Delphi case, they know more about this dude than they're telling us. And some of the things they know in conjunction with the voice may trigger someone's memory. It's true. And that's the balance, right? Like, how much do we give if we think we could get this guy? They've already given the photos and the video, which probably won't hurt the case if it goes. But now if you start giving out details, it's imagine finding the guy, imagine finding the Delphi guy. And then losing him in a trial. Yeah. I mean, do I think he'd make it far in the outside world? Probably not,

but that's not the point, right? We're talking, you know, if it's done how it's supposed to be, he could walk and imagine what that would be like for the family, you know? So it's something to think about, but no perfect system. We've said that a million times. Yeah. I wish somebody could figure it out because somebody figured that out for us. Let us know. Can you guys get on that, please? Well, let's talk about Susan Oaks, ex-husband, Mike. Michael Beniman Sams had been born on August 11, 1941, in West Yorkshire. At the age of 20, he had joined the Merchant Navy. And when he returned home three years later, he began working as an engineer before setting up his own central heating company. In 1964, he married his first wife, Susan Little. We know her as Susan Oaks now because she remarried after that. And together, Susan and Mike had two sons, Robert and

Charles. For quite a while, life was very good, and they lived comfortably off the handsome salary that Sams brought home from his work as a central heating engineer. Sams was an active member of his community and he became an avid runner, a lifestyle he would follow for over a decade. But in the early 70s, things began to change for Michael Sams. In 1974, he was diagnosed with viral meningitis and it allegedly affected him mentally, causing an extreme change in his personality. When he was discharged from the hospital, Sams announced to his family that he was selling his very profitable business so that he could start a new business, but he was not in the right frame of mind to successfully put together this new business venture due to his constant mood swings and erratic behavior.

In August of 1976, frustrated with her husband's life choices and sick of dealing with his irrational ideas, Susan walked out on their marriage and they were officially divorced a year later, which is right around the time that Sams was charged with stealing a car and making a fraudulent insurance claim. Michael Sams spent 10 months in armley prison where he was diagnosed with cancer in his leg, resulting in the leg being amputated to prevent it from spreading. After only a few months of being released from prison, Sams met and married his second wife, a catering there was no money because Michael could not hold a job, and once his home was repossessed, he fell into a deep depression that his wife could not help him out of. After an argument one evening where Sams threatened to shoot her, a tool company based in Leeds. The company transferred him to their Birmingham branch, and it was here that he answered a Lonely Hearts ad placed in a local

paper by the woman who would become his third wife, Tina Aston. In 1984, Black & Decker tried to get Michael Sams to relocate again, but Tina, who was living with him, did not want to leave Birmingham, so Sams was back at square one, attempting to start his own business again. Eventually, Sams set up a tool repair shop, but business was not booming, and Tina was forced to sell two properties she owned in order to keep cash flow going, forcing herself and Sams to move into a small flat above the repair shop. In 1988, Sams was in extreme debt, and he took out a loan for £30,000, and this allowed him to keep up on the mortgage payments of the business, but without customers, it didn't matter. By 1990, he was taking another loan, trying to stay afloat. But then, his wife Tina's son Paul died after an unexpected illness, and she became deeply depressed, and then the money completely ran out.

Sams was forced to abandon his shop in Peterborough and try again in Newark, where he opened a shop called T&M Tools. But once again, business wasn't good. He was spending money quicker than he could make it. And even after applying for disability, he still did not have enough to survive. Which brings us to the kidnapping and murder of Julie Dart in 1991, a plot to collect enough money to get away and start over. On the same night that Susan Oak had found herself stunned to hear her ex-husband's voice on her Crimewatch program, Michael Sams and his wife Tina were watching the same program together in the small cottage they

shared together. Tina had already been joking with her husband that he resembled the sketch of Stephanie Slater's kidnapper. And when Crime Watch revealed that the kidnapper was seen driving a red Austin Metro, Tina laughed and said, quote, you have a red Metro. They'll be coming to see you about it. End quote. Jesus, Tina, read the room. Right? How do you live with someone and not know what they're capable of? Well, not only that, I mean, if I see a sketch of my wife or my husband up on the screen, and then they say they were driving the same car, you know, it's like, oh, that's funny. You got the same car. Don't tell me that when the voice came on, she goes, wow, that sounds like you.

I don't know what they didn't say, but. Okay. I hope. Tina may not be too smart because I mean, owns a tool repair shop, owns a shop of some kind, drives a red Metro. Sounds like him. I mean, the writing's on the wall. It sounds like an SNL skit.

Jesus. So the cottage that Tina and Michael Sams lived in, it was located in Sutton-on-Trent, and it was filled with Sam's favorite things, trains. Sams had become a train-spotting enthusiast. And for those who don't know, my brother-in-law is actually a train-spotting enthusiast. They just go and they watch trains and and take pictures of trains and they love trains and they'll have model trains and they just love everything about trains to the point where my brother-in-law is like almost 40 and he has these elaborate train sets in the basement.

It's kind of crazy. And he plays with them regularly. They're not just there. He plays with them. So in Michael Sam's house, one whole room in this house was devoted to his model train set. There were books about trains and pictures of trains and train paraphernalia that he had collected over the years. In fact, he had chosen this cottage specifically because of its close proximity to the East Coast main line. For someone

who was not professionally connected to trains, Michael Sams knew a lot about them, and he even owned a jacket that had a little train badge on the left chest pocket, which once again brings us back to Tina. Okay, Tina, because Stephanie Slater said that about the train badge. I don't know if the police released it. They may not have released it, but come on, man. I mean, if you're following this case and you know that they tried to like extort british rail and all of this stuff what's going on no it's it's a lot and i think we have our guy obviously what is i know that we have one more part to go yeah what is in store for the next part because i believe we have our guy maybe you're gonna throw a twist at us but i believe we have our guy we've always said through both episodes that we believe this

person was acting alone so what are we breaking down in part three that's going to contribute to this case what do you want spoilers you want like you want like you know well i mean it feels like we're dead to rights now but but if you're doing a whole nother part on it there has to be more to the story of course there's more there's more. There's more. And I'm assuming based on if this person is arrested, there's going to be a trial. It's going to break down. Obviously, now the police have to go find him, apprehend him. They're going to locate these.

And they can probably find evidence relating to both Julie and Stephanie. And I'm assuming that's going to give us more details on what actually happened to Julie. I guess you're going to find out. Oh, man, I'm with you guys. I don't even get any inside treatment here. I know I'm a control freak. She's not kidding. She won't tell me anything when we stop recording either. No, I mean, I would, but I like to see your surprise, your genuine surprise and reactions. Real, real story. Before we started, I told her that I had to do a thumbnail for the YouTube video. And I obviously

saw pictures of the alleged suspect, you know, or I should say the guy who did it. No, he said, he said, oh, you know, like I had to do the thumbnail. So I saw pictures of Michael Sams and this was before we even started this part. So I never even said the name Michael Sams. And I'm like, come on, man. But I mean, I felt bad. She made me feel bad. I was like, guilt, like, what am I supposed to do? Am I supposed to just like cover my face and just only find, I mean, I Google the case and then things pop up and I'm feeling guilty because I'm doing my job. What do you do?

You lie to me. You don't tell me. That was the first time that's ever happened, to be honest. Yeah. Because usually I'll find, you know, I type in one of the victim's names or whatever, and it's usually one of the first photos. But this one, there's not a ton of photos out there and be and it's kind of all tied to both julie and stephanie and michael sam so there are all the photos are kind of together but i do apologize stephanie i stole a little bit of the thunder

it's okay well i mean just like lie to me from now on be like yeah i'll just lie completely blind bring me down your storytelling path stephanie i'm here with you. Yes. Michael Sams. Who is he? Never heard of her. Never heard of her. Well, that is where we will pick up in our third and final part of this case. And there's plenty more to talk about. So stay tuned. Don't look it up beforehand. Okay. Don't be me. Or if you do, don't tell me that you did. That too. Thank you guys so much for being here. Don't be me. Or if you do, don't tell me that you did. That too. Thank you guys so much for being here. Don't forget to follow us on social media. Derek will tell you where.

Yep. Follow us on Instagram, Crime Weekly Pod. Same thing on Twitter, Crime Weekly Pod. Or you can go to our website, CrimeWeeklyPodcast.com. Like Stephanie had said, make sure you're following us on Instagram. We did a photo shoot. We will have some of those photos coming out very soon. Not all of them, but we have a lot that are coming out and they'll keep coming out.

So you want to follow us there. Also, if you're not, check us out on Patreon. I've been trying to post a little bit more on there today. I posted a photo of me, my youngest daughter, Peyton, and my new puppy, Vinny, at Home Depot, where Vinny's kind of like leading the ship. He's out at the front end of the carriage, making sure nobody gets in front of us. And my kid's in the carriage playing on her Kindle and I'm looking for concrete. You brought Vinny to Home Depot? I had to, because I was, I was dropping Tenley off at dance. So there was really nobody here for the puppy. So yeah, I was. No dude, you're like a chick magnet at that point. You got your little girls with you,

a puppy, you're a guy without a, without a woman with him, right? I assume Jana wasn't with you. No, she was at work. Okay. Like how many women approached you like, oh my God, your dog. No, I was looking like, I mean, I'm in sweatpants. I'm disheveled. I just got done schoolwork. It was a distance learning day. So I was looking, nobody was coming up to me, I promise you. But if you're not checking us out on Patreon, and for those of you who don't know, if you're watching YouTube right now, the benefit with Patreon, obviously we're on there. We're talking with you guys, but also you get the video early and without ads. So for those of you who don't like the

skippable ads on YouTube, if you sign up for our Patreon, you get the video on Sunday night, usually, and it's ad free. So there's no monetization in there. It's very easy to download it, check it out. And sometimes we don't get the video on Wednesday if it's not approved by YouTube yet. So a couple of benefits there, you don't have to do it. You're still going to get all the content that we put out for free every week, but it's a luxury for some people that they really like. And we conversate on there. We talk, we might even, uh, there's going to be a giveaway pretty soon on the Patreon. That's, uh, I can act, no, I don't want to give away that photo. Cause there's a photo shoot we did. I'll tell you this

in the photo shoot that we did, there's a prop that Stephanie and I made. It's pretty freaking cool. And when I saw Stephanie the weekend that we saw each other, we both signed it and we're going to give it away to someone on Patreon. It's a really cool prop. I think you guys will like it. That's all I got. It was funny. You should have seen us putting it together in some sketchy hotel room on our hands and knees. Yep. We did that. We did that.

I also have a picture of Derek signing the thing that I will send you that no one else will see except for you. He didn't take a picture of me signing it because no one ever takes pictures of me. You know, like my kids aren't even going to know I existed. One day they'll be looking back at pictures and they'll be like oh my dad was so great but i didn't have a mom because i'm always good with that you your camera's constantly out i'm just like i'm just living in the moment yeah well the moment was me signing and you should have taken a picture of me maybe i did i didn't i didn't with your creepy police hidden lapel cameras that you're talking about just push the button and it goes off.

My little go-go gadget camera. Except you wore the like squirting flower one that day. So just squirted me in the face. Yep. Basically. But yeah, check us out there. You can find us all on all that stuff. And yeah, next week.

Thank you guys so much for being here. We will see you next week. And I don't have an exit. I don't have an exit to say. But I love you guys. Have a good night, guys. Bye. Bye. Later.