Scott White, now 51, might be sentenced to life in prison for the death of Scott Johnson, a 27-year-old man.

A court heard on Monday that a man told police he killed American mathematician Scott Johnson in 1988; by pushing him off a Sydney cliff in what prosecutors characterise as a gay hate crime.

Scott White, 51, appeared in the New South Wales state Supreme Court for a sentencing hearing in January; after pleading guilty to the murder of the Los Angeles-born Canberra resident; whose death at the base of a North Head cliff was initially mistook for suicide by police.

On Tuesday, White will be sentenced by Justice Helen Wilson. He might get a life sentence if convicted.

“I shoved a guy.” In a recorded police interview aired in court in 2020, White claimed, “He went over the brink.”

In the interview, White admitted that he lied to police when he said he tried to grab Johnson and stop him from falling to his death.

Johnson “fell from the clifftop as a result of real or threatened assault by unidentified strangers who attacked him because they suspected him to be homosexual,” according to a 2017 coroner’s report.

The coroner also discovered that gangs of males patrolled numerous Sydney places looking for gay men to assault, with several victims dying as a result. Some persons were robbed as well.

In 1989, a coroner determined that the openly gay man had committed suicide, but a second coroner in 2012 could not determine how he died.