Police and prosecution errors left proven sex offender free to murder two women in London
Catastrophic errors left a persistent and proven sex offender free before he murdered two women in London, it can be revealed.
On Friday, an Old Bailey jury found Simon Levy, 40, guilty of murdering Carmenza Valencia-Trujillo in March 2025 and Sheryl Wilkins five months later.
Levy was on bail as a suspect for the first murder when he committed the second, after police said they lacked sufficient evidence to charge him.
Months before the first killing, police arrested Levy for sexual assaults of women on trains but made errors that delayed charging him. While on bail, he carried out further attacks, taking the total to 10 across London. Although charged with most of the offences, Levy remained free and went on to commit his second murder.
Prosecutors also admitted to bungling efforts to have Levy remanded in custody, by failing to provide three court hearings with key information demonstrating the full extent of the danger he posed to women.
Yet even before the attacks on women travelling by train, police and prosecutors knew Levy posed a serious risk.
He was first jailed for a sexual offence in 2021. While in prison, he sexually assaulted a female prison officer.
After his release, he carried out a series of sexual assaults on trains across London between 2023 and 2025. He was also the prime suspect in a rape investigation.
In January, March and August 2025, Levy, from Tottenham in north London, savagely attacked three women who provided sexual services, killing two and leaving one seriously injured.
The jury convicted him by an 11-1 majority of the murder of Valencia-Trujillo, 53, in a partly disused tower block on 17 March 2025. The scene was close to where Levy had lived after his release from prison following his first convictions for sexual offences.
The jury was unanimous on all other verdicts and found him guilty of the murder of Wilkins, 39, in a Tottenham car park on 24 August 2025.
He was convicted of raping and attacking a third woman, 35, in January 2025, who survived. She was attacked in the same Tottenham car park, eight minutes’ walk from the home Levy shared with his mother and sister.
Levy was impassive, wearing dark glasses because of an eye injury, as the jury delivered its verdicts, which condemned him to the mandatory life sentence for murder. He will be sentenced on Wednesday.
The Crown Prosecution Service, the Metropolitan police and British Transport Police have admitted making errors.
Kevin Southworth, a deputy assistant commissioner at the Met, which investigated the killings, described Levy as a “predatory monster”. He said Wilkins, the second woman murdered by Levy, would probably have been alive were it not for what he described as “collective system failures”.
The litany of failings can only be reported now that Levy’s murder trial has ended, leading to the lifting of reporting restrictions on that and a trial earlier this year.
A jury in February convicted him of 10 sexual assaults on trains, including one on a daughter travelling with her mother, as well as the attack on a female prison officer while he was in jail.
Police arrested Levy for a number of attacks on trains in November 2024, with CCTV tying him to the scene of the assaults. Six more occurred in the first five months of 2025. By May 2025, police wanted Levy remanded, fearing he posed a “high risk of reoffending” with his crimes “escalating”.
The CPS admitted errors at three court hearings in May, June and August 2025, which ended in Levy remaining free. It would not specify publicly what those were, but a source authorised to speak for the organisation said they included failing to mention he had been arrested for Valencia-Trujillo’s murder, and that it could find no record or mention of Levy’s past sexual assault convictions, nor that he was a suspect in a 2024 rape.
The CPS said: “We accept there was relevant information regarding bail that was not provided to the court when bail applications were being considered. Our actions fell short of the standards that victims, families and the public are entitled to expect … We could and should have taken a more robust approach to representations about bail.”
Other errors and questionable decisions included:
Levy failed to attend three crown court hearings for the train attacks, and the CPS accepts there is no evidence of a warrant being sought for his detention. For two he claimed illness, for the other that he had not been informed. His final non-appearance in crown court was on 11 August 2025. A fortnight later he murdered Wilkins. A CPS source said individuals involved in the Levy case had been disciplined.
The assaults on the London tube network and trains were investigated by BTP. Officers arrested Levy, who was travelling on a stolen Oyster travel card, but handed it back to him, unaware it was stolen. With it he travelled to south London to commit his first murder, and carried out further sexual assaults on trains.
BTP admitted the charging of Levy for his sexual assaults on trains in November 2024 was held up because of a delay in holding an identification parade after his arrest. His bail was extended, and during this delay he attacked and raped another woman and murdered Valencia-Trujillo. BTP said it had not referred its errors to the police watchdog. Instead it has moved one officer, who it says delayed the holding of the ID parade, out of investigations, and given a supervisor words of advice.
BTP identified Levy as a suspect and charged him but never searched his home. Peter Fulton, BTP’s head of crime, said: “There’s a fine line between going fishing and breaching someone’s human rights.” He said that every woman who had reported Levy for attacking them on a train had seen him charged and convicted. When the Met, which investigated the murders, searched Levy’s home, evidence was found about his attack on the prison officer.
The police watchdog has placed two Met officers under investigation over whether Levy was supervised correctly as a person on the sex offender register. A constable is under investigation for gross misconduct, meaning he could be dismissed. The other officer, under investigation for misconduct, is a detective sergeant.
The Met downgraded his risk as a sex offender from high to medium in August 2024, in part because Levy was blind in one eye. The attack that damaged his eye occurred days after Levy is alleged to have raped a woman in May 2024 in north London, and detectives believe it was a reprisal for that.
The failings come despite decades of promises from police chiefs, senior prosecutors, courts and government that the criminal justice system will better protect women from male violence after a series of scandals.
Harriet Wistrich, of the Centre for Women’s Justice, said an independent inquiry was needed, while Andrea Simon, London’s victims’ commissioner, said: “There are striking parallels with other cases where escalating risk was not acted upon, with devastating and preventable consequences.
“Critical opportunities to intervene were missed, despite him being a known violent offender.”
The crime and policing minister, Sarah Jones, described Levy as a monster and said the failings that had allowed him to remain free were “deeply concerning”.
Jones signalled the government would allow the relevant institutions and police watchdog to establish what went wrong. “The fact that Levy was able to inflict such devastating harm after being freed by police and the courts is deeply concerning,” she said. “It raises serious questions that require urgent answers.”
Reporting from The Guardian contributed to this story.
