A 15-year-old boy, Alex Rodda, was beaten to death by his lover after threatening to expose their gay sexual relationship. The farmer's son, Matthew Mason, was facing a £2,000 blackmail plot over the intimate relationship, but he had a shocking and deadly reaction to the threat.

After the threats, Matthew tricked Alex into going into the woodlands with him on the "pretense of sexual activity." He was afraid that their relationship would be exposed.

While there, the 19-year-old murdered the boy using a long wrench. Afterward, the boy's body was found partially clothed by garbage collectors.

According to court documents, the two lovers "enjoyed an intimate sexual relationship." However, problems emerged when Alex started to threaten Matthew that he would share explicit photos and videos of their affair.

In fact, Mason had already paid £2,020 to keep Alex from sharing the photos and the videos.

According to Ian Unsworth, the prosecutor handling the case:

"The attack was brutal and merciless. The overall pattern of the injuries was indicative of a violent repetitive assault with that wrench estimated to have involved the landing of at least 15 separate heavy blows."

"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 the next morning."

Alex Was Openly Gay

Alex had no problem with the world knowing he was gay. He was a student at Holmes Chapel school.

However, Mason had been in a relationship with his girlfriend for about two years, and this scandal was probably the last thing he needed. Before he killed Alex, they had known each other for some months.

The girlfriend had found out about the affair, as indicated by a text Alex sent to her:

"I thought I should let you know that the past 2-3 weeks matt has been trying to message me he came to my house in his car to meet me last week but I told him my dad wouldn't let me out so I didn't meet him."

"I have told him it has to stop but just thought I'd let you know before he does a d***head move and I didn't know he was dating you until I went to go follow him on Instagram."

According to Alex, Mason had been acting "flirty" in addition to sending him pictures of his privates and an explicit video.

However, in court, Mason denied these allegations.

Nevertheless, he made payments to Alex's bank account. In fact, Alex had told a friend that Mason was paying him for sex.

He also confided in this friend that if Mason stopped the payments, he would tell the police on him.

In another report, Mr Unsworth admitted that the payments were turning into a huge burden for Mason:

"The messages that have been recovered show that, over time, the defendant was complaining that the payments were cleaning him out."

Despite all this, Mason denies ever killing Alex. Only the outcome of the trial will show if he was responsible for this brutal murder or not.