Simon Levy, 40, of Beaufoy Road, Tottenham, was tried in his absence at the Old Bailey after failing to appear at a court hearing, following charges of murdering two women in London and raping a third. The charges mark one of the more serious criminal indictments to pass through the Central Criminal Court in recent months.

Levy — born 14 August 1985 — was charged with the murders of Sheryl Wilkins, 39, and Carmenza Valencia-Trujillo, 54, according to BBC News. He was additionally charged with the rape of a third woman. The Metropolitan Police confirmed the charge relating to Valencia-Trujillo was brought on 20 November 2025, with one of the alleged crime scenes located in Walworth, South London — roughly ten miles from Levy's registered address in Tottenham, North London.

Levy had been scheduled to appear via video-link at Westminster Magistrates' Court on 25 November 2025. He did not attend. The case was subsequently committed to the Old Bailey, where proceedings continued in his absence, as BBC News reported.

Trial in absentia in England and Wales is legally permissible under section 11 of the Magistrates' Courts Act 1980 and, at Crown Court level, under the Criminal Procedure Rules where a defendant has voluntarily absented themselves. Courts may proceed where the defendant had reasonable notice of the hearing and there is no adequate explanation for non-attendance. The mechanism exists to prevent defendants from frustrating proceedings through deliberate absence, though convictions secured this way carry their own appellate sensitivities — absence does not preclude later challenge on grounds of unfair process.

The two victims present starkly different profiles of London life. Sheryl Wilkins was 39; Carmenza Valencia-Trujillo was 54 and, as her surname indicates, likely of Colombian or broader Latin American heritage — though no further biographical detail has been verified in the sourced material. The geographic spread of the alleged offences, spanning Walworth in Southwark and connecting to a suspect based in Haringey, suggests investigators were tracking activity across a considerable portion of the city before charges were brought.

The Metropolitan Police's public appeal for further information following the Walworth discovery is standard practice in homicide investigations where detectives believe additional witnesses or evidence may be outstanding. It also signals that, at the point of charging, the evidential picture — while sufficient to charge — may not yet have been closed.

The rape charge adds a further layer of legal and investigative complexity. Under English law, the prosecution of a defendant for both homicide and serious sexual offences in a single indictment is procedurally possible and not uncommon where the alleged conduct forms part of a connected course of behaviour. Whether the prosecution will argue a pattern of predatory conduct — and what weight the jury, if empanelled, will be asked to place on that — remains a matter for trial.

Levy's failure to appear will itself become a point of record. Juries are routinely directed by judges that they may draw no adverse inference from a defendant's absence alone, though the circumstances of that absence — and any explanation offered — will be scrutinised. If Levy remains at large, a warrant for his arrest will have been issued; the extradition position depends entirely on his whereabouts, which have not been publicly confirmed in any sourced material available as of 29 June 2026.

The Old Bailey handles the most serious criminal cases in England and Wales. Its jurisdiction over this matter is unremarkable procedurally but underlines the gravity with which the Crown Prosecution Service is treating the charges. Two counts of murder and one of rape, tried in absentia, with a defendant whose location is unconfirmed — the case carries the kind of procedural and human complexity that rarely resolves quickly.