A senior detective from British Transport Police has rejected a comparison between Simon Levy and Wayne Couzens, who both carried out a series of disturbing sex attacks before going on to kill women.

Serious questions are being asked of the BTP after it failed to organise an identity parade when Levy, 40, sexually assaulted three women on the London Underground in October 2024, while on bail for another rape offence.

The oversight meant Levy's bail was extended until April 2025, allowing him to carry out a harrowing rape in a Tottenham car park in January 2025. He went on to murder Carmenza Valencia-Trujillo, 53, in March and Sheryl Wilkins, 39, in August, suffocating both women, who were described as vulnerable sex workers.

Since Levy was convicted at the Old Bailey on Friday, a disturbing history of his sexual offending has come to light, extending as far back as 2018, when he groped two women in public.

The revelation has led to comparisons with Sarah Everard’s killer Wayne Couzens, who carried out sex assaults including eight counts of indecent exposure before going on to kidnap, rape and murder Miss Everard in March 2021.

BTP Detective Chief Superintendent Pete Fulton apologised for the delay in the identification parade in October 2024, which could have caught Levy, saying that the detective constable was incompetent and their supervising sergeant ineffective.

Both officers have been moved off investigative duties but will not face disciplinary action or investigation by the police watchdog.

“We understand that Levy’s actions will have a lifelong impact on his victims, and we’re equally aware that more should have been done to prevent his offending before it could take place,” Mr Fulton said.

Rejecting the idea that the case has parallels to Wayne Couzens, where lower-level sexual offending was not treated seriously enough and the serving police officer went on to kill, he said instead there was “an element of incompetence in the investigation which held it up”.

Levy was previously 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.

He sexually assaulted a prison guard while behind bars in 2022 but was still released the following year, going on to sexually assault a woman on the Tube in October 2023 and allegedly rape another in May 2024, for which he was recalled to prison and released again in August that year.

Levy was arrested by BTP in November 2024 for four sexual assaults on the Tube, for which he has since been separately convicted, but delays in organising an identification parade until the following April left him free to carry out the rape and first murder.

When they took details of his Oyster card, BTP officers did not realise that it had been stolen from a bus driver, meaning Levy had a free travel pass that he used on the day he murdered Ms Valencia-Trujillo.

Following her death, he was released on bail at two magistrates’ court hearings in May and June 2025, with the CPS admitting 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 August 11, he murdered Ms Wilkins.

The murders of Ms Valencia-Trujillo in March and Ms Wilkins in August were interspersed with sexual assaults on six women on the Tube and Overground.

Levy is due to be sentenced on Wednesday, August 12.