Londoner Killed Two Women While Free on Bail Following a String of Rapes

A man named Levi killed two women in London while out on bail after being arrested on suspicion of sexually assaulting ten women. He committed the first murder in March last year, and killed his second victim five months later, The Guardian reports.

In March last year, Levi killed 53-year-old mother-of-two Carmensa Valencia-Trujillo in a partially empty residential building in southeast London. By that point he had already spent several months free on bail, having been arrested on suspicion of sexually assaulting ten women. He was only found guilty on those charges in February.

Five months after the first murder, Levi killed 39-year-old Cheryl Wilkinson. By then he had already been arrested on suspicion of the first murder but was released on bail again — police reportedly lacked sufficient evidence to charge him. Investigators were slow to connect the crimes, partly because he had changed his method.

A String of Attacks and Murders

Levi first attacked a woman in January last year — a 35-year-old rape victim survived. The attack took place in a car park in Tottenham, an eight-minute walk from the home where the unemployed man, blind in one eye, lived with his mother and sister. Two months later he attacked Valencia-Trujillo near his former address, and later killed Wilkinson in the same car park where he had attacked his first victim.

During the trial, the Metropolitan Police, the British Transport Police and the Crown Prosecution Service all admitted their own failures. Metropolitan Police Deputy Commissioner Kevin Southworth said that had it not been for these failings — which he called a "collective systemic failure" — Wilkinson would likely still be alive today.

The scandal deepened further when it emerged that Levi was a registered sex offender who had carried out attacks on women on trains between 2023 and 2025. He was first jailed for sexual assault in 2021, and while behind bars he even attacked a female prison officer.

Prosecutors and Police Admit Fault

The Crown Prosecution Service publicly apologised, admitting it had failed to provide three separate court hearings with key information about the level of danger Levi posed. According to the newspaper, at three hearings in 2025 prosecutors never mentioned that the man had already been arrested on suspicion of murder — information that could have led to his bail being revoked. Prosecutors also failed to uncover records of his previous convictions or mentions of an earlier rape allegation.

Levi himself never once appeared at these hearings: he missed the first two, citing illness, and claimed he had not known about the third. Despite breaching his bail conditions, no arrest warrant was issued. Two weeks after the last missed hearing, Levi killed Wilkinson.

"We acknowledge that there was significant information about the bail conditions that was not provided to the court when the application was considered. Our actions fell short of the standards that victims, their families and the public are entitled to expect," the Crown Prosecution Service said in a statement.

Separate criticism has been levelled at the British Transport Police: Levi's release on bail was repeatedly extended because the force failed to organise a suspect identification procedure in time. It was during these delays that he carried out the January rape and the murder of Valencia-Trujillo. Moreover, even after he was charged with sexual assault, transport police failed to search his home — it was later searched by Metropolitan Police officers, who found evidence there of the attack on the prison officer.

The Metropolitan Police is now investigating two of its own officers, suspected of failing to properly monitor Levi as a registered sex offender. One of them faces dismissal.

The whole affair is deeply uncomfortable for the police, prosecutors and courts: for decades, authorities have promised to do better at protecting women from male violence, yet cases like this keep happening.

Source: novinky.cz