Sydney man admits pushing gay American off a cliff in 1988

CANBERRA, Australia (AP) — A person instructed 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 Court docket for a sentencing listening to after he pleaded responsible in January to the homicide 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 potential sentence of life in jail.

“I pushed a bloke. He went over the sting,” White mentioned in recorded police interview in 2020 that was played in court.

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

A coroner ruled in 2017 that Johnson “fell from the clifftop on account of precise 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 men roamed various Sydney locations in the hunt for gay men to assault, resulting 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, while a second coroner in 2012 couldn't explain how he died.

His Boston-based brother Steve Johnson maintained stress for further investigation and provided his own 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 wife Helen White advised the court that her then-husband “bragged” to their children of beating homosexual males at the clifftop well-known for homosexual meetups.

Helen White said she read a newspaper report in 2008 about Johnson’s death 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 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 data on Johnson’s homicide when she reported her former husband to police in 2019. She mentioned she only grew to become conscious of a reward when the sufferer’s brother, Steve Johnson, doubled the sum in 2020.

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

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

Steve Johnson mentioned he appreciated White’s guilty plea.

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

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

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

Rebecca Johnson, a younger sister, stated 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 reports of gay beatings in Sydney being described as a sport.

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

White had met Johnson in a close-by bar in suburban Manly and Johnson had stripped naked at the clifftop before he died, Hatfield mentioned. He stated the gravity of the homicide was significantly elevated because it was motivated by the victim’s sexuality.

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

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

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

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