Sydney man admits pushing gay American off a cliff in 1988

CANBERRA, Australia (AP) — A man 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 courtroom heard on Monday.

Scott White, 51, appeared within the New South Wales state Supreme Courtroom for a sentencing listening to after he pleaded guilty in January to the murder of the Los Angeles-born Canberra resident, whose demise on the base of a North Head cliff was initially dismissed by police as suicide.

White can 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 played in courtroom.

White stated within the interview he lied when he had earlier told police that he had tried to seize Johnson and forestall his fatal fall.

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

The coroner also found that gangs of men roamed varied Sydney areas in the hunt for gay males to assault, resulting within the deaths of some victims. Some individuals had been also robbed.

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

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

White’s former wife Helen White instructed the court that her then-husband “bragged” to their kids of beating homosexual men at the clifftop well-known for gay meetups.

Helen White mentioned she read a newspaper report in 2008 about Johnson’s demise and requested her husband if he was accountable.

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

“I stated, ‘It is for those who chased him,’” Helen White advised the court docket. She mentioned her husband didn't reply.

Under cross-examination, Helen White denied she had been aware of a AU$1 million reward for information on Johnson’s homicide when she reported her former husband to police in 2019. She said she only turned aware of a reward when the victim’s brother, Steve Johnson, doubled the sum in 2020.

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

“This man (Scott Johnson) who once told me he could never damage somebody even in self-defense died in terror,” the brother added.

Steve Johnson mentioned he appreciated White’s guilty plea.

“If he had turned himself in after his violent motion, I might have had slightly more sympathy. If he had grasped Scott’s hand and pulled him to security, I'd 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 additionally gave sufferer influence statements.

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

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

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

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

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

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

In January, White yelled repeatedly in court docket throughout a pre-trial hearing that he was responsible, having beforehand denied the crime.

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

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