Murdered teenager Sally Anne Bowman's ashes exhumed after grave was repeatedly vandalised

The parents of teenager Sally Anne Bowman, a model who was killed in a gruesome murder in 2005, have said that they have now exhumed her ashes and brought them to their home after vandals repeatedly desecrated her grave.

Linda Bowman told the Mirror that her daughter's headstone had repeatedly been smashed at the cemetery in Croydon, south London where the she had been laid to rest.

"We had to have Sally Anne's remains exhumed and her ashes brought home because someone kept destroying her grave and her headstone," she told the paper.

The grave was reportedly smashed four times in six years and cards with Sally Anne's name in red writing left inscribed at the grave site.

"We'd just had enough," Linda Bowman said, describing how she and Paul, Sally Anne's father, had had to go through the Ministry of Justice before they were able to bring their daughter's ashes back home.

Mark Dixie, now 47, was found guilty of Bowman's murder in 2008, having originally claimed that he had come across the murdered body and had sex with it. Dixie was found linked to several other sexual assaults and stabbings around the world. He was handed a sentence with a minimum of 34 years.

In 2015, Dixie admitted to another brutal attack on a woman in Spain - one for which an innocent man had spent 12 years in prison. Romano van der Dussen, 42, was released after his 15 year sentence was overturned.

At the time, Linda Bowman said she was "appalled", adding "I feel very strongly that if the Spanish authorities had done their jobs properly, my Sally Anne would be alive. He did not assault those three women in Spain - Sally Anne's killer did. He is someone's son and he is locked up for something he didn't do."