Australian man admits he pushed US mathematician off cliff in apparent gay hate crime in 1988
- Scott White pleaded guilty to murdering Scott Johnson, whose death was dismissed as suicide 34 years ago; he lied about trying to grab him to prevent a fall
- White’s former wife told the court that her then-husband ‘bragged’ to their children of beating up gay men at the clifftop well-known for meet-ups
An Australian man told police he killed US 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.
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.
White will be sentenced by Justice Helen Wilson on Tuesday. He faces a potential sentence of life in prison. “I pushed a bloke. He went over the edge,” White said in recorded police interview in 2020 that was played in court. He said he lied when he earlier told police that he had tried to grab Johnson and prevent his fatal fall.
A 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.”
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. Some people were also robbed.