Sally Anne Bowman’s dream was to appear on the front cover of Vogue magazine.

Growing up in Croydon, south London she set her heart on following in the footsteps of local girl Kate Moss.

Sally Anne, who was also a talented singer and dancer, had beaten 700 applicants to win a place at the nearby BRIT performing arts school where former pupils include Adele, Amy Winehouse and Tom Holland.

She went on to win a contest to become the face of watch brand Swatch and declared herself ‘the happiest girl in the world’ after appearing on the catwalk for the first time in a leading fashion show.

At 18, she was the youngest of four girls, the baby of the family, whose loved ones were fiercely proud of her and in no doubt she would go on to find fame and fortune.

Tragically, Sally Anne came to the public’s attention in a very different way after her partially naked body was discovered in a pool of blood on the driveway of her family home on September 25 2005.

She had been stabbed seven times, including in the neck and stomach, repeatedly bitten and savagely raped as she lay dead or dying.

Her Prada handbag, cardigan, underwear and mobile phone were stolen after her body was dumped near a workman’s skip just yards away from the safety of her front door.

It was a sickening crime which sent shockwaves through the nation and it would be nine months before police snared Sally Anne’s depraved killer – serial sex offender Mark Dixie.

Dixie, a pub chef who lived an itinerant life high on drink and drugs, had a history of sexual violence dating back two decades before he murdered Sally Anne Bowman on the night of his 35th birthday.

He was just 16 when he was charged with his first offence of indecent assault and would go on to commit sex crimes in Australia, Spain and Holland.

A lack of compulsory DNA testing at the time of his offences, his use of aliases and failings in international co-operation meant Dixie was free to prowl the streets.

It would be more than two years before the monster finally faced justice when he was jailed for a minimum of 34 years at the Old Bailey following a three week trial.

On the night of the tragedy, Sally Anne’s mother Linda waved her goodbye outside their home in Blenheim Crescent as she set off at 6.05pm with one of her sisters for a night out with friends.

Sally Anne, who worked part time at a local hairdressers and had celebrated her birthday two weeks earlier, was in good spirits as the sisters headed into town.

Between 10pm and 1am Sally Anne – who was wearing high-heeled sandals, a short blue denim skirt and a white bodice top with butterflies on it – was drinking with friends in Lloyd’s Bar in Croydon.

She headed to a friend’s house but caught a taxi back into town at 2am after she had texted her long-term boyfriend Lewis Sproston, then aged 20, and asked him to pick her up.

The couple, who had recently returned from a holiday in Greece, had been dating for around two years and had something of a tempestuous relationship which was marred by blazing rows and jealousies.

They had recently broken up but Lewis, who had been on a night out with his friends, agreed to meet Sally-Anne and drove her back to her home at around 2.30am.

Tragically their final moments together were consumed in a tortuous row with Lewis becoming convinced Sally Anne had been seeing another man.

Their argument lasted nearly two hours until around 4.15am when Lewis drove off.

Meanwhile Dixie had been drinking heavily and taking drugs while celebrating his 35th birthday.

Dixie, who was known for his volatile temperament, met up with friends in a pub that evening and at one point was said to have been visibly angry after contacting his ex-girlfriend Stacy Nivet who had refused his pleas to come and join them.

Dixie, who had lived for two years close to Sally Anne’s home, went to stay at a friend’s house nearby.

But after his friends went to bed, he locked them in a bedroom and went out – still high on drink and drugs.

He attacked a female motorist, whose mobile phone was stolen before a taxi driver came to her aid near Sally Anne’s home.

And it is believed he was lurking in the bushes when he spotted Sally Anne and her boyfriend arguing in their car – before pouncing moments after Lewis drove away.

He fled the scene after attempting to hide traces of his DNA by placing cement dust over Sally Anne’s body.

Dixie went to a friend’s flat where he smoked cannabis, slept for a few hours and then went out drinking.

It was 6am before a horrified neighbour discovered Sally Anne’s bloodied body after spotting ‘a pair of white legs’ near the skip.

A huge murder investigation was launched and in the aftermath of the killing it was Lewis who became the focus of police attention.

He had been with Sally Anne until the minutes before her death and their heated flare ups had previously come to the attention of police.

To make matters worse, mobile phone records showed Lewis had threatened to spit in Sally Anne’s face if she had been cheating on him.

The day after the murder Lewis was arrested. With their turbulent relationship history in the back of his mind he said to police as he was led away in handcuffs: ‘Is it about the row with my girlfriend last night?’.

Lewis was held and questioned for four days, along with two of his friends and his brother.

He was cleared when DNA analysis showed that semen found in Sally Anne’s body belonged to someone else.

Despite a massive police investigation – which included multiple appeals and a massive DNA screening operation – the trail went cold.

It would be nine months before Dixie would find himself in the frame for Sally Anne’s murder in the most unexpected of circumstances.

And it was his out-of-control lifestyle which gave police their big breakthrough.

On the night of June 15 2006, England had beaten Trinidad and Tobago 2-0 in a World Cup group stage match in Germany.

Dixie was arrested after a fight among football fans on the night of the match and before being released on bail gave a saliva sample to police.

Officers at Crawley police station were shocked when he burst into tears as they took the routine DNA swab.

The reason became clear 12 days later when Sussex police received a call from the forensics lab – Dixie’s DNA was a near perfect match for the semen found on Sally Anne’s body.

Murder squad detectives were alerted and at 8pm that evening Dixie was arrested by officers at Ye Olde Six Bells pub in Horley, Surrey, where he was working at the time.

Police made a sickening discovery after searching his home. Among his possessions they found a digital camera containing a video file showing Dixie fantasising over the killing.

He performed a sex act on himself alongside a newspaper bearing a photograph of Sally Anne on the front page.

At his trial he would claim he did not kill Sally Anne but had sex with her after stumbling across her body believing she had ‘passed out or fallen over’.

His sickening history emerged as it was revealed at the age of 16, Dixie was charged with indecent assault after putting a knife to a woman’s throat and allegedly fondling her breasts.

Although that charge was withdrawn in court, it was the first of 16 brushes with the law.

Two years later, he attacked a Jehovah’s Witness, threatening to kill the married mother of three and ending up in jail for six months.

Along with a string of sex offences, he had been convicted of assaulting a police officer and a number of thefts.

To escape his criminal past he moved to Australia in 1993 but was deported six years later after committing a sex offence for which he received a fine.

After his arrest, police went back to Australia and uncovered a further attack on a Thai woman, also in Perth in 1998.

She was attacked by a masked man who stabbed her, raped her and left her for dead, but crucially with his DNA at the scene.

In a landmark move for a British court, this evidence was used against Dixie at his trial even though it had taken place abroad and he had not been charged.

DNA evidence has also linked him to the rapes of three women in Spain in 2003. Another man, wrongly convicted, served 12 years for those attacks before he was released.

Dixie fathered three sons, two with the girlfriend he followed to Australia, and one with Nivet.

It was only in 2015 that Dixie confessed to Sally Anne’s murder and two years later he was handed two further life sentences after he admitted sex attacks on two other women.

In 1987, when he was 16, he raped an office worker in her car in outh London, tied her up and started a fire.

She managed to escape but was left ‘utterly petrified’ when she received two chilling phone calls from her attacker in the following days.

In 2002 he fractured a woman’s skull after bludgeoning her with a chef’s steel, used to sharpen kitchen knives, before he molested her.

Dixie threatened to kill the woman who only managed to escape when he was interrupted by a man who heard her screams.

Sally Anne’s family – condemned to a life sentence of their own through Dixie’s depravity – believed missed opportunities by police allowed her to fall into his clutches.

As the anniversary of her death approached Linda, 62, said: ‘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.’

She added: ‘It’s 20 years this year since she was killed. It’s a devastating milestone. It doesn’t get any easier.

‘Every day is another day she’s not with us. And every day I think about what she might look like now.’