Case snapshot
University student Libby Squire vanished after a night out in Hull, England, in February 2019. Her body was found in the Humber Estuary seven weeks later. The investigation into her final hours would expose a predator who had been hiding in plain sight.
The night she disappeared
Libby Squire, 21, was a second-year philosophy student at the University of Hull. On the night of January 31, 2019, she went out with friends to a nightclub called Welly. She had been drinking, and by the end of the night, she was turned away at the door of another club, the Fuel bar, because she appeared too intoxicated.
Her friends put her in a taxi just after midnight. The driver dropped her near her shared student home on Wellesley Avenue around 11:45 p.m. Security footage captured her getting out of the car. She never made it inside.
A passerby saw her sitting on a bench near the intersection of Beverley Road and Haworth Street around 11:50 p.m. She appeared confused and upset. Another motorist stopped and offered help, but Libby said she was fine and walked away. That was the last confirmed sighting of her alive.
The search begins
Libby’s housemates reported her missing the next morning when they realized she had not come home. Police launched an immediate search. Her phone was found in her purse inside her house. She had no wallet, no keys, no coat in the middle of winter.
Detectives canvassed the area. They reviewed CCTV footage, spoke to witnesses, searched parks, waterways, abandoned buildings. Days passed with no trace of her.
Then investigators began looking at a man who lived less than a mile from where Libby was last seen.
The suspect emerges
Pawel Relowicz, 24, was a married father of two who worked as a butcher. He had no connection to Libby, but his car had been captured on CCTV in the same area where she disappeared, around the same time.
Police obtained his phone records. Between midnight and 1:00 a.m. on February 1, his phone pinged off cell towers near Oak Road Playing Fields, a park close to where Libby was last seen. His movements were erratic. His car was recorded circling the area multiple times.
Officers searched his home and car. They found no blood, no DNA, no obvious sign of violence. But they did find something else.
A pattern of predatory behavior
Relowicz had been committing sex offenses in the area for years. He had been charged just weeks before Libby’s disappearance with voyeurism, outraging public decency, and burglary. Police had caught him performing sex acts in front of women’s homes, entering student properties to steal underwear, watching women through windows.
Nine victims came forward. All lived within walking distance of where Libby vanished. All described a man who prowled at night, peering into windows, touching himself in driveways, disappearing into the dark.
Relowicz admitted to these offenses. But he denied any involvement in Libby’s disappearance.
The body is recovered
On March 20, 2019, nearly seven weeks after Libby vanished, her body was found in the Humber Estuary near Grimsby Docks. She was still wearing the same clothes from the night she disappeared.
The pathologist could not determine a definitive cause of death due to decomposition, but drowning was considered likely. There were no clear signs of assault or strangulation. The condition of her body made forensic examination difficult.
But investigators had other evidence.
Building the case
Police analyzed Relowicz’s digital footprint. His phone data placed him at Oak Road Playing Fields at the time Libby would have been walking in that direction. His car was seen on camera heading toward the area, then later returning.
Detectives also examined his internet search history. In the days following Libby’s disappearance, Relowicz searched for news coverage of the case. He looked up how long a body could survive in water. He researched whether the Humber was tidal.
Then came the DNA evidence. Forensic scientists found Libby’s DNA on the car seat of Relowicz’s vehicle. It was a small trace, but it was there. His semen was found on her body.
The prosecution’s theory
At trial, prosecutors argued that Relowicz had been prowling the streets that night, as he often did. He encountered Libby while she was vulnerable and alone. He offered her a ride. She got into his car.
He drove her to Oak Road Playing Fields. There, he raped her. Then, to silence her, he pushed her into the River Hull, which flows into the Humber Estuary. She drowned in the freezing water.
The Crown presented the digital trail, the forensic evidence, the pattern of behavior. They framed Relowicz not as a man who made a single mistake, but as a serial predator who escalated.
The defense’s argument
Relowicz’s defense did not deny his presence in the area. They did not deny the sexual contact. But they argued that what happened was not rape, and it was not murder.
The defense suggested that the sexual activity was consensual, that Libby had willingly entered his car, and that he had left her near the water’s edge, alive. They claimed he did not know she had died until her body was found weeks later.
The defense pointed to the lack of a definitive cause of death, the absence of signs of violence, the difficulty in proving intent to kill. They argued the case rested on circumstantial evidence and assumption.
The verdict
The jury deliberated for more than nine hours. On February 11, 2021, they found Pawel Relowicz guilty of rape and murder.
He was sentenced to life in prison with a minimum term of 27 years. The judge described him as a predator who had taken advantage of a vulnerable young woman and then tried to destroy the evidence by putting her in the water.
Libby’s parents issued a statement calling her a loving, creative, kind person who had been stolen from them. They said they would never understand why Relowicz did what he did.
The unanswered questions
The conviction brought legal closure, but it left gaps in the narrative. Because of the condition of Libby’s body, the precise sequence of events could not be fully reconstructed. The exact cause of death remained undetermined. The timeline of what happened between the moment she got into his car and the moment she entered the water was based on inference, not direct proof.
Relowicz never confessed. He never explained what happened in those final minutes. His silence meant that the full story of Libby Squire’s last hours would never be known.
What is known is that a young woman who was lost and alone was targeted by a man who had spent years preying on women in the dark. When investigators traced his movements, his searches, his DNA, the evidence was enough to convict him of taking her life.
Where to dive deeper
- Documentary: “The Murder of Libby Squire” (Investigation Discovery)
- Podcast: “The Disappearance and Murder of Libby Squire” (“Crime Junkie”, Audiochuck)
- Book: “My Beautiful Libby: A Mother’s Journey Through Grief and Justice” by Lisa Squire
