Sydney man admits pushing homosexual American off a cliff in 1988

CANBERRA, Australia (AP) — A man informed 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 for a sentencing hearing after he pleaded guilty 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 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 docket.

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

A coroner ruled in 2017 that Johnson “fell from the clifftop on account of precise 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 varied Sydney areas in quest of homosexual males to assault, resulting within the deaths of some victims. Some individuals had been also robbed.

A coroner had ruled in 1989 that the openly homosexual man had taken his own life, whereas a second coroner in 2012 couldn't explain 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 info. White was charged in 2020 and police say the reward will doubtless be collected.

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

Helen White said she read a newspaper report in 2008 about Johnson’s dying and requested 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's should you chased him,’” Helen White advised the court docket. She mentioned her husband did not reply.

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

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

“This man (Scott Johnson) who once advised me he may by no means hurt somebody 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'd have had a bit of extra sympathy. If he had grasped Scott’s hand and pulled him to security, I would owe him everlasting gratitude,” the brother stated, 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 sufferer impression statements.

Rosemarie Johnson described the initial police failure to investigate Scott Johnson’s dying 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 able to such horror?” she requested, referring to media stories of homosexual beatings in Sydney being described as a sport.

Prosecutor Brett Hatfield said the precise details of the murder were not known and that White’s accounts had varied.

White had met Johnson in a nearby bar in suburban Manly and Johnson had stripped naked at the clifftop earlier than he died, Hatfield mentioned. He said the gravity of the murder was considerably elevated because it was motivated by the victim’s sexuality.

White’s lawyer Belinda Rigg mentioned her consumer was gay and had been concerned 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 beforehand denied the crime.

His attorneys will enchantment that plea within the Court of Criminal Appeals and hope he will probably be acquitted at trial.

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