Sydney man admits pushing gay American off a cliff in 1988

CANBERRA, Australia (AP) — A man told 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 within the New South Wales state Supreme Court docket for a sentencing hearing after he pleaded guilty in January to the homicide 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 will 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 mentioned in recorded police interview in 2020 that was performed in court.

White mentioned in the interview he lied when he had earlier informed police that he had tried to seize Johnson and prevent his deadly fall.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Underneath cross-examination, Helen White denied she had been conscious of a AU$1 million reward for info 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 victim’s brother, Steve Johnson, doubled the sum in 2020.

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

“This man (Scott Johnson) who once told me he might never hurt 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 action, I might have had a bit of extra sympathy. If he had grasped Scott’s hand and pulled him to security, I would owe him eternal 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 also gave victim impression statements.

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

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

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

Prosecutor Brett Hatfield said the exact details of the murder 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 naked at the clifftop earlier than he died, Hatfield said. He said the gravity of the murder was significantly elevated as a result of it was motivated by the victim’s sexuality.

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

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

His lawyers will appeal that plea within the Courtroom of Criminal Appeals and hope he will be acquitted at trial.

Scott Johnson was a doctoral scholar at Australian National University and lived in Canberra. He was staying at Noone’s mother and father’ Sydney residence when he died.