Sydney man admits pushing homosexual American off a cliff in 1988

CANBERRA, Australia (AP) — A person advised 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 Court docket for a sentencing hearing after he pleaded responsible in January to the homicide of the Los Angeles-born Canberra resident, whose dying on 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 edge,” White said in recorded police interview in 2020 that was performed in courtroom.

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

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

The coroner additionally discovered that gangs of males roamed various Sydney areas looking for gay men to assault, resulting in 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 explain how he died.

His Boston-based brother Steve Johnson maintained stress for additional investigation and offered his own 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 wife Helen White informed the court docket that her then-husband “bragged” to their children of beating gay males at the clifftop well-known for gay meetups.

Helen White said she read a newspaper report in 2008 about Johnson’s loss of life 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 mentioned, ‘It is in the event you chased him,’” Helen White advised the court. She said her husband didn't reply.

Under cross-examination, Helen White denied she had been conscious of a AU$1 million reward for data on Johnson’s murder when she reported her former husband to police in 2019. She mentioned she only grew to become aware of a reward when the sufferer’s brother, Steve Johnson, doubled the sum in 2020.

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

“This man (Scott Johnson) who once instructed me he could never 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 motion, I might have had just a little more sympathy. If he had grasped Scott’s hand and pulled him to safety, I would owe him eternal gratitude,” the brother mentioned, his voice choked with emotion.

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

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

Rebecca Johnson, a youthful sister, stated 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 experiences of homosexual beatings in Sydney being described as a sport.

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

White had met Johnson in a nearby bar in suburban Manly and Johnson had stripped bare on the clifftop before he died, Hatfield said. He said 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 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 guilty, having previously denied the crime.

His legal professionals will attraction that plea in the Court docket 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 mother and father’ Sydney residence when he died.