How can repeated failures across the criminal justice system allow a dangerous offender to remain a threat?
In this episode of Crime Time Inc. Weekly News, former detectives Tom Wood and Simon McLean examine the case of Simon Levy and the murders of Carmenza Valencia-Trujillo and Sheryl Wilkins.
Tom and Simon look beyond the crimes themselves to the series of decisions and system failures surrounding Levy's offending history. They discuss acknowledged errors involving the Metropolitan Police, British Transport Police and Crown Prosecution Service, and examine how information was handled as his offending escalated.
The discussion includes delays in charging, failures to place crucial information before the court when bail was being considered, inadequate monitoring as a registered sex offender, missed court appearances and the decision to downgrade his risk assessment from high to medium.
Drawing on decades of real investigative experience, Tom and Simon consider where responsibility lies when individual officers may be capable and conscientious but the systems around them fail. Tom reflects on his own experience as a Senior Investigating Officer, the importance of supervision, properly resourced murder squads, intelligence systems such as HOLMES, and the need to make sure critical information is actually joined together.
They also discuss accountability when investigations go wrong — including the extraordinary prospect of officers involved in the Levy investigation themselves facing investigation — and ask whether these were isolated mistakes or evidence of a much wider systemic problem.
As Tom puts it, policing needs good people and good systems. In this case, their conclusion is stark:
The dots were not joined up.
Tom Wood and Simon McLean bring decades of experience in murder investigations, serious crime, undercover policing and senior operational command to examine what happened, what should have happened, and what lessons policing must learn.
Contains discussion of murder, sexual offending and violence.
00:00 Cold Open
00:48 Simon Levy: Two Murders and a Criminal Justice Failure
01:46 Sex-Offender Risk & Missed Warning Signs
02:58 The Timeline: Assaults, Rape, Bail and Murder
04:08 Inconclusive Postmortems & Forensic Delays
06:28 SIO Accountability & Investigating the Investigators
08:50 Arrested, Released — Then a Second Murder
10:48 “The Dots Were Not Joined Up”: Resources, HOLMES & Murder Squads
12:07 Bail, Monitoring, Missed Court Dates & Risk Downgrade
13:28 Portobello, Robert Black & Why Appearances Can Deceive
15:44 Assumptions, Bias & Judging People by Appearance
Real cases. Real detectives. Real talk.
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