For over 30 years, Steve Johnson of Cambridge, Massachusetts, has sought justice in the 1988 anti-gay hate-crime death of his brother Scott, then 27 years old and traveling in Australia.
As Boston Spirit writer Mark Krone reported for us back in 2015, “On December 10, 1988, Scott Johnson’s body was found at the bottom of a cliff in [the New South Wales beach town of] Manly, his clothes neatly folded nearby, his wallet missing.” Since the late 1970s, the rocky spot had been a place where “roving male teenagers (and some girls) made ‘poofter bashing’ a rite of passage” and where some 80 men had died or disappeared.
In May 2020, then 49-year-old Australian Scott Phillip White was arrested in a Sydney suburb for Scott’s murder, according to The Boston Globe back in 2020. Last week, in a pretrial hearing, White pled guilty.
Reports The Guardian:
White yelled repeatedly in court during a pre-trial hearing in Sydney on Monday that he was guilty, having previously denied the crime.
A New South Wales state supreme court judge on Thursday accepted the guilty plea, dismissing the objections of White’s lawyers. White is to be sentenced on 2 May.
He faces a possible sentence of life in prison.
Johnson’s older brother, Steve Johnson, told ABC radio on Friday that White “surprised everyone in the courtroom” by offering the plea at the start of a technical hearing on Monday.
“The police were sure they had the right person but you’re never sure until you hear those words from the person themselves and then suddenly I know who killed my brother,” he said.
The plea was not confirmed until [last] Thursday when the court was satisfied White had made it intentionally and in his right mind.
“I was very impressed with the way the justice system worked here,” Steve Johnson said, adding that he was grateful to White for sparing his family the anguish of a trial.
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