Morning:
8°c
I found stabbed girl lying in the street and took full advantage
Paul Cheston, Courts Correspondent19 Feb 2008
The mother of Sally Anne Bowman wept at the Old Bailey today as she heard a man admit to having sex with her daughter's dead body.
Pub chef Mark Dixie, 37, denies murdering the 18-year-old aspiring model who was stabbed to death outside her home in south Croydon. Today Dixie told the jury he was "clucking" for cocaine on the night Miss Bowman was killed.
As he walked down her street in the early hours he said he saw a pair of legs lying at the side of the road.
"I took full advantage. I know I should not have done it," he told the jury.
As Dixie claimedhe did not realise she was dead until later, tears ran down her mother Linda Bowman's cheeks and two of Miss Bowman's sisters also wept at the back of the courtroom.
Dixie, giving evidence for a second day, described how he had been separated from his girlfriend and mother of his son when Miss Bowman was killed in September 2005.
He had been out drinking and taking drugs with two friends, and brought three bottles of wine back to the flat where he was staying.
"I would be the life and soul of the party. I'd want to carry on, I'm like a vacuum cleaner when it comes to cocaine, I just want more," he told the jury.
When his two friends went to bed drunk at around 3am, hewent out to try and buy more cocaine from a friend who lived one street away from Sally Anne.
He said: "Nobody came to the door. I needed more cocaine. I was clucking for more. That's when the body wants more cocaine and that's all your mind can think about."
But instead of taking the direct route back to the f lat, he returned via Blenheim Crescent, where he once lived.
"When I got outside number 26 I saw a pair of legs on the side of the road. It has gone round in my head for the last three years but I don't know what was going through my mind at that time. I crouched down and I took full advantage of someone. I know I should not have done it."
Defence barrister Anthony Glass QC asked: "Do you mean you had sexual intercourse with her?"
"Yeah," Dixie replied. "I would not expect to see anybody dead in that street. I thought she had passed out drunk or fallen over. I didn't expect anybody to be lying dead in a quiet cul-de-sac like that."
"Did you bite her?" asked Mr Glass. "Yes," he answered. "Did you realise she was unconscious?" said the QC.
"Probably it came through my head that that could be the only reason she was not moving, that she was unconscious," Dixie replied. "Did you realise she was dead?" asked Mr Glass.
"After a while, yes. Then I panicked. I stood up and looked around and looked at her and didn't know what to do. I realised I had to cover up my DNA."
Dixie said he went to a nearby skip and took out some concrete, hoping to wipe away the traces of himself he had left on her with cement dust.
"Then I ran straight back to the flat. It was 4.55am, I had been out about 25 minutes," he added.
The court heard that Dixie, of no fixed address, also left his fingerprint in blood on Sally Anne's shoe. But he told the jury there was no blood either on him or his clothing.
He said that without showering or washing, he smoked a last cannabis cigarette and "dozed off about one hour later". The case continues.
