Two police officers are facing a misconduct investigation following a series of failures that allowed convicted sex offender Simon Levy to remain at liberty, despite previous warnings about the danger he posed to women.
Levy, 40, was found guilty at the Old Bailey on Friday of murdering two women, Carmenza Valencia-Trujillo, 53, and Sheryl Wilkins, 39.
Follow the Elizabethblog channel on WhatsApp: https://whatsapp.com/channel/0029VbDQN5lI1rcbSgriLG2M
He was also convicted of raping another woman and carrying out a serious sexual assault that left her with a broken collarbone.
Valencia-Trujillo, a grandmother, was killed in March 2025, while mother-of-four Wilkins was murdered in August of the same year.
The case has raised serious questions about how Levy was handled by the Metropolitan Police, British Transport Police (BTP), the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), probation services and the wider criminal justice system.
Authorities have acknowledged several failures in their handling of Levy, including decisions that allowed him to remain on bail after he had already been suspected of serious offences.
Deputy Assistant Commissioner Kevin Southworth of the Metropolitan Police said mistakes made during hearings at Highbury Corner Magistrates’ Court in May and June 2025 contributed to Levy remaining free and ultimately enabled him to kill again.
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.
“His behaviour is self-evidently that of a very prolific serial sexual predator who seeks his sexual gratification in a number of ways, whether it’s opportunistically offending against strangers on the Underground system, or whether it’s targeting sex workers in the most horrific and harrowing fashion.
“Ultimately what we’re talking about here is a serial sexual predator who’s finally been brought to justice, but ultimately too late to help the victims of his tragic acts.”
A separate investigation is now examining whether Levy may have attacked additional women during periods when he was repeatedly released on bail.
Levy had already come to the attention of authorities several times before the two murders.
He was jailed in 2021 after being convicted of groping two women in 2018. One incident happened at Notting Hill Carnival, while another took place at a party in Camden.
While serving his sentence in 2022, Levy sexually assaulted a prison guard. Despite this, he was released the following year.
His offending continued after his release. In October 2023, he sexually assaulted a woman on a London Underground train. He was also accused of raping another woman in May 2024, an allegation that resulted in his return to prison before he was released again in August 2024.
In November 2024, British Transport Police arrested Levy over four sexual assaults on the Tube. He was later convicted in connection with those offences.
However, a delay in arranging an identification parade meant the case was not progressed quickly enough. The parade eventually took place in April 2025, leaving Levy free during the period in which he allegedly raped another woman and murdered Valencia-Trujillo.
One woman who survived an attack by Levy told authorities that she had been raped and knew where her attacker lived.
Despite this information, she was not formally interviewed until after Levy had allegedly killed two women.
The delays have become a major focus of the investigation into how the case was handled.
There were also concerns over the information provided to the courts during Levy’s bail hearings.
Following Valencia-Trujillo’s death, Levy was released on bail at hearings in May and June 2025.