Sydney man admits pushing gay American off a cliff in 1988

CANBERRA, Australia (AP) — A person told 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 docket heard on Monday.

Scott White, 51, appeared within the New South Wales state Supreme Court docket for a sentencing listening to after he pleaded responsible in January to the homicide 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 probably be sentenced by Justice Helen Wilson on Tuesday. He faces a potential sentence of life in prison.

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

White mentioned within the interview he lied when he had earlier told police that he had tried to grab Johnson and stop his deadly fall.

A coroner dominated in 2017 that Johnson “fell from the clifftop because of precise or threatened violence by unidentified individuals who attacked him because they perceived him to be gay.”

The coroner additionally found that gangs of males roamed varied Sydney locations in search of homosexual males to assault, ensuing in the deaths of some victims. Some individuals have been also robbed.

A coroner had ruled in 1989 that the openly homosexual man had taken his personal life, while a second coroner in 2012 couldn't clarify how he died.

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

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

Helen White mentioned she learn 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 is in the event you chased him,’” Helen White advised the court docket. She stated her husband didn't reply.

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

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

“This man (Scott Johnson) who as soon as instructed me he might by no means harm somebody 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 action, I might have had somewhat more sympathy. If he had grasped Scott’s hand and pulled him to safety, I might owe him everlasting gratitude,” the brother mentioned, his voice choked with emotion.

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

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

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

“How might a neighborhood fail so spectacularly that they created boys able to such horror?” she asked, referring to media studies of gay beatings in Sydney being described as a sport.

Prosecutor Brett Hatfield mentioned the precise details of the murder were not known and that White’s accounts had different.

White had met Johnson in a nearby bar in suburban Manly and Johnson had stripped naked on the clifftop before he died, Hatfield stated. He mentioned the gravity of the homicide was significantly elevated as a result of it was motivated by the victim’s sexuality.

White’s lawyer Belinda Rigg stated her shopper was gay and had been involved that his homophobic brother would discover out.

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

His lawyers will attraction that plea in the Court of Criminal 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 home when he died.