Sydney man admits pushing gay American off a cliff in 1988

CANBERRA, Australia (AP) — A person 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 docket heard on Monday.

Scott White, 51, appeared in the New South Wales state Supreme Court docket for a sentencing listening to after he pleaded responsible in January to the murder of the Los Angeles-born Canberra resident, whose dying at the base of a North Head cliff was initially dismissed by police as suicide.

White will probably be sentenced by Justice Helen Wilson on Tuesday. He faces a potential sentence of life in prison.

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

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

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

The coroner also found that gangs of males roamed varied Sydney places searching for gay males to assault, resulting within 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 explain how he died.

His Boston-based brother Steve Johnson maintained pressure for further investigation and provided his own 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 spouse Helen White informed the court that her then-husband “bragged” to their youngsters of beating gay males at the clifftop well-known for homosexual meetups.

Helen White mentioned she read a newspaper report in 2008 about Johnson’s loss of life 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 mentioned, ‘It is if you happen to chased him,’” Helen White advised the courtroom. She said her husband did not reply.

Under cross-examination, Helen White denied she had been conscious of a AU$1 million reward for information on Johnson’s homicide when she reported her former husband to police in 2019. She said 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 once told me he might never hurt somebody even in self-defense died in terror,” the brother added.

Steve Johnson said he appreciated White’s guilty plea.

“If he had turned himself in after his violent motion, I might have had a little bit more sympathy. If he had grasped Scott’s hand and pulled him to security, 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 impact statements.

Rosemarie Johnson described the initial police failure to investigate 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 reports of gay beatings in Sydney being described as a sport.

Prosecutor Brett Hatfield stated the exact particulars of the homicide were not 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 at the clifftop earlier than he died, Hatfield mentioned. He said the gravity of the homicide was significantly elevated because it was motivated by the sufferer’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 courtroom throughout a pre-trial listening to that he was guilty, having previously denied the crime.

His legal professionals will attraction that plea in the Court of Criminal Appeals and hope he shall be acquitted at trial.

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