AN ACCIDENT helped solve one of England’s most horrifying cases. THE TRAGIC STORY of Sally Bowman

AN ACCIDENT helped solve one of England’s most horrifying cases. THE TRAGIC STORY of Sally Bowman

This monster story, which took place in 2005, shocked the whole of Britain with its cruelty. A young woman who had built a successful modeling career by the time she was 18 was found 10 meters from the door of her own home. The police had spent vast resources searching for the culprit, and only a tiny DNA sample helped them in the case.

Sally Ann Bowman was born on September 11, 1987, in London. She grew up in a large family with three older sisters. Her parents, Linda and Paul, later divorced, but the girl continued to maintain a good relationship with her father. Sally was a cheerful and friendly girl with a big heart. At the same time, she was also very responsible; already in her teens, she got a job and came to live in rented housing. The girl did not want to depend on her parents financially, but continued to see her family regularly.

Later, Sally enrolled at the prestigious London School of Performing Arts and Technology (BRIT). This institution is known for such alumni as actor Tom Holland, Adele, and Amy Winehouse. Sally dreamed of working as a model, and the fact that she was able to enroll at this school was a big step towards her cherished goal. Graduating in 2004, she spent some time working as a hair stylist and model, but in January 2005, she landed a job with a London-based model agency, Pulse Model Management.

From the first months, Sally achieved impressive success in her new work. She became the face of the popular watch brand Swatch and took part in prestigious fashion shows. As a result, by the age of 18, she had already managed to build a successful career.

On Saturday, September 24, 2005, Sally went to visit her mother and spent most of the day at her home. Later, her older sister Nicole called her and invited her to her best friend’s birthday party. Sally agreed and left her mother’s house around 6 p.m. At the end, she said she loved her.

At 10 p.m., the young woman met her sister and her friends at the Lloyd’s bar establishment in downtown Croydon. Surveillance footage at the bar showed Sally having a great time. The company was partying, socializing, and dancing. At about 1 a.m., Sally left the bar with her sister. They walked to her house, but the young woman didn’t stay there long. On the way, she called her ex-boyfriend, Lewis Spurgin, and arranged to meet him in downtown Croydon. At about 2:30 a.m., she got in a cab and drove to the designated location.

During the meeting, there was an argument between them. They had broken up only a few weeks earlier over mutual grievances and had been trying unsuccessfully to resolve the situation ever since. Lewis decided to give her a ride home to Blenheim Crescent, and they continued to argue the entire way. The couple worked out their relationship until about 4:15 a.m., at which point Sally got out of the car and headed home.

At about the same time, neighbors were awakened by an unexplained noise that changed to screaming. People ran to the windows, but there was nothing suspicious going on outside. Five minutes later, they only saw an unknown man walking down the street.

At about 6:30 a.m., one of the neighbors came out of the house and noticed something strange. From behind the nearby construction container looked out something that he first mistook for the legs of a mannequin, but as soon as he came closer, a frightening sight awaited him. There lay the half-naked body of a dead woman. She turned out to be Sally Bowman.

The police quickly arrived on the scene and sealed off the area. They were unable to find the murder weapon, but experts later found DNA on the woman’s body from an unknown man. They also discovered that Sally had been stabbed at least seven times with a sharp object and had been abused. The unknown maniac had even left several bite marks on her body.

Sally’s family was shattered by this news. When her mother heard a knock on the door that morning, she thought it was Sally coming home, but there were police officers on the doorstep who informed her of her daughter’s murder. Hours later, Sally’s mother and sister had to go to the morgue for identification. They hoped to the last that it was all one big mistake and that Sally was really alive. It wasn’t until they saw her body that they realized it was really her.

Meanwhile, the police launched an investigation, and the first thing they did was run a DNA sample from the woman’s body through the databases, but that didn’t help them identify the perpetrator. There were also no cameras in that area, which only made the job more difficult. Investigators determined that Sally was killed just 10 feet from the door of her home. Her path from her car to the building was also very short; her attacker must have attacked her almost immediately after she left the car.

The first person the police suspected was her ex-boyfriend, Lewis. He was the last person to see Sally, and her murder occurred almost immediately after she got out of the car. Investigators also found out that the couple had often quarreled in the past; several times it even went as far as calling the police, but no charges were ever filed. On the same day, the police tracked him down and arrested him. When questioned, he stated that he didn’t even know Sally was dead until the detectives themselves told him about it. He admitted that there had indeed been an altercation between them that night, but denied any involvement in the murder. According to his version, as soon as Sally got out of the car, he drove away.

The investigators were in no hurry to take the guy’s word for it because things looked really not in his favor. He spent four days in custody while detectives waited for the results of a DNA test. Eventually, it was discovered that his DNA did not match the sample, and Lewis was released.

At the same time, experts discovered another interesting detail: the DNA sample found on Sally’s body appeared in a criminal case four years ago in 2001. A woman called from a phone booth located in the parking lot of a convenience store. At some point, a man entered the booth, stripped naked, and committed lewd acts. He did not touch the woman and fled, but left his DNA on the floor of the booth. The victim went to the police, and a sample of the pervert’s DNA was attached to the case. However, they were never able to find the perpetrator.

All of this happened not too far from where Sally was killed—two and a half kilometers away. The police realized that they were dealing with a serial pervert who had been on the loose for years. The only question was how many women had suffered at the hands of this maniac and when he would strike next. Detectives had to find him before he ruined someone else’s life.

It soon became clear that the police’s fears were not in vain. Just an hour before Sally’s murder, a woman had been attacked on a nearby street. She was walking home talking on her cell phone. At some point, a man approached her, apologized, and immediately struck her. The woman screamed and dropped her phone, but what happened next was something the attacker clearly did not expect: a taxi cab appeared on the road and frightened him away. He grabbed the victim’s phone and fled.

One creepy thing worth noting here: the person on the other end of the line—the woman was still connected—heard everything. Even after the perpetrator took the phone and disappeared from the victim’s sight, her cries for help did not become any quieter. That meant he was hiding quite nearby, perhaps hoping that the cab driver would drive by and the victim would be at his disposal again.

Fortunately, the driver heard the screams and stopped. He put the woman in the car and took her to the hospital. There, she called the police and told them what had happened. According to her description, the attacker was a white male, 25 to 30 years old, about 180 centimeters tall, with short dark hair. On the basis of this data, the police compiled a sketch, which was published in the media.

Alas, a large number of men fell under such a vague description, so detectives received hundreds of calls from local residents. They all said that the sketch looked like someone they knew or had seen a similar man somewhere. Each such call was checked by the police, but it yielded no results.

When they realized they would not be able to find the maniac from the sketch, the investigators decided to go another way. The only lead they had was a DNA sample found on the victim’s body. In addition, the detectives were sure that the perpetrator lived in the area; this was evidenced by the fact that he had also attacked a woman in a phone booth on a nearby street.

As a result, the decision was made to DNA-screen the entire neighborhood. Police officers were to go to every apartment and house, ask questions, and ask residents to volunteer their DNA samples. Of course, the detectives did not expect the perpetrator to give them his DNA, but it was enough to get a sample from his relatives to get them closer to catching the culprit. For example, the man may have lived with parents who were unaware of his atrocities and would willingly provide his DNA to the police.

For the next six months, police officers went to more than six thousand addresses, and many area residents provided their DNA samples. But the entire operation came to nothing. Despite law enforcement’s efforts, experts at the lab found no matches with the perpetrator’s sample.

All the while, the people of Croydon were in fear, and police rounds only increased the anxiety. They all knew there was a maniac on their streets; women were afraid to walk at night, and parents would not let their children go out. As a result, the police had to go back to the sketch since there was nothing else to work with. They contacted the woman who had been attacked by the maniac on the day of Sally’s murder, as well as the victim from the phone booth. They were asked to redescribe the perpetrator’s appearance, and based on this testimony, the detectives compiled an adjusted version of the sketch.

The police showed it at a press conference and for the first time revealed some details of the crimes committed, which up to that point had been kept secret. This was done in the expectation that the citizens of Croydon would realize how dangerously maniacs walked freely on their streets and would be more careful. Alas, all this also yielded no results. The updated sketch was not much different from the previous one and was too generalized; thousands of men who lived in the area fit it.

But what happened next was something no one expected: a completely random breakthrough in the case. A man was sitting in a bar watching soccer, and after drinking heavily, he began to argue with one of the patrons, and soon their conflict turned into a scuffle on the street. Unfortunately for him, a police officer walked by as he pushed his opponent to the ground. He apprehended the attacker and took him to the police station.

There, something strange began. The instigator of the conflict, Mark Dixie, 35, went into a real panic and almost cried. This was very illogical behavior since he had been arrested for a misdemeanor; most likely, no charges would have been filed by his opponent at all, and the man was free to go home. The police found him very suspicious, but they soon had to release him on bail. Before that, they conducted the standard procedure for all detainees: taking his fingerprints and a DNA sample.

Twelve days passed, and the detectives received a call from the lab. The experts made an unexpected announcement: Mark Dixie’s DNA was a perfect match to the sample found on Sally’s body.

Investigators realized they had a dangerous maniac on their hands, but they let him go. In any case, the law would not allow them to hold him any longer, and now the police had to re-arrest the perpetrator. Unfortunately for them, Dixie escaped to Amsterdam as soon as he was released. The British authorities put out a search warrant for him, but the man successfully escaped.

This went on for three months until something strange happened: the criminal quarreled with the owner of the apartment he was renting in Amsterdam and returned back to England. Moreover, he got a job at his previous place of work, making the work of the police much easier. On June 28, 2006, almost a year after the murder, he was finally arrested and this time charged with a whole series of serious crimes.

After examining his background, police found that Mark had a very rich criminal history. He committed his first crime in 1986 when he was 16 years old: he attacked a woman with a knife, robbed her, and committed severe abuse. He was sentenced to only six months in prison because of his age. Each subsequent year, Mark was put on trial again for robbery and molestation, and in 1990 he was arrested for assaulting a police officer. Unfortunately, all of these times the court system was favorable to him; the man received little time and continued to commit crimes.

In 1993, he moved to Australia, where he picked up where he left off. Five years later, he broke into a young woman’s home, robbed, and abused her. He was then arrested for exhibitionism in a park and deported from the country in 1999. Unfortunately, in those years the police were not yet collecting DNA samples from criminals, so Dixie’s DNA from the murdered woman’s body showed no matches in existing databases.

The police had a lot of work to do before taking the case to court. They discovered that the night Sally was killed, Mark was celebrating his birthday at a bar with friends on Brighton Road, a few hundred yards from her home. He argued with his girlfriend over the phone and spent the rest of the evening abusing alcohol and illegal substances. He withdrew into himself and had little contact with anyone.

After the bar closed, Mark and his two girlfriends went to a house nearby. Waiting for them to fall asleep, the man took a knife and went outside. According to the investigation, he was the one who attacked the woman who was saved from death by a cab driver. Fearing that she would call the police, Mark left for another street.

Unfortunately, that’s when Sally Bowman got out of the car and headed for her door. He attacked her, abused her, and fled. Apparently, it was him walking down the street that the neighbors saw from their windows at night. After killing Sally, he went back to his apartment and quietly went to bed.

Mark Dixie’s trial began on February 5, 2008. He refused to admit his guilt, instead making up a really ridiculous story. According to his version, he was just walking down the street and saw Sally laying on the ground; he took advantage of the situation, abused her, and left, and someone else killed the woman. Dixie claimed that he allegedly did not know the woman was dead.

During the trial, a woman from Australia was also found whom Dixie attacked in 1998. He abused her, stabbing her seven times, but was never punished for it.

The jury unanimously found Dixie guilty of Sally’s murder despite his ridiculous history. As a result, the court sentenced him to life in prison with a minimum sentence of 34 years. After that, he was transferred from one prison to another several times, as each time his cellmates bullied him and tried to kill him.

All this time, Mark continued to deny his involvement in the murder, and it wasn’t until 2015—ten years later—that he confessed. This did not make his situation any worse, but the police were able to prove his involvement in the other crimes. In 2017, it turned out that an innocent Dutch citizen had served 12 years in prison for an attack on three women in Spain, which was in fact committed by Mark Dixie. In addition, the perpetrator also voluntarily confessed to another assault which he committed when he was 16 years old: Dixie attacked a woman in a parking lot, abused her, stole her credit cards, and set her car on fire. That same evening, he found out her home phone number, called her, and began taunting the victim. The woman then moved to live in the countryside because she could not cope with her trauma.

That same year, Dixie was found guilty of assaulting two women in Croydon, for each of which he received another life sentence.

2017 was marked by another unpleasant event: Sally’s family had to exhume her remains because unknown vandals kept desecrating her grave. The family decided to cremate her and leave her ashes at home.

After all of this ordeal, Sally’s mother is a strong advocate for a national DNA database. In her opinion, if the government collected DNA samples of all British residents, such crimes would be solved in 24 hours instead of nine months. In addition, the woman was certain that if the perpetrator had not left his DNA at the scene, Sally’s ex-boyfriend would have gone to prison for life for a murder he did not commit.

The detective leading the investigation into Sally’s murder supported the idea of a DNA database, but the government rejected it. In their view, forced DNA collection would violate basic human rights. This issue is very controversial. On one hand, such a database would really help solve such crimes in a matter of hours; in addition, some criminals would not dare to commit atrocities at all, knowing that they could be identified very quickly. On the other hand, not every criminal leaves their DNA behind, and leaking or misusing information from such a database could really hurt law-abiding people.