Predatory sex attacker Simon Levy is facing life in prison for murdering two women and raping a third after being left free to kill due to a string of failures by police and the Crown Prosecution Service.
Levy, 40, of Beaufoy Road, Tottenham, north London, was found guilty at the Old Bailey of murdering grandmother Carmenza Valencia-Trujillo, 53, in March 2025 and mother-of-four Sheryl Wilkins, 39, in August that year. He suffocated both women in sexually motivated attacks.
Failures allowed attacks to escalate
Ms Valencia-Trujillo's body was found in a largely abandoned block of flats on the Aylesbury estate in south east London, and Ms Wilkins was discovered behind a car park wall near Tottenham High Road, north London. The killings came after Levy subjected a third woman to a brutal sex attack in January last year in the same car park where Ms Wilkins' body was later found.
The surviving victim, who suffered a broken collarbone, told police at the time that she had been raped and knew where her attacker lived, but she was not formally interviewed until after Levy had killed twice. "I never thought this man would be so evil," she told police after she was left with a broken collarbone when Levy bore down on her with all his weight.
Campaign of assaults on public transport
Levy also sexually assaulted 10 women on busy rush-hour Tube or overground trains between 24 October 2023 and 29 May 2025. Judge Martin Evans KC said he carried out "a deliberate, persistent and carefully orchestrated campaign of targeted assaults on women" over a three-year period.
Policing minister Sarah Jones, MP for Croydon West, praised "the survivor who bravely came forward and helped bring this monster to justice". A jury also found Levy guilty of two counts of rape, grievous bodily harm with intent and the non-fatal smothering of the third woman.
Sentencing and admissions of failings
During the murder trial, prosecutor Tom Little KC said "predatory" Levy had targeted the three vulnerable women, all of whom carried out street sex work in order to fund drug addictions. Levy was being returned to the Old Bailey on Wednesday to be sentenced for the rape and murders by Judge Mark Lucraft KC. Murder carries an automatic life sentence but the number and circumstances of the killings means that he could be handed a whole-life order and never be eligible for release on licence.
Following the verdicts on Friday, the Metropolitan Police, British Transport Police and Crown Prosecution Service admitted failings in how they dealt with Levy, who was on bail as his attacks on women escalated to double murder. The Independent Office for Police Conduct said it had served a gross misconduct notice on a Met police constable and a misconduct notice on a detective sergeant. Scotland Yard has also issued a plea for any more survivors of sex attacks by Levy to come forward to police.
History of offending and missed warnings
His prolific sexual offending spanned the period between 2018 to 2025. He was jailed in 2021 for groping two women in the summer of 2018, one at Notting Hill Carnival and the other at a party in Camden. Earlier this year, he was convicted of 11 counts of sexual assault in a separate trial at Inner London Crown Court.
He was arrested by British Transport Police in November 2024 for sexual assaults on the Tube, but delays in organising an identification parade until the following April left him free to carry out the rape and first murder. When they took details of his Oyster card, BTP officers did not realise that it had been stolen from a bus driver, meaning Levy had a free travel pass that he used on the day he murdered Ms Valencia-Trujillo. Following her death, Levy was released on bail at two magistrates' court hearings in May and June 2025.
The Crown Prosecution Service admitted that it had not opposed bail at the first hearing, and the prosecutor had not given the court all the relevant information for consideration at the second hearing. There were another three crown court hearings that Levy failed to attend for various reasons, yet no arrest warrant was requested. Less than two weeks after a hearing on August 11, he murdered Ms Wilkins.
The murders of Ms Valencia-Trujillo and Ms Wilkins over eight months in 2025 were interspersed with sexual assaults on six women on the Tube and Overground. As a convicted sex offender, partially-sighted Levy was being monitored by the probation service and police. He repeatedly lied to officers who visited him at the home he shared with his mother, claiming he did not go out and watched YouTube and films instead. He later tried to claim that his partial sight and wobbly, crowded trains led him to grope 10 women on London's transport network.
Ms Valencia-Trujillo's children described her as a "big character" and "full of life". She became a grandmother in 2024 and was said to be a "much-loved" member of the community with a love of salsa dancing. Ms Wilkins' family said she was a much-loved woman and was missed every day by those who knew her.
Speaking outside the Old Bailey last week, Detective Chief Inspector Neil John, from Scotland Yard, said: "Simon Levy is a dangerous and predatory offender. His crimes were calculated, cruel and deeply disturbing." Deputy Assistant Commissioner Kevin Southworth, from the Met, said: "There's a collective system failure here, which has left Levy free to go on offending in this awful manner and left these victims at risk from his prolific offending, and that's something which ourselves and colleagues across the criminal justice system will need to reflect on."
