Australian man faces possible life sentence for pushing gay American to his death from a Sydney cliff

Canberra, 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. 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.   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.

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.   A 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.

His Boston-based brother Steve Johnson maintained pressure for further investigation and offered his own reward of 1 million Australian dollars ($704,000) for information. White was charged in 2020 and police say the reward will likely be collected.   White's former wife Helen White told the court that her then-husband "bragged" to their children of beating gay men at the clifftop well-known for gay meetups.   Helen White said she read a newspaper report in 2008 about Johnson's death and asked her husband if he was responsible.   "It's not my fault," Scott White allegedly replied. "The dumb (expletive) ran off the cliff."   "I said, 'It is if you chased him,'" Helen White told the court. She said her husband did not reply.