Police failures left serial rapist Simon Levy free to kill again

Simon Levy was found guilty at the Old Bailey of murdering Carmenza Valencia Trujillo, 54, and Sheryl Wilkins, 39, and of raping a third woman after a string of failures left a known sex offender free in London. Levy had been monitored by the Metropolitan Police, and two officers are now under investigation by the police watchdog over how he stayed at liberty despite prior convictions.

The case has laid bare how badly the system broke down around a man already known to police. Levy was a convicted sex offender who had sexually assaulted other women on public transport, yet he remained able to move through the city and offend again. In April 2025, he was arrested in connection with the suspected murder of Carmenza Valencia Trujillo, but he was later freed and went on to kill again about four months later.

That sequence has sharpened scrutiny of risk assessment, supervision and coordination between agencies. The Metropolitan Police, the British Transport Police and the courts all came under pressure over why repeated warning signs did not lead to tighter control of Levy’s movements. The failures were not confined to one decision or one office. They stretched across the point where police intelligence, prosecution judgment and court oversight were supposed to meet.

The evidence at trial also brought the surviving woman’s account back into focus. She denied inventing her allegation that Levy raped her and said the attack involved suffocation, adding to the picture of a predatory offender who had already drawn official attention. The jury’s verdict means the justice system is now dealing with the consequences of a case in which earlier intervention did not stop further violence.

Levy now faces possible whole-life prison sentences. For investigators, the central question is no longer whether he was dangerous, but how a man with a record of sexual offending, police monitoring and multiple warning signs was allowed back onto the streets long enough to kill twice.