When former pub chef Mark Dixie stepped into the dock he spoke with the arrogance of a football thug answering charges of affray, rather than a killer on trial for some of the most heinous offences the Old Bailey has heard.Dixie stared menacingly at the jury and press box as he was grilled by prosecutor Brian Altman KC over the horrifying murder of 18-year-old model Sally Anne Bowman.But it wasn't his intimidating glare that chilled me to the bone. It was the matter-of-fact tone as he spun a web of lies about finding Sally Anne's dead body and then the appalling abuse that followed.At one point the monster even demonstrated how he might have lifted her lifeless leg with his left hand. I have no doubt he was enjoying this; reliving his appalling crime – but this time he had an audience. He set out to shock.For those closest to Sally Anne, parents Linda and Paul and her three sisters, I'm convinced he wanted to add to their unimaginable suffering.Weeping Linda – weary from two weeks of an already harrowing trial – couldn't take any more and bolted through the courtroom door, while her father and siblings remained.In more than 30 years of crime reporting, I had never come face-to-face with such evil. Nor had the Central Criminal Court heard a more ludicrous defence put forward to murder in living memory. Sally Anne Bowman, an aspiring model, was raped and murdered just yards from her home in from Croydon, south London, in a crime that shocked Britain Despite the widespread publicity around Sally Anne's murder, it would be nine months before police finally caught her depraved killer - serial sex offender Mark DixieDixie, then 35, had repeatedly stabbed the hairdresser and model, before raping her as she lay dead or dying outside her home in Croydon, south London, in the early hours of September 25, 2005.He denied murder but admitted having sex with her mutilated corpse, claiming he thought she had passed out from drinking so he 'took advantage'.The devil had stepped into the dock in Court Nine on February 19, 2008, and what he said next haunted me for years.'I was not expecting anyone to be dead in the street,' he told Mr Altman.'I took full advantage of someone and I shouldn't have.'That fateful early morning, Dixie was lurking in suburban Blenheim Crescent when he saw Sally Anne's on-off boyfriend Lewis Sproston dropping her off in his car after a night out at the local Walkabout pub.The predator had been hiding in her garden on the prowl for a female victim as she rowed for over an hour and a half with Mr Sproston, who finally drove off at 4.15am. Dixie knifed Sally Anne three times through the neck, then twice in the stomach. After defiling her body, he took her bra and bag as trophies.In court, Dixie tried to explain away his culpability. He told jurors he had gone out to source cocaine from a dealer who lived near the scene because he was 'clucking for it', admitting: 'I am like a vacuum cleaner. I always need more.'When he got no response from the pusher, he strolled up Sally Anne's street because he once lived there.'As I walked between a van and a skip, I saw a pair of legs on the side of the road.' Sally Anne Bowman pictured on CCTV in Croydon town centre on the night she was murdered by Mark Dixie Sally Anne won 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. Pictured on the Swatch catwalk shoot in 2005Dixie ridiculously claimed he only realised Sally Anne was dead because she did not react to him biting her four times and suggested someone else must have murdered her. He tried to destroy any trace of forensic evidence with cement dust.'I panicked. I stood up and looked around. I did not know what to do. I knew I had to cover up my DNA.'Mr Altman challenged him on his reaction to finding Sally Anne.Dixie said: 'Working in pubs I have seen people pass out and collapse in the corner. I've seen weird things, how alcohol affects people.'There was nothing for me to think anything had happened to her.''Are you saying you had no idea that this young lady, naked, on her side on the driveway, was caked in blood?' Mr Altman said doubtfully.'No, I didn't,' Dixie insisted.Dixie admitted he did not try to ask Sally Anne for consent, or even call the emergency services, further ridiculing his account.'Nothing like that came into my head,' he said as hardened crime reporters, detectives and barristers listened aghast.'I'm totally disgusted with myself for doing it.'There was one particularly awful moment when Mr Altman suggested he had dragged Sally Anne's corpse down the drive for sex away from her pool of blood.'No,' Dixie laughed. When asked what was so funny, he replied: 'You astound me with what you are saying.'In my opinion, Dixie was getting a thrill from the court evidence and seeing pictures of Sally Anne's body in the bundle.A jury took barely three hours to convict him of murder and Judge Gerald Gordon told him his crime had been 'repulsive'.'Your subsequent conduct shows that you had not the slightest remorse for what you had done - quite the contrary,' he said.At the time, many of us were reduced to tears by Linda's victim impact statement which she was determined to read to the monster's face.In it, she said: 'On September 24, 2005, at 4.05pm, I kissed and cuddled my little girl.'We said we loved each other and waved goodbye. I never knew this would be the last time I'd see her beautiful smile or hear her voice.' Pub chef Dixie (filmed being interviewed by police) had a history of sexual violence dating back two decades before he murdered Sally Anne Bowman on the night of his 35th birthday