An apprentice mechanic bludgeoned his 15-year-old lover to death after paying more than £2,000 to stop him reporting their relationship to police, a court has heard.
Matthew Mason, 19, is alleged to have beaten Alex Rodda, 15, with a wrench in woods in Ashley, Cheshire, on December 12 last year.
Opening the trial, Ian Unsworth QC, prosecuting, said: ‘The case for the prosecution is that Matthew Mason took Alexander Rodda to the woods on the pretence of sexual activity and then murdered him in cold blood.’
He said the defendant, then 18, and Alex had known each other for some months before his death and ‘enjoyed an intimate sexual relationship’.
![This is the teenager accused of murdering 15-year-old schoolboy Alex Rodda in a leafy Cheshire village last week. Matthew Mason, 18, appeared at Crewe Magistrates' court today [Dec 16] charged with murder and possession of a bladed article in a public place. Caption: Matthew Mason, 18, of Ash Lane in Knutsford, Cheshire, who has been charged with murder](https://metro.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/PRI_111532052.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&w=897)
Mr Unsworth told the court: ‘For reasons, you may conclude, borne out of that relationship, the defendant took Alex to a remote wooded area near Ashley, not far from Bowdon in Cheshire.
‘There, the defendant used a heavy and long wrench to beat Alex to the head and body over and over again.’
He said Alex, a pupil at Holmes Chapel High School, was struck with at least 15 heavy blows in the ‘brutal’ and ‘merciless’ attack.
He added: ‘Alex did not stand a chance. His life ended in those woods.
‘His partially clothed abandoned young body was discovered by a team of refuse collectors early the next morning.’
Mr Unsworth said in November last year Alex contacted Mason’s girlfriend of two years, Caitlyn Lancashire, to tell her the defendant was messaging him ‘in a flirty way’ and had sent him an explicit photo and video.
Mason denied the allegations to his girlfriend, the court heard, but began making payments to Alex’s bank account at the same time.
Alex told a friend Mason was paying him for sex and if he stopped the payments he would report him to the police, Mr Unsworth said.
The jury heard his friend told Alex it was ‘akin to blackmail’ and ‘wrong’.
By November 23 Mason, who lived with his family on a farm near Knutsford, had paid £2,020 to Alex, the court was told.
Mr Unsworth said: ‘The messages that have been recovered show that, over time, the defendant was complaining that the payments were cleaning him out.’
The court heard telematics data from a tracker, used for insurance purposes, had been used by police to follow the movements of Mason’s Renault Clio at the time of Alex’s death.
Telephone and social media data had also been analysed although Alex’s phone had not been recovered, Mr Unsworth said.
He said: ‘We suggest that the defendant disposed of that telephone and he has decided not to tell anyone where it is or where it went to.’
Family members of Alex and of the defendant were in the public gallery of court as the trial opened on Monday afternoon.
Mason, of Ash Lane, Ollerton, denies murder. The trial is expected to last until early January.
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