Libby Squire’s killer Pawel Relowicz jailed for life after raping and murdering student
A MONSTER has today been caged for life for raping and murdering tragic Libby Squire. The student, 21, was “extremely vulnerable” when she was spotted by Pawel Relowicz, 26, who was prowling the streets looking for a victim. After forcing Libby in his car, the dad-of-two drove her to remote playing fields where he raped […]
A MONSTER has today been caged for life for raping and murdering tragic Libby Squire.
The student, 21, was “extremely vulnerable” when she was spotted by Pawel Relowicz, 26, who was prowling the streets looking for a victim.
After forcing Libby in his car, the dad-of-two drove her to remote playing fields where he raped her before dumping her dead or dying in the river Hull.
She was discovered six weeks later on March 20, 2019, in the Humber estuary by a fishing boat – a gold necklace bearing the letter ‘L’ still hanging around her neck.
Relowicz was today caged for life with a minimum of 27 years after being convicted of rape and murder.
He was handed an 18-year sentence for rape to run concurrently.
Libby’s mum Lisa earlier revealed her “torture” at her daughter’s death and how she “silently screams in pain”.
She told Sheffield Crown Court in a powerful victim impact statement: “There are no words that can explain the torture of living without my Libby. She was a sister, a grandaughter, niece and cousin.
“I have not only lost my daughter but the opportunity to be a grandmother to her children. In any times of trouble she wanted me, her mum. Knowing I was not there when she needed me will haunt me for the rest of my life.
“I now live in two worlds where I live as a mother, wife, friend and employee but there is also a world that will run parallel and is a dark and lonely world.
“In this world I long to die so I can be with my girl. I wake up with disappointment that I will live another day.
Imagine wanting to live to be here with your children but one where you long to die so I can be with my child
Libby's mum Lisa
“This is a world where I silently scream in pain and pray that one day we will be reunited in a dream, a world where we constantly look for signs in every rainbow.
“A world I didn’t want to be in. Imagine wanting to live to be here with your children but one where you long to die so I can be with my child.”
Lisa touchingly revealed how Libby would tell her she loved her “all the time” and revealed her pride at her “beautiful, caring and wonderful girl”.
The nurse continued: “My memories of her are always in my thoughts and I will never allow our bond to be broken.”
Libby's family pay tribute
Libby’s little sister Beth said: “Having to grow up around something so traumatic is not something a child should do.
“Such is the shifting of roles, losing a shared future of siblings. I suppose people have varying degrees of closeness with their siblings but Libby and I grew up to be friends.
“When I was little I idolised her and she provided me with unique advice. I now face a scary and unknown world without her support as the eldest sibling.
“I’m now the eldest and although that has been forced upon me, I hope I can follow her footsteps. We will miss her terribly.”
Speaking outside court yesterday, Libby’s mum Lisa was supported by husband Russ as she read a devastating statement.
The nurse said: “As a family, today’s verdict changes nothing for us.
“There is no closure. We don’t get to have Libby back.
“Our lives don’t revert back to normal.
“However, we are pleased that all the hard work and dedication of the police and legal teams has been recognised.
“Libby will always be with us and we are all so proud of our beautiful, caring, wonderful girl.
“And, although she has been physically taken from us, the memories we have and the love we share will never be taken.”
Libby’s dad Russ added: “As a father what can I say? I’ve lost my little girl and I’m heartbroken.
“I struggle to look at her pictures and can no longer watch her video clips, unable to recall her memories because of the pain it brings.”
Relowicz forced Libby’s parents to listen to his callous web of lies during a lengthy trial – including claiming he had consensual sex with Libby.
But jurors saw through his deception and yesterday convicted him of rape and murder at Sheffield Crown Court after 27 hours and 55 minutes of deliberation.
It came just over two years after philosophy and religion student Libby vanished in Hull on February 1, 2019.
During the trial, the court was told Relowicz was a convicted pervert who was described as a “disgusting” Peeping Tom who “violated intimate moments” by his own lawyer.
The fiend previously pleaded guilty to nine sexually motivated offences including voyeurism, outraging public decency and burglary.
He had exposed himself to women and performed sex acts on himself in the street in the year leading up to Libby’s death.
Relowicz also watched them through their windows as they changed or had sex and swiped underwear and sex toys from women’s homes as “trophies”.
His last offence occurred just days before Libby went missing in 2019.
Sickeningly, the married dad-of-two admitted he had a “fetish” and was looking for “easy sex” on the night Libby vanished.
In a “terrible twist of fate”, it was then he saw Libby – “intercepting” her as she walked the freezing streets of Hull moments from her home.
Libby's last movements
January 31, 2019
Libby leaves her student home at Wellesley Avenue with friends at about 8.30pm and they walked to another student house on Cromer Street together
The group leave at about 11pm to walk to The Welly nightclub, at the junction of Wellington Lane and Beverley Road, where they arrive at 11.20pm
Libby is refused entry to the The Welly and is put in a taxi by her friends just before 11.30pm
The taxi drops her in Wellesley Avenue but she does not go home. She instead walks towards Beverley Road where she falls over in the street
Libby enters another house on Wellesley Avenue after the occupants heard her crying. She says she wants to go home but sets off towards Beverley Road, dropping her keys outside the house she left
She is then approached by a woman who tried to help her outside the former convent at the Endsleigh Centre, on Beverley Road
Two men try to help Libby as she lays in the snow near the junction of Haworth Road and Beverley Road. They were there from 11.40pm to 11.49pm
Another woman steps in to help as she sits on the floor near a bus stop close to the same junction. A supermarket manager spots her in the same location
Relowicz’s Vauxhall Astra arrives at the end of Haworth Street at 11.57pm. The defendant gets out of the car, crosses the road to Beresford Avenue and tracks Libby as she walks back up Beverley Road
February 1, 2019
They interact outside the Endsleigh Centre and entered the grounds before walking back to the car at the end of Haworth Street
Relowicz drives off from Haworth Street at 12.08am with Libby in the car
They arrive at Oak Road playing fields at 12.11am
A man living in the house at the entrance to the playing fields wakes at 12.14am and “after a period that he thought was a couple of minutes” hears a woman screaming in the park. The man then sees a young man running from the park “perhaps a few minutes after the last scream”
At 12.19am, CCTV captures Relowicz’s indicators flashing as he unlocks his car
Relowicz arrives home in Raglan Street at 12.23am
He leaves home again at 2.22am and drives back to Oak Road playing fields, arriving at 2.25am. He stays for a little over four minutes
Relowicz then drives around, arriving in Alexandra Road at 2.51am, walking over Newlands Avenue and performing a sex act in the street.
He arrives back at Raglan Street but walks back to Newland Avenue where he is captured “walking up and down the road in that area for no apparent reason and exhibiting some strange behaviour”
The prosecution say Relowicz raped and murdered Miss Squire at Oak Road playing fields after arriving at 12.11am. They say he put her dead or dying into the River Hull, which runs along the north east of the park. They say this could have been at the 12.11am visit or the later one at 2.25am.
March 20, 2019
Libby’s body is found in the Humber Estuary, off Spurn Point, by a fishing boat
The student had been drinking with friends and appeared “in good spirits” before the group headed to the nightclub in the city centre at around 11pm.
CCTV showed Libby stumbling with her pals as they walked through the snow to the club.
Once there, security staff on the door refused to let her in because she appeared to be drunk so she told her friends she would walk home instead.
But her pals put her in a taxi, which dropped Libby off close to her home, but tragically she “walked away from the safety of her front door”.
Toxicology tests later revealed she was two-and-a-half times the drink-drive limit when she died.
She was later seen by passers-by “obviously drunk” and “sobbing” – including two men who spotted the student lying in the snow at the side of the road.
The bystanders tried to help her but were unable to understand what she was saying and she became verbally aggressive so they drove away.
A group of students who heard Libby crying outside their house let her in but she left, saying she wanted to go home.
She was likely hypothermic, “extremely vulnerable” and wasn’t dressed for the weather as she stumbled through the snow-covered streets.
At this point, Relowicz was lurking in the shadows watching the student’s final movements as he prepared to pounce.
He bundled Libby into his silver Vauxhall Astra and drove her to the secluded playing field where frantic screams were later heard.
Relowicz then left the playing field around seven-and-a-half minutes later without Libby.
Prosecutor Richard Wright QC said this was “more than enough time” for him to have “taken or pursued Libby out into the playing fields, sexually attacked and killed her, put her body into the river, and then run back to his car.”
He said Relowicz’s “sole purpose” was to “silence her screams” after he raped Libby.
The prosecutor added: “Her screams, and the scratches that she clearly managed to land on the face of the defendant as she fought him off, are just part of the evidence that establishes that she was raped by a man whose entire motivation for coming into contact with her that night was to take her away from safety to a remote area well known to him and there to subject her to his uncontrollable sexual urges.
“His very purpose in prowling the streets was in order to commit opportunistic sexual offences and the rape of Libby was just such an offence.”
Relowicz later returned to the playing fields in the early hours of the morning.
CCTV footage captured him standing with his knees bent performing a sex act on himself in the street.
He had also visited a porn site twice in the hours after Libby died and had been “in a state of heightened sexual arousal that night”.
Two days later, on February 3, a used condom containing DNA matching Relowicz was discovered in the area.
A huge search was mounted after Libby disappeared with cops searching ponds, bins and gardens in a desperate bid to find the student.
Her mum Lisa Squire told the court how she knew something was “seriously wrong” when her daughter first vanished.
Tragically, she had only dropped Libby back at Hull University just days before her brutal death.
'ALLOWED TO TARGET VULNERABLE WOMEN'
The complainant in one of the four voyeurism charges Relowicz admitted after he was arrested on suspicion of abducting Libby Squire told Channel 4 News these type of offences should always be taken seriously.
She told the programme: “These things shouldn’t be taken lightly because it may just be somebody who isn’t really a threat.
“On the other hand, it might be somebody who’s going to go on to do more similar offences as we’ve seen very sadly, tragically, in this case, something far, far worse.”
The woman said: “We did get to move on with our lives and that’s not something she and her family get to do because of this evil man who was allowed to just carry on targeting vulnerable women to the point where his actions had tragic and deadly consequences.”
Sheffield Crown Court heard how Relowicz committed a series of bizarre sex offences in the months before killing Ms Squire including exposing himself in public, masturbating in front of women and watching them through their windows as they changed or had sex.
He pleaded guilty to nine charges, including voyeurism, outraging public decency and burglary, and was sentenced to eight and a half years in jail, later reduced to five years and eight months on appeal.
The woman told Channel 4 News: “He didn’t particularly care when I saw him.
“He made eye contact.
“It was one of those moments when it sort of takes a little while to comprehend what was actually happening.”
She said: “I hope that the attitude towards these things does shift, people realise that they deserve to report things, to have them investigated, to not be embarrassed, to feel supported by the authorities and the people around them.”
The nurse, from High Wycombe, Bucks, said: “I knew something wasn’t right and told her friend to call the taxi company, they had been to her favourite taxi companies and they had contacted the police.
“We made the decision not to panic and go straight to Hull as she could have gone to another friend’s house.
“I knew she had a lecture that day and would never miss a lecture so if she didn’t go to that something would be seriously wrong.
“We travelled to Hull and knew something serious had happened. It was not in her character and she was not answering her texts or calls.
“She was planning her future and was in the best place in her life she had ever been.”
As the frantic search gathered speed, Relowicz was arrested on suspicion of abduction in a huge breakthrough for the case.
But instead of helping police solve the riddle, the butcher instead created an intricate story to throw officers off the scent.
Painting himself as a caring hero, he claimed he “just wanted to help” when he saw crying Libby on the pavement.
He branded her a “very beautiful woman” but denied having any sexual feelings towards her.
Relowicz said: “I asked her if everything was OK with her, she said yes and she asked me to hug her.
“We were hugging each other and we started kissing.”
He told jurors the pair had sex but Libby “scratched” his face when he didn’t want to kiss her after so he drove away as she screamed at him not to leave her.
Relowicz said he then returned home where he had a bath and washed his clothes to stop his wife discovering he had sex with someone else.
After watching “non-violent” porn, he told the court he returned to the playing field as he was “worried” about Libby but couldn’t see her.
The dad even said violent sexual intercourse, rape, rough sexual intercourse and the idea of causing pain in sex did not excite him sexually in a bizarre defence.
After he was arrested, police found a pink holdall containing “trophies… taken in a series of sexually motivated burglaries”.
This included sex toys, photographs of young women and several pairs of women’s knickers and thongs.
When quizzed by police, Relowicz said he “forgot” about them and they did not belong to him or his wife.
He also had two “Halloween” masks in the boot of his car – one described as a “Scream” mask and the other which had red hair.
But it wasn’t until a month later that Libby’s decomposed body washed up in the Humber Estuary.
A post mortem could not establish a cause of death but DNA matching Relowicz was found on her.
Her bruised body also had “neck marks” and small haemorrhages around her mouth, which could be evidence of asphyxia.
Relowicz was finally charged with Libby’s rape and murder in October 2019 – two months after being jailed for eight years for his vile sex offences.
It can now be reported for the first time his sentence was reduced to five years and eight months at the Court of Appeal in March last year.
Most read in News
Libby’s mum, who affectionately referred to her daughter as “Pie”, said she had lost “one of the four most precious things in my life” after the student’s body was discovered.
She added: “I cannot thank you enough my darling Pie for making me a mummy. For choosing me to be your mummy. It’s an honour, a privilege and a joy.
“I kept you safe for as long as I could and I am so sorry I could not keep you safe on that night. I’m sorry. I’m so so sorry.”
