Double killer Simon Levy has denied stabbing a prison guard in the neck with a pen and attempting to strangle him. Levy, who is serving a life term for the murder of two women and the rape of a third, faces charges of assault occasioning actual bodily harm and intentional strangulation.
Appearing via videolink from HMP Belmarsh on Monday, Levy entered not guilty pleas to both charges at Woolwich Crown Court. The incident allegedly occurred on February 18, when Levy was being held on remand at the maximum security prison.
During a previous hearing, prosecutor David Burns stated that Levy attacked guard Paul Dunne with a pen, stabbing him multiple times in the arm and neck. The court heard that Mr. Dunne then fell to the floor, and Levy proceeded to grab the officer around the throat, tightening his grip.
Levy, formerly of Tottenham, north London, was handed a whole-life prison term in August for murdering grandmother Carmenza Valencia-Trujillo, 53, and mother-of-four Sheryl Wilkins, 39, in 2024. His prior offenses included at least 13 sexual assaults, though he was not remanded in custody despite investigations.
He was first jailed for three years in 2021 for sex attacks in 2018 and later groped a prison officer in 2022. Upon his release in February 2023, Levy committed further sex assaults on the London Underground. He was arrested in November 2024 for two tube attacks but was granted bail.
Emboldened, Levy then raped and nearly killed a prostitute, breaking her collar bone and suffocating her. He murdered Ms. Valencia-Trujillo on March 17 using a similar method of neck compression and smothering. Following her death, Levy was released on bail after a postmortem deemed the cause of death "unascertained."
Levy accelerated his offending, carrying out four more attacks on the underground. On May 2, he was charged with five sex assaults but released on bail, despite also being suspected of murder. After a sixth sex assault charge on June 3, he failed to appear in court, but no arrest warrant was issued. Three weeks later, he was spotted on the underground and charged with breaching bail conditions, failing to appear in court, and committing two sex attacks. He was granted bail again.
Levy subsequently failed to attend further hearings on July 18 and August 11, yet no warrant was sought. On August 28, he murdered Ms. Wilkins using the same method, leaving her body near his home. Police arrested him on September 5 after facial recognition identified him at the scene.
In February of the current year, Levy was convicted of 11 sexual assaults between April 2022 and May 2025. On August 12, he was sentenced to a whole-life order for the murders, making him ineligible for parole. He also received two life sentences for rapes, a four-year sentence for GBH, and a two-and-a-half-year sentence for intentional smothering.
Levy's trial for the alleged assault on the prison guard is scheduled to begin on February 15 of the following year and is expected to last up to four days.