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Sally Anne attended the BRIT School for Performing
Arts and Technology in Croydon. She had dreams of one day appearing on
the cover of Vogue magazine and also being the next Kate Moss.
In January 2005, she joined Pulse Model
Management, a local talent agency. Sally took part in the
Swatch Alternative Fashion Week in April of the same year and
described her experience there. "I was so nervous all week
particularly when all the models were lined up and the designers chose
who they wanted to model their clothes - luckily I was picked by loads
of designers which gave me more confidence."
Murder
In 2005 Bowman was stabbed in the neck and stomach,
and then raped as she lay dead or dying. Her handbag, cardigan, bra,
thong and mobile phone were stolen. Mark Dixie was accused and charged
with the assault and murder of Bowman. At the Old Bailey on 22
February 2008, Dixie was found guilty of Bowman's murder by a jury of
seven women and five men after only two days of deliberation. The jury
sat for three hours and Dixie was found guilty by a unanimous verdict.
He was sentenced to life imprisonment with a recommended minimum of 34
years, by which time he will be 70 years old. This is among the
longest minimum terms ever imposed upon a single murderer. It was then
revealed that Dixie was already a convicted serial sex offender.
Following Dixie's conviction, Detective
Superintendent Stuart Cundy, who had led the Bowman investigation,
said: "It is my opinion that a national DNA register — with all its
appropriate safeguards — could have identified Sally Anne's murderer
within 24 hours. Instead it took nearly nine months before Mark Dixie
was identified, and almost two-and-a-half years for justice to be
done."
Police had initially treated Sally Anne Bowman's
boyfriend Lewis Sproston as a suspect; he was the last person known to
have seen alive and admitted that they'd argued just before she left.
He was subsequently arrested but DNA evidence eliminated him as a
suspect within hours.
The calls for a such a register were, however,
turned down by ministers and other politicians who claimed that it
would raise practical as well as civil liberties issues.
A documentary about the murder was broadcast on
BBC1 at 10.35pm on 8 April 2008. Another TV documentary, as part of
ITV's Real Crime series documented Bowman's killing, with
interviews, the history of the case and reconstructions included. It
was shown on 29 June 2009.
Mark Dixie
Mark Philip Dixie (born 24 September 1970)
was born in Streatham. When he was 18 months old, his parents
separated. When he was 8, his mother remarried; she had two sons by
her new husband. Dixie took his stepfather's surname, McDonald.
Dixie used cannabis from age 14, and later used
cocaine and ecstasy.
Dixie's criminal record begins in 1986. Between
then and 1990, he was found guilty of robbery, burglary, assaulting a
police officer, indecent assault, indecent exposure and assault
occasioning actual bodily harm.
Dixie lived in Australia from January 1993 until he
was deported back to the UK in April 1999 after being fined for
indecent exposure. He lived in London until moving to Spain in 2002.
He moved back to England in 2003.
Dixie later started work as a chef at the Ye Old
Six Bells in Horley, Surrey. He was arrested on 10 June 2006 in nearby
Crawley, West Sussex, after being involved in a fight while watching
an England vs Trinidad and Tobago World Cup football match. His DNA
was taken and matched with that of Bowman's killer.
Dixie denied the murder. As part of his defence he
claimed he had spent the night drinking and taking drugs, and had gone
out to buy more cocaine. He claimed to have come across the body of
Bowman, murdered, he said, by a third party, and had sex with her
after she was killed.
Dixie's DNA matches that left at a sexual assault
in 2001, where it is believed he masturbated in front of a woman in a
telephone booth.
In October 2006, Dixie's DNA was sent to Western
Australia to be tested against that of the DNA evidence in the
Claremont serial killer case between 1996 and 1997, as it is believed
he was in the area at the time of the killings, and may have committed
them. At his trial for the murder of Bowman, an unnamed Thai woman
gave evidence that Dixie had stabbed and raped her in Australia in
June 1998 in Subiaco, Western Australia whilst Dixie was burgling her
house; Dixie has yet to be formally charged with this attack, though a
DNA sample from the woman's underwear has been matched to him.
Memorial
On 11 September 2008, a memorial was held to mark
what would have been Sally Anne's 21st birthday. Balloons were
released in Central Croydon outside Primark along North End.