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

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

White will likely 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 edge,” White said in recorded police interview in 2020 that was played in court docket.

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

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

The coroner also discovered that gangs of males roamed various Sydney areas seeking gay males to assault, resulting within the deaths of some victims. Some people have been also robbed.

A coroner had ruled in 1989 that the overtly gay man had taken his personal life, while a second coroner in 2012 could not clarify how he died.

His Boston-based brother Steve Johnson maintained strain for additional 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 doubtless be collected.

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

Helen White stated she read a newspaper report in 2008 about Johnson’s dying 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 for those who chased him,’” Helen White informed the court docket. She said her husband did not 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 stated she only turned aware of a reward when the victim’s brother, Steve Johnson, doubled the sum in 2020.

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

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

Steve Johnson said he appreciated White’s responsible plea.

“If he had turned himself in after his violent motion, I might have had a bit more sympathy. If he had grasped Scott’s hand and pulled him to security, I would owe him eternal gratitude,” the brother stated, 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 victim affect statements.

Rosemarie Johnson described the initial 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 community fail so spectacularly that they created boys capable of such horror?” she requested, referring to media experiences of gay beatings in Sydney being described as a sport.

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

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

White’s lawyer Belinda Rigg mentioned her shopper was homosexual and had been concerned 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 attraction that plea in the Court docket of Felony Appeals and hope he will probably be acquitted at trial.

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