Sydney man admits pushing gay American off a cliff in 1988

CANBERRA, Australia (AP) — A man 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 Courtroom for a sentencing hearing after he pleaded guilty in January to the murder of the Los Angeles-born Canberra resident, whose demise on the base of a North Head cliff was initially dismissed by police as suicide.

White might 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 sting,” White stated in recorded police interview in 2020 that was played in court.

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

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

The coroner also found that gangs of males roamed various Sydney places seeking homosexual males to assault, resulting within the deaths of some victims. Some people had been also robbed.

A coroner had dominated in 1989 that the overtly homosexual man had taken his own life, while a second coroner in 2012 could not explain 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 info. 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 children of beating homosexual men at the clifftop well-known for gay meetups.

Helen White stated she learn a newspaper report in 2008 about Johnson’s dying and requested 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 is if you chased him,’” Helen White informed the court. She mentioned her husband didn't reply.

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

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

“This man (Scott Johnson) who as soon as told me he might by no means hurt 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 just a little extra sympathy. If he had grasped Scott’s hand and pulled him to safety, I'd owe him eternal 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 wife Rosemarie Johnson additionally gave victim impact statements.

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

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

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

Prosecutor Brett Hatfield mentioned the exact particulars of the homicide were not known and that White’s accounts had different.

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

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

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

His lawyers will attraction that plea within the Court docket of Prison Appeals and hope he can be acquitted at trial.

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