My dark and lonely world… anguish of Libby’s mother

Family’s pain as student’s murderer gets 27 years

THE mother of murdered student Libby Squire told a court yesterday she would forever be haunted by ‘knowing I was not there when she needed me’.

Lisa Squire, 50, spoke of her anguish as Pawel Relowicz, 26, was jailed for a minimum term of 27 years for raping and murdering her daughter.

Imposing a mandatory life sentence on the Polish butcher, Mrs Justice Lambert praised the ‘quiet dignity’ of 21-year-old Libby’s parents during the ‘harrowing’ trial at Sheffield Crown Court.

She said Relowicz had condemned Libby’s family – she was the eldest of four siblings – to a lifetime of anguish.

Mrs Squire’s words to the court laid bare their suffering. ‘Knowing I was not there when she needed me will haunt me for the rest of my life,’ she said.

‘I now live in two worlds where I live as a mother, wife, friend and employee, but there is also a world that will run parallel and is a dark and lonely world. In this world, I long to die so I can be with my girl. I wake up with disappointment that I will live another day.

‘This is a world where I silently scream in pain and pray that one day we will be reunited in a dream, a world where we constantly look for signs in every rainbow.

‘A world I didn’t want to be in. Imagine wanting to live, to be here with your children, but one where you long to die so I can be with my child.’ Mrs Squire, a nurse from High Wycombe,

Buckinghamshire, said she was proud of her ‘wonderful’ daughter and their close relationship. ‘My memories of her are forever in my thoughts and I will never allow the continuing bonds I have with my beautiful girl to be broken,’ she added. Libby’s father Russell, 55, also spoke of his torment, telling the court: ‘To get through my day I have to suppress my thoughts of her. I struggle to look at her pictures and can no

Victim: Libby Squire longer watch her video clips, unable to recall her memories because of the pain it brings.’ In her sentencing remarks, the judge warned Relowicz, a married father-of-two, that ‘you may never be released’.

She agreed that he was a ‘very dangerous’ man who conducted a ‘campaign of sexually deviant behaviour’ in the run up to the night he killed Libby before dumping her ‘dead or dying’ body in the River Hull.

Relowicz had been breaking into homes in the student area of Hull, watching women in intimate moments from windows and committing acts of indecency in the street.

Mrs Justice Lambert told the murderer: ‘You grew increasingly emboldened, no doubt because you were confident you would not and could not be caught.’

A ‘malignant twist of fate’ in the early hours of February 1, 2019 meant Libby and Relowicz’s paths crossed. The Hull University philosophy student had gone out with friends and had been refused entry to a nightclub when Relowicz saw her in the street.

‘From the moment you intercepted her... Liberty Squire did not stand a chance,’ the judge told him. ‘There was a significant degree of planning that night as you patrolled the student area looking for a suitable victim.’

Police arrested Relowicz after CCTV footage revealed Libby had got into his car shortly after midnight in a drunken state and was never seen alive again. Her body was recovered from the Humber estuary almost seven weeks later.

Mrs Justice Lambert said she had no doubt Relowicz intended that her body was ‘never found’.

But forensic evidence from Libby’s remains enabled prosecutors to charge and convict him of raping and murdering her.

‘A malignant twist of fate’