An Australian man was sentenced to 12 years and seven months in prison Tuesday for the 1988 murder of an American who fell off a Sydney cliff that was known as a gay meeting place.
The death of mathematician Scott Johnson was initially called a suicide, but his family pressed for further investigation. A coroner in 2017 found a number of assaults, some fatal, where the victims had been targeted because they were thought to be gay.Justice Helen Wilson said she did not find beyond reasonable doubt that the murder was a gay hate crime, an aggravating factor that would have led to a longer sentence.
White’s former wife Helen White told police in 2019 that her then-husband had bragged about beating gay men and had said the only good gay man was a dead gay man. “The offender hit Dr. Johnson, causing him to stumble backwards and leave the cliff edge,” Wilson said. Under cross-examination on Monday, Helen White denied she had been aware of a 1 million Australian dollar reward for information on Johnson’s murder when she went to police in 2019. She said she only became aware of a reward when the victim’s brother, Steve Johnson, doubled the sum in 2020.
“Because of the lapse of time, the offender is no longer the same angry young man who raised his fists to another on the edge of a cliff. Neither is the court imposing a sentence for a crime motivated by hatred for a particular sector of society. The evidence is too slender to support that,” Wilson added.White's lawyers have appealed his conviction and hope he will be acquitted of the murder charge in a jury trial.
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