"This was a grave and serious murder which entailed a high degree of criminality," crown prosecutor Brett Hatfield said. The prosecution pointed to the seriousness of the offence, saying it was targeted towards the victim's sexuality. During the 1980s, White was a gay man who had lived with his homophobic brother and alcoholic parents, Ms Rigg said. White's intellectual impairments meant he had suffered stress, anxiety and panic attacks while in custody. Ms Rigg argued that White should receive a lesser sentence because he had only turned 18 at the time, saying that sentences for murder were significantly lower in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Ms White denied suggestions by White's barrister Belinda Rigg SC that she had only gone to police because of a $1 million reward offered in 2018 for information about Mr Johnson's death, and rejected claims she had made up the conversations with her then husband. And he said, 'It's not my fault the dumb c*** ran off the cliff'," she said. "He said the only good poofter is a dead poofter, to which I said, 'So you threw him off the cliff'. These victim statements were heard after White's former partner Helen White took the stand and described a conversation with him in December 1998 about his "poofter bashing" of the 1980s. Scott Johnson's partner Michael Noone also gave a statement describing the sheer horror of receiving a call from the police about the death of a loved one. "The wailing is a reliving, it's a howl of death and despair and loss and grief that signifies that a piece of us has departed. Ms Johnson questioned why her brother, an American mathematician, was placed in the crosshairs of deadly violence and murder simply for who he chose to love.īrother Steve Johnson described the death as too awful to be true, saying his mother had reacted with a wailing cry at the news. That is a profound tragedy," she said on Monday.
"Parents, brothers and sisters, teachers and classmates, authority, culture, somehow Mr White's world reinforced that violence and even killing was OK and maybe that gay men weren't human. With White looking on from the NSW Supreme Court dock, sister Rebecca Johnson talked about how society in the 1980s had also let down teenagers who thought violence against gay men was acceptable.