If the police had done their job my girl would still be alive

THE mum of murdered model Sally Anne Bowman has blasted missed opportunities to snare her daughter's killer years before he struck.

- DAN WARBURTON

As the 20th anniversary of Sally Anne's death nears, it has emerged that police had quizzed serial sex predator Mark Dixie eight years earlier.

They even had a photo of him, taken just moments after he allegedly attacked a woman in Victoria Park, Perth, Western Australia.

Dixie was deported from Australia back to the UK because of a sex crime.

But there was nothing to alert police here that he was linked to a string of offences Down Under.

And a few years later he murdered Sally Anne as she returned home from celebrating her 18th birthday and raped her as she lay dead or dying.

Her mum Linda Bowman says Dixie, who worked as a chef, should never have been free to kill her girl.

Linda, 62, says: "He is one of Britain's most depraved sex offenders. The police in Australia didn't care.

"They banged him back on a plane to let the UK deal with him. They should have informed the British police and he should have been arrested at the gate as he landed.

"Instead he was free to kill my daughter. If they had done their jobs my daughter would still be alive.

"Sally Anne died because the police did not do enough to stop him. I want to confront them, to tell them how their mistakes cost Sally Anne her life."

Dixie emigrated to Australia in 1993. A recent probe has unearthed a photograph of him, which ran in Perth's Western Australia newspaper.

It was taken by police, who had questioned him just moments after a woman was attacked in the suburb of Victoria Park in 1997.