IF the culprit is the person widely discussed as chief suspect number one, his first marriage was 2011, divorced 2014, and his second marriage was 2022, they have a young son and are apparently going through divorce at this time.
The incident happened in 2017.
According to google "exhausting all leads, Scotland Yard officially closed the case in June 2018".
It's entirely possible that neither wife was aware of the incident, there are posters on this thread who hadn't heard about it before. So no reason to suppose either wife was covering for him.
However it suddenly hit the news again a few months ago? I can't remember exactly when but there was relatively recent renewed interest for some reason.
Which may have lead to someone remembering something, or putting 2+2 together, or perhaps someone close to the person such as an ex-wife recognising him from the CCTV.
I would hazard a guess that the sort of person who arrogantly represented himself in court previously is likely to be very like some of the (ex) husbands posters on Mumsnet write about, who put their wives through hell during the divorce process and afterwards, representing themselves in court and pulling every trick in the book to make life difficult for their ex.
That might lead someone on the receiving end to seek other ways to gain the upper hand on eg child access issues or whatever.
Of course it's all pure speculation, and no doubt if the person is charged more information will come to light.