Sydney man admits pushing homosexual American off a cliff in 1988

CANBERRA, Australia (AP) — A person instructed 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 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 prison.

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

White mentioned within 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 because of precise or threatened violence by unidentified individuals who attacked him because they perceived him to be homosexual.”

The coroner also discovered that gangs of men roamed numerous Sydney areas in search of homosexual males to assault, resulting within the deaths of some victims. Some individuals have been additionally robbed.

A coroner had ruled in 1989 that the openly 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 provided his personal reward of 1 million Australian dollars ($704,000) for info. White was charged in 2020 and police say the reward will probably be collected.

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

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

Beneath cross-examination, Helen White denied she had been aware 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 victim’s brother, Steve Johnson, doubled the sum in 2020.

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

“This man (Scott Johnson) who once advised me he could by no means harm 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 action, I might have had a little more sympathy. If he had grasped Scott’s hand and pulled him to security, I'd 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 additionally gave sufferer influence statements.

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

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

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

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

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 homicide was significantly elevated as a result of it was motivated by the sufferer’s sexuality.

White’s lawyer Belinda Rigg said her client was homosexual and had been involved that his homophobic brother would discover out.

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

His attorneys will appeal that plea within the Court docket of Felony Appeals and hope he will be acquitted at trial.

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