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. Prosecutors: 3 face hate crimes charges in attack on gay man in Florida 02:46Ī 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." 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. 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. White has lodged an appeal against the conviction, which will be dealt with by the NSW Court of Criminal Appeal later this year.A family photo provided by the New South Wales Police shows Scott Johnson, who in 1988 was pushed to his death from a clifftop in Sydney, Australia.Ĭanberra, Australia - 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. “With Dr Johnson’s death the world lost a mind ready to contribute substantially to its advancement,” Justice Wilson said.
Justice Wilson said White claimed he felt sorry for the Johnson family and would “never cope” with what happened to Dr Johnson, who was remembered as a modest, kind and gentle young man who was posthumously awarded a doctorate of philosophy on mathematics in 1995. White previously attempted to take his own life multiple times and said he would “kill himself” he if was sentenced to imprisonment, the court was told. “It seems the offender was encouraged as a child to fight for the amusement of others.” “The community failed the offender as a child and a young man,” Justice Wilson said.
The court was told that White suffered when he was a child raised by alcoholic, homophobic parents. Video footage of Scott White’s interview was played in court. “He would have been well aware that he and Dr Johnson were close to a cliff edge.” “The offender necessarily foresaw that his act would probably cause the death of Dr Johnson but continued regardless of that consequence,” Justice Wilson said. White’s claim he was punched was rejected by Justice Wilson, who said there no injuries found on Dr Johnson’s hands. “He may have chased Dr Johnson, it may be that he pushed Dr Johnson … neither of those propositions can be accepted as proved beyond a reasonable doubt.” “Something prompted the offender to attack Dr Johnson … possibly the assault was driven by the offender’s own self-loathing and self-loathing of what Dr Johnson represented,” Justice Wilson said.
She said Dr Johnson and White could have possibly met for a sexual encounter before the murder, but there was no evidence before the court that explained the full facts surrounding the circumstances of the murder. He travelled to Sydney once a week for university and seminars.
“We used to go poofter bashing … my brother did,” White told police.Īt the time of his death Scott Johnson was living in Canberra with his partner Michael Noone. White, a father of six, said his sexuality was his biggest secret “cause my brother hates gays … my family hates gays”. When police spoke to White in March 2020 he denied targeting gay men and said “no I’m gay myself”, court documents state. “He said ‘the only good poofter is a dead poofter’,” Mrs White told the court. She told the NSW Supreme Court on Monday that White often bragged about bashing gay men and referred to Dr Johnson as a “girly looking poofter”. Police interviewed White in 2020 after his ex-wife Helen tipped off authorities. It wasn’t until 2017 that an inquest found that Dr Johnson died as the result of an act of another person. Police initially believed Dr Johnson took his own life and the case went cold for decades despite his family advocating for further investigation and multiple inquests being held. Detective Sergeant John Breda, Detective Chief Inspector Peter Yeomans and Detective Senior Constable Tim Carey arrested Scott Phillip White.