Sydney man admits pushing homosexual American off a cliff in 1988

CANBERRA, Australia (AP) — A man 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 homosexual hate crime, a court docket heard on Monday.

Scott White, 51, appeared within the New South Wales state Supreme Court for a sentencing listening to after he pleaded guilty in January to the murder of the Los Angeles-born Canberra resident, whose demise 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 potential sentence of life in prison.

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

White said within the interview he lied when he had earlier informed police that he had tried to grab Johnson and forestall his fatal fall.

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

The coroner additionally discovered that gangs of men roamed varied Sydney places in the hunt for gay men to assault, resulting in the deaths of some victims. Some people were additionally robbed.

A coroner had ruled in 1989 that the overtly gay man had taken his personal 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 provided his personal reward of 1 million Australian dollars ($704,000) for information. White was charged in 2020 and police say the reward will seemingly be collected.

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

Helen White said she learn a newspaper report in 2008 about Johnson’s death 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 said, ‘It's for those who chased him,’” Helen White told the court docket. She said her husband didn't reply.

Beneath 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 said she solely turned aware of a reward when the sufferer’s brother, Steve Johnson, doubled the sum in 2020.

Steve Johnson mentioned 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 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 action, I'd have had just a little extra 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 partner Michael Noone and Steve Johnson’s spouse Rosemarie Johnson also gave sufferer impression statements.

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

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

“How could a community fail so spectacularly that they created boys capable of such horror?” she asked, referring to media experiences of gay beatings in Sydney being described as a sport.

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

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

White’s lawyer Belinda Rigg stated her client was gay and had been concerned that his homophobic brother would discover out.

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

His legal professionals will enchantment that plea within the Court of Prison Appeals and hope he might be acquitted at trial.

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