Libby Squire murder trial: Court hears 'terrible twist' of fate led student to stray into killer's path as his account of night deemed 'nonsense'

Butcher Pawel Relowicz's insistence that he had consensual sex with the philosophy student, who "vanished as if into thin air" after he picked her up in a drunken state, is also a "nonsense proposition", prosecutor Richard Wright QC said as he gave the jury his closing speech.

Mr Wright said: "Pawel Relowicz, we suggest has lied throughout these proceedings and Libby Squire died because it was her sheer misfortune by a terrible twist of fate to stray into the path of a man who was looking for this sexual opportunity. By a man who raped her and achieved the easy sex he was looking for and killed her."

Mr Wright began his closing speech by reminding the jury at Sheffield Crown Court that it is two years to the day the 21-year-old disappeared in the early hours of February 1, 2019, after a night out with friends.

He told the court: "Two years ago today, at probably this very moment, her friends and her family were frantically searching for her and for news of her as she had vanished as if into thin air."

Mr Wright told the jury the prosecution case is that Relowicz, 26, picked up Miss Squire in Haworth Street, just off Beverley Road, in Hull, before driving her to the nearby Oak Road playing fields where he raped her and put her into the River Hull either alive, dead or dying.

Relowicz, who has admitted committing a series of sexually motivated offences in the 18 months before Miss Squire disappeared, told the jury he had consensual sex with her on Oak Road before he left her alive.

Mr Wright said: "It is, we suggest in common sense, a nonsense proposition."

He reminded the court how Miss Squire had gone out with friends on the night of January 31 2019, but was refused entry to the Welly club because she was drunk and returned to her street in a taxi.

Instead of going home she went to Beverley Road where a number of people tried to help her in the freezing conditions before she got into Relowicz's car.

Mr Wright told the jury that the defendant had been out for three hours that night looking to "satisfy his insatiable sexual urges".

He said that Relowicz has admitted he "wanted an opportunity for easy sex".

Miss Squire's body was found in the Humber Estuary on March 20, 2019.

Her cause of death remains unascertained, although a pathologist previously told the jury she "could have been strangled".

Mr Wright said it was not credible to argue that she had accidentally fallen in the river, as she would have had to walk across the playing fields from where Relowicz had left her and was terrified of water.

He also told the jury the idea she was killed by someone other than the defendant would have been an "unholy coincidence".

He asked the jurors: "On the very night this man, who was out to commit sexual offences, we suggest raped Libby Squire, conveniently for him someone else came forward and murdered her?"

Married father-of-two Relowicz, of Raglan Street, Hull, denies rape and murder.

The trial was adjourned until Tuesday when Oliver Saxby QC will deliver the defence closing speech.