Sydney man admits pushing gay American off a cliff in 1988

CANBERRA, Australia (AP) — A man instructed police he killed American mathematician Scott Johnson in 1988 by pushing the 27-year-old off a Sydney cliff in what prosecutors describe as a gay hate crime, a court docket heard on Monday.

Scott White, 51, appeared within the New South Wales state Supreme Court docket for a sentencing hearing after he pleaded guilty in January to the murder of the Los Angeles-born Canberra resident, whose demise at the base of a North Head cliff was initially dismissed by police as suicide.

White will be sentenced by Justice Helen Wilson on Tuesday. He faces a potential sentence of life in jail.

“I pushed a bloke. He went over the sting,” White said in recorded police interview in 2020 that was played in court.

White mentioned in the interview he lied when he had earlier informed police that he had tried to seize Johnson and forestall his deadly fall.

A coroner ruled in 2017 that Johnson “fell from the clifftop on account of precise or threatened violence by unidentified persons who attacked him as a result of they perceived him to be gay.”

The coroner additionally discovered that gangs of men roamed numerous Sydney places in the hunt for gay men to assault, ensuing within the deaths of some victims. Some folks were also robbed.

A coroner had dominated in 1989 that the openly homosexual man had taken his personal life, whereas a second coroner in 2012 could not explain how he died.

His Boston-based brother Steve Johnson maintained pressure for additional investigation and offered his own reward of 1 million Australian dollars ($704,000) for information. White was charged in 2020 and police say the reward will likely be collected.

White’s former wife Helen White informed the courtroom that her then-husband “bragged” to their kids of beating gay men at the clifftop well-known for gay meetups.

Helen White mentioned she read a newspaper report in 2008 about Johnson’s demise and asked her husband if he was accountable.

“It’s not my fault,” Scott White allegedly replied. “The dumb (expletive) ran off the cliff.”

“I mentioned, ‘It's in case you chased him,’” Helen White told the court docket. She stated her husband did not reply.

Beneath cross-examination, Helen White denied she had been aware of a AU$1 million reward for data on Johnson’s homicide when she reported her former husband to police in 2019. She mentioned she solely turned conscious of a reward when the victim’s brother, Steve Johnson, doubled the sum in 2020.

Steve Johnson mentioned in his sufferer impression statement that, “With a vicious push, Mr. White took Scott and he vanished.”

“This man (Scott Johnson) who once instructed me he might by no means damage someone even in self-defense died in terror,” the brother added.

Steve Johnson stated he appreciated White’s guilty plea.

“If he had turned himself in after his violent motion, I might have had a little bit extra sympathy. If he had grasped Scott’s hand and pulled him to security, I'd owe him everlasting gratitude,” the brother stated, his voice choked with emotion.

Scott Johnson’s sisters Terry and Rebecca Johnson, his partner Michael Noone and Steve Johnson’s wife Rosemarie Johnson also gave victim impression statements.

Rosemarie Johnson described the preliminary police failure to research Scott Johnson’s loss of life as “indefensible and inhumane.”

Rebecca Johnson, a younger sister, stated the police report of suicide “made no sense.”

“How could a group fail so spectacularly that they created boys capable of such horror?” she requested, referring to media reviews of gay beatings in Sydney being described as a sport.

Prosecutor Brett Hatfield mentioned the precise details of the murder weren't known and that White’s accounts had different.

White had met Johnson in a nearby bar in suburban Manly and Johnson had stripped bare at the clifftop earlier than he died, Hatfield stated. He mentioned the gravity of the homicide was considerably elevated because it was motivated by the victim’s sexuality.

White’s lawyer Belinda Rigg stated her client was gay and had been concerned that his homophobic brother would find out.

In January, White yelled repeatedly in courtroom during a pre-trial hearing that he was responsible, having previously denied the crime.

His attorneys will enchantment that plea within the Court of Criminal Appeals and hope he will be acquitted at trial.

Scott Johnson was a doctoral scholar at Australian Nationwide University and lived in Canberra. He was staying at Noone’s mother and father’ Sydney dwelling when he died.