Mark Dixie

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

In June 2015, the Dutch newspaper the 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.

He has a long criminal record. His first conviction was for robbery – he mugged a woman at knifepoint in Stockwell in 1986, for which he was sentenced to six weeks' detention. In 1987, he moved to Sidcup and was convicted of burglary and robbery. In 1988, he was convicted of indecent assault and indecent exposure and sentenced to two years' probation. Later in 1988, he was convicted of indecent assault and assault occasioning actual bodily harm. In 1989, he was convicted of indecent exposure and sentenced to 80 hours' community service. In 1990, he was convicted of assaulting a police officer.

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.

Dixie was found guilty of Bowman's murder 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 is among the longest minimum terms ever imposed upon a single murderer.

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. As late as 2015, van der Dussen was still in prison and Dixie not yet charged with the rape

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 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 was accused of a sexual assault in 2001, where it is believed he masturbated in front of a woman in a telephone booth. He was not prosecuted for this.

Dixie lived in Australia from 1993 and overstayed his visa. He was deported in 1999 after being convicted of a sex offence, for which he was fined.

Mark Philip Dixie (born 24 September 1970) is a British serial rapist and murderer who was convicted on 22 February 2008 of murdering 18-year-old singer and model Sally Anne Bowman on 25 September 2005 in South Croydon, London. He has 17 other criminal convictions. He was known by various pseudonyms.