A NORTH Yorkshire butcher accused of raping and murdering a 21-year-old student has told a court that they were “hugging” and “kissing” before having sex on the night she disappeared.

Pawel Relowicz, 26, told Sheffield Crown Court that he left Libby Squire shouting at him not to leave her after she scratched his face when he did not want to kiss her again.

The court heard that Relowicz, who worked as a butcher at Karro Foods, in Malton, was guilty of previous “utterly disgusting” sexual offences and watched porn in the hours after he said he had sex with Ms Squire.

But Oliver Saxby QC, defending, said there was no evidence that the defendant had killed the University of Hull philosophy student on February 1 2019.

Giving evidence through an interpreter on Monday, Polish-born Relowicz told the court he was driving around Hull on the evening of Ms Squire’s disappearance because he was “looking for a woman to have easy sex”.

The defendant – who has convictions for outraging public decency, voyeurism and sexually motivated burglaries – said he parked on Haworth Street with the intention of looking through windows.

He said he saw Ms Squire – who was on nearby Beverley Road in a drunk and distressed state after being refused entry to a nightclub – crying and shouting on the pavement and went over to her “out of curiosity”.

Relowicz, of Raglan Street, Hull, described the student as a “very beautiful woman” but said he did not have any sexual feelings towards her and offered her a lift home in his car.

On reaching Oak Road playing fields, the defendant said he stopped the car because he thought Ms Squire was going to vomit and they both got out of the vehicle.

He said: “I asked her if everything was OK with her, she said yes and she asked me to hug her.”

He added: “We were hugging each other and we started kissing.”

Relowicz, who said he felt “excited”, told the court he grabbed Ms Squire’s bottom and she tried to undo his trousers, before she laid down near his car and they had sex.

Afterwards, he said she scratched his face when she tried to kiss him again and he turned away.

He told the jury he got into his car and that Ms Squire, who was originally from High Wycombe, in Buckinghamshire, was stood behind his vehicle, shouting at him not to leave her as he drove away.

When asked how he felt about having sex with Ms Squire, Relowicz said: “I was emotionally broken down that I had cheated on my wife for the first time in my life.”

He told the court that he returned to Oak Road later that night because he was “worried” about Ms Squire but could not see her anywhere.

The prosecution have told the jury that Relowicz picked up Ms Squire while he was “prowling around the student area” looking for an opportunity to commit a sexual offence against a vulnerable young woman.

The court has heard that he drove Ms Squire to Oak Road playing fields, where he raped and murdered her before putting her body into the River Hull.

Relowicz told the jury that he had did not watch violent porn, had never assaulted a woman and that violent or rough sexual intercourse, rape and the idea of causing pain in sex did not excite him sexually.

He said he did not rape or kill Ms Squire or put her body into the river.

Mr Saxby told the jury that they would “hate” Relowicz for his sexually motivated offences.

He said: “To say he has a problem barely scratches the surface.

“How he has behaved, what he has done – it is utterly disgusting.”

But he said the prosecution evidence did not prove that he raped or murdered Ms Squire.

Mr Saxby said this was the type of case where the defendant “is left simply saying: ‘I didn’t do it. I don’t know what happened, I wasn’t there, I cannot say”.

The trial continues.