Under cross-examination on Monday, Helen White denied she had been aware of a 1 million Australian dollar ($704,000) reward for information on Johnson’s murder when she went to police in 2019. Wilson did not accept the defense lawyers’ argument that Helen White had been motivated to report him to police by a reward. Johnson must have been terrified, aware that he would strike the rocks below and conscious of his fate,” Wilson added. “In those seconds when he must have realized what was happening to him, Dr. Johnson, causing him to stumble backwards and leave the cliff edge,” Wilson said. Wilson said it was not possible to draw any conclusions beyond a reasonable doubt about what had happened at the clifftop.
Scott White told police that he was himself gay and frightened that his homophobic brother would find out. She told the court on Monday that her husband had told her Johnson had run off the cliff. 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. White was 18 and homeless when he met 27-year-old Los Angeles-born Johnson at a bar in suburban Manly in December 1988 and went with him to a nearby cliff top at North Head. He must serve at least eight years and three months in prison before he can be considered for parole. She also said she applied more lenient sentencing patterns in place in New South Wales state in the late 1980s. 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. Scott White, 51, pleaded guilty in January and could have been sentenced to up to life in prison. A coroner in 2017 found a number of assaults, some fatal, where the victims had been targeted because they were thought to be gay. The death of mathematician Scott Johnson was initially called a suicide, but his family pressed for further investigation. 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.