A neighbour described the moment she found Sally Anne Bowman's bloodied body poking out from behind a skip.

Sally Anne was stabbed repeatedly in the abdomen and neck in such a savage attack the weapon passed through her body.

Chef Mark Dixie, 37, denies Sally Anne's murder on September 25, 2005.

Ann Hardy had earlier told the court she had woken after hearing two screams in the night which she thought was either a vixen or a girl.

She woke up at 6.30am on September 25, 2005, and said she did what she always did and looked out of the window of her home in Blenheim Crescent, South Croydon.

She said: "The only difference was that I felt I had seen something unusual as I looked out. It was a pair of white legs.

She pulled on her dressing gown and slippers, crossed the road and around the skip.

"I just felt I knew what I was going to see, that it wasn't going to be a model or a mannequin," she said. "I was relating it to the screams."

When asked what she had seen by prosecutor Brian Altman, she replied: "Sally Anne's body."

Mrs Hardy said: "I knelt down. It was a natural thing to do and odd, poor darling.

"I told my husband what I'd seen and asked, will you corroborate, please'. He came back and he said yes' and I called the police."

June Cumpper, who lives in a house opposite where Sally Anne was found, yesterday told the court she was woken by a sound she could not identify.

She said: "I got up and had a look. I knelt up on the bed and raised the blinds and watched to see if I could see anything."

Mrs Cumpper then went to check on her son and two daughters, went to the toilet then returned to the window.

She told the court her attention was drawn to a man on the other side of the road.

Giving evidence today she described how she saw a man walking along the footpath looking down at the ground from left to right and then back again.

Asked to describe what he looked like she said: "He was not an ugly person, not a bad looking person, just even featured."

The court heard Mrs Cumpper had been to three identity parades and had picked out one person.

The trial continues.

  • Click here for full trial coverage