“This man (Scott Johnson) who once told me he could never hurt someone even in self-defense died in terror,” the brother added. Steve Johnson said in his victim impact statement that, “With a vicious push, Mr. She said she only became aware of a reward when the victim’s brother, Steve Johnson, doubled the sum in 2020. Under cross-examination, Helen White denied she had been aware of a AU$1 million reward for information on Johnson’s murder when she reported her former husband to police in 2019. “I said, ‘It is if you chased him,’” Helen White told the court.
“The dumb (expletive) ran off the cliff.” “It’s not my fault,” Scott White allegedly replied. Helen White said she read a newspaper report in 2008 about Johnson’s death and asked her husband if he was responsible. Some people were also robbed.Ī coroner had ruled in 1989 that the openly gay man had taken his own life, while a second coroner in 2012 could not explain how he died. The coroner also found that gangs of men roamed various Sydney locations in search of gay men to assault, resulting in the deaths of some victims. White said in the interview he lied when he had earlier told police that he had tried to grab Johnson and prevent his fatal fall.Ī coroner ruled in 2017 that Johnson “fell from the clifftop as a result of actual or threatened violence by unidentified persons who attacked him because they perceived him to be homosexual.” He went over the edge,” White said in recorded police interview in 2020 that was played in court. He faces a potential sentence of life in prison. White will be sentenced by Justice Helen Wilson on Tuesday.
Scott White, 51, appeared in the New South Wales state Supreme Court for a sentencing hearing after he pleaded guilty in January to the murder of the Los Angeles-born Canberra resident, whose death at the base of a North Head cliff was initially dismissed by police as suicide. CANBERRA, Australia (AP) - A man 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 heard on Monday.