The mother of Sally Anne Bowman has spoken of the missed opportunities to catch her daughter’s killer as a new probe in Australia revealed how he slipped through the net.

Mark Dixie brutally raped and murdered 18-year-old Sally Anne near her home in Croydon, south London, in September, 2005, in a crime that shocked Britain.

Sally Anne, a fashion student who dreamed of being a Vogue cover girl, was stabbed seven times and then raped by Dixie. 

The father of three, who worked as a pub cook, finally admitted the killing to detectives in January 2015, seven years after he was jailed for a minimum of 34 years for the murder.

Dixie also confessed to two more London attacks which led to two more life sentences – raping a woman in 1986 when he was only 16, and bludgeoning a woman with a knife sharpener and threatening to kill her in 2002. 

He also confessed to the rape of a woman in Spain in 2003, for which another man spent 12 years in prison.

But speaking ahead of the 20th anniversary of her daughter’s death, Linda Bowman, 62, said Dixie should never have been free to carry out the brutal 2005 murder. 

It comes as  a new probe by the West Australian newspaper found that Dixie had been pictured by cops in Australia just moments after a woman was savagely assaulted while walking home in Victoria Park, near Perth. 

But despite the image being printed in a local newspaper, he was never prosecuted because the victim was never able to positively identify him. 

Speaking to the Mirror, Linda said: ‘He is one of Britain’s most depraved sex offenders. The police in Australia didn’t care.

‘The banged him back on a plane to let the UK deal with him even though he’s a sex offender’. 

The grieving mother added that had the Australian authorities warned British police about Dixon ‘my daughter would still be alive’.

‘Sally Anne died because the police did not do enough to stop him’. 

Dixie, who had emigrated to Australia in 1993, was eventually deported in 1999 after he tried to rape a female jogger. 

When the convicted murderer returned to the UK, British police were not alerted that he was a serial sex offender. 

The shocking revelation by West Australian suggests that Dixie was suspected of carrying out a sex attack in Como, near Perth, in 1997, just weeks after he was pictured by police. 

In that incident, a woman was grabbed by a man and taken to a construction site.  She managed to get away, and Dixie was never formally questioned over the attack.

It also emerged an identikit image of a suspect alleged to have attacked a Thai student was created in 1998.

The student was stabbed eight times by a hooded attacker who broke into her home in Leederville, Perth, in 1999.

The woman, who was raped while unconscious, testified during Dixie’s 2008 trial for Ms Bowman’s murder that a man had broken into her home before the attack unfolded.

The trial was told Dixie’s DNA matched a sample that was taken from the woman’s underwear.