Sydney man admits pushing homosexual 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 courtroom 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 loss of life 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 edge,” White mentioned in recorded police interview in 2020 that was performed in court.

White mentioned in the interview he lied when he had earlier instructed police that he had tried to grab Johnson and stop 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 homosexual.”

The coroner also found that gangs of men roamed numerous Sydney areas searching for homosexual men to assault, resulting in the deaths of some victims. Some folks were also robbed.

A coroner had dominated in 1989 that the overtly 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 offered his own reward of 1 million Australian dollars ($704,000) for data. White was charged in 2020 and police say the reward will likely be collected.

White’s former spouse Helen White instructed the courtroom that her then-husband “bragged” to their children of beating homosexual 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 should you chased him,’” Helen White advised the courtroom. She stated her husband didn't reply.

Underneath cross-examination, Helen White denied she had been conscious of a AU$1 million reward for data on Johnson’s murder when she reported her former husband to police in 2019. She stated she only became aware of a reward when the sufferer’s brother, Steve Johnson, doubled the sum in 2020.

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

“This man (Scott Johnson) who as soon as informed me he could 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 action, I might have had a bit more sympathy. If he had grasped Scott’s hand and pulled him to safety, I might owe him eternal gratitude,” the brother said, his voice choked with emotion.

Scott Johnson’s sisters Terry and Rebecca Johnson, his associate Michael Noone and Steve Johnson’s wife Rosemarie Johnson additionally gave victim impact statements.

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

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

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

Prosecutor Brett Hatfield stated the exact details of the murder were not identified 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 before he died, Hatfield mentioned. He mentioned the gravity of the homicide was considerably elevated as a result of it was motivated by the victim’s sexuality.

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

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

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

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