Sydney man admits pushing gay 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 court docket heard on Monday.

Scott White, 51, appeared within 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 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 potential sentence of life in jail.

“I pushed a bloke. He went over the edge,” White said in recorded police interview in 2020 that was played in courtroom.

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

A coroner dominated 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 also discovered that gangs of males roamed various Sydney areas in quest of homosexual males to assault, resulting within the deaths of some victims. Some people had been also robbed.

A coroner had ruled in 1989 that the overtly homosexual man had taken his personal life, while a second coroner in 2012 couldn't clarify how he died.

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

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

Helen White said she learn a newspaper report in 2008 about Johnson’s dying 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 if you happen to chased him,’” Helen White informed the courtroom. She said her husband didn't reply.

Beneath cross-examination, Helen White denied she had been aware of a AU$1 million reward for info on Johnson’s murder when she reported her former husband to police in 2019. She mentioned she solely became aware of a reward when the victim’s brother, Steve Johnson, doubled the sum in 2020.

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

“This man (Scott Johnson) who once told me he might by no means harm 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 motion, I would have had slightly extra sympathy. If he had grasped Scott’s hand and pulled him to security, I would owe him everlasting gratitude,” the brother mentioned, his voice choked with emotion.

Scott Johnson’s sisters Terry and Rebecca Johnson, his accomplice Michael Noone and Steve Johnson’s spouse Rosemarie Johnson additionally gave sufferer impression statements.

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

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

“How may a group 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 homicide were not identified and that White’s accounts had different.

White had met Johnson in a close-by 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 client was gay and had been concerned that his homophobic brother would find out.

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

His lawyers will attraction that plea within the Court of Legal Appeals and hope he will 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 house when he died.