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 gay hate crime, a courtroom heard on Monday.

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

White will likely 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 sting,” White mentioned in recorded police interview in 2020 that was played in courtroom.

White stated within the interview he lied when he had earlier instructed police that he had tried to seize Johnson and stop his deadly fall.

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

The coroner additionally found that gangs of men roamed varied Sydney locations in search of gay men to assault, resulting in the deaths of some victims. Some folks were also robbed.

A coroner had ruled in 1989 that the brazenly gay man had taken his personal life, while a second coroner in 2012 could not clarify how he died.

His Boston-based brother Steve Johnson maintained stress for additional investigation and supplied his own reward of 1 million Australian dollars ($704,000) for information. White was charged in 2020 and police say the reward will probably be collected.

White’s former wife Helen White instructed the court that her then-husband “bragged” to their youngsters of beating gay men at the clifftop well-known for homosexual 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 said, ‘It's if you chased him,’” Helen White instructed the courtroom. She stated her husband did not reply.

Underneath 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 stated she solely turned conscious of a reward when the sufferer’s brother, Steve Johnson, doubled the sum in 2020.

Steve Johnson said in his sufferer influence assertion that, “With a vicious push, Mr. White took Scott and he vanished.”

“This man (Scott Johnson) who as soon as advised me he might by no means damage somebody 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 might have had a bit more sympathy. If he had grasped Scott’s hand and pulled him to security, I'd owe him eternal gratitude,” the brother mentioned, 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 research Scott Johnson’s dying as “indefensible and inhumane.”

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

“How might a community 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 said the exact details of the murder weren't identified and that White’s accounts had various.

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

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

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

His lawyers will appeal that plea within the Court docket of Prison Appeals and hope he can be acquitted at trial.

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