A convicted sex offender has been handed a rare whole life sentence at a court in London after being found guilty of murdering two women and raping a third. Simon Levy, a registered sex offender, was given the order after a case that has drawn scrutiny not only to his crimes but also to how the authorities failed to stop him. The whole life term means he will spend the rest of his life in prison, one of the most severe punishments available in the justice system.
The two women he murdered were Sheryl Wilkins, a dearly loved mother of four, and Carmenza Valencia Trujillo, a beloved grandmother. Members of both families arrived at court to see the man responsible for their loved ones' deaths sentenced. For the relatives, the hearing was the culmination of a case that had turned their lives upside down and left them searching for a sense of justice.
At the time of the killings, Levy was on bail for other offences and was being monitored by the police. Despite that supervision, he was free to kill, something prosecutors and the families attributed to a series of disastrous failings by the police, the prosecution and the courts. The case has become a stark example of how a known and dangerous offender was able to continue attacking women while under the eye of the authorities.
The Metropolitan Police accepted that there had been serious failings in the way the case was handled. The force's Commissioner, Sir Mark Rowley, acknowledged that his officers had made errors, but stressed that the failure went wider, saying the whole justice system had let the victims down. His admission underlined that the shortcomings were not confined to a single agency but ran across the institutions meant to protect the public.
During the sentencing, the court heard powerful victim impact statements. Carmenza's daughter, Nasli Fuenmayo Valencia, read a moving statement through tears, describing her mother as a beautiful woman inside and out. She told the court the family had been living a nightmare they could not wake up from, and that the rest of their lives would never be the same after such a loss.
Sheryl Wilkins' family also spoke of their vast grief. One of the statements addressed to Levy told him that Sheryl had been a beautiful soul he had cruelly taken away, but insisted that he had ultimately lost, because the family would keep her memory alive by sharing stories about her and living for her. The words carried both anguish and defiance, aimed directly at the man in the dock.
A statement from the surviving rape victim was read to the court by a prosecutor. She had been trafficked into the United Kingdom and was described as highly vulnerable, and she said she was a classical pianist who now hoped to forget the man who attacked her and to play music and smile again. The judge told Levy he had ruthlessly exploited and taken advantage of each of the three women for his own personal sexual satisfaction, and imposed the whole life order as the appropriate punishment.
