British Transport Police detectives face investigation over alleged failings which led to Simon Levy murders

The police watchdog has launched an investigation into two British Transport Police (BTP) detectives after a serial sex offender was left free to murder two women and rape a third.

Simon Levy’s crime spree spanned from 2018 to 2025 and included myriad sex attacks on women in public spaces and two murders, as the Metropolitan Police, BTP and the courts failed to stop him.

Levy was on bail as his attacks on women escalated to double murder.

The Met, BTP and Crown Prosecution Service have all admitted failings in how they dealt with him.

A probe has now been launched into the conduct of two BTP detectives over “alleged failures to progress or supervise an investigation” into two reported sexual assaults by Levy on the London Underground in October 2024, the the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) said on Tuesday.

It comes after the IOPC previously said an investigation into alleged failures of two Metropolitan Police officers in their management of Levy following his prison release on licence in February 2023 was “ongoing”.

A spokesperson for the watchdog said of the investigation into the BTP officers: “Levy was arrested in November 2024 regarding these incidents but was bailed to return to custody in January, with his bail further extended twice until May 2025 to allow for the investigation to be completed.

“During this period, Levy committed multiple further sexual assaults on trains, and other serious offences including murder and rape.

“We received a voluntary conduct referral from BTP on August 12 and decided an independent investigation was required.”

“The families of murder victims Carmenza Valencia-Trujillo and Sheryl Wilkins, and the woman who survived the rape attack, have been notified of our investigation,” the spokesperson added.

The BTP said: “It’s in the public interest for independent and objective scrutiny to be applied, and we will fully co-operate with the IOPC’s independent investigation.”

Levy, 40, was jailed for the rest of his life earlier this month after being convicted of killing grandmother Carmenza Valencia-Trujillo, 53, in March 2025 and mother-of-four Sheryl Wilkins, 39, in August that year.

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 January 2025 in the same car park where Ms Wilkins’s body was later found.

The surviving victim had told police where her attacker lived.

Levy committed the murders after having been 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.

He sexually assaulted a prison guard while behind bars in 2022 but was still released the following year, going on to sexually assault a woman on the Tube in October 2023 and allegedly rape another in May 2024, for which he was recalled to prison and released again in August that year.

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 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.