Killer who preyed on women on the Tube for seven years found guilty of double murder and rape while out on bail
Simon Levy, 40, preyed on women across London in a seven-year campaign, and was allowed to commit his second murder while he remained a suspect in his first.
British Transport Police had twice asked a magistrates’ court to remand Levy in custody, after he’d been charged, but he was allowed to walk the streets, as he awaited a trial date.
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Met Police
A man who used the London transport network to carry out a seven-year campaign of sex attacks has been found guilty of murdering two women and raping a third, while he was on bail. Simon Levy, 40, from Tottenham, north London, was convicted following a trial at the Old Bailey.The fatal attacks against Carmenza Valencia-Trujillo, 53, and Sheryl Wilkins, 39, as well as the double rape of a surviving victim were committed while he was under investigation for a string of sexual assaults across London.Levy sexually assaulted a woman in 2018 at a party in Camden market, before carrying out a string of other attacks across London, in parks and on the transport network - even using a TfL staff Oyster card to travel across the capital for free.
Carmenza Valencia-Trujillo, 53 (left), and Sheryl Wilkins, 39.
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Met Police
In February this year, he was convicted of 11 sexual assaults between April 2022 and May 2025. He was arrested in April 2025 in relation to the first murder, months before committing the second murder in August 2025.British Transport Police had twice asked a magistrates’ court to remand Levy in custody, after he’d been charged, but he was allowed to walk the streets, as he awaited a trial date.
At the time of the attack, Levy was under investigation by British Transport Police, having been arrested and released on bail, for three sexual assaults on the Central Line of London’s Underground three months earlier.
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Met Police
A senior officer in the force has also admitted “incompetence” by two members of their investigation team led to a delay in identifying Levy from initial reports of sexual assault on the Underground.The senior officer went on to say that they had “significant concerns” that Levy would continue to offend if he was granted bail and that BTP had done its “very best” to get him remanded in custody.He suggested the court’s decision to let him out may have been because of “prisons being full”.Jurors heard that Simon Levy twice raped a woman, who legally can’t be named, in a supermarket car park, near to his home in Tottenham, on 21 January 2025. She was a sex worker, who later told officers she’d been trafficked to the UK. At the time of the attack, Levy was under investigation by British Transport Police, having been arrested and released on bail, for three sexual assaults on the Central Line of London’s Underground three months earlier.He was convicted of those attacks, alongside eight others earlier this year, but the details couldn’t previously be reported.The Metropolitan Police began investigating the Tottenham rape after an officer had spotted Levy’s victim with a broken collar bone, when she was arrested for breaching a community order.Less than eight weeks later, still on police bail from BTP and having not been arrested by the Met Police over the rape, Simon Levy committed his first murder.The predator had travelled from north London to Elephant and Castle in the south of the capital on 16 March 2025, to meet another sex worker: 53 year-old Carmenza Valencia-Trujillo.
Simon Levy, 40, from Tottenham, north London, was convicted following a trial at the Old Bailey.
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PA
Her body was found the next day in the stairwell of a derelict building in Southwark. Prosecutor Tom Little KC told jurors that Simon Levy used to live in the area and that his DNA was found at the crime scene and on his victim’s body.The cause of Ms Valencia-Trujillo’s death was “unascertained”, the court heard.Simon Levy was arrested by the Met Police on 1 April 2025, but Scotland Yard said there was a lack of evidence at the time to charge him and he was released under investigation.Levy continued his spree of sexual assaults, while then under investigation by two police forces. He targeted six more women on London’s transport network between Carmenza’s death in March and the end of May 2025.Three months later, Simon Levy killed again, despite now having been charged by BTP for sexual offences which happened the year before.Sheryl Wilkins, 39, was found dead on 24 August, in the same supermarket car park in Tottenham where Levy had raped a woman at the start of the year.
He was arrested 11 days later, before then being charged with both Sheryl’s murder as well as the previously reported rape, intentional suffocation and inflicting grievous bodily harm.British Transport Police told reporters they had twice asked a magistrates court to remand Simon Levy in custody when he had been charged with sexual offences. Both times it was rejected.
Levy is seen walking away from the scene.
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Met Police
Deputy Assistant Commissioner Kevin Southworth from the Metropolitan Police said: “There's a collective system challenge here about how Simon Levy was able to continue his offending despite coming to notice on so many occasions.“It's not lost on any of us, including myself, that he was put before the magistrates' court on two occasions in May and June in 2025, where strong applications were made to remand him in custody and he was nevertheless bailed and then went on to commit at least one further murder. “This was, by any measure, an incredibly dangerous offender and whilst there were multiple investigations, ultimately the collective system failed, and his bail from court left him free to go on to offend in the most harrowing manner imaginable.”The Metropolitan Police has faced questions about the lack of supervision in place for Levy, after he’d been released under investigation for the murder of Carmenza Valencia-Trujillo.Scotland Yard says it has since referred itself to the Independent Office of Police Conduct watchdog to investigate any failings.DAC Southworth added: “We are a very reflective, learning organisation, these days more so than when I joined 29 years ago.“We're very quick to hold ourselves to account now and I think one of the points of reflection for the senior leadership at the Met is how do we, as a collective system, reflect on what went wrong here?” The British Transport Police says it has dealt with “incompetence” among two officers who initially investigated Simon Levy, through internal disciplinary action.Deniz Uğur, Deputy Director of the End Violence Against Women Coalition, told LBC the case is a “deeply upsetting one which highlights failings across the justice system.”She said: “Serious questions must be asked about why someone suspected of such egregious serial offending was allowed to continue perpetrating harm to women for such a long time without the risk of intensification behind the pattern of offending being identified. “This could have saved the lives of Carmenza Valencia-Trujillo and Sheryl Wilkins and prevented countless others from being subjected to life-altering traumatic sexual assaults.“The responsibility lies not only in one agency but across the justice system. The series of choices not to act in this case played a significant role in making these women, and therefore all of us, unsafe.”
