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18-Year-Old Man Murdered The 15-Year-Old Boy Who Was Blackmailing Him
They were having sex and the youngster was demanding money.
In the second half of 2019, then 18-years-old, Matthew Mason was a student, studying a three-year Agricultural Engineering course at Reaseheath College. He lived on his parent’s farm and was intending farm work as his future.
Mason had a girlfriend. They had been together for two years.
In the second half of 2019 — the exact dates are not precise — Mason began some social-media contact with a 15-year-old schoolboy, Alex Rodda, who he knew slightly from school. They started an occasional sexual relationship. It seems that Matthew Mason would visit Alex Rodda’s home, driving there when Rodda’s mother had left for work, and whilst there, Alex Rodda would perform a sex act on him.
Again, details of this are sketchy; of the two present people, one is dead, and one is not talking. But Alex Rodda was confiding in another friend. Police officers captured details of the conversations that friend had with Alex Rodda in an interview, and the resulting recording played to the Jury at Chester Crown Court.
Asked by the Police if he knew Mason and Rodda’s relationship’s nature, the friend said he knew Mason paid Rodda for sex.
