Chef 'downed sambuca and snorted cocaine on night he killed Sally Anne'

Mark Dixie snorted two lines of coke, downed up to five Sambuca shots and knocked back lager and wine as he celebrated his 35th birthday, friends said.

A few hours later, he killed the blonde 18-year- old in a frenzied attack, stabbing, biting and raping her before dragging her body behind a skip, it is alleged.

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His friend Victoria Chandler told the court that a week after the murder, Dixie flew into a rage when it was suggested he should respond to a police appeal and volunteer his DNA for elimination.

She said: "Mark got quite angry, saying, 'Are you f***ing calling me a murderer?'

"He said, 'Why should I? I was in the flat all night.'

Miss Chandler had been drinking with Dixie and other friends in Croydon, South London on the night of the attack in September 2005.

She said he took a quarter of a gram of cocaine in the pub as well as drinking large quantities of spirits and lager.

Miss Chandler described Dixie as "quite serious" when he took cocaine.

"He would look like he had been awake for the whole weekend," she said.

At one point in the evening, Dixie became "withdrawn" after Stacey Nivet, his ex-girlfriend and mother of his child, failed to wish him happy birthday over the phone.

Miss Chandler later returned to her flat with Dixie and another friend, Diane Glassborow.

They drank three bottles of red wine between them and he had another line of cocaine.

The women went to bed at about 2.30am, leaving Dixie lying fully-clothed on the sofa watching television.

Miss Chandler woke up at around 10.30am and went downstairs to find him in the same position, wearing the same trousers.

He appeared in "good spirits" and there did not seem to be anything troubling him.

The day after the murder, Dixie went to a South London court where he was due to be a prosecution witness in an assault case.

His sister, Melanie Worrall, told how she met him in the corridor but found him "rude, arrogant and unsociable".

Later that day, she read about Miss Bowman's murder in a newspaper and said: "I hope the bastard that killed her dies of cancer".

Dixie immediately left the room in a "strop", she said. Dixie, a 37-year-old father of three from Streatham, South London, denies murdering Miss Bowman at 4. 15am as she returned from a night out in Croydon, but has admitted having sex with her.

He says she was already dead when he found her.

The court has heard that Dixie was convicted in 1988 of indecent assault and actual bodily harm after attacking a Jehovah's Witness.

He punched the mother of three to the ground before indecently assaulting her.

He has also been accused of stabbing and sexually assaulting a student in Perth, Western Australia, in 1998.

The trial continues.