Model’s murderer admits attacking two other women
‘Dangerous sexual predator’
The killer of aspiring model Sally Anne Bowman has confessed to her murder more than a decade on – and admitted two other sex attacks.
Mark Dixie, 46, was jailed for 34 years in 2008 for stabbing the 18-year-old, before raping her as she lay dying, yards from her front door in Croydon, south London.
Yesterday police said he could have many more victims.
The sexual predator put Sally Anne’s family through agony during his three-week trial at the Old Bailey, giving lurid details of how he sexually assaulted and bit her.
he claimed she was already dead when he came across her partially naked body ‘by chance’.
Yesterday it emerged he had finally admitted killing her in 2005, as he confessed to brutal sex attacks on two other women – one battered with his chef’s steel and another raped before being tied up in a burning car.
he appeared at Southwark Crown Court via video link from Frankland jail, County Durham, to admit the two earlier crimes.
Crispin Aylett QC, prosecuting, said: ‘In January 2015, the defendant wrote to the police indicating that he wanted to tell the truth about what had happened to Sally Anne because at the trial he denied being responsible for the murder. When interviewed by police in the early part of 2015 he now admitted it.’
Mr Aylett added that Dixie chillingly told officers, ‘I’ll give you another one as well’, before confessing to the two earlier sex attacks. The killer’s startling admission left police and prosecutors wondering how many more women could have been his victims.
Before Sally Anne’s murder he had carried out a string of attacks in the UK, Spain and Australia, where he lived from 1993 to 1999.
Yesterday senior investigator Chris Le Pere said: ‘Dixie is a dangerous sexual predator, who I believe carried out attacks on other women.
‘I would ask people to take a look at Dixie’s photograph and speak to police or Crimestoppers if they think they were a victim of his.’
Dixie carried out his first attack in 1987 aged just 16, when he pounced on a lone woman in an isolated car park in Croydon. The victim was bundled into her car where Dixie raped her before pulling off a silk tie from her blouse and binding her by the wrists to a car handle.
When she begged to be released, Dixie told he, ‘I can’t, you’ll go to the police’ before stuffing tights in her mouth and binding her feet with a seat belt.
he took cash and bank cards from her purse and asked for her passwords before setting fire to the front seat. But the victim managed to wriggle free and raise the alarm.
Dixie was later linked to the attack from a palm print left on the back seat, but police did not have his prints on file so they were unable to identify him at the time.
A year later he was found guilty of indecent exposure and indecent assault in 1988 when he exposed himself to a woman and forced her to the ground. But his DNA was not recorded as it was before the creation of a national database.
It was not until after Sally Anne’s murder that Dixie was caught by chance when he had to submit his DNA after a fight in a pub in 2006.
Police later found Dixie had been deported from Australia in 1999 after he was convicted of exposing himself. A year earlier a Thai student, 19, had been made to strip by a masked knifeman who then repeatedly stabbed her. DNA found at the scene was matched to Dixie.
he also raped a woman in Spain, for which Dutch national Romano van der Dussen was wrongly jailed.
When interviewed in 2015, Dixie told police he had committed another attack in Croydon in 2002, fracturing a woman’s skull by repeatedly smashing her over the head with a chef’s knife sharpener before sexually assaulting her.
Yesterday he remained expressionless as he pleaded guilty to rape, causing grievous bodily harm with intent and indecent assault. he will be sentenced on September 22.