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 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 murder 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 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 edge,” White stated in recorded police interview in 2020 that was played in court docket.

White said in the interview he lied when he had earlier told police that he had tried to grab Johnson and stop his fatal fall.

A coroner ruled 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 additionally found that gangs of men roamed numerous Sydney areas in quest of homosexual men to assault, ensuing in the deaths of some victims. Some individuals had been additionally robbed.

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

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

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

Helen White mentioned she read a newspaper report in 2008 about Johnson’s dying 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 if you happen to chased him,’” Helen White told the court. She stated her husband didn't reply.

Below 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 only became aware of a reward when the sufferer’s brother, Steve Johnson, doubled the sum in 2020.

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

“This man (Scott Johnson) who once told me he might never harm someone 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 somewhat extra sympathy. If he had grasped Scott’s hand and pulled him to safety, I would owe him everlasting gratitude,” the brother stated, his voice choked with emotion.

Scott Johnson’s sisters Terry and Rebecca Johnson, his partner Michael Noone and Steve Johnson’s wife Rosemarie Johnson additionally gave sufferer impact statements.

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

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

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

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

White had met Johnson in a nearby bar in suburban Manly and Johnson had stripped naked on the clifftop earlier than he died, Hatfield mentioned. He stated 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 client was homosexual and had been concerned that his homophobic brother would discover out.

In January, White yelled repeatedly in courtroom throughout a pre-trial listening to that he was guilty, having beforehand denied the crime.

His lawyers will attraction that plea in the Court docket of Prison Appeals and hope he can 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 dwelling when he died.