Libby Squire’s killer exposed himself to her weeks before her murder, her mother believes. Polish butcher Pawel Relowicz, 28, a married father-of-two, dumped the 21-year-old student’s body in the River Hull after raping her on a playing field in the early hours of February 1 2019.
Before carrying out the murder, Relowicz had been carrying out a campaign of chilling, sexually-motivated crimes in the student area of Hull, peering through windows to watch young women and breaking into their homes to steal intimate items. Libby’s mother, Lisa Squire, told the Guardian that a stranger she now believes to be Relowicz had exposed himself to her daughter on her way home weeks before her death.
She said the incident had left her daughter feeling “absolutely furious”, but she had never thought to tell her to report the incident to the police.
“But I never thought to say to her, you need to report that, you need to ring the police, and she didn’t report it either,” she said. “We’re almost conditioned to ignore indecent exposure. I didn’t know better then, but I know better now.”
Earlier this month, Sarah Everard’s killer Wayne Couzens was finally brought to justice for a series of earlier flashing incidents. Ex-officer Couzens, 50, was supposed to be on duty and working from home when he exposed himself to a female cyclist in a country lane in Kent in November 2020.
He went on to expose himself to female attendants at a McDonald’s drive-through in Swanley, Kent, twice in February 2021 – the last incident just days before he snatched Ms Everard, 33, in south London.
Lisa Squire said she was “absolutely horrified” when she learned about the details of Ms Everard’s murder as they were “identical” to her daughter’s. While she admitted she will never be able to prove that it was Relowicz who flashed her daughter, she said “the coincidence is there”.
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“As likely as not, it was Relowicz who flashed Libby because he was doing that in the area at the time,” she said. “I’ll never be able to prove that but the coincidence is there, isn’t it?”
During Relowicz’s sentencing hearing, Mrs Justice Lambert said he had been “emboldened” by the fact he had not been stopped. Since her daughter’s death, Ms Squire has been campaigning for earlier intervention and harsher measures for lower-level sex crimes.
“Not every non-contact sexual offender will go on and become a rapist, but every rapist was a non-contact sexual offender at one point,” she said. “So I think we need to take them for the red flags that they really are.”
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