How police failed to stop double murderer Simon Levy | BBC News

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Convicted sex offender Simon Levy, 40, from Tottenham, has been found guilty of murdering two women and violently raping a third surviving woman.

Carmenza Valencia-Trujillo, 54, was found dead in the stairwell of a derelict building in Walworth, Southwark in March 2025 and Sheryl Wilkins, 39, was found dead in Tottenham, north London in August.

Levy, who was being risk managed by the Met, was also found guilty of two rapes, grievous bodily harm and intentional suffocation, against a third surviving woman in Tottenham in January 2025.

When Carmenza Valencia-Trujillo was murdered in March last year, the killer made no attempt to hide her body. She was discovered, with visible injuries, lying face-down in the stairwell of a derelict block of flats in south London.

The DNA of registered sex offender Simon Levy was found on Carmenza’s body and he was arrested on suspicion of murder by local officers. But he was released without charge and the Metropolitan Police decided not to pursue a murder investigation.

The BBC can now report in detail how, earlier this year, Levy was also convicted of sexual assaults against 10 women on the tube between 2023 and 2025, and the sexual assault of a prison officer in 2022.

BBC News has been following Levy’s case and can now reveal the multiple failings of the authorities, the Met, British Transport Police (BTP) and courts, which led to Levy being able to continue to harm women – and eventually kill two.

The Met has accepted that the life of Sheryl Wilkins could have been saved, had it not been for its failure to prosecute Levy sooner.

There has been a “collective system failure” and it is a “tragedy beyond words that I can express,” deputy assistant commissioner Kevin Southworth told the BBC.

He has apologised to Sheryl’s family, he says, for “any role that we’ve played in failing to protect her from this man”.

Detective Chief Superintendent Pete Fulton, from BTP, said that delays in carrying out ID parades on Levy “absolutely wasn’t good enough” and was down to “incompetence” by two officers who have since been moved to other roles.

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