Malton butcher accused of murder ‘100% sure he did not harm student’
A Malton butcher accused of raping and murdering a university student has told a jury he is “100% sure” he had not “done anything” to her.
Pawel Relowicz, 26, said he was not lying in an attempt to “get away with rape and murder” when he was asked at Sheffield Crown Court about the different accounts he has given concerning what happened to Libby Squire on the night she disappeared.
Relowicz, 26, of Raglan Street, Hull, told the court he had consensual sex with the 21-year-old philosophy student in Hull just after midnight on February 1 2019 but denied that he “attacked her, raped her and killed her”.
The married father-of-two has told the court he found Ms Squire, drunk and upset after being refused entry to a nightclub, after he had spent more than three hours driving and walking around the streets of Hull looking for women to masturbate in front of.
Polish-born Relowicz has said he offered her a lift home and they had sex on the ground near his car when he stopped on Oak Road to let her out as he thought she was going to be sick.
He drove away after she scratched his face when he refused to kiss her again and he last saw her shouting after his car, he told the jury.
‘Twisting’ his story
Cross-examining the defendant, Richard Wright QC, prosecuting, asked him: “As you drove away from Oak Road, was your thinking, your mind, that you had done nothing wrong to that girl at all?”
Speaking through an interpreter, Relowicz, who worked as a butcher at Karro Foods, in Malton, North Yorkshire, replied: “100% sure that I’ve not done anything to that girl.”
Mr Wright told the court that the defendant had given five different accounts of what happened when he met Ms Squire on the evening of January 31 2019 and was “twisting” his story to fit with the evidence in the case.
Relowicz said he had lied previously – because he did not want his wife to find out he had cheated on her – but had “no reason to lie” now.
Mr Wright said: “How about trying to get away with raping and murdering Libby Squire, is that not a reason to lie?”
The defendant replied: “This is not true.”
Relowicz denied a suggestion that Ms Squire scratched his face as she was “desperately trying” to get him off her.
Mr Wright said: “You were a fit young man who worked as a butcher. She was a drunk, upset, hypothermic young girl. And she was no match for you at all was she?
“The most she could do as you attacked her, raped her and killed her was land that scratch on your face.”
Relowicz replied: “This is not true.”
Chance to go further
Mr Wright said the reason the defendant – who has convictions for sexually motivated offences against women – did not masturbate in front of Ms Squire was because “this was the opportunity to go further”.
The defendant denied this and said he wanted to help her but said he did go back out to masturbate in the street and find women to offend against in the hours after he met Ms Squire.
Mr Wright said: “You were back out driving around looking for women that you could masturbate at. Three hours and 20 minutes of driving around wanting to do that earlier in the evening.
“You say you had consensual sex with Libby Squire. Should we understand that wasn’t enough for you? Because you had to be back out again looking for other women to masturbate at.”
Relowicz said: “Yes, this is correct.”
Mr Wright asked the defendant about masturbating in the street, which was caught on CCTV in the early hours of February 1, and said: “Were you still sexually excited about what you had done to Libby Squire at Oak Road?
“Did the fact that you had raped her and killed her sexually excite you, Mr Relowicz?”
He replied: “This is not correct.”
The prosecution has said Relowicz picked up Ms Squire, who was from High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, drove her to Oak Road playing fields, raped her and put her into the River Hull.
Relowicz denies raping and murdering Ms Squire, whose body was found in the Humber estuary around seven weeks after she disappeared.
The trial was adjourned until Friday.