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 docket heard on Monday.

Scott White, 51, appeared in the New South Wales state Supreme Court for a sentencing listening to after he pleaded responsible in January to the murder of the Los Angeles-born Canberra resident, whose death 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 jail.

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

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

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

The coroner also discovered that gangs of males roamed numerous Sydney locations looking for gay men to assault, resulting within the deaths of some victims. Some people had been additionally robbed.

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

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

White’s former wife Helen White told the court docket that her then-husband “bragged” to their youngsters of beating gay men at the clifftop well-known for homosexual meetups.

Helen White stated she learn a newspaper report in 2008 about Johnson’s demise 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 in case you chased him,’” Helen White advised the courtroom. She stated her husband did not reply.

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

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

“This man (Scott Johnson) who once informed me he may never damage someone even in self-defense died in terror,” the brother added.

Steve Johnson stated he appreciated White’s guilty plea.

“If he had turned himself in after his violent action, I would have had a little bit more sympathy. If he had grasped Scott’s hand and pulled him to safety, I might owe him eternal gratitude,” the brother stated, 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 victim affect statements.

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

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

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

Prosecutor Brett Hatfield stated the exact particulars of the murder weren't recognized and that White’s accounts had different.

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

White’s lawyer Belinda Rigg said her shopper was homosexual 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 legal professionals will appeal that plea within the Court of Felony Appeals and hope he will probably be acquitted at trial.

Scott Johnson was a doctoral student at Australian Nationwide University and lived in Canberra. He was staying at Noone’s parents’ Sydney house when he died.