Yahoo News Butcher found guilty of raping and murdering Hull student Libby Squire
Watch: Butcher found guilty of Libby Squire murder
A butcher has been found guilty of the rape and murder of Hull University student Libby Squire.
Pawel Relowicz was said to have cruised around the city’s student area on the night of 31 January 2019 looking for “easy sex”.
Prosecutors said he picked up the drunk and vulnerable 21-year-old, who had left a night out, before driving her to playing fields.
They accused him of then raping her and either killing her in the park or leaving her body in the River Hull to drown.
Her body was found in the Humber Estuary almost seven weeks later.
The 26-year-old married father from Poland – whose past offences include outraging public decency, voyeurism and sexually-motivated burglaries – denied both charges, insisting he had consensual sex with her and did not know what happened to her later.
But on Thursday, a jury found him guilty at Sheffield Crown Court of both counts.
Speaking after, the student’s mother Lisa Squire 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.”
She added: “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.”
Jurors heard during the four-week trial that the philosophy student had been out with friends but went home in a taxi after being refused entry to a nightclub.
Instead of going into her student home she wandered until she came across Relowicz.
Relowicz’s lawyer, Oliver Saxby QC, said there was no evidence that he killed her, even though he admitted to “utterly disgusting” offences.
Relowicz, who lives in Hull, insisted he he left her to walk home from the playing fields.
Jurors also heard he watched porn and masturbated in the street hours after meeting – and ultimately murdering – the student, who came from High Wycombe.
He outwardly appeared to be a devoted husband with two sons.
But he secretly patrolled the streets in the student area of Hull to see if he could watch women through windows, commit sex acts in view of them and burgle homes to steal sex toys and underwear to aid masturbation.
He went on to invent stories about his encounter with Squire, telling friends she tried to kiss him and he threw her out of his car.
In a statement, Gerry Wareham, of the Crown Prosecution Service, said the defendant invented a “web of lies” and added: “Relowicz robbed a young and vibrant woman of her life and her future. His actions have left her family and friends devastated.”
Relowicz showed no emotion as the jury’s verdict was read out. His victim’s family held hands and cried in the courtroom’s public gallery.
He will be sentenced on Friday.
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