Man ‘in panic’ buried boyfriend’s body

AUSTRALIA: After finding his boyfriend’s ‘‘cold’’ and lifeless body sprawled on the floor after a night out, Michael Atkins thought he could ‘‘bury the body and nobody would know’’.

That is how the 53-year-old explained his actions after agreeing last year to lead homicide detectives to 20-year-old Matthew Leveson’s grave site. He even drew them a mud map of the burial site.

‘‘I thought it would make it all better,’’ Atkins said in an interview tendered in the NSW Coroner’s Court.

Details of the revealing claims were made public this week, three months after police dug up Leveson’s skeleton in the Royal National Park south of Sydney.

Atkins, an electrician, agreed to show police where he dumped his former boyfriend’s body in 2007 after he was granted immunity from prosecution. He had been acquitted of the murder and manslaughter of Leveson in 2009.

In an interview with police in his solicitor’s office last November, Atkins claimed Leveson died of a drug overdose after a night out at ARQ nightclub in Darlinghurst. However, there is no way to prove this claim forensically, the court heard on Wednesday.

Atkins said the pair returned to their Cronulla unit in the early hours of September 23, 2007, and slept in separate rooms.

Atkins said he woke up about 9am and went to check on Leveson. He found him ‘‘lying on the ground with his eyes open and he was not breathing’’.

‘‘...and he had a funny colour and he was dead,’’ he told police.

‘‘I did not know what to do and I just sat there with him. Later I was lying next to him I told him that I loved him.’’

Asked if he checked his motionless boyfriend for a pulse, Atkins replied: ‘‘No I just felt him ... I touched his forehead and it was cold.’’

Detective Chief Inspector Gary Jubelin asked Atkins, who had the drug GHB in his house, why he didn’t call an ambulance.

‘‘I was panicking, I was in shock and I could not believe this had happened,’’ he said. ‘‘I was just sitting there and I thought I would get blamed and I thought about the drugs.’’

That night he carried Leveson’s body to his car, placed his body in the boot and rolled the car out of the driveway to avoid making any noise. He drove down to the Royal National Park, picked an area of bushland and started digging.

Leveson’s body was uncovered in May this year after weeks of searching. Atkins pointed police to the location,

Asked if he caused Leveson’s death, he told police ‘‘no’’ and claimed he covered it up because he though he would get blamed.

‘‘Because we were dealing drugs and everyone thought I was the more responsible one, so I should be the one caring for him,’’ he said.

After deciding to bury the body, Atkins said he thought people would assume Leveson had just ‘‘gone away or is missing because he had done that before’’.

‘‘I thought the problem would all go away in some weird way,’’ he said.

The inquest into Leveson’s death resumed yesterday.

Deputy State Coroner Elaine Truscott is expected to determine whether Atkins will be called to give further evidence. - Fairfax