The former pub chef serving a life sentence for the brutal rape and murder of teenage model Sally Anne Bowman has admitted raping another woman when he was aged just 16.

Mark Dixie was jailed for 34 years in 2008 for repeatedly stabbing 18-year-old Miss Bowman before raping her as she lay dead or dying outside her home in Blenheim Crescent, south Croydon in 2005.

Appearing via videolink at Southwark Crown Court in London on Wednesday (July 26), Dixie, 46, admitted raping a woman in 1987 after ambushing her in an isolated car park.

A previous hearing was told that after the sex attack he tied the woman to her car and set fire to it, but she managed to escape and raise the alarm.

Dixie also admitted charges of indecent assault and GBH over an attack on a second woman in 2002.

She was hit on the head with a chef's steel - normally used to sharpen kitchen knives - before being molested on a flight of stairs, a previous hearing was told.

Dixie finally admitted to police that he killed Miss Bowman in January 2015, prosecutor Crispin Aylett QC told the court.

Mr Aylett said: "He wrote to police indicating he wanted to tell them the truth of what had happened to Sally Anne, because at the trial he said that he was not responsible for her murder.

"He also admitted two other serious attacks on women that had taken place some time before."

Dixie, who appeared from HMP Frankland in County Durham, appeared calm as he appeared on the videolink to admit his crimes, wearing a sports top and glasses.

Dixie, who lived in Australia from 1993 to 1999, had a string of previous convictions before being convicted of Miss Bowman's brutal murder.

They include being found guilty of indecent exposure and indecent assault in 1988 when he exposed himself to a woman and forced her to the ground.

At his trial, Dixie denied murdering the teenage blonde, claiming he had sex with her after coming across her dead or dying in the street.

His frenzied attack - which included biting her - came minutes after Miss Bowman had parted from her boyfriend after a row in a car.

Mr Aylett said on Wednesday that both of the other attacks on women were also in Croydon.

Outlining the 1987 attack, Mr Aylett said: "He actually raped her in her car and after he had attacked her and she had asked him to let her go, he said: 'I can't, you will go to police.'

"He used a silk tie from her blouse to tie her by her wrists, made her lie on the back seat of the car and tied her feet with the seat belt.

"He then set fire to the front seat of the car. He later told police he had set fire to a Tampax."

When detectives told Dixie in an interview they had already linked him to that attack by a fingerprint found on a rear wheel arch, he said: "I will give you another one as well", the prosecutor said.

He then told them about the 2002 attack on a woman near a Croydon railway bridge.

After hitting the woman on the head several times, he said: "I'm going to kill you", the court heard.

He dragged her up the stairs and indecently assaulted her before being confronted by a woman living close by who heard the commotion.

Mr Aylett said: "When she asked what was going on, Dixie said 'nothing, nothing, it's just a row with my girlfriend'.

"But she (the victim) said 'help, help, he's attacking me."

Dixie then fled the scene.

Judge Jeffrey Pegden QC adjourned sentencing to September.