Crimes That Shook Britain Sally Anne Bowman (2008– ) Online

This is the story of an unspeakable crime and the serial sex attacker who committed it. In September 2005, Sally Anne Bowman was murdered on a Croydon street in the small hours. This was a girl who literally had the world at her feet. Stunningly attractive and with a passion for acting, she already had some modelling experience, and in due course would undoubtedly have made her mark on the catwalk. Instead, barely 18, she was knifed to death in an act of shocking depravity by a man who compounded the murder by having sex with her warm, bloodied corpse.

In three quarters of an hour this documentary tells the full story of the hunt for Sally Anne's killer, Mark Dixie, a man who may well have committed other murders in Australia. It includes interviews with both the victim's parents and the man who led the hunt. This was a crime that for obvious reasons made massive headlines, and is still fresh in many people's memories.

In addition to the usual psychobabble from a mental health "professional" who tries to explain Dixie's motivation it leaves us with an equally chilling thought. Less than sixty years ago - before the advent of DNA profiling - the wrong man might well have been convicted and even hanged for the crime.

The above was published April 2, 2014. I watched this documentary again on Christmas Day 2017, Christmas night actually, forgetting I'd seen it already. I have two comments I could have added then which I will add now. The hunt for the killer of Sally Anne Bowman was hardly the largest murder hunt ever in London. It was certainly extensive, but was nothing like the biggest. Heck, there are people still looking for Jack The Ripper to this day! Also, the suggestion by her mother that babies should have their DNA taken at birth for a central database is so over the top it beggars belief. We still hear today about the way Jews in Nazi Germany were forced to wear a yellow star; this is a thousand times worse. Sadly, it is coming, if not in the next ten years then the ten after that.

The following comments are not about the programme but Mark Dixie. Although this man has still only ever been convicted of one murder, he is almost certainly a serial killer and is definitely a serial rapist. He is thought to have committed murders and known to have committed rapes in Australia. On top of that, Lewis Sproston was not the first person to be arrested for a crime he committed; Dutch national Romano van der Dussen spent twelve years in a Spanish prison convicted of a rape committed by him.

Dixie has now confessed to the Bowman murder, he also confessed to a 1987 rape; he was sixteen at the time. In November 2017, he was given two more life sentences with a 28 year tariff. It remains to be seen why he confessed: shame, guilt, most likely to enhance his notoriety. Whatever, he will never see daylight again, and rightly so.