She said she only became aware of a reward when the victim’s brother, Steve Johnson, doubled the sum in 2020. Under cross-examination, Helen White denied she had been aware of a AU$1 million reward for information on Johnson’s murder when she reported her former husband to police in 2019. “I said, ‘It is if you chased him,’” Helen White told the court. “The dumb (expletive) ran off the cliff.” “It’s not my fault,” Scott White allegedly replied. Helen White said she read a newspaper report in 2008 about Johnson’s death and asked her husband if he was responsible. 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. White was charged in 2020 and police say the reward will likely be collected. His Boston-based brother Steve Johnson maintained pressure for further investigation and offered his own reward of 1 million Australian dollars ($704,000) for information. 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.
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. 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. He faces a potential sentence of life in prison. White will be sentenced by Justice Helen Wilson on Tuesday. Scott White, 51, appeared in the New South Wales state Supreme Court for a sentencing hearing after he pleaded guilty in January to the murder of the Los Angeles-born Canberra resident, whose death at the base of a North Head cliff was initially dismissed by police as suicide. In this world, at this time, can love really join the tribes of man? It was not a question when the Judds asked, “Don't you think it's time?” Naomi knew the answer all along.CANBERRA, Australia (AP) - A man told police he killed American mathematician Scott Johnson in 1988 by pushing the 27-year-old off a Sydney cliff in what prosecutors describe as a gay hate crime, a court heard on Monday.
It was so beautiful and artful, he thought it was a Broadway song. I once sang that song at a piano bar, and a man in the audience approached me afterward, impressed by the song (probably not by my performance). The lack of animosity between us reminds me of that line in “Love Can Build a Bridge,” perhaps Naomi’s crowning achievement as a songwriter: “Love and only love can join the tribes of man.” When my husband and I moved to Philadelphia and they stayed in New York, we continued our campground reunions, and there was never a camping trip without a Judds singalong around the fire, under the starlit Pennsylvania sky.īoth couples have since divorced, and I have remarried - making sure to impress an appreciation of the Judds upon my new husband - but we all remain close and in touch. Soon we two couples became inseparable, taking camping trips together several times a summer. I had to go to all the way to New York City to find my country people. One night a Judds song came on, I forget which one, and one of my new friends began singing along. There, I cultivated a new circle of friends, many of them also from Michigan.