Sydney man admits pushing gay American off a cliff in 1988

CANBERRA, Australia (AP) — A person informed 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 guilty 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 jail.

“I pushed a bloke. He went over the sting,” White mentioned in recorded police interview in 2020 that was performed in court docket.

White stated in the interview he lied when he had earlier instructed police that he had tried to grab Johnson and forestall his deadly fall.

A coroner ruled in 2017 that Johnson “fell from the clifftop on account of precise or threatened violence by unidentified persons who attacked him because they perceived him to be homosexual.”

The coroner additionally discovered that gangs of men roamed various Sydney places in quest of homosexual men to assault, ensuing within the deaths of some victims. Some folks were additionally robbed.

A coroner had dominated in 1989 that the openly homosexual man had taken his own 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 supplied 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 wife Helen White told the courtroom that her then-husband “bragged” to their kids of beating homosexual men at the clifftop well-known for gay meetups.

Helen White said she learn a newspaper report in 2008 about Johnson’s dying 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 mentioned, ‘It is if you chased him,’” Helen White told the court. She stated her husband did not reply.

Under 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 conscious of a reward when the sufferer’s brother, Steve Johnson, doubled the sum in 2020.

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

“This man (Scott Johnson) who once informed me he could by no means damage someone even in self-defense died in terror,” the brother added.

Steve Johnson said he appreciated White’s responsible plea.

“If he had turned himself in after his violent action, I would have had just a little more sympathy. If he had grasped Scott’s hand and pulled him to safety, I'd owe him everlasting gratitude,” the brother stated, his voice choked with emotion.

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

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

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

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

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

White had met Johnson in a nearby 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 mentioned her client was gay and had been concerned that his homophobic brother would discover out.

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

His attorneys will appeal that plea in the Court docket of Criminal Appeals and hope he might be acquitted at trial.

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