Sally Anne’s killer given life for two earlier sex attacks
SEX killer Mark Dixie, who raped and murdered model Sally Anne Bowman, was given two further life sentences yesterday after admitting more sadistic attacks on vulnerable women.
The 47-year-old chef was ordered to remain behind bars for another 28 years because the “cold case” offences proved he was a danger to women.
Dixie was already serving life for stabbing Sally Anne, 18, to death and defiling her body after pouncing on her in the street.
Southwark Crown Court in London was told he committed two chillingly similar offences in the two decades before Sally Anne’s murder.
Zoe Johnson, QC, prosecuting, said he raped a 44-year-old office worker in a deserted car park and battered and indecently assaulted a 16-year-old reveller he stalked on the street.
Probation officers believe Dixie, who will be eligible for parole aged 75 in 2045, may have owned up to the offences to maintain a “degree of notoriety”. Sally Anne’s parents Paul and Linda sat in the public gallery with her sisters throughout yesterday’s hearing.
Dixie, who appeared via videolink from Frankland prison in County Durham, looked calm as the sentence was handed down.
Judge Jeffrey Pegden told him: “I am satisfied that you may be a serious danger to the public for a period which cannot be reliably estimated.” Ms Johnson said Dixie, who had denied the 2005 rape and murder of Sally Anne at his trial, wrote to police three years ago to say he wanted to “tell the truth”.
The first of his victims was returning to her car in a Croydon multi-storey in 1987 when Dixie, then only 16, forced her inside and raped her on the back seat.
Afterwards, he bound and gagged her and lit a fire on the front seat to add to her terror.
He also used items stolen from her purse to obtain her home phone number and called her the following two nights.
The second attack happened in 2002. Dixie pounced on the 16-year-old and hit her repeatedly on the head with a chef’s “steel” used to sharpen knives.
He pinned her to the ground but she managed to escape when a resident heard her screams.
The court heard he took the girl’s mobile and boasted to her ex-boyfriend: “I’ve battered her.”
After the hearing, senior investigating officer Chris Le Pere said: “He is a monster.”