Sydney man admits pushing gay American off a cliff in 1988

CANBERRA, Australia (AP) — A man advised 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 within the New South Wales state Supreme Court docket for a sentencing listening to after he pleaded guilty in January to the homicide 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 edge,” White stated in recorded police interview in 2020 that was played in court docket.

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

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

The coroner also discovered that gangs of males roamed varied Sydney places in quest of homosexual men to assault, resulting within the deaths of some victims. Some folks had been also robbed.

A coroner had dominated in 1989 that the openly gay 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 supplied his personal reward of 1 million Australian dollars ($704,000) for data. White was charged in 2020 and police say the reward will seemingly be collected.

White’s former wife Helen White told the courtroom that her then-husband “bragged” to their children of beating gay males at the clifftop well-known for gay meetups.

Helen White mentioned she read 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 stated, ‘It's in the event you chased him,’” Helen White instructed the courtroom. She said her husband did not reply.

Under cross-examination, Helen White denied she had been aware of a AU$1 million reward for info on Johnson’s homicide when she reported her former husband to police in 2019. She stated 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 as soon as informed me he might by no means damage 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 would have had a little more sympathy. If he had grasped Scott’s hand and pulled him to safety, I'd owe him eternal gratitude,” the brother mentioned, 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 impact statements.

Rosemarie Johnson described the initial police failure to investigate Scott Johnson’s death 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 capable of such horror?” she requested, referring to media stories of gay beatings in Sydney being described as a sport.

Prosecutor Brett Hatfield mentioned the precise details of the homicide weren't known and that White’s accounts had diversified.

White had met Johnson in a close-by bar in suburban Manly and Johnson had stripped bare on the clifftop earlier than he died, Hatfield said. He stated the gravity of the murder was significantly elevated as a result of it was motivated by the sufferer’s sexuality.

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

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

His attorneys will enchantment that plea in the Courtroom of Prison Appeals and hope he will likely be acquitted at trial.

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