Sydney man admits pushing gay 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 court docket heard on Monday.

Scott White, 51, appeared within the New South Wales state Supreme Court docket for a sentencing listening to after he pleaded responsible 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 will 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 sting,” White said in recorded police interview in 2020 that was performed in courtroom.

White said 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 on account of actual or threatened violence by unidentified individuals who attacked him as a result of they perceived him to be homosexual.”

The coroner also found that gangs of males roamed numerous Sydney areas in search of gay men to assault, resulting within the deaths of some victims. Some people were also robbed.

A coroner had dominated in 1989 that the overtly homosexual man had taken his personal life, whereas a second coroner in 2012 couldn't explain how he died.

His Boston-based brother Steve Johnson maintained strain for additional investigation and offered his personal 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 spouse Helen White instructed the courtroom that her then-husband “bragged” to their youngsters of beating homosexual men on the clifftop well-known for homosexual meetups.

Helen White said she learn a newspaper report in 2008 about Johnson’s loss of life 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 stated, ‘It's in the event you chased him,’” Helen White instructed the court docket. She mentioned her husband did not reply.

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

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

“This man (Scott Johnson) who once instructed me he could by no means hurt somebody 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 action, I would have had a little bit more sympathy. If he had grasped Scott’s hand and pulled him to security, I'd owe him everlasting gratitude,” the brother stated, his voice choked with emotion.

Scott Johnson’s sisters Terry and Rebecca Johnson, his partner Michael Noone and Steve Johnson’s wife Rosemarie Johnson additionally gave sufferer influence statements.

Rosemarie Johnson described the initial police failure to analyze Scott Johnson’s demise 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 capable of such horror?” she asked, referring to media reviews of homosexual beatings in Sydney being described as a sport.

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

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

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

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

His attorneys will appeal that plea within the Court of Prison Appeals and hope he will be acquitted at trial.

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