A sex offender who should have been remanded in custody was recently bailed to an address two doors down from his victim, the Met Police have said, highlighting the challenges they face in monitoring sexual offenders in the criminal justice system.
It comes as they face backlash over their handling of the investigation into double-murderer Simon Levy, which saw the prolific predator kill Carmenza Valencia-Trujillo, 53, and Sheryl Wilkins, 39, after a string of sexual assaults against other women.
The force commissioner Sir Mark Rowley has criticised other agencies’ routine failures that allowed Levy’s offending, including the prison service and the crown prosecution service.
Speaking to BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on Thursday, Sir Mark also revealed his force had dealt with a case of a sex offender who had been bailed to an address on the same street as their victim lived.
He said: “I’m the leader stepping towards; there’s no one from the court service, no one from CPS, no one from probation stepping forward and talking about their failures – we will always be publicly accountable, we’re the agency closest to the public.
“The reason we’re really worried and concerned by what’s going on is we’re the ones who see victims day in and day out… we had a case the other day of a sex offender who should have been remanded in custody, bailed to an address two doors down from his victim.
“These things are happening routinely and it really worries us because we’re close to those victims.”
There are currently 10,800 registered sex offenders in London and the number grows by 100 every three months, he added.
Taking aim at the prison service, he said he did not understand why Levy was released after he sexually assaulted on of its staff members in jail.
Levy was questioned by police about the assault five months after his release, which Sir Mark said was “too slow”.
“I’m prepared to come here and be accountable, we’ve got two officers being, we’ve referred to be investigated by the independent office of police complaints, we take our accountability seriously,” he said.
“The rest of the system is not doing that. The prison service should not have released somebody who’s indecently assaulting its staff.”
Levy, 40, killed Valencia-Trujillo in March 2025 and Wilkins in August that year, as his spiral of offending escalated from sexual assaults on the Tube to double murder.
He suffocated both women in sexually motivated attacks, with Valencia-Trujillo found in a largely abandoned block of flats on the Aylesbury estate in southeast London, and 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 the same car park where Wilkins’ body was later found, and the surviving victim had told police where her attacker lived.
But she was not formally interviewed until after Levy had killed twice, in a catalogue of justice system failings that meant Levy was repeatedly set free on bail despite a growing number of attacks on women.
At the Old Bailey on Wednesday, Levy was sentenced by Judge Mark Lucraft KC, the Recorder of London, to a whole life prison term, condemning him to spend the rest of his life in jail with no chance of ever being released.
“You are clearly someone who ruthlessly exploits others for your own personal sexual satisfaction,” said the judge.
Following the verdicts on Friday, the Metropolitan Police, British Transport Police (BTP) 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.
On Wednesday, the Met Police said detectives have “exhausted numerous lines of inquiry” – including working with coroners – to identify whether Levy is responsible for any similar, unsolved incidents, including deaths. They added they are yet to find anything they believe is linked to Levy.
