Sydney man admits pushing homosexual 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 gay hate crime, a court heard on Monday.

Scott White, 51, appeared in the New South Wales state Supreme Court docket for a sentencing hearing after he pleaded guilty 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 shall 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 sting,” White said in recorded police interview in 2020 that was performed in courtroom.

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

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

The coroner also discovered that gangs of men roamed numerous Sydney areas in search of gay men to assault, ensuing within the deaths of some victims. Some individuals had been additionally robbed.

A coroner had dominated in 1989 that the brazenly homosexual man had taken his own life, whereas a second coroner in 2012 couldn't explain how he died.

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

White’s former spouse Helen White instructed the courtroom that her then-husband “bragged” to their children of beating homosexual males at the clifftop well-known for gay meetups.

Helen White stated she learn a newspaper report in 2008 about Johnson’s dying 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 said, ‘It's for those who chased him,’” Helen White instructed the courtroom. She said her husband did not reply.

Under cross-examination, Helen White denied she had been conscious of a AU$1 million reward for information on Johnson’s homicide when she reported her former husband to police in 2019. She stated she solely grew to become aware 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 informed me he might never harm somebody 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 just a little extra sympathy. If he had grasped Scott’s hand and pulled him to security, I would owe him everlasting gratitude,” the brother said, his voice choked with emotion.

Scott Johnson’s sisters Terry and Rebecca Johnson, his accomplice Michael Noone and Steve Johnson’s wife Rosemarie Johnson also gave sufferer affect statements.

Rosemarie Johnson described the initial police failure to investigate Scott Johnson’s dying as “indefensible and inhumane.”

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

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

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

White had met Johnson in a nearby bar in suburban Manly and Johnson had stripped naked at the clifftop before he died, Hatfield mentioned. He stated the gravity of the murder was considerably elevated because it was motivated by the sufferer’s sexuality.

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

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

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

Scott Johnson was a doctoral student at Australian Nationwide University and lived in Canberra. He was staying at Noone’s parents’ Sydney home when he died.