Wednesday 26 October 2022 10:49 PM Mother of Libby Squire, 21, tells how she is preparing to meet stranger who ... trends now
The mother of a university student who was brutally killed after becoming separated from friends on a night out is steeling herself to come face to face with the man who took her daughter's life.
Lisa Squire is preparing to meet the sexual predator who raped and murdered her eldest daughter Libby, 21, in Hull in 2019. Polish butcher Pawel Relowicz, 26, was convicted of killing the philosophy student when he chanced upon her after she had been out with friends.
Relowicz has agreed to see Mrs Squire, which feels like an inversion of the natural order.
Surely it should be she, the bereaved parent, who determines whether the meeting takes place?
'I get that he has to know he has some control over it,' she says. 'He has committed the worst offences imaginable and the prospect of seeing the mother of the person he killed must be quite difficult.
'He may be a bit nervous,' she concedes both with understatement and astounding magnanimity. 'It's quite a brave thing for him to do.
'I don't hate him, I really don't. I find anger and hatred incredibly draining, so I choose not to go down that route. Just trying to muddle through life without Libby is hard enough and there are days when I don't even want to mother my other three children, or go to work, or walk the dog. I just want to wallow in my Libby world.
Libby Squire was a 21-year-old student at the University of Hull when she was raped and murdered by Pawel Relowicz in the early ours of February 1, 2019, following a night out in the city
Libby Squire's mother Lisa, a maternity nurse from High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, has dedicated herself to campaigning against violence against women. She is determined to meet Relowicz to find out what happened to her daughter
Pawel Relowicz, 26, had a history of spying on female students and was on the prowl looking for a vulnerable victim when he murdered Libby on February 1, 2019
'Grief can be all-consuming. So if I had hatred to contend with on top of all that it would just be an extra layer of s***; too much to cope with.'
What she wants, she says, are answers about how her daughter died. Relowicz, a Polish butcher who is now serving 27 years for his heinous crimes, has always denied his guilt.
He was 24 and a married father of two when he killed Libby — then 21, and a second-year philosophy student at Hull University. The fact that he had also committed a string of sexual offences — eight crimes in the preceding 19 months including voyeurism, outraging public decency and burglary (he stole intimate items from women's homes) — before he murdered Libby should have been a red flag.
But he did not have a criminal record and police did not apprehend him. Could he have been prevented from killing Libby if they had? It is a question that haunts Lisa: 'Such offences are known as 'low-level' sex crimes. Let's just call them what they are: sex crimes. And people who commit them should be tagged for five years, then maybe their offences would be taken seriously.'
Libby Squire 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'd wandered off, into the cold, snowy night, perhaps to clear her head, and became hypothermic, confused, tearful. She was in this vulnerable state when Relowicz pounced.
It was seven weeks before her body was dredged from the Humber Estuary, submerged for so long that pathologists were unable to determine the cause of her death.
Lisa was so close to her bright, kind daughter that they felt like a single entity, tied by bonds of love so strong that death could never break them. The puzzle of how Libby spent her last hours of life has never been solved and that plagues her mum. '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.
'There is no question of forgiveness but I can try and get something positive out of this horrendous situation. And as soon as he has answered one question, another will take its place. I'll always want to know more.
'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.
'But at the moment, my mind fills in the blanks and it goes down some dark paths. I wonder: did he torture her? I thought at the start, maybe she wasn't dead when she went into the water. But we know she was, because of the post-mortem. There were none of the signs of drowning. And before I saw her body I thought, 'Did he stab her?' I had to look to satisfy myself that he didn't.
'He said in court that when he first came across her, she was crying and cold and — by then disorientated by hypothermia — asking for him to take her home to her mummy. I knew she'd ask for me and I'm grateful he confirmed that. She knows that she is never far from my thoughts, that although I wasn't with her physically that night, my love was there with her.'
Since Libby's death, Mrs Squire has lobbied politicans for tougher measures on low-level sex offenders to prevent more serious crimes from being committed
She said she feels strong enough to find out what happened during Libby's final moments and wants to speak to the depraved killer in person. Pictured: Lisa and Russell Squire
Lisa still speaks of Libby in the present tense; as if she were a palpable, living presence. And there is, even now, a communion between mum and daughter.
'I still feel the bond. I talk to her every day: 'I've really missed you. Why did you die? What happened?' I hear her voice replying, 'Mum, it doesn't matter,' and there is a real sense that she is at peace now; happy and never far from us. I know we will be together again when I die, not that I want to hasten my death.
'But how lovely it is that I'll see her again. That is a gift from her. And I try not to sink into the depths of grief because I know she'd feel guilty if I did; that it's her fault.
