Serial sex attacker Simon Levy jailed for whole life over murders of two women
A serial sex attacker who murdered two women and raped a third after being left free to kill has been jailed for the rest of his life.
Simon Levy, 40, killed grandmother Carmenza Valencia-Trujillo, 53, in March 2025 and mother-of-four Sheryl Wilkins, 39, in August that year, as his spiral of offending escalated from sexual assaults on the Tube to double murder. He suffocated both women in sexually motivated attacks, with Ms Valencia-Trujillo found in a largely abandoned block of flats on the Aylesbury estate in south-east London, and Ms Wilkins behind a car park wall near Tottenham High Road, north London. When he turned killer, Levy had already subjected a third woman to a brutal rape in the same car park where Ms Wilkins’ body was later found, and the surviving victim had told police where her attacker lived. But she was not formally interviewed until after Levy had killed twice, in a catalogue of justice system failings that meant Levy was repeatedly set free on bail despite a growing number of attacks on women. At the Old Bailey on Wednesday, Levy was sentenced by Judge Mark Lucraft KC, the Recorder of London, to a whole life prison term, condemning him to spend the rest of his life in jail with no chance of ever being released. “You are clearly someone who ruthlessly exploits others for your own personal sexual satisfaction,” said the judge. Noting his disturbing internet history and collection of press cuttings about sexual crimes, he said Levy is “someone who appears to have a morbid fascination with sex, rape, and crime”. Levy’s victims branded him a “monster” and a “parasite” as he faced the sentencing hearing. At a trial which concluded last week, Levy was found guilty by a jury of two counts of murder, two counts of rape, grievous bodily harm with intent and the non-fatal smothering of the rape victim. Levy was convicted earlier this year at Inner London Crown Court of 11 sexual assaults on London’s public transport network. During the murder trial, prosecutor Tom Little KC said “predatory” Levy targeted Ms Wilkins, Ms Valencia-Trujillo, and the third woman who survived, knowing they were vulnerable as street sex workers with drug addictions. Levy, who wore sunglasses throughout the sentencing hearing, appeared to be smiling as he entered the dock to be sentenced, and he spoke only to say “yes” when asked to confirm his name. He looked on without displaying emotion as the surviving victim, as well as the murder victim’s family members, delivered their impact statements. The surviving rape victim branded Levy a “monster”, and told the court she had become a drug addict and sex worker after being trafficked to the UK. She had been attacked by Levy in a secluded area of a car park after he promised her money in exchange for sex. “He took away my soul that night and he took away my dignity,” she said, calling the attack “worse than all the nights of being a victim of trafficking”. “This man is a parasite not worthy of any more of my words or time,” she added. Ms Wilkins’ sister Lindsey Hicks tearfully addressed Levy directly, saying: “You, Simon Levy, have destroyed our lives and we will never ever get over this.” Ms Valencia-Trujillo’s daughter, Nazly Johana Fuenmayor Valencia, called the murder “horrific”, and told the court: “There’s an emptiness that can’t be filled. “Our world has been ripped apart, she was taken from our family and we will never be the same again.” She paid tribute to her mother as a “beautiful woman both inside and out”, and added: “She came to this country to give her children a better life and for safety, and her life was taken so cruelly.” Following the verdicts on Friday, the Metropolitan Police, British Transport Police (BTP) and Crown Prosecution Service admitted failings in how they dealt with Levy, who was on bail as his attacks on women escalated to double murder. The Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) said it had served a gross misconduct notice on a Met police constable and a misconduct notice on a detective sergeant. Scotland Yard has also issued a plea for any more survivors of sex attacks by Levy to come forward to police. On Wednesday, the Met Police said detectives have “exhausted numerous lines of inquiry” – including working with coroners – to identify whether Levy is responsible for any similar, unsolved incidents, including deaths. They added they are yet to find anything they believe is linked to Levy. Levy’s prolific sexual offending spanned the period between 2018 and 2025. He was jailed in 2021 for groping two women in the summer of 2018, one at Notting Hill Carnival and the other at a party in Camden. Levy was arrested by BTP in November 2024 for sexual assaults on the Tube, but delays in organising an identification parade until the following April left him free to carry out the rape and first murder. Following Ms Valencia-Trujillo’s death, Levy was released on bail at two magistrates’ court hearings in May and June 2025. The Crown Prosecution Service admitted that it had not opposed bail at the first hearing, and the prosecutor had not given the court all the relevant information for consideration at the second hearing. There were another three crown court hearings that he failed to attend for various reasons, yet no arrest warrant was requested. Less than two weeks after a hearing on August 11, he murdered Ms Wilkins. The murders of Ms Valencia-Trujillo and Ms Wilkins over eight months in 2025 were interspersed with sexual assaults on six women on the Tube and Overground. As a convicted sex offender, Levy was being monitored by the probation service and police but repeatedly lied to officers who visited him at the home he shared with his mother, claiming he did not go out and watched YouTube and films instead. After the guilty verdicts, Deputy Assistant Commissioner Kevin Southworth, from the Met Police, 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.” After sentencing, Mr Southworth said: “We know that this case has raised questions around the way Levy was handled and we have carefully reflected on the opportunities missed to prevent his violent offending. It highlighted that improvements needed to be made and we have not waited for the outcome of the IOPC’s report to implement change. “As the commissioner recently said, we are concerned by the fragility of the criminal justice system. As we have seen in Levy’s case, despite clear risk and rapid escalation, the courts defaulted to bail on two occasions. We now need to work together, with other judicial partners, to create and implement a plan of action which sees repeat offenders – like Levy – automatically placed on remand to protect the wider public.”
Published: by Radio NewsHub