Sydney man admits pushing gay 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 gay hate crime, a courtroom heard on Monday.

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

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

White stated within the interview he lied when he had earlier told 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 also discovered that gangs of men roamed varied Sydney places seeking homosexual males to assault, resulting in the deaths of some victims. Some people had been additionally robbed.

A coroner had dominated in 1989 that the openly homosexual man had taken his own life, while a second coroner in 2012 could not explain 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 information. White was charged in 2020 and police say the reward will probably be collected.

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

Helen White stated she learn a newspaper report in 2008 about Johnson’s loss of life 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 if you chased him,’” Helen White instructed the courtroom. She stated her husband didn't reply.

Below cross-examination, Helen White denied she had been conscious of a AU$1 million reward for information on Johnson’s murder when she reported her former husband to police in 2019. She mentioned she only grew to become conscious of a reward when the victim’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 as soon as told me he might never 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'd have had a bit more 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 partner Michael Noone and Steve Johnson’s wife Rosemarie Johnson additionally gave sufferer affect statements.

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

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

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

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

White had met Johnson in a close-by bar in suburban Manly and Johnson had stripped bare at the clifftop before he died, Hatfield stated. He stated 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 stated her consumer was homosexual and had been involved that his homophobic brother would find out.

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

His attorneys will attraction that plea within the Court of Criminal Appeals and hope he will probably be acquitted at trial.

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