Sydney man admits pushing gay American off a cliff in 1988

CANBERRA, Australia (AP) — A man 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 gay hate crime, a courtroom heard on Monday.

Scott White, 51, appeared in the New South Wales state Supreme Court for a sentencing listening to after he pleaded guilty in January to the murder of the Los Angeles-born Canberra resident, whose demise 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 said in recorded police interview in 2020 that was performed in court.

White said in the interview he lied when he had earlier advised police that he had tried to seize Johnson and forestall his fatal fall.

A coroner dominated 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 males roamed numerous Sydney places searching for gay men to assault, ensuing in the deaths of some victims. Some folks have been additionally robbed.

A coroner had dominated in 1989 that the brazenly gay 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 stress 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 courtroom that her then-husband “bragged” to their kids of beating gay males on the clifftop well-known for homosexual meetups.

Helen White stated she learn a newspaper report in 2008 about Johnson’s death 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's in case you chased him,’” Helen White instructed the court. She mentioned her husband didn't reply.

Below cross-examination, Helen White denied she had been aware of a AU$1 million reward for data on Johnson’s homicide when she reported her former husband to police in 2019. She mentioned she solely turned conscious of a reward when the sufferer’s brother, Steve Johnson, doubled the sum in 2020.

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

“This man (Scott Johnson) who as soon as advised me he might by no means 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 slightly more sympathy. If he had grasped Scott’s hand and pulled him to safety, I'd owe him eternal 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 also gave sufferer affect statements.

Rosemarie Johnson described the initial 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 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 details of the murder were not identified and that White’s accounts had varied.

White had met Johnson in a nearby bar in suburban Manly and Johnson had stripped bare on the clifftop before he died, Hatfield stated. He mentioned the gravity of the murder was considerably elevated because it was motivated by the sufferer’s sexuality.

White’s lawyer Belinda Rigg stated her shopper was gay and had been concerned that his homophobic brother would discover out.

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

His lawyers will attraction that plea in the Court of Legal Appeals and hope he will be acquitted at trial.

Scott Johnson was a doctoral pupil at Australian Nationwide College and lived in Canberra. He was staying at Noone’s parents’ Sydney dwelling when he died.