When Mark Dixie was finally arrested in 2006, he was already a seasoned sex abuser whose crimes spanned the globe.
But it was the brutal slaying of aspiring model, Sally Anne Bowman, 18, that made him one of Britain’s most reviled offenders. Even as cops – armed with DNA evidence that proved his guilt – quizzed him over the teen’s rape and murder, he refused to confess. Instead he shamelessly claimed he had sex with a dead body to avoid being jailed for murder.
His 2008 murder trial was told Sally Anne – who attended the Brit School for Performing Arts and Technology in Croydon, which counts Adele and Amy Winehouse among its former pupils – was brutally murdered as she returned home after a night out with her older sister Nicole and a group of friends. In the early hours of September 25 2005, she had persuaded boyfriend Lewis Sproston to come to Croydon from his home Kingston and drive her home.
But when Lewis arrived the couple rowed and Sally Anne got out of his car and he drove away at around 4am. Two hours later, a woman saw Sally Anne’s body lying on the side of the road. It was later reported that nearby resident had heard screaming a few hours prior.
Part-time hairdresser Sally Anne’s body had been stabbed seven times in the neck and stomach. Three of the knife wounds were so savage they passed clean through her body. Bite marks were found on her cheek, neck and chest and she had been raped as she lay dead or dying.
It wasn’t until 2006 that Dixie was snared for the murder after he was arrested following a pub brawl and cops took his DNA.
Jurors at his murder trial were subjected to horrific details about the night of her killing and had to be warned to try the case “coolly, calmly and without emotion”. Dixie, who was drunk and high on drugs on the night of Sally Anne’s death, admitted having sex with Sally Anne as she lay dying near her family home but denied being the killer.
He claimed he had “taken advantage of the situation” after stumbling across her bloodied body, an admission Judge Gerald Gordon said “would be regarded as revolting almost beyond belief”. Dixie was found guilty of murder and sentenced to life in prison with a minimum of 34 years.
His refusal to admit to his crime meant Sally Anne’s mother Linda, father Paul, and her three sisters, had to sit through the trial and hear the horrific details of the attack. At one point when Dixie was explaining how he had sex with her daughter’s corpse, Mrs Bowman fled the court in tears.
The former pub chef, who was born in Streatham, South West London, has a long record of previous convictions, including robbery, indecent assault and indecent exposure, and, when he was just 16, he robbed a woman at knifepoint before fondling her breasts.
Dixie moved to Australia in 1993 but was deported six years later after being convicted of a sex offence. Friends were said stunned when they discovered Dixie’s long history of sex-related violence, having previously described him as the “life and soul of the party”. The mother of his three sons said their sex life was “normal” but occasionally it would get a “bit rough”.
A jury found him guilty of Sally Anne’s murder and he was sentenced to life in jail with a minimum term of 34 years.
It wasn’t until 2017 that the full scale of Dixie’s depravity was laid bare. He had earlier called cops to make a string of chilling confessions from his prison cell. In 1987, when he was just 16, Dixie bundled a woman into her car and raped her in Croydon.
He left the victim tied to one of the car doors before setting light to the front seat and other items. The woman managed to escape. Dixie also admitted to a vicious sex assault in 2002 in which he battered his victim with a knife sharpening tool and molested her on a flight of stairs.
Appearing via videolink at Southwark Crown Court on July 26, 2017, Dixie pleaded guilty to rape, causing grievous bodily harm with intent and indecent assault. He received two life sentences for the crimes. Dixie has also admitted to raping a woman in Spain in 2003. Dutch hotel receptionist Romano van der Dussen to be wrongly jailed for 12 years.
His conviction was quashed in 2016 when new DNA evidence emerged. Van der Dussen had been jailed for three attacks – only one of which Dixie confessed to.
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