Police offer million-dollar reward in gay man’s 1988 death
SYDNEY — Almost 30 years to the day after a gay mathematician from the United States was forced off a Sydney cliff in a hate crime, police on Sunday announced a reward of 1 million Australian dollars for information leading to the perpetrators.
The mathematician, Scott Johnson, was a 27-year-old doctoral student at the Australian National University in Canberra when he died on Dec. 8, 1988. He had moved to Australia to be with his partner and had applied for permanent residency.
His body was found at the bottom of a cliff where gay men were known to meet. His death was initially ruled a suicide but was declared a hate crime by a coroner last year.
Johnson’s case has drawn attention to a pattern of homophobia-driven crimes in the 1980s and ‘90s in which gay men were targeted by gangs of young people, who sometimes forced them off cliffs to their deaths. Former officials have acknowledged that the deaths were not adequately investigated at the time by police officers, many of whom had a reputation for hostility toward gay men.
The new reward, the equivalent of about US$720,000, is a tenfold increase from the previous one. Police say they hope it will motivate people to share information.
“Scott’s death is possibly one of the most challenging investigations I’ve seen — and it’s believed one of the greatest hindrances has been an unwillingness for witnesses to come forward,” said Mick Fuller, the police commissioner for the state of New South Wales, which includes Sydney.
Johnson’s brother, Steve Johnson, who flew into Sydney for the announcement, said the reward was an “incredible step” toward answers.
“I’m very encouraged,” he said in a phone interview Sunday. “The million-dollar reward is speaking to the community that the police are taking this seriously and they need people’s help.”
Johnson described Scott as a gentle soul with a brilliant mind.
“He just effortlessly understood things,” he said. “He was also the most modest person I’ve ever known.”
After hearing about a 2005 inquest into the deaths of three men from the same period under similar circumstances, Johnson petitioned authorities to reopen his brother’s case and hired an investigative journalist to collect evidence.
A 2012 inquest into Scott Johnson’s death overturned the original finding of suicide but concluded that he might have fallen by accident. It called for his death to be reinvestigated. Last year the state coroner ruled that Johnson “died as a result of a gay hate attack.” A team of specialists has been investigating his death since September.
“The people who killed Scott are in all likelihood still alive and living in the Northern Beaches, free,” Steve Johnson said, referring to an area of Sydney.
Police are looking at leads, and with the public’s help, he said, he is optimistic the case can be solved.
The reward is unusually high; of more than 240 rewards currently offered by the state government, only seven are for 1 million dollars, Troy Grant, the New South Wales police minister, said in a statement.
Dozens of cases similar to Johnson’s are under review. In 2013, police said they were looking at the deaths of 88 men from 1976 to 2000 to determine if they should be classified as antigay hate crimes. About 30 of the crimes remain unsolved.
In September, a state parliamentary inquiry was established to investigate crimes against gay and transgender people from
1970 to 2010, including these cases, and how they were handled by the justice system.
“This isn’t just about Scott’s case,” Steve Johnson said. “I think all these cases need to be looked at.”
Johnson, a tech entrepreneur, has kept his brother’s memory alive by talking to his children about the talented uncle they never met.
“The ‘90s would have been a fantastic time to shine. It was a great time to be a geek,” he said. “They feel the world was cheated to not have Scott.”