The murderer of a homosexual student is convicted 34 years after the event

More than three decades later, the killer was sentenced to prison.

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Scott White was sentenced Tuesday to a maximum of 12 years and seven months in prison for the murder of the American Scott Johnson, whose body was found at the base of the Sydney cliffs in December 1988.

The then 27-year-old Cambridge University graduate student’s death was ruled a suicide, something his family never believed.

For years they fought for the Australian police to investigate him as a homosexual hate crime.

The court found that there was not enough evidence to establish that it was a hate crime against homosexuals, but sentenced White to prison for the Johnson murder and he will be eligible for parole only in 2030.

“Reckless Indifference To Human Life”

White, who was 18 at the time of the murder, did not testify in court but told police that he and Johnson had met at a bar in December 1988.

The court heard that the pair had gone to the North Head cliffs in Manly, a popular gay hangout, where, according to White, they got into a fight and Johnson fell.

But the investigation revealed that White had hit Johnson without provocationknowing that the mathematician would most likely fall to his death.

“Scott was, because of his supreme intellectual gifts, the most modest person I have ever met,” said his brother Steve (left). (STEVE JOHNSON)

White had acted with “reckless disregard for human life”Justice Helen Wilson told the Supreme Court of New South Wales.

“With Johnson’s death, the world has lost an intelligent mind to contribute substantially to its advancement,” he said.

The judge said White had been a “street kid” who “handled disagreements with his fists” but was “no longer the same angry young man.”

The court had previously rejected an attempt by White’s lawyers to withdraw a confession he had made.

Why did the case take so long?

Homosexuality had been decriminalized in New South Wales just two years before Johnson’s death, and his family alleges that police it did not take hate crimes seriously.

Investigators initially treated Johnson’s death as a suicide.

His brother Steve campaigned for decades to have the case reinvestigated, claiming his brother may have been killed by homophobic groups.

It is estimated that up to 80 gay men were killed, many of them pushed off cliffs.

In 2012 and 2015, coroners requested that the case be reopened. Both times, the police found nothing to convince them that Johnson had not taken his own life.

But in November 2017, a coroner ruled that he had been killed by a gay hate gang, leading to a new investigation.

The police offered a cash reward of 1 million Australian dollars ($645,000) in 2018 for information on the case and in 2020 the family doubled the reward.

White’s ex-wife came forward in 2019 after hearing about the case, telling police the man often he bragged about “beating up” gay youth and he hadn’t denied killing Johnson when she’d asked him.

White also admitted it to police before he was charged in 2020.

The police force previously apologized to the family for failing to investigate the case properly in the 1980s and failing to protect the gay community.

Source: Elcomercio