Accused 'angry at DNA suggestion'

He told friends: "Are you calling me a murderer?" and left the country, it was alleged.

Dixie, 37, denies stabbing the 18-year-old model seven times in her Croydon, south London, driveway during a sex attack.

He claims he was affected by drink and cocaine when he found her body in the middle of the night on September 25 2005, and had sex with the corpse.

Friend Victoria Chandler said Dixie stayed at her flat a couple of streets away on the night Sally Anne was killed.

She left him on the sofa at 2.30am and he was still there at 10.30 in the morning. One or two weeks later, he called back to see his friend Justin Everard and the talk turned to Sally Anne's murder, said Miss Chandler.

She said: "The police was wanting males to give DNA in the area. Justin said Mark should go and give DNA. Mark got quite angry, saying: 'Are you calling me a murderer?' He had added: "Why should I? I was in the flat all night."

Miss Chandler said: "He went to Amsterdam a couple of days after the conversation."

The friends had been to a local pub to celebrate Dixie's 35th birthday hours before Sally Anne was murdered in Blenheim Crescent. Dixie had taken two lines of cocaine and had been drinking until closing time, said Miss Chandler.

Asked what effect the drug would have on Dixie, she said: "He was quite serious when he used it. He would look like he had been awake for the whole weekend." The trial continues.