'I was wrongly jailed for rapes carried out by evil killer – now I'm begging him to confess'

Daily Mirror

26-04-2025

Romano van der Dussen spent 12 years in jail for rapes he did not commit in Spain before Sally Anne Bowman killer Mark Dixie's DNA was identified on one of the victims
A skipper wrongly jailed for rapes committed by Sally Anne Bowman's killer today begged him to admit his crimes - so he can sue for one million euros.
Dutch national Romano van der Dussen, 52, revealed he had written to jailed monster Mark Dixie THREE times asking for him to confess to three attacks in 2003. The dad-of-one was freed 12 years into a 15-year sentence after Dixie's DNA was linked to one of the brutal assaults in Fuengirola, Spain.
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But he said Dixie - jailed for the 2005 murder and rape of Sally Anne, 18, in Croydon - has refused to respond to his pleas for a meeting. It means he is unable to clear his name for the remaining two attacks and claim compensation from the Spanish authorities for the 12 years he wrongly spent in prison.
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In a desperate plea, Romano said: "I have written to him in HMP Frankland on a number of occasions and he has never responded. He should come forward and admit what he did. He needs to think of his karma. If he admits then he can cleanse his soul and something good may happen."
It comes just days after Sally Anne's mum, Linda, blasted police in Australia after he was free to slip through the net and return to the UK undetected. British police had no way of knowing he was a repeat offender with a history of violent assaults spanning the globe.
Romano was sentenced to 15 years in Spain for three assaults on women. He was jailed even though his DNA did not match a sample found on one of the victims Detectives later discovered the DNA belonged to Dixie. Romano spent more than a decade in a Spanish jail before his conviction was finally quashed.
But in the eyes of Spanish law, he remains guilty for two of the offences, even though his original trial said all three were committed by the same offender. It means he cannot launch a bid for compensation from the Spanish authorities.
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He currently receives 2,000 Euros each month from the Spanish Government for his wrongful incarceration for the one rape charge But if Dixie - who says he cannot remember because he was drunk - finally confessed then Romano says he can sue for one million euros.
Romano said: "I wrote to him most recently just before Christmas [2024], but I heard nothing. I want to get on with my life. I want the compensation so I can start again. He will never be freed, he's never coming out, so I want him to admit to what he did. He has to take the first step."
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Romano was just 30 in 2003 and working at an ice cream parlour on Spain's Costa del Sol when his nightmare began. On the morning of September 2, 2003, as he returned to his apartment after visiting the beach, he was stopped by two police officers. They asked his name and told him that he was under arrest.
He was held for two days and then transferred to prison to await trial. Romano was accused of the rape of three women during the night of August 2003, a month earlier. The women had been brutally beaten; one of them so badly that she could remember nothing about what had happened to her and was in a state of shock.
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The attacks had taken place soon after the murder of two young women in nearby Coín and Mijas, and the police were under pressure to put somebody behind bars. In an exclusive interview with the Mirror, Romano spoke of the moment he was told he would be charged for the rapes.
And he told of the 12 years of hell he endured in prison, during which time he suffered brutal beatings for being a rapist. He said the miscarriage of justice ruined his life and stopped him seeing his daughter grow up. Speaking exactly 10 years since his conviction was overturned Romano said: "It was so difficult. The paedophiles and the rapists are treated the worst in prison.
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"There are three people in a cell and 250 blokes with just four guards. But they have their own laws and the toughest inmates demand to see your papers to know what you were convicted of. I was attacked once and I had to spend three weeks in hospital, I was passing blood. They hurt me so badly. I was a mess. You never get over it. I think about it every day. How messed up it was."
Spanish police failed to catch Dixie, now 54, and he was free to stab and rape 18-year-old model Sally Anne in Croydon in 2005. He was handed a life sentence of at least 34 years in 2008. Last Week the Mirror revealed he had slipped through the net despite carrying out a string of attacks while he lived in West Australia between 1993 and 1999.
And in 2015 Dixie finally admitted one rape in Spain for which Romano had been jailed. Dixie is suspected of two other rapes the same night for which Romano was convicted but the killer says he cannot remember carrying them out. In 2017 he was given two more life sentences after confessing to horrific sex attacks on two other women, one when he was just 16.
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But Romano, who now works as a commercial boat skipper around the Balearic Islands, said that Spanish police had blood on their hands for failing to catch him in 2003. He said: "The Spanish police did not do enough to catch Dixie. In 2005 the English police told them about Dixie but they ignored it. I was arrested in 2003 and in May 2004 the forensics and DNA showed I didn't do it.
"That's when I should have been released but they didn't care. They only looked at the national database, not the international database. They had no images of me there, nothing, but they still charged me. It was the worst day of my life. I thought I'd be able to call my lawyer and say, 'Look, this is all crap'. But that didn't happen. I said I would cooperate. I hadn't done anything wrong."
Romano - who was approached about taking part in a Netflix documentary last year - added: "It was clear by May 2004 that I wasn't responsible. From that moment the police should have been hunting the real person who had done it. But they didn't. They had more than a year to find him but they didn't and then he was free to kill Sally Anne and rape her. She died because of their incompetence.
"The Spanish police didn't do their jobs and that's why Sally Anne is dead, she would be alive today."