Two Women Dead, One Known Offender Free: The Bail Chain That Failed

Two women should be alive today. Carmenza Valencia-Trujillo, 53, was killed in March 2025. Sheryl Wilkins, 39, was killed five months later by the same man, a convicted sex offender who was on bail and under police monitoring at the time he murdered them ⁷¹¹³⁴. That number — two — is the measure of what a chain of admitted police and prosecution failures allowed to happen in London last year.

On Friday 7 August 2026, Simon Levy, 40, was found guilty at the Old Bailey of murdering both women and of raping a third woman, after what court reporting described as a series of disastrous decisions by police, prosecutors and courts that left him free ⁷¹¹³. He faces a possible whole-life sentence ⁴. The verdict closed the question of who killed Valencia-Trujillo and Wilkins, but it opened a harder one about why Levy was still free to reach them at all.

Levy was not unknown to the system. He was a prolific sexual offender, convicted of two sexual assaults committed in 2018 and jailed in 2021 ⁴⁷. While in custody in 2022 he sexually assaulted a female prison officer ⁴⁷. He was out of jail in 2023, recalled in 2024 after an allegation of rape, then released three months later ⁴⁷. He was later found guilty of 11 sexual assaults between 2022 and 2025, many of them on public transport ⁴⁷. In other words, by the time he came to kill, his pattern was documented, repeated and escalating.

Weeks before the first murder, Levy raped and suffocated a woman who survived ⁷. She gave police what has been described as a heartbreaking account, but police did not take a formal statement from her for months ⁷. That delay matters because it left a violent, recent allegation sitting without the formal weight that might have changed bail and remand decisions. She is not named for legal reasons, but her case is now central to understanding how the first safeguard failed before Valencia-Trujillo was dead.

After his arrest for the murder of Valencia-Trujillo, Levy was released under investigation ⁷¹¹. Months later he killed again ⁷¹¹. Two admitted breakdowns created the windows in which he stayed free ⁷. The first concerned the public-transport investigation. British Transport Police said delays in its investigation meant his bail was extended and he was free to murder Valencia-Trujillo ⁷¹⁰. It was not a single missed appointment or lost file, in that account, but a stalled case that kept extending the time a repeat offender spent in the community at the peak of his offending.

The second breakdown came at court. At an initial hearing for some of the assaults, Levy was bailed because not all relevant information was provided by the Crown Prosecution Service to remand him into custody, leaving him free to kill Wilkins ⁷². Remand is supposed to be the moment when history counts — prior convictions, related allegations, risk on bail, pattern across forces. On that day, the court did not get the full history, and the argument for custody was made with one hand tied behind it.

The agencies involved do not dispute that description. The Crown Prosecution Service apologised, saying there should have been a more robust approach to try to keep him in custody and vowing to strengthen its approach in serious sexual offence cases ⁷¹⁰. British Transport Police said it has amended its procedures for repeat offenders as a result ⁷. The Metropolitan Police, British Transport Police and courts described what happened as a collective system failure ¹⁰. A senior Metropolitan Police detective admitted Levy's second murder victim could have been saved ⁹.

That admission is now being tested by the police watchdog. Two Metropolitan Police officers are being investigated by the Independent Office for Police Conduct over alleged failures in their handling of Levy, who was on bail and being monitored by police when he committed the murders ³⁴. The Metropolitan Police also voluntarily referred itself for wider learning on system failure and how Levy came to be bailed at the peak of his offending ¹⁰. The distinction matters: one track asks whether individual officers breached standards, the other asks why the structure around them allowed release, extended bail and incomplete court information to line up in sequence.

London's victims' commissioner, Andrea Simons, said a litany of failures had allowed Levy to kill two women and rape a third, and called for a review into the failure to monitor him appropriately ⁵. Police have urged more Levy victims to come forward ⁵. The call reflects the proven span of his offending — 11 sexual assaults between 2022 and 2025, including assaults on public transport — and the fear that the convictions to date still undercount the harm ⁴⁷.

What makes this case different from a single bail error is the layering. Release under investigation after the first murder arrest, then extended bail while a separate investigation stalled, then an initial hearing where the remand argument went ahead without the full history — each safeguard assumed another part of the system was holding the risk ⁷¹⁰². None of them did, despite a record already flagged as prolific ⁴⁷. The surviving woman's delayed statement fits the same pattern: information existed, but it was not converted in time into protection ⁷.

The case now sits against a national promise to reduce violence against women and girls, a promise that is judged not in strategies but in bail sheets and hearing bundles. Levy was convicted of two sexual assaults from 2018, jailed in 2021, accused again inside custody and outside it, and still at liberty during the months he killed ⁴⁷. The unresolved question is why the dots across those reports, arrests and bail decisions were not connected before Wilkins died — and what systemic changes will prevent the same referral and remand failures from freeing the next prolific offender already in the files ⁵⁷¹⁰.