A serial sex attacker has been jailed for life for murdering two women and raping a third after being left free to kill by a string of police failings.

Simon Levy, 40, was on Friday found guilty at the Old Bailey of murdering grandmother Carmenza Valencia-Trujillo, 53, in March 2025 and mother-of-four Sheryl Wilkins, 39, in August that year. At the Old Bailey on Wednesday, Levy was given a whole life prison tariff.

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.

The killings came after he subjected a third woman to a brutal sex attack in January last year in the same car park where Ms Wilkins’ body was later found.

The surviving victim, who suffered a broken collarbone, told police at the time that she had been raped and knew where her attacker lived, but she was not formally interviewed until after Levy had killed twice.

The jury also found Levy guilty of two counts of rape, grievous bodily harm with intent and the non-fatal smothering of the third woman.

Delivering the sentence, His Honour Judge Mark Lucraft KC described Levy as someone who “ruthlessly exploits others for your own personal sexual satisfaction”.

Addressing the defendant, the judge said Levy was being sentenced for a series of attacks upon “vulnerable women”.

“You are clearly someone who ruthlessly exploits others for your own personal sexual satisfaction,” he said.

Judge Lucraft KC added: “You are someone who appears to have a morbid fascination with sex, rape and crime.”

Nazly Fuenmayor Valencia - Ms Valencia-Trujillo's daughter - earlier told the court she has been “ripped apart” by the loss of her mother.

Ms Valencia said: “There’s an emptiness that can’t be filled.

“I have been ripped apart… we will never be the same again.”

She described her mother as a “beautiful woman”, adding: “She was a truly special person who gave so much love to others. Her kindness, her smile and the love she shared so freely will stay with us forever.”

Ms Wilkins’s sister Lindsey Hicks told the court that Levy “destroyed our lives”.

“Sheryl was a beautiful soul who was cruelly taken away”, she said.

“This last year has been the worst year of our lives and the pain you have put us through has been unbearable.”

Following the verdicts on Friday, the Metropolitan Police, British Transport Police 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.

Levy’s prolific sexual offending spanned the period between 2018 to 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.

Earlier this year, he was convicted of 11 counts of sexual assault in a separate trial at Inner London Crown Court.

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 11 August, 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.

Deputy Assistant Commissioner Kevin Southworth, from the Met, 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.”