Mark Dixie

Mark Philip Dixie (born 24 September 1970) He has 17 other criminal convictions. He was known by various pseudonyms.

Early life Dixie was born in Streatham, South London. His parents separated when he was 18 months old.

Criminal record and deportation Dixie has a long criminal record.

Personal life His mother remarried when he was eight and had two sons with her new husband.

Murder conviction Sally Anne Bowman was stabbed to death yards from her home after a night out with friends. Almost a year later, Dixie's DNA was taken when he was arrested in Crawley, West Sussex, after being involved in a pub fight while watching a World Cup football match. It matched DNA found on Bowman's body.

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 was believed he was in the area at the time of the killings, and may have committed them. At his trial for the murder of Sally Anne Bowman, an unnamed Thai woman gave evidence that Dixie had stabbed and raped her in Australia in 1998; Dixie has yet to be formally charged with this attack, though a DNA sample from the woman's underwear has been matched to him.

Dixie denied the murder but, as part of his defence, claimed that he had spent the night drinking and doing drugs and had gone out to buy more cocaine. He claimed to have come across Bowman's body, who was already dead, he said, by a third party, and had sex with her after she was killed.

In 2007, Dixie's DNA was matched to the rape of a woman in Fuengirola, Spain, in August 2003. A Dutchman – Romano van der Dussen – had already been sentenced to 15 years in prison for this rape and two sexual assaults that were committed nearby and in the same way as the rape. In June 2015, the Dutch newspaper de Volkskrant reported that Dixie confessed to this rape, but not to the two sexual assaults. van der Dussen was finally exonerated and freed in February 2016 after spending over 12 years in prison.

Dixie was found guilty of murdering Bowman on 22 February 2008 and was sentenced to life imprisonment at the Old Bailey, where Judge Gerald Gordon recommended that Dixie should not be released for a minimum of 34 years, by which time he will be 70 years old. This means he is likely to remain in prison until at least 2040.

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." The calls for 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. Dixie confessed to the murder in January 2015.

Rape convictions In 2017, Dixie was convicted of two rapes – one of which happened in 1986 and the other in 2002. He received two life sentences.