Libby Squire’s killer Pawel Relowicz jailed for life for rape and murder

A butcher has been jailed for life with a minimum term of 27 years for the rape and murder of Hull university student Libby Squire.

Pawel Relowicz raped the 21-year-old on a playing field before dumping her body in the River Hull on 1 February 2019.

After sentencing, Mrs Justice Lambert said: “There was a significant degree of planning that night as you patrolled the student area looking for a suitable victim.”

On Relowicz’s decision to put Libby’s dead or dying body in the tidal river, the judge added: “I have no doubt your purpose was to conceal her body and you intended and hoped her body would be washed out to sea and never found.”

In a victim statement, Libby’s mother Lisa told the court: “There are no adequate words that can explain the torture of living without my Libby.

“In any times of trouble she wanted me, her mum. She knew I would do anything in my power to help her.

“Knowing I was not there when she needed me will haunt me for the rest of my life.”

Her father, Russ, said: “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, I am afraid to recall her memories because of the pain they bring. How cruel is that?”

Relowicz will serve his full sentence.

The judge told him: “A minimum term means what it says. Even after you have served that term, you will not be released unless and until the Parole Board decides that it is safe to do so.

“You may never be released.

“If you are, you will remain on licence for the rest of your life and will be liable to recall if you commit any further offence or breach the conditions of your licence.”

The 26-year-old father-of-two showed no emotion as he was convicted by a jury at Sheffield Crown Court on Thursday after 28 hours of deliberations.

Libby’s parents cried and held hands in the public gallery after waiting a week for the jury to return its verdicts.

They had heard during the four-week trial how Relowicz picked up their daughter as she wandered around the Beverley Road area of Hull in a confused and upset state after being too drunk to get into a club.

The jury heard a mass of circumstantial evidence linking Relowicz to the disappearance of the second-year philosophy student.

Pathologists had been unable to determine how Libby died due to the time her body had been in the water before it was was found in the Humber Estuary almost seven weeks after she went missing.

Libby had been out with friends on the evening of 31 January 2019, but was so drunk she was refused entry to a club, the court heard.

Her friends paid a taxi driver to take her home but she wandered the streets instead of going into her shared student house.

She fell over in the snow and had refused offers of help from passersby before she encountered Relowicz.

The judge said that Libby, “like many young people on a night out” had “too much to drink”.

“I have no doubt that from the moment that you first saw her you had her in mind as your next victim,” she added.

Relowicz had told the jury he did not kill her and said he had consensual sex with her in Oak Road.

The defendant admitted a series of what his barrister called “utterly disgusting” sexual offences in the months before that night.

Polish-born Relowicz also admitted to watching porn and masturbating in the street in the hours after he said he had sex with the student.

He gave evidence through an interpreter during his trial.

He told the court he was driving around the city on the evening of Libby’s disappearance because he was “looking for a woman to have easy sex”.

Relowicz was found guilty of rape unanimously by a jury of five men and seven women and guilty of murder by a majority of 11 to one.

Sentencing Relowicz, Mrs Justice Lambert said he was correctly described as having conducted a “perverted campaign of sexually deviant behaviour” by the judge who dealt with his previous offending of voyeurism, outraging public decency and burglary, which happened over 18 months.

She said: “He also considered you to be potentially a very dangerous individual, again he was correct to do so.”

The judge told him that, prior to the murder, “your offending escalated, you grew increasingly emboldened, no doubt you were increasingly confident you would not and could not be caught”.

She called it a “malignant twist of fate” that his path crossed with the drunk, confused and upset Libby Squire that night, and that he must have immediately decided she would be his next victim.

(c) Sky News 2021: Libby Squire’s killer Pawel Relowicz jailed for life for rape and murder