12:46 EDT, 22 January 2021
A butcher laughed and smirked during a police interview when he was quizzed over the rape and murder of student Libby Squire, a jury has been told.
Pawel Relowicz is accused of stalking the disoriented student after finding her wandering drunk and possibly suffering from hypothermia before picking her up in his car and raping her.
The 26-year-old is also accused of then dumping her dead or dying into a river.
Sheffield Crown Court also heard that it was likely Ms Squire was too cold to run away from danger as her judgment could have been impaired by alcohol before she vanished in Hull, East Yorks.
A court sketch of Pawel Relowicz, left, and Libby Squire A North Yorkshire butcher accused of raping and murdering student Libby Squire was asked what he found funny and why he was “smirking” by interviewing detectives, a jury has been told. Sheffield Crown Court heard that after Pawel Relowicz, who worked as a butcher at Karro Foods in Malton, was arrested on suspicion of killing Ms Squire, he made a brief statement denying any involvement before refusing to answer questions from police. At the beginning of one interview, in August 2019, an officer put it to Relowicz that “the only reason she is dead is because you killed her”, and then asked him why he was laughing.
Mr Woolfall told the jury that Relowicz replied: “No comment.” The 26-year-old Polish-born father-of-two, of Raglan Street, Hull, denies raping and murdering 21-year-old Ms Squire in the city.
Court sketch of Pawel Relowicz The Hull University philosophy student went missing in the early hours of February 1 2019, following a night out, and her body was found in the Humber Estuary a number of weeks later. Also on Friday, a leading expert on hypothermia told the jury that Ms Squire’s decision-making would have been “significantly impaired” in the lead-up to her disappearance due to the cold and the amount of alcohol she had drunk.