Double killer and rapist given whole life sentence

A serial sex attacker who had a "morbid fascination" with sex has been jailed for the rest of his life after he was found guilty of murdering two women and raping a third.

Simon Levy, 40, killed Carmenza Valencia-Trujillo, 53, in March 2025 and 39-year-old Sheryl Wilkins five months later. Earlier that year, he raped a third woman in the same Tottenham car park where Wilkins was later found dead.

At the Old Bailey on Wednesday, Judge Mark Lucraft KC sentenced Levy to a whole life order, meaning he will never be released.

The sentence comes after police and the Crown Prosecution Service apologised over a series of disastrous decisions that left him free to roam the streets.

During his trial, the court heard Levy suffocated both women in sexually motivated attacks, with Valencia-Trujillo found in a largely abandoned block of flats on the Aylesbury estate in south-east London, and Wilkins behind a car park wall near Tottenham High Road, north London.

The woman he raped had told the police where he lived but she was not formally interviewed until after Levy had killed.

During sentencing, Lucraft told Levy: "You are clearly someone who ruthlessly exploits others for your own personal sexual satisfaction".

Noting his disturbing internet history and collection of press cuttings about sexual crimes, he said Levy was "someone who appears to have a morbid fascination with sex, rape, and crime".

The judge added the offences reflected "a series of attacks by you upon vulnerable women".

Lucraft said he was "acutely aware that whole life terms are sentences that should be considered for rare cases".

But in this case "the starting point has to be a whole life order", he said, as the aggravating features outweighed any mitigating features and "this cannot be described in any way as a borderline case".

"You will be in prison for life and there will be a whole life order," the judge added.

The court heard victim impact statements from families of the murdered women and the woman he raped.

Lindsey Hicks, Wilkins' sister, addressed Levy directly, saying: "I hope you rot in prison for the rest of your life."

She added: "You Simon Levy have destroyed our lives and we will never get over this. Sheryl was a beautiful soul who you cruelly took away in an evil act of crime.

"We should have been growing old together like sisters do and be there to support each other.

"Instead, I'm having to realise that one day in the near future I will be older than my big sister."

She said the past year had been the "worst of our lives" and concluded her witness statement by telling him: "Know this, you lose."

Wilkins' mother, Mary Wilkins, said she takes a "small measure of comfort" that Levy is now locked up and will never be free again.

She added her daughter "ended your chances of hurting anyone else".

During his trial, jurors heard Levy had a string of convictions for attacking women dating back to July 2018, including one carried out against a prison officer in 2022.

Earlier this year, Levy was also convicted of sexually assaulting 11 other women, 10 of them on trains and the Tube in London between 2023 and 2025.

Levy had declined to give evidence during his trial but pleaded not guilty to the two murders, as well as two counts of rape, grievous bodily harm with intent, and non-fatal suffocation against the surviving woman.

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