Mum of murdered Libby Squire wants to talk to killer Pawel Relowicz

Lisa Squire told BBC Breakfast: “I don’t know how he got her in the car, I don’t know how she died, I don’t know whether she was dead when she went into the water or not. There’s so many questions.”

Married father-of-two Pawel Relowicz dumped Libby’s body in the River Hull after raping her on a playing field in the early hours of February 1 2019.

The 26-year-old Polish butcher, who worked in Malton, was convicted of raping and murdering the 21-year-old student when he chanced upon her after she had been out with friends. He was jailed for life last February with a minimum term of 27 years.

On why she wanted to question Relowicz, the Hull University philosophy student’s mother told the BBC: “I think it’s my makeup. I need to know what’s going on with my children.

“My children are a massive part of my life so not knowing what happened to her, for me, is not acceptable.”

Ms Squire, from High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, said she was due to meet with the Prime Minister to discuss tougher measures for non-contact sexual offences.

Before he killed Libby Squire, Relowicz had a history of non-contact sex crimes including voyeurism.

She said: “People still think that non-contact sexual offences are harmless but they’re not harmless.

“We can’t say that all people who commit a non-contact sexual offence are going to go on to become rapists and murderers, but I think we can probably say that most rapists and murderers started off with non-contact sexual offences.

“I also think these people need help. There should be some sort of help facility for them. They should be forced to go into treatment or have therapy for what they have done.”

Ms Squire said she wanted her daughter’s legacy to be “change for women”.

She added: “Because of what happened to her, I want other women to be safer.

“I will honour her until I take my last breath.”

Libby Squire’s parents still do not know how their daughter died.

Pawel Relowicz is the only person who knows how Ms Squire ended up in the River Hull, whether she was alive when she was put in the water or how she was killed on Hull’s cold, dark Oak Road playing fields.

Despite all the evidence gathered by Humberside Police about Relowicz’s sexual motive, previous offences, interactions with Miss Squire and their sexual intercourse, detectives had to contend with a major problem for a murder investigation – no cause of death.

Home office pathologist Matt Lyall, who conducted the post-mortem examination, was unable to determine the cause of Ms Squire’s death because her body had been in the water for so long when it was found in the Humber Estuary.

Oliver Saxby QC, defending Relowicz, told the jury: “They cannot say how Libby Squire died. They can’t even say she was killed.

“Dr Lyall’s clear evidence cannot even say she was killed.

“However much you are reassured that the prosecution don’t have to prove this or that, not being able to prove how the victim died, not being able to prove she was killed, these are two fairly big caveats in a murder case.

“It means one of the crucial aspects of the case, whether she was killed, perhaps the most crucial aspect of the case, the prosecution are forced to rely on inference, on carefully constructed arguments, on theories, in reality, to persuade you of what happened.”

But prosecutors told the jury that they did not need to establish how she died.

Their case against Relowicz was presented on the basis that the father-of-two must have killed Ms Squire due to the overwhelming circumstantial evidence against him and the lack of credible alternative explanations.

Richard Wright QC, leading the prosecution team, told Sheffield Crown Court: “It is not possible for the pathologist to determine how Libby died, but it is not necessary for the prosecution to demonstrate any particular mechanism of death in this, or indeed in any other case of murder.

“We say that you can be sure that Pawel Relowicz subjected Libby to unlawful violence at the Oak Road playing fields and that violence caused her death.

“Whether that be by asphyxiation, or by any other means, such as deliberately throwing her into the freezing River Hull in the sure knowledge that she would drown.”

During the trial, a juror asked the judge to clarify: “Does circumstantial evidence stack up in court?”

Mr Wright told the jury that it definitely did.

And he said that the crucial circumstances which should convince them that Relowicz was the killer included the fact that he was prowling the streets looking for “easy sex”, that he was a serial sex offender, that he had picked up Ms Squire in a drunken and confused state and that he admitted the he had sexual intercourse with her before she vanished.

Mr Wright told the jury there was no other credible explanation of how she got into the water.

The prosecutor ruled out suicide. He said that, despite Ms Squire having mental health problems, she was in the “best place in her life” and had showed no recent signs of being suicidal.

He also discounted her accidentally falling into the water, pointing out that she was terrified of water and scared of walking in dark places by herself.

And Mr Wright dismissed any suggestion that she was attacked by someone other than Relowicz, saying it would have been an “unholy coincidence”.