The mum of murdered student Libby Squire is ready to meet her killer behind bars at his high-security jail to ask “How did my daughter die?"
Maternity ward nurse, Lisa Squire, 51, talking exclusively to The Mirror, said: “I’d like to sit at a table opposite him and have a cup of coffee with him. I really would.
“I want to know what happened that night. I still don’t know what happened. What were Libby’s last words? How did she die? Did you hit her?
“I want him to have to look at me.”
This month marks three years since Libby, 21, from High Wycombe, was snatched from the snow-covered streets of Hull then raped and murdered after a night out in 2019.
Her mum says she now feels strong enough to face her daughter’s killer, who is languishing behind bars at top security HMP Wakefield.
“He can’t hurt me any more than he already has done and I need answers,” she said.
Lisa has vowed to come out fighting in 2022 and is preparing to meet the Prime Minister to discuss her campaign for tougher action on low-level sex crimes.
She fears her daughter’s killer, Pawel Relowicz, could have been caught earlier due to his voyeurism and flashing crimes carried out in the years before Libby’s murder.
University of Hull student, Libby, was grabbed from the street by the married dad after she got refused entry to a nightclub for being too drunk.
Vulnerable and alone Libby ended up in the cross-hairs of Relowicz, who had been using the student area as his “hunting ground” - flashing at young women and breaking into homes stealing their underwear and sex toys.
He bundled Libby into his car then drove her to an isolated park where he raped then murdered her, before dumping her body in the Humber. Libby’s body was discovered floating out to sea 48 days later.
In court bespectacled Relowicz, 26, cut a pathetic figure in the dock only moving his head to glance up at Libby’s parents sitting in the public gallery above him.
“He’s been in custody for nearly three years and apparently he is now showing his true colours and is not the quiet little man that he used to be.
“I want him to be forced to face me and answer my questions.”
Lisa, who lives with husband Russell in High Wycombe and has three teenage children, two at home and one at university, said later this month she will have to “relive” her daughter’s horrifying murder in minute detail.
“We have seen all the CCTV. We have a visual leading up to the point of when they got to the park. We can see her being put into his car, we can see his car with her in it, driving to the park. All those time stamps are emblazoned on my brain.
“That’s really hard because on the 31st January I will run through that in my mind.
“I will be watching the clock from 11.30 when she left the club, to nine minutes past midnight when he picked her up.
“I will be thinking ‘she got in the car now...they were driving down this road at that point’.
“I will replay it all, like a video loop in my head.
“But there are seven minutes where I don’t what happened. Before her screams were heard and he silenced her.”
She said it’s because of those seven minutes she wants to take part in restorative justice.
“I will ask to meet him because I want to know how he managed to get her in his car. I want to know did she think she was going home. Was she really, really cold? Was she crying all the time?
“I want to know how he killed her. All the questions that I’ve got going through my mind constantly.
“I want to know if she was dead when he put her in the river, where he put her in the river. Did he hit her? Her frenulum was broken (the thin tissue that connects the tongue to the bottom of the mouth) Did he do that?
“There are all these massive questions. Russell, my husband, says to me ‘why do you want to know all that’ but for me it’s important.
“The questions keep coming back. I know that she was picked up, raped, murdered and put in the water. I know that but I now want more detail.
“I don’t want to know what he was thinking. I don’t want to know if he’s sorry. I don’t want to know if he’s remorseful. I’m not interested in that because I will never forgive him obviously because he took her away from me.
“And I just want to have him be made to look at me. I don’t want him to say sorry because I don’t believe he is sorry.”
Lisa revealed how at his trial in Hull she discovered her daughter’s killer shared the same birthday as her and thought: ‘I can’t even enjoy my birthday now because it’s his birthday too!’
“Can you imagine the extra layer of hell that adds?” Lisa said.
The mum says it is not only Boris she plans to tackle this year. The Attorney General Suella Braverman is next on her list after last year refusing to increase Relowicz’s sentence, as it was not considered to be “unduly lenient”.
Anyone can refer a criminal’s sentence to be increased under the ‘Unduly Lenient Sentence Scheme’ but there is a strict 28 days statutory time limit.
Lisa wants to see the law changed as she was in no state to consider the sentence when he was sent down.
She desperately wants Relowicz’s sentence to be increased from a 27-year tariff to life and she wants prisoners to be made to meet their victims’ families.
“When he got the sentence he got I was happy with it but I’ve been able to sit with it now for nearly a year and the case is comparable to Wayne Couzens, who murdered Sarah Everard and he was given life.
“Both men had scoped out the area they were going to take their victims to, both men had picked the girls up under false pretences, both girls were raped, both girls were murdered and both girls disposed of in inhumane ways.
“The only difference being is that Wayne Couzens admitted what he did and told the family how she died and Relowicz has never told us a thing.
“They are identical but in some ways, Relowicz was worse, as he had 13 other offences which he had already been tried and found guilty of. I couldn’t have broken it down like that after he was sentenced, I just wasn’t there.
“I’m really hoping I can get it changed to life, meaning life even if that means I have to fight to get the law changed. I am writing to the Attorney General asking for a meeting.”
Before any meeting though Lisa has to face the agonising third anniversary of her daughter’s murder.
“I still feel a physical pain in my heart and my arms ache, it’s a physical ache in your arms where you just want to hold them and you can’t,” she explained.
“I still go to pick my phone up to message her and then remember I can’t.“
Lisa has been visiting schools telling children urging them to report any low-level sex crimes.
“If I manage to reach one person then it will be worth it,” she said and added: “I miss Libby more every day and it gets harder but I take comfort in knowing she is helping me get change and together we can make a difference.”
