LIBBY MAY HAVE TAKEN HER OWN LIFE, SAYS SUSPECT’S DEFENCE
EVIDENCE PROVES RELOWICZ ‘MAY HAVE KILLED HER, NOT THAT HE DID’, COURT HEARS
HULL student Libby Squire may have taken her own life on the night she disappeared, the lawyer defending her alleged killer Pawel Relowicz has said.
Libby disappeared on January 31, 2019, after a night out with friends in which she had been refused entry to Beverley Road nightclub The Welly because she was too drunk. Her body was discovered in the Humber Estuary near Spurn Point nearly seven weeks later, on March 20.
In his closing arguments on Day 13 of the trial yesterday, Oliver Saxby QC argued that the evidence previously put forward by the prosecution “proves not that [Relowicz] killed her, but instead simply that he might have done, that he could have done”.
He said the prosecution had “opened the door” to convicting Relowicz, 26, of Raglan Street, of raping and murdering Libby, but added that “they are short of the evidence they need if they expect you to take that step to be sure of their theories”.
This included, he said, the fact that it could not be proven exactly how Libby had died, nor that she had been killed, according to the evidence given earlier in the trial by the pathologist who had conducted the post-mortem examination on her body.
The prosecution claim Relowicz had seen Libby drunk and disorientated that night at the junction between Beverley Road and Haworth Street – where he admitted he had been driving “looking for women for sex” – before taking her to Oak Road playing fields, where he raped and killed her, dumping her body in the River Hull.
In an alternative version of events, Mr Saxby pointed out that Libby had previously told doctors she had considered taking her own life by throwing herself into a river amid previous struggles with her mental health during her teenage years.
He told the jury: “A throwaway remark that you are now asked to approach. Where to start? It is, isn’t it, a really unusual way to consider taking one’s life? For her to have conveyed to medics and doctors.
“Isn’t it something of a coincidence that, some six years later, here we are in court with a man on trial for murder, his fate resting on whether it is possible his victim may have taken her own life by falling into the river, reckless of her own safety, a cry for help? “A pathologist saying she may have drowned on a night she felt abandoned by her friends. She is somebody with a history of serious mental health issues. These are coincidences that the prosecution dreamed.”
And while he conceded that Relowicz’s previous sexual offences were “disgusting”, he contested the prosecution’s claims that his behaviour was on a “frantic upward curve” which ultimately culminated in the rape and murder of Libby.
Mr Saxby pointed out there had been “no confrontation” or violence in Relowicz’s previous offending and that he had not taken the “ample opportunity” he had had since moving to Hull eight years ago to sexually assault someone.
Instead, he argued that Libby, in her fragile mental state, was liable to act in a “reckless way” on the night she disappeared and had “wanted to express her torment”.
He said: “In early 2019 she was a young woman with mental health issues that had surfaced as early as the New Year.
“[Someone} who was perfectly capable of acting in a way that was reckless, and capable of committing some dreadful and life-threatening way because she didn’t care and wanted to express her torment.
“[Someone] who had harboured thoughts of suicide and couldn’t cope with abandonment and rejection and in her worst moments would have felt little self-worth.”
The defence were due to conclude their closing remarks, after which the case will be summed up before the jury consider their verdicts.
Relowicz has denied the charges of rape and murder against him.
The trial continues.
She is somebody with a history of serious mental health issues Oliver Saxby QC