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 within the New South Wales state Supreme Courtroom for a sentencing listening to after he pleaded responsible in January to the murder of the Los Angeles-born Canberra resident, whose dying on the base of a North Head cliff was initially dismissed by police as suicide.

White will probably be sentenced by Justice Helen Wilson on Tuesday. He faces a possible sentence of life in prison.

“I pushed a bloke. He went over the edge,” White stated in recorded police interview in 2020 that was performed in court docket.

White said in the interview he lied when he had earlier told police that he had tried to grab Johnson and stop 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 as a result of they perceived him to be homosexual.”

The coroner additionally discovered that gangs of males roamed varied Sydney areas in quest of homosexual males to assault, resulting within the deaths of some victims. Some people had been additionally robbed.

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

His Boston-based brother Steve Johnson maintained strain for further investigation and offered his personal 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 spouse Helen White informed the court docket that her then-husband “bragged” to their kids of beating gay men at the clifftop well-known for gay meetups.

Helen White stated she read 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 said, ‘It is in the event you chased him,’” Helen White informed the court docket. She said her husband did not reply.

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

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

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

Steve Johnson mentioned he appreciated White’s responsible plea.

“If he had turned himself in after his violent action, I'd have had just a little more 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 affect statements.

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

Prosecutor Brett Hatfield mentioned the precise particulars of the murder were not known and that White’s accounts had diversified.

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 homicide was significantly elevated as a result of it was motivated by the victim’s sexuality.

White’s lawyer Belinda Rigg stated her client was gay and had been concerned that his homophobic brother would find out.

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

His lawyers will appeal that plea within the Court of Legal Appeals and hope he shall be acquitted at trial.

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