Sydney man admits pushing gay American off a cliff in 1988

CANBERRA, Australia (AP) — A person 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 homosexual hate crime, a court heard on Monday.

Scott White, 51, appeared in the New South Wales state Supreme Courtroom for a sentencing listening to after he pleaded responsible in January to the murder of the Los Angeles-born Canberra resident, whose loss of life 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 possible sentence of life in jail.

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

White said in the interview he lied when he had earlier instructed police that he had tried to seize Johnson and prevent 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 because they perceived him to be gay.”

The coroner additionally found that gangs of males roamed various Sydney locations searching for homosexual males to assault, ensuing within the deaths of some victims. Some people have been also robbed.

A coroner had dominated in 1989 that the overtly 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 further investigation and supplied his personal reward of 1 million Australian dollars ($704,000) for information. White was charged in 2020 and police say the reward will possible be collected.

White’s former spouse Helen White advised the court docket that her then-husband “bragged” to their kids of beating gay males on the clifftop well-known for homosexual meetups.

Helen White mentioned she read a newspaper report in 2008 about Johnson’s death and requested her husband if he was responsible.

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

“I mentioned, ‘It's should you chased him,’” Helen White advised the courtroom. She said her husband didn't reply.

Underneath cross-examination, Helen White denied she had been conscious of a AU$1 million reward for information on Johnson’s murder when she reported her former husband to police in 2019. She said she solely became aware of a reward when the sufferer’s brother, Steve Johnson, doubled the sum in 2020.

Steve Johnson said in his victim impact assertion that, “With a vicious push, Mr. White took Scott and he vanished.”

“This man (Scott Johnson) who once instructed me he may never hurt someone even in self-defense died in terror,” the brother added.

Steve Johnson said he appreciated White’s guilty plea.

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

Scott Johnson’s sisters Terry and Rebecca Johnson, his associate Michael Noone and Steve Johnson’s spouse Rosemarie Johnson additionally gave victim affect statements.

Rosemarie Johnson described the preliminary police failure to analyze Scott Johnson’s death as “indefensible and inhumane.”

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

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

Prosecutor Brett Hatfield mentioned the exact particulars of the homicide were not identified and that White’s accounts had assorted.

White had met Johnson in a close-by bar in suburban Manly and Johnson had stripped naked on the clifftop earlier than he died, Hatfield stated. He stated the gravity of the murder was considerably elevated as a result of it was motivated by the sufferer’s sexuality.

White’s lawyer Belinda Rigg said her consumer was gay and had been concerned that his homophobic brother would discover out.

In January, White yelled repeatedly in court during a pre-trial listening to that he was guilty, having beforehand denied the crime.

His lawyers will enchantment that plea in the Courtroom of Legal Appeals and hope he can be acquitted at trial.

Scott Johnson was a doctoral pupil at Australian National University and lived in Canberra. He was staying at Noone’s parents’ Sydney house when he died.