Sydney man admits pushing homosexual American off a cliff in 1988

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

Scott White, 51, appeared in the New South Wales state Supreme Courtroom for a sentencing hearing after he pleaded responsible 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 likely 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 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 precise or threatened violence by unidentified persons who attacked him as a result of they perceived him to be gay.”

The coroner additionally discovered that gangs of men roamed various Sydney areas searching for gay males to assault, ensuing within the deaths of some victims. Some individuals had been also robbed.

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

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

Helen White said she read a newspaper report in 2008 about Johnson’s demise 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 mentioned, ‘It's in case you chased him,’” Helen White instructed the court docket. She said her husband did not 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 conscious of a reward when the victim’s brother, Steve Johnson, doubled the sum in 2020.

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

“This man (Scott Johnson) who once instructed me he might never harm someone 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 a little bit extra sympathy. If he had grasped Scott’s hand and pulled him to security, I might owe him eternal gratitude,” the brother stated, his voice choked with emotion.

Scott Johnson’s sisters Terry and Rebecca Johnson, his companion Michael Noone and Steve Johnson’s spouse Rosemarie Johnson also gave sufferer influence statements.

Rosemarie Johnson described the initial police failure to research Scott Johnson’s loss of life as “indefensible and inhumane.”

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

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

Prosecutor Brett Hatfield stated the exact particulars of the homicide were not recognized and that White’s accounts had diverse.

White had met Johnson in a nearby bar in suburban Manly and Johnson had stripped bare on the clifftop earlier than he died, Hatfield said. He said the gravity of the murder was significantly elevated as a result of it was motivated by the sufferer’s sexuality.

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

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

His lawyers will enchantment that plea within the Court of Felony Appeals and hope he can be acquitted at trial.

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