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 Johnson, whose death at the base of a North Head cliff was initially dismissed by police as suicide.
White will be sentenced today and 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."
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.
The victim's brother, Steve Johnson, maintained pressure for further investigation and offered his own reward of $704,000 for information. White was charged in 2020 and police say the reward will likely be collected.
Steve Johnson said in his victim impact statement that, "With a vicious push, Mr. White took Scott and he vanished."
"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 he appreciated White's guilty plea.
"If he had turned himself in after his violent action, I would have had a little more sympathy. If he had grasped Scott's hand and pulled him to safety, I would owe him everlasting gratitude," the brother said, his voice choked with emotion.
Scott Johnson's sisters Terry and Rebecca Johnson, his partner Michael Noone and Steve Johnson's wife Rosemarie Johnson also gave victim impact statements.
Rosemarie Johnson described the initial police failure to investigate Scott Johnson's death as "indefensible and inhumane."
Rebecca Johnson, a younger sister, said the police report of suicide "made no sense."
"How could a community fail so spectacularly that they created boys capable of such horror?" she asked, referring to media reports of gay beatings in Sydney being described as a sport.
Prosecutor Brett Hatfield said the precise details of the murder were not known and that White's accounts had varied.
White had met Johnson in a nearby bar in suburban Manly and Johnson had stripped naked at the clifftop before he died, Hatfield said. He said the gravity of the murder was significantly elevated because it was motivated by the victim's sexuality.
White's lawyer Belinda Rigg said her client was gay and had been concerned that his homophobic brother would find out.
In January, White yelled repeatedly in court during a pre-trial hearing that he was guilty, having previously denied the crime.
His lawyers will appeal that plea in the Court of Criminal Appeals and hope he will be acquitted at trial.
Scott Johnson was a doctoral student at Australian National University and lived in Canberra. He was staying at Noone's parents' Sydney home when he died.