Sydney man admits pushing homosexual American off a cliff in 1988

CANBERRA, Australia (AP) — A person told 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 Courtroom for a sentencing hearing after he pleaded responsible 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 will probably be sentenced by Justice Helen Wilson on Tuesday. He faces a possible 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 court.

White said within the interview he lied when he had earlier instructed police that he had tried to seize Johnson and prevent his deadly fall.

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

The coroner also discovered that gangs of men roamed various Sydney places seeking homosexual men to assault, ensuing within the deaths of some victims. Some individuals had been additionally robbed.

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

His Boston-based brother Steve Johnson maintained pressure for further investigation and provided his own reward of 1 million Australian dollars ($704,000) for data. 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 kids of beating gay males on the clifftop well-known for homosexual 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's if you chased him,’” Helen White instructed the courtroom. She said her husband did not reply.

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

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

“This man (Scott Johnson) who as soon as told me he could never harm somebody 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 would owe him everlasting gratitude,” the brother mentioned, 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 victim impression statements.

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

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

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

Prosecutor Brett Hatfield said the exact details of the murder were not known and that White’s accounts had diverse.

White had met Johnson in a close-by 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 considerably elevated as a result of it was motivated by the sufferer’s sexuality.

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

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

His lawyers will attraction that plea within the Court of Felony Appeals and hope he will probably be acquitted at trial.

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