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 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 probably be sentenced by Justice Helen Wilson on Tuesday. He faces a possible 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 stated 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 ruled in 2017 that Johnson “fell from the clifftop as a result of precise or threatened violence by unidentified individuals who attacked him as a result of they perceived him to be homosexual.”

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

A coroner had dominated in 1989 that the openly homosexual man had taken his personal life, while 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 own reward of 1 million Australian dollars ($704,000) for info. White was charged in 2020 and police say the reward will seemingly be collected.

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

Helen White mentioned she learn a newspaper report in 2008 about Johnson’s dying and asked her husband if he was responsible.

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

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

Beneath cross-examination, Helen White denied she had been conscious of a AU$1 million reward for data on Johnson’s homicide 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 affect statement that, “With a vicious push, Mr. White took Scott and he vanished.”

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

Steve Johnson mentioned he appreciated White’s responsible plea.

“If he had turned himself in after his violent action, I'd have had slightly more sympathy. If he had grasped Scott’s hand and pulled him to safety, I'd owe him eternal 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 wife Rosemarie Johnson also gave victim affect statements.

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

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

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

Prosecutor Brett Hatfield said the precise details of the homicide were not identified and that White’s accounts had diverse.

White had met Johnson in a close-by bar in suburban Manly and Johnson had stripped bare at the clifftop before he died, Hatfield mentioned. He said the gravity of the murder was significantly elevated because it was motivated by the sufferer’s sexuality.

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

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

His legal professionals will appeal that plea within the Court docket of Legal Appeals and hope he might be acquitted at trial.

Scott Johnson was a doctoral pupil at Australian Nationwide College and lived in Canberra. He was staying at Noone’s dad and mom’ Sydney residence when he died.