White will be sentenced by Justice Helen Wilson on Tuesday. He faces a potential sentence of life in prison. 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.Ī 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.” He went over the edge,” White said in recorded police interview in 2020 that was played in court. 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.Ī 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 (US$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.”