Libby Squire murder: Killer’s 27-year jail term ‘not unduly lenient,’ attorney general rules

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The butcher who raped and murdered Hull student Libby Squire will not have his 27-year jail sentence increased after it was ruled not to be unduly lenient.

Serial sex offender Pawel Relowicz was jailed last month after being found guilty of killing the 21-year-old following a night in which he prowled the city’s streets.

His term was referred to the Attorney General's Office last week for consideration under the Unduly Lenient Sentence scheme

But a spokesperson for the office said the threshold for a full review had not been met, meaning the original sentence will remain standing.

During an oft-harrowing trial at Sheffield Crown Court, prosecutors told how Relowicz – a 26-year-old married father-of-two – approached Squire when he saw her intoxicated, shivering and in deep distress after she had been refused entry into a Hull nightclub in January 2019.

The Polish national, who had been driving around the streets in his car, drove his victim to an isolated playing field where he raped her and threw her body in the adjacent river. Squire, a philosophy undergraduate originally from High Wycombe, may have still been alive when her body hit the water, the court heard.

It was seven weeks before she was found in the Humber Estuary.

Relowicz denied rape and murder but, after being found guilty, was revealed to have already committed nine other sexual offences between July 2017 and 20 January 2019 – just 11 days before he killed Squire.

The AGO spokesperson said on Friday that the solicitor general had been shocked by the case and offered her "profound sympathy" to Squire's family.

But they added: "A referral under the scheme can only be made if a sentence is not just lenient but unduly so, such that the sentencing judge made a gross error or imposed a sentence outside the range of sentences reasonably available in the circumstances of the offence.

“The threshold is a high one, and the test was not met in this case."