Mark Dixie Pic: Metropolitan Police
The murderer of south Croydon teenage model Sally Anne Bowman has been given two further life sentences for sex attacks on two other women in Croydon.
Mark Dixie, now 47, was jailed for at least 34 years in 2008 for repeatedly stabbing and raping 18-year-old Bowman near her home in Blenheim Crescent, Croydon, in September 2005.
During his trial in 2008, Dixie denied murdering Bowman and claimed he had sex with her after finding her already dead or dying, but was still found guilty.
Dixie finally admitted the killing to detectives in January 2015 and went on to confess to two more attacks over the course of 40 interviews.
He admitted raping a woman in her car in a deserted Wandle Road car park 1987, when he was aged just 16, and molesting a woman near Selsdon railway station in 2002.
On Friday, Judge Jeffrey Pegden QC sentenced Dixie to two life terms with a minimum of 28 years at Southwark Crown Court.
Dixie’s previous sentence meant he would not have been eligible for parole until 2040, when he will be 69, but the new sentence will add another four years.
At an earlier hearing, Judge Pegden said he was “satisfied” that Dixie remained a “serious danger to the public”.
He said that the pub chef from Streatham’s offending had “escalated significantly” before he was jailed for Sally Anne Bowman’s murder.
Friday’s sentencing hearing was told Dixie targeted his first victim when he was 16 while she was sitting in her car in the isolated Wandle Road car park. He tied her up inside and raped her before setting the vehicle on fire.
The woman, aged 44 at the time, managed to free herself and raise the alarm. In the following days after the attack, she received two chilling phone calls from Dixie and was left “utterly petrified”, the court was told.
In a victim impact statement, she said: “I didn’t seek counselling, I had survived, I was in one piece. I just wanted to get on with life.”
The second attack, in 2002, saw Dixie bludgeoning a woman over the head with a chef’s steel, normally used to sharpen kitchen knives, near Selsdon railway station.
Dixie said to the woman “I’m going to kill you” before molesting her. She managed to escape when Dixie was interrupted by a man who heard her screams.
The court heard Dixie took his victim’s mobile phone during the attack and afterwards boasted to her ex-boyfriend in a call: “I’ve battered her. I’ve battered her. I’ve left her by the railway.”
In a victim impact statement, the woman said: “It is difficult to assess, over the years, how this incident has affected me. I was determined that it would not stop me from living my life.”
By the time Dixie was jailed for Bowman’s murder, he had already been convicted of indecent exposure and indecent assault in the UK.
The court also heard of another sex attack carried out by Dixie in 1998 in Australia, where he had lived for six years, and a sexual assault he committed in Spain in 2005.
Speaking outside court after the sentence, senior investigating officer Detective Chief Inspector Chris Le Pere described Dixie as “a monster”.
Le Pere said Dixie was still “very dangerous”, adding: “I would be very surprised if he would ever not pose a threat to the public or a danger to the public, but that’s for other people to decide.”
