Metro
Serial sex predator guilty of murdering two women and raping a third
Simon Levy faces a whole life order when he is sentenced for the two murders and rape attack (Picture: Met Police)
An ‘evil’ predator who murdered two women and nearly killed a third amid a wider years-long spree of sex attacks faces dying behind bars.
Simon Levy, 40, killed Carmenza Valencia-Trujillo, 53, in March 2025, leaving her body lying in the stairwell of a derelict building in Peckham, southeast London.
He was arrested and interviewed by police before being released and went on to murder Sheryl Wilkins, 39, in August last year.
Months earlier in January, Levy raped another woman and left her for dead in the same B&M car park in Tottenham, north London, where Ms Wilkins’ body would later be found.
Tom Little KC, prosecuting, told the Old Bailey Levy is ‘a predatory serial sexual attacker’.
Jurors heard that Levy was already a registered sex offender. He sexually assaulted two women in 2018 and was jailed in 2021.
After he was released in 2023, he carried on preying on women, and earlier this year was convicted of 11 counts of sexual assault in a separate trial at Inner London Crown Court.
Ten of the victims were young women who were using the Tube and London Overground, and the 11th was a prison officer assaulted while he was previously behind bars in 2022.
The final six sexual assaults in that three-year spree took place in between the murders of Ms Valencia-Trujillo and Ms Wilkins.
Simon Levy, 40, killed Carmenza Valencia-Trujillo, 53 (pictured), in March 2025 (Picture: Met Police)
He was arrested and interviewed by police before being released and went on to murder Sheryl Wilkins, 39 (pictured), in August last year (Picture: Met Police)
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Simon Levy was found guilty of murdering two women and almost killing a third while on police bail (Picture: Met Police)
Levy was today found guilty of two counts of murder, as well as charges of rape, GBH and non-fatal strangulation.
He was previously found guilty of 11 counts of sexual assault in an earlier trial in February this year, in addition to two similar convictions over attacks in 2018.
Jurors heard Levy raped one woman, who cannot be named, in January last year, bearing down on her with all his weight so that her collarbone broke.
He put his hand over her mouth and grabbed her throat, causing her to lose consciousness and fear that she might die during the attack in a car park in Tottenham High Road.
Two months later, in March, he murdered Ms Valencia-Trujillo, who was found dead in the stairwell of a largely abandoned block of flats in Southwark, southeast London.
He was arrested and interviewed by police on April 1 last year but released and went on to murder Ms Wilkins four months later in August that year.
One of the officers who found Ms Wilkins lying face down and covered in a jacket at first thought she might be the same victim from seven months earlier.
Prosecutors said Levy’s victims were ‘each in their own way very vulnerable’.
Mr Little said: ‘(This was) a series of attacks upon vulnerable women who either undertook sex work or who, by reason of drug addiction, would sometimes perform sexual services for money and/or drugs.
‘Therefore, a series of attacks committed, we say, by the same predatory serial sexual attacker in a similar way.’
One of the women targeted by Levy on the Tube took his photograph after being assaulted (Picture: British Transport Police)
He targeted women on the London Underground, sidling up to and assaulting them with his hand hidden by a jumper or coat (Picture: British Transport Police)
Four days after the attack on the surviving woman, she was arrested for breach of a community order while on her way to hospital for treatment for the injury to her collarbone.
She told police that she had been raped but was not well enough to be interviewed at the time because she was withdrawing from heroin.
Ms Valencia-Trujillo was found in the stairwell of a large, mostly condemned block of flats on March 17.
She was found lying face down in a landing area, with injuries to her face and no pulse, and her trousers were not fully pulled up, the court heard.
Levy had lived nearby for several months in 2023, and jurors were told he would have known the area.
His blood was found on a pipe in the stairwell area near where her body was found, the court heard.
Mr Little said: ‘Something caused him to bleed at the very location where Carmenza was killed. That is, we say, no coincidence.’
DNA from his semen was also found on her body, the jury was told.
On June 8, police closed the rape investigation without having interviewed the woman about what happened.
Ms Wilkins was found dead behind a wall in the B&M car park in Tottenham High Road on August 24, with a jacket placed over the top half of her body, including her head.
Weeks later, the surviving rape victim made a statement on video and described how she thought she was going to die during the attack.
Jurors heard the physical description she gave and details of the address where the man lived matched Levy, and that she had picked him out in an identification parade.
She said: ‘I would not think this man would be so evil.
‘I believe I’m going to die. I couldn’t believe. I will never forget the smell of his hands, salty, smelly.’
Ms Valencia-Trujillo captured on a doorbell camera (Picture: Met Police)
The cause of death for both murdered women was unascertained.
Levy did not give evidence, but his barrister Siobhan Grey KC suggested neither death was a crime, saying the toxicology evidence indicated they could have been caused by drugs.
She also accused the surviving woman of lying about what happened.
Ms Grey told jurors Levy admitted having ‘consensual intercourse’ with all three women but denied harming any of them.
She said: ‘We say to you that just because one man over a period of eight months had sexual intercourse with three sex workers does not mean that he has intended to harm them or kill them.’
The defence called forensic pathologist Dr Brett Lockyer, who the court heard had advised on television programmes such as Silent Witness.
After a review of post-mortem examination findings, Dr Lockyer agreed the cause of the women’s deaths was ‘unascertained’, which he said was relatively rare in forensic work.
Giving evidence about Ms Valencia-Trujillo’s death, he said the body being face down ‘complicated’ matters, especially when there was a suggestion of possible neck compression.
He told the jury that injuries including petechial haemorrhaging, congestion of the face, froth in the airway and injury to the neck are not necessarily significant on their own but taken together they can ‘build a picture’ to suggest a victim was strangled.
The ‘hallmark’ injury in strangulation cases is damage to the voicebox or the bone that sits above the voicebox, he said, and this is sometimes only visible under a microscope.
Discussing the case of Ms Valencia Trujillo, he said no fractures were found in the neck.
Mr Little told jurors of Levy’s decision not to give evidence: ‘His total silence in this trial is proof positive that he is trying to hide the truth from you.
‘His silence in this case is deafening.’
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