The mother of Libby Squire has revealed the sickening moment her daughter's killer, Polish butcher Pawel Relowicz, looked her in the eye and said the student spent her last moments 'asking for her mummy'.
The Murder of Libby Squire
Libby, 21, was found dead in an estuary seven weeks after she vanished following a night out in Hull in January 2019. She had wandered off into the cold, snowy night – perhaps to clear her head – but became hypothermic, confused and tearful. Pawel Relowicz, a married father-of-two who was 24 at the time, was convicted of rape and murder following a trial at Sheffield Crown Court in February 2021. The serial sex offender had committed a string of previous offences – eight crimes in the preceding 19 months including voyeurism, outraging public decency and burglary – before he murdered Libby.
Mother's Harrowing Account
Libby's mother, Lisa Squire, has now shared the horrifying moment her daughter's sadistic killer revealed to her Libby's final words. Ms Squire told the Key Witness: Aftermath podcast she had been warned the day that Relowicz was due to take the stand in court. She said an officer had informed her the killer was 'very likely to tell me what Libby had said'.
Speaking to podcast host Daisy Maskell, Ms Squire said: 'And he did. He looked at me directly in the eye and said "Libby was terribly terribly crying and terribly terribly cold and asking for her mummy". But again, because I knew in advance that it was going to happen I just thought, "Good. I knew she'd be asking for me and I'm glad she was thinking about me". Because that would have maybe given her... she wouldn't have thought about what was going on maybe. And I kind of made up a scenario in my head that I was with her and I was helping her through it.'
The Night of the Disappearance
Libby disappeared during a night out with university friends in Hull in January 2019. She had gone to a nightclub but doormen considered her too drunk to be admitted. Her friends put her into a taxi, paid the fare and gave instructions for her to be taken home. But after the driver had dropped her at her shared student house, she had wandered off – encountering Relowicz in a confused and vulnerable state.
Arrest and Trial
Less than a week after her disappearance, Relowicz was arrested on suspicion of Libby's abduction after CCTV showed his silver Vauxhall Astra in the area where she went missing. Initially, pathologists were unable to establish how the student died, or whether she was still alive when she went into the Humber Estuary, because of the amount of time her body had been in the water.
Relowicz's trial lasted four and a half weeks – with the prosecution saying he had been in the centre of Hull 'looking for an opportunity' on the night of January 31, 2019. He invited or forced Libby into his car before taking her to playing fields where he raped and subsequently murdered her, the prosecution said. Relowicz argued in his defence that he claimed to be a 'good Samaritan' and only stopped to offer help to the visibly intoxicated philosophy student. But the killer, who had worked at a meat processing plant in Malton, was found guilty and sentenced to life imprisonment with the possibility of parole after 27 years.
Campaign for Justice
Libby's mother has since begun publicly advocating for an end to violence against women and girls – and for men convicted of non-contact sexual offences, such as voyeurism, to be given tougher sentences as well as therapy. In 2022 Ms Squire was due to meet Relowicz in prison in the hope of learning more details of her daughter's final moments. However, Relowicz changed his mind – with Ms Squire describing the decision as making her 'really tearful'.
Speaking to the Daily Mail that year, she said: 'The questions I have are simple ones: What happened to Libby? Was she scared? Did she ask for me? I want Libby to know – and I have a sense that she does know – that I did everything I could to find out what happened. I'm not interested in hearing he is sorry, or that he has a problem or that it was a lapse of judgment. I want to know how Libby died. It will be hard, but not harder than living without her. The worst has happened. There is nothing he can say or do that will be worse.'
She added: 'If he is released, he will do it again. There is no doubt in my mind. So as long as I have breath in my body I will make sure he never comes out of prison.'
