Libby Squire murder accused admits he had sex with student on night she disappeared but denies raping and killing her

A man accused of the murder of University of Hull student Libby Squire told a court he had sex with her as he tried to help her home from a night out, but denied raping and killing the 21-year-old.

Pawel Relowicz, 26, told the jury at Sheffield Crown Court that he had offered to take Miss Squire home after finding her drunk, cold, and upset in Beverley Road, Hull, in the early hours of February 1, 2019.

He explained how he had sex with Miss Squire on a grass verge next to his car in Oak Road after he had originally stopped his car for her to be sick and how he had helped her when she had fallen.

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Mr Relowicz said: “I asked her whether everything was OK and she said 'yes' and asked me to hug her. We were hugging each other and started kissing each other.

Libby Squire.Libby Squire.
Libby Squire.

“She was the one who brought forward her hands towards me, she wanted me to hug her. I grabbed hold of her bottom and she tried to undo the button on my trousers. She was trying to undo my zip and didn’t manage to.

"She laid down, there was grass near to the car and we had sex."

Relowicz said after he had sex with Miss Squire he thought she was going to be sick and asked her if everything as OK, to which she replied 'yes' and started to apologise to him.

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He said Miss Squire tried to kiss him again, but he refused because she had saliva on her face.

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Relowicz said that was the last time he saw Miss Squire and he returned home and took a bath and watched porn online.

He did not watch violent porn, he told the court.

Around 2.25am he said he went back to Oak Road to see if he could find Ms Squire.

"I was worried about her," he said.

He checked to see if she was on the ground, and said he could not see her anywhere and thought she might have gone home.

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Asked how he felt about having sex with her, Relowicz said: "I was emotionally broken down that I had cheated on my wife for the first time in my life."

He said he had lied to the police about having sex with Miss Squire and also lied about the scratches on his face - telling detectives they were from his young son - because he didn't want his wife to find out he had cheated on her.

The prosecution have said that he drove her in his car to the remote Oak Road playing fields, where he raped and murdered her, before putting her body into the River Hull.

Relowicz, who worked as a butcher at Karro Foods in Malton, North Yorkshire, began giving evidence in the trial on Monday.

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When asked by Oliver Saxby QC, defending, why he spent the evening of Ms Squire's disappearance driving around Hull, he said he "was looking for a woman to have easy sex".

The jury has been told that Relowicz has previously admitted committing a number of sexually motivated offences - including voyeurism, outraging public decency and burglaries.

They heard that, after the police arrested the Polish-born defendant, a married father-of-two of Raglan Street, Hull, they found sex toys and women's underwear that he had stolen after breaking into homes in the city.

The court has also been shown CCTV of Relowicz appearing to perform a sexual act in the street on the night Ms Squire disappeared.

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Mr Saxby said: "To say he has a problem barely scratches the surface.

"How he has behaved, what he has done - it is utterly disgusting."

Relowicz told the court he now accepted he had a "problem" and said he originally denied his sexually motivated offences because of his wife and children.

The defence barrister said Relowicz's sexual offences were his only previous convictions.

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In his opening defence speech, Mr Saxby said he will call two witnesses, both students, who heard screams in the early hours of February 1 2019.

Mr Saxby said Relowicz had already returned home at the time the witnesses said they heard the screams, and so he "cannot be guilty of killing Libby Squire".

The barrister said "desperate" screams heard by a previous witness could be explained as Ms Squire being "lost, and disorientated, and confused, and desperate".

This was the type of case where the defendant "is left simply saying: 'I didn't do it, I don't know what happened, I wasn't there, I cannot say,'" Mr Saxby said.

The trial continues.