The death of mathematician Scott Johnson was initially described as suicide, but his family pushed for further investigation. A medical examiner in 2017 found a series of attacks, some fatal, in which the victims had been targeted because they were considered to be gay. Scott White, 51, pleaded guilty in January and could face up to life in prison. Judge Helen Wilson said she did not find beyond reasonable doubt that the murder was a hate crime against homosexuals, an aggravating factor that would lead to a greater sentence. He also said he applied milder sentencing standards in the state of New South Wales in the late 1980s. He must serve at least eight years and three months in prison before being considered for parole. White was 18 years old and homeless when he met 27-year-old Johnson-born Johnson at a bar in the Manly suburb in December 1988 and went with him to a nearby rock in North Head. White’s ex-wife, Ellen White, told police in 2019 that her then-husband boasted that he had beaten a gay man and had said that the only good homosexual was a dead homosexual. She told the court Monday that her husband told her Johnson had run off the cliff. Scott White told police he was gay and feared his homophobic brother would find out. Wilson said no conclusions could be drawn beyond a reasonable doubt as to what had happened at the top of the cliff. “The perpetrator hit Dr. Johnson, causing him to stumble back and leave the edge of the cliff,” Wilson said. “In those seconds when he must have realized what was happening to him, Dr. Johnson must have been terrified, knowing he was going to hit the rocks and being aware of his fate,” Wilson added. “It was a terrible death.” Wilson did not accept the defense lawyers’ argument that Helen White had been motivated to report him to the police as a reward. In a cross-examination on Monday, Helen White denied knowing she was being paid A $ 1 million ($ 704,000) for information about Johnson’s murder when she went to police in 2019. She said she was only informed of the reward when the victim’s brother Steve Johnson, doubled the amount in 2020. White had a history of violent crime before and after the assassination, but had not committed any crime since 2008. “It should be understood that the court does not convict a violent and reckless young man for a targeted assault on a gay man,” Wilson said. “Due to the passage of time, the perpetrator is no longer the same angry young man who raised his fists to another on the edge of a cliff. Nor does the court impose a sentence for a crime motivated by hatred for a particular sector of society. The data is too thin to support that, “Wilson added. He said the penalty for the same crime today would be “much higher”. White’s lawyers have appealed his conviction and hope he will be acquitted of the murder charge in a jury trial. A medical examiner ruled in 2017 that Johnson “fell from the top of a cliff as a result of real or threatened violence by strangers who attacked him because they perceived him as gay.” The medical examiner also found that gangs of men roamed various locations in Sydney in search of gay men to attack, resulting in the deaths of several victims. Some men also robbed. A medical examiner had ruled in 1989 that Johnson had committed suicide, while a second medical examiner in 2012 could not explain how he died. Johnson studied at universities in California and Cambridge in Britain before moving to Australia in 1986 to live with his Australian partner Michael Nunn. They lived in Canberra where Johnson studied at the National University of Australia, where he was posthumously awarded a doctorate. He was living at Noone’s parents’s house in Sydney when he died.
