Sydney man admits pushing homosexual 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 courtroom heard on Monday.

Scott White, 51, appeared in the New South Wales state Supreme Courtroom for a sentencing listening to after he pleaded responsible in January to the murder of the Los Angeles-born Canberra resident, whose loss of life 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 possible sentence of life in prison.

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

White stated in the interview he lied when he had earlier instructed police that he had tried to grab Johnson and forestall his fatal fall.

A coroner ruled in 2017 that Johnson “fell from the clifftop because of actual or threatened violence by unidentified individuals 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 seeking homosexual males to assault, ensuing in the deaths of some victims. Some people had been additionally robbed.

A coroner had dominated in 1989 that the overtly homosexual man had taken his own life, whereas a second coroner in 2012 could not clarify how he died.

His Boston-based brother Steve Johnson maintained pressure 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 probably be collected.

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

Helen White said she learn a newspaper report in 2008 about Johnson’s dying and asked 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 is if you chased him,’” Helen White advised the courtroom. She stated her husband did not reply.

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

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

“This man (Scott Johnson) who as soon as instructed me he could never harm someone even in self-defense died in terror,” the brother added.

Steve Johnson stated he appreciated White’s responsible plea.

“If he had turned himself in after his violent motion, I would have had somewhat more sympathy. If he had grasped Scott’s hand and pulled him to security, I'd owe him everlasting 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 also gave sufferer influence statements.

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

Prosecutor Brett Hatfield mentioned the exact details of the homicide were not identified and that White’s accounts had different.

White had met Johnson in a close-by bar in suburban Manly and Johnson had stripped naked on the clifftop before he died, Hatfield stated. He said the gravity of the homicide was significantly elevated because it was motivated by the sufferer’s sexuality.

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

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

His lawyers will attraction that plea within the Courtroom of Legal Appeals and hope he will probably be acquitted at trial.

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