Man charged in 1988 cold case killing of gay American who plunged from Australian cliff

SYDNEY, Australia — When American mathematician Scott Johnson’s naked body was found mangled on the rocks at the base of an Australian cliff in 1988, his death was ruled a suicide.

More than 30 years later, a man has been arrested in what authorities now say was one in a string of gay-bashing hate crimes. The suspect, identified by the Sydney Morning Herald as Scott Phillip White, was charged Tuesday with murder in Johnson’s death.

The Associated Press reported that a 2018 review of 88 suspicious deaths in Sydney that occurred from 1976 to 2000 revealed that 27 of the dead men likely were killed for their real or perceived homosexuality. The crimes are believed to have been committed by youth gangs who specifically targeted gay men.

Police officials acknowledged in 2018 the agency’s role in “marginalizing” the LGBTQ community in the past.

“(New South Wales Police) acknowledges, without qualification, both its and society’s acceptance of gay bashings and shocking violence directed at gay men, and the LGBT community, between 1976 and 2000,” authorities said in a statement, according to the BBC News.

Click here to view “Australian Story: On the Precipice,” a 2013 documentary about Scott Johnson’s death.

Video footage released by the New South Wales Police shows the 49-year-old White, his face blurred, being led away in handcuffs from his home in the Sydney suburb of Lane Cove.

When asked about White’s reaction to police knocking on his door, NSW Detective Chief Inspector Peter Yeomans’ response was succinct.

“It wasn’t one of surprise,” he said.

Drone footage from the police also shows a forensic team scouring the 164-foot cliff where Johnson died. It was unclear if any evidence was found there after more than three decades.

NSW Police Commissioner Mick Fuller said being able to tell Johnson’s brother, Steve Johnson, about the arrest has been a highlight of his career. Steve Johnson, an American internet pioneer and tech guru, has doggedly pursued the truth about what happened to his brother.

“Steve has fought so hard for so many years, and it has been an honor to be part of his fight for justice,” Fuller said in a statement. “While we have a long way to go in the legal process, it must be acknowledged that if it wasn’t for the determination of the Johnson family, which inspired me and the Strike Force Welsford team led by (DCI) Peter Yeomans, we wouldn’t be where we are today.”

Yeomans said during a news conference Wednesday that the arrest would not have been possible without the tireless efforts of his detectives, who worked on the case for two years.

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“It was exceptionally complex,” Yeomans said. “When we got the job, we didn’t have a body, we didn’t have DNA evidence, we didn’t have forensic evidence. They just worked for hours upon hours and solved this case.”

Scott Johnson, an American national based in Sydney, was found dead the morning of Dec. 10, 1988, at the base of a cliff at Blue Fish Point, near Manly’s North Head, police officials said. The ABC (Australian Broadcasting Company) News reported that Johnson’s clothes were found neatly folded at the top of the cliff, and his wallet was missing.

An inquest into his death found it to be a suicide.

Watch the news conference and police footage below.

Johnson had just completed his doctorate at Australian National University. According to his brother and his boyfriend of five years, Michael Noone, he had been happy in the days leading to his death, and both felt it unlikely that he would have killed himself.

A string of suspected gay hate crimes during that same time frame further aroused their suspicions. Noone contacted Steve Johnson in the U.S. after learning about the attacks.

“Maybe that’s what happened to Scottie,” Noone told Steve Johnson, according to the Morning Herald.

The phone call from Noone strengthened Steve Johnson’s resolve.

“Scott and I were as close as two brothers could be,” Steve Johnson told ABC News in the U.S. in 2014. “He was a brilliant, idealistic young man. The day he died, he had just finished the final proof for his math Ph.D. He had just gotten off the phone with his professor, who had congratulated him.”

Steve Johnson, who at that time was co-founder and CEO of the advertising company Choicestream, pushed for a second inquest. When one was held in June 2012, it ended with an “open finding,” indicating that authorities were still unsure of Scott Johnson’s manner of death.

The (Australian) ABC News reported that the coroner at that time, Carmel Forbes, overturned the suicide ruling because the cliff where Scott Johnson died had been a “gay beat,” or a spot where gay men met up for sex. By 2012, there was also growing evidence that gay men had been the targets of extreme violence in the 1980s and 1990s.

Forbes said, however, that there was insufficient evidence to determine if Scott Johnson died of suicide, homicide or “misadventure,” the network said.

“The matter was referred for a third inquest and, in 2017, the then-NSW coroner, Michael Barnes, found that Mr. Johnson fell from the cliff top as a result of actual or threatened violence by unidentified persons who attacked him because they perceived him to be homosexual,” a New South Wales Police news release said.

After the third inquest, Fuller met with Steve Johnson to discuss the case before selecting a “specialist team of detectives” to investigate Scott Johnson’s death. Steve Johnson said in a statement that Fuller, at that time, pledged to fully investigate the death as a homicide.

“And true to his word, here we are,” Steve Johnson said.

A reward of $1 million Australian, or about $647,000 in American dollars, was offered in 2018 for information about Scott Johnson’s death, according to the New South Wales Police.

In March, the Johnson family pledged to match that amount.

Fuller said Wednesday that the reward was instrumental in solving the case. An unidentified witness came forward with information that pointed to White, according to the ABC News.

“There's certainly one witness, on conviction, that would be eligible for part of the reward,” Fuller said, according to the network.

The commissioner urged others with information about the hate crimes to come forward.

“Please don’t underestimate how one small piece of the puzzle can lead police to solve some of the most terrible crimes in our state’s history,” he said.

The ABC News reported that police believe the then-18-year-old White met Scott Johnson at a hotel in Manly before taking the 15- or 20-minute walk to the cliff. Authorities believe Johnson took his clothes off for a sexual encounter, at which point White physically assaulted him and pushed him or caused him to fall to his death.

Steve Johnson said his brother, who graduated at the top of his class at the California Institute of Technology before studying at Harvard and Cambridge, has come to symbolize the dozens of gay men who died during the period when the homophobic crimes in Sydney peaked.

“This is a very emotional day. It’s emotional for me. It’s emotional for my family, my two sisters, and my brother who loved Scott dearly, my wife and my three kids who never got to know their uncle,” Steve Johnson said.

He said his children admire the uncle they never knew, not only for his brilliance but for his bravery.

“He courageously lived his life as he wanted to,” he said.

Watch Steve Johnson’s full statement on the arrest in his brother’s death below.

Johnson said he and his brother were very close. They had been working together on a project that enabled Steve Johnson, shortly after Scott Johnson’s death, to produce the first algorithm in the world that allowed people to send photos over the internet, the ABC News reported.

“He was my best friend, and he really needed me to do this,” Steve Johnson said of pursuing justice. “I’m sad that our parents are not alive today, not only to see justice done but to understand what happened.

“We seem to be a lot closer now to finding out.”

The case has also been emotional for the dozens of people who have helped him in his longtime quest for justice for his brother, Steve Johnson added.

“I think Commissioner Fuller and the New South Wales Police and DCI Yeomans are speaking to the gay community to say that times have changed. A recognition that all of us deserve equal protection and justice under the law,” he said. “Equal standing with each other without prejudice.”

Steve Johnson said his brother would be happy to see how far the LGBTQ community has come in the nearly 32 years since his death. He added that “despite sometimes fierce institutional resistance to investigating Scott’s death,” the Australian community has always welcomed him and “embraced Scott’s case as if it were a fight for justice for all of us.“

“I hope the friends and families of the other dozens of gay men who lost their lives find solace in what’s happened today, and hope it opens the door to resolve some of the other mysterious deaths of men who have not yet received justice,” Steve Johnson said.

Fuller said he learned about a number of “harrowing” gay hate crimes from private investigators hired by Steve Johnson over the years, according to the ABC News. The third inquest also turned up a great deal of new information.

“It shone a pretty dark light on the life of young gay men in Sydney in the 80s,” Fuller said, according to the network. “That was pretty confronting, talking to (Coroner Barnes) about some of the witnesses that gave evidence about either being victims or themselves being out bashing gay men.

“The plight of young gay men in Sydney, probably around the world, was a very difficult one and not only were they let down by police, I think they were let down by the community and probably the media,“ Fuller continued. “An apology is one thing but actions will always speak louder than words, and delivering an outcome for Steve and the family and the broader community was important to me.”

White is being held without bail.

Cox Media Group