Two officers are under investigation for misconduct after a serial sex predator was left free to murder two women and rape a third despite warnings that he was a danger to women. Simon Levy, 40, was found guilty on Friday 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.
The Metropolitan Police, British Transport Police (BTP) and Crown Prosecution Service have all admitted failings in how they dealt with Levy, after he committed the second murder while on bail after being suspected of carrying out the first. Officers now also believe that Levy may have claimed more victims during the multiple occasions he was released on bail, potentially carrying out daily attacks.
Misconduct notices served
The Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) said it had served a gross misconduct notice on a Met police constable and a misconduct notice on a detective sergeant. During the trial, prosecutor Tom Little KC said that the 'predatory' Levy had targeted the three vulnerable women, all of whom carried out street sex work in order to fund drug addictions.
The surviving victim told police at the time that she had been raped and knew where her attacker lived, but she was not formally interviewed until after he had killed twice. Deputy Assistant Commissioner Kevin Southworth, from the Met, said failures to remand Levy in custody at hearings at Highbury Corner Magistrates' Court in May and June 2025 had left him free to kill a second time.
He 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.'
Levy's history of attacks
Levy was previously 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. He sexually assaulted a prison guard while behind bars in 2022 but was still released the following year, going on to sexually assault a woman on the Tube in October 2023 and allegedly rape another in May 2024, for which he was recalled to prison and released again in August that year.
Levy was arrested by BTP in November 2024 for four sexual assaults on the Tube, for which he has since been separately convicted, 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.
Missed opportunities
Following her death, he was released on bail at two magistrates' court hearings in May and June 2025, with the CPS admitting 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 he 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 in March and Ms Wilkins in August were interspersed with sexual assaults on six women on the Tube and Overground. As a convicted sex offender, Levy was being monitored by the probation service and police but repeatedly lied to officers who visited him at the home he shared with his mother in March and July 2025, claiming he did not go out and watched YouTube and films instead.
Victims' families react
His victims spoke of their shock at learning of his other crimes, with one, who cannot be named for legal reasons, telling the court: 'After reporting the sexual assaults, it wasn't long before I learned that my attacker was already known to the police for sexual violence and is a convicted sex offender. You could not begin to understand the horror I felt at hearing this.'
London's Victims' Commissioner Andrea Simon said she was 'appalled by the litany of failures to manage a prolific offender like Levy'. She told BBC News: 'I'm keen now to see how we can uncover every single key moment that there was to assess the harm that Levy posed to women by every justice agency involved, not just the police, but every critical opportunity there was to intervene.'
The jury on Friday found Levy guilty of two counts of rape, grievous bodily harm with intent and the non-fatal smothering of the third woman whose collarbone was broken. Members of the victims' families burst into tears as the verdict was delivered after the jury deliberated for 13 hours.
Judge Mark Lucraft KC adjourned sentencing until Wednesday August 12 and remanded Levy into custody. Speaking outside the Old Bailey, 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.'
