A predatory older guy buried a young homosexual man face-up in a shallow grave. His bereaved parents issued that frantic warning.
Mark and Faye Leveson felt compelled to warn others after a narcissistic controller and drug user took the 20-year-life. old’s
On September 23, 2007, Matt disappeared after fighting with his elderly boyfriend in Sydney nightclub ARQ.
In 2008, Michael Atkins, aged 59, was cleared of Matt’s murder and moved to Brisbane to continue dating young men he met at The Beat, a homosexual nightclub in Fortitude Valley.
After panicked when Matt died of a heroin overdose, Atkins buried him in a shallow bush burial, but a bargain with officials prevented him from being charged.
‘He’s approaching 60, three years younger than me,’ Mrs. Leveson added.
Speaking on the podcast Matty, developed by Casefile for Spotify and hosted by missing people advocate Loren O’Keefe, Matt’s parents boldly talked about their suffering in an effort to safeguard others.
The inquest’s highlight was nine lads saying Atkins was a weird old guy and they didn’t know what Matt saw in him. His mother described Atkins’ precious expression.
He pursues the same age group. Know.
Atkins’ new life in Brisbane revealed that he was dating young guys, prompting Mr. Leveson to deliver a similar caution at Matt’s inquiry.
One teenage participant told Daily Mail Australia that he held “pool parties for porn stars” after meeting them at The Beat, a nearby gym.
‘He’d want the youngest and most gorgeous males he could find and we’d become ludicrously drunk and out of it,’ the man added.
He constantly groped us. He’d take off everyone’s shirt and grasp young boys’ a**es.
We believed he was an elderly person having fun while he could.
The Beat banned him following the Matt’s death inquiry.
Shocking Brisbane’s LGBTIQ community petitioned to ban Atkins from gay clubs and events throughout Australia after discovering his background.
After discovering Atkins was dating guys as young as his son was when he disappeared, Mr. Leveson called Atkins’ new boyfriend’s parents.
‘Google Matthew Leveson,’ he urged the parents.
Atkins planned without calling police.
Detectives claim Atkins spent time with Matthew’s corpse before burying it in wilderness.
He bought a Garden Master mattock and duct tape at Taren Point Bunnings after removing Matt’s Toyota Corolla’s boom box.
Having wrapped Matt in a blanket or sheet he waited till after midnight and transported him to the boot of the Corolla, and drove to the Royal National Park.
Atkins dug an 80cm hole about 2m long and 1m wide, covered Matt with dirt, and drove off in the deceased man’s vehicle, abandoning it near Waratah Park Reserve in Sutherland.
After Atkins abandoned the car, police found the Bunnings docket in the trunk beneath Matt’s corpse.
In 2016, Atkins was forced to testify and made his notorious “deal with the devil” to avoid jail.
The place where Atkins dumped Matt was a turn-off from the Princes Highway midway between his Cronulla apartment and his devout Catholic mother Pamela Atkins’ NSW South Coast house.
An unsettling scenario occurred on the last afternoon of the search for their missing kid at Sydney’s Royal National Park.
Mr. and Mrs. Leveson stood deep in undergrowth where an excavator and police with spades had searched for the young man’s bones for days.
They even searched with pickaxes and a metal detector.
A search the previous year along a secluded road off a walking circuit in the enormous national park had found nothing, and this second search, undertaken in severe rains, was approaching completion.
But with the closing minutes ticking away on June 1, 2017, the Levesons received a heaven-sent stroke of luck – the excavator became buried in the rain-soaked mud.
Mr. Leveson told Daily Mail Australia what occurred this week as he and Faye promoted their new podcast about their search for their son and the spine-tingling moment they discovered him.
Mr. Leveson said, ‘The National Parks back hoe became stuck extremely severely and they had to send in a professional operator to rescue it.
‘And (the commercial person) claimed “my back hoe has caterpillar treads and can go wherever”, and he was less tree friendly.
The National Parks person wouldn’t have taken out the palm.
The robots were attempting a surface scrape closer to the road 500m from last year’s excavation.
After forcing Atkins to bring in a 70kg mannequin the size and weight of Matt from Matt’s parents’ loaned automobile, police found he could only have dug a shallow grave closer to the road.
Investigators had Atkins sketch the cabbage tree palm jungle near Hacking River where he had transported Matt’s remains hours after his death.
Matt was discovered face-up under the palms on September 23, 2007, wearing the cargo trousers, black Morgan brand singlet, and white leather shoes he was wearing when seen on CCTV outside ARQ early that morning.
He’s face-up. Mr. Leveson said last week that Atkins had thrown dirt on his face.
Atkins’ plan showed a location 4km from Waterfall Railway Station along McKell Avenue along Waterfall Creek to a Hacking River hairpin bend.
Five years after their kid was discreetly placed amid the trees, a grown cabbage tree palm seed fell or was blown into the earth over his body and germinated.
Mr. Leveson indicated that the palm was five years old and fertilized by Matt.
In 2016, then-detective Gary Jubelin took Atkins with his map to Matt’s resting place and discovered white leather shoes but no corpse.
The business operator used his caterpillar tread hoe to remove the five-year-old palm the next year.
Forensic investigators swept aside dirt to find Matt’s first bones and the ‘M’, ‘R’, ‘G’, and ‘A’ of a rotten black Morgan singlet.
“We didn’t need DNA that final afternoon and they were trying to kick us out when they were digging him out, but we said, “we’ve been here for the entire trip.”
Fay embracing detectives and the couple crying with relief are shown on tape.
Detectives informed Mr. and Mrs. Leveson that Atkins’ attorneys would say “our lad told you the truth” and that police hadn’t tried hard enough if Matt wasn’t recovered.
As the Levesons discovered, Atkins’ “deal with the devil” approved up by police hierarchy shielded him from prosecution for meddling with a body.
The Levesons ultimately had Matt’s funeral after reassembling his largely intact remains.
“You fortunate bastards,” his mother exclaimed.
The Leveson family said goodbye to their son at Woronora Cemetery’s South and West Chapels on March 9, 2018.
Matt’s friends, whom Mr. and Mrs. Leveson have adopted, attended the event in the hundreds.
Mrs. Leveson told Daily Mail Australia that they cherished Matty’s essence: ‘a charming youngster who hung about with a harem of females at school, a joker, a loving son who enjoyed travel, and liked his buddies and his siblings’.
After weeks of hardship, Atkins’ murder trial concluded with a not guilty judgment, putting the Levesons through a lot since Matt’s abduction.
The family’s rollercoaster trip with the court system, Atkins’ conviction for drug peddling, and the inquest that ended with an open finding due to Atkins’ continuous lying caused constant stress.
“I do not accept Mr Atkins as a witness of truth,” declared Deputy State Coroner Elaine Truscott in December 2017.
In any case, his falsehoods prevent me from concluding that he killed Matt.
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