Sydney man admits pushing gay American off a cliff in 1988

CANBERRA, Australia (AP) — A man told 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 court heard on Monday.

Scott White, 51, appeared in the New South Wales state Supreme Court docket for a sentencing hearing after he pleaded guilty in January to the homicide 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 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 stated in recorded police interview in 2020 that was played in court.

White mentioned in the interview he lied when he had earlier instructed police that he had tried to grab Johnson and prevent his deadly fall.

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

The coroner also discovered that gangs of males roamed varied Sydney places in the hunt for gay males to assault, resulting within the deaths of some victims. Some folks were also robbed.

A coroner had dominated in 1989 that the openly gay man had taken his personal life, whereas a second coroner in 2012 couldn't explain how he died.

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

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

Helen White said she learn a newspaper report in 2008 about Johnson’s loss of life 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 when you chased him,’” Helen White told the court. She stated her husband didn't reply.

Underneath cross-examination, Helen White denied she had been aware 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 aware of a reward when the sufferer’s brother, Steve Johnson, doubled the sum in 2020.

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

“This man (Scott Johnson) who as soon as instructed me he may by no means hurt somebody even in self-defense died in terror,” the brother added.

Steve Johnson said he appreciated White’s responsible plea.

“If he had turned himself in after his violent motion, I'd have had slightly more sympathy. If he had grasped Scott’s hand and pulled him to security, I would owe him eternal gratitude,” the brother mentioned, his voice choked with emotion.

Scott Johnson’s sisters Terry and Rebecca Johnson, his partner Michael Noone and Steve Johnson’s wife Rosemarie Johnson also gave sufferer impression statements.

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

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

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

Prosecutor Brett Hatfield said the precise particulars of the homicide weren't known and that White’s accounts had diverse.

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

White’s lawyer Belinda Rigg said her shopper was homosexual and had been concerned that his homophobic brother would discover out.

In January, White yelled repeatedly in courtroom during a pre-trial listening to that he was guilty, having beforehand denied the crime.

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

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