Sydney man admits pushing gay American off a cliff in 1988

CANBERRA, Australia (AP) — A man 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 gay hate crime, a court docket heard on Monday.

Scott White, 51, appeared in the New South Wales state Supreme Court for a sentencing listening to after he pleaded guilty in January to the murder of the Los Angeles-born Canberra resident, whose dying at the base of a North Head cliff was initially dismissed by police as suicide.

White shall 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 said in recorded police interview in 2020 that was performed in court docket.

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

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

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

A coroner had dominated in 1989 that the overtly gay man had taken his own life, whereas a second coroner in 2012 could not clarify how he died.

His Boston-based brother Steve Johnson maintained pressure 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 seemingly be collected.

White’s former spouse Helen White advised the courtroom that her then-husband “bragged” to their youngsters of beating homosexual males on the clifftop well-known for homosexual meetups.

Helen White mentioned she learn a newspaper report in 2008 about Johnson’s loss of life and requested her husband if he was accountable.

“It’s not my fault,” Scott White allegedly replied. “The dumb (expletive) ran off the cliff.”

“I mentioned, ‘It's if you chased him,’” Helen White informed the courtroom. She mentioned her husband didn't reply.

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

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

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

Steve Johnson stated he appreciated White’s guilty plea.

“If he had turned himself in after his violent motion, I would have had a bit of more sympathy. If he had grasped Scott’s hand and pulled him to safety, I might owe him eternal gratitude,” the brother stated, his voice choked with emotion.

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

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

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

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

Prosecutor Brett Hatfield said the exact particulars of the murder weren't recognized and that White’s accounts had diversified.

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

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

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

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

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