Gay-hate victim Scott Johnson’s brother ready to pay $1m reward

The brother of alleged gay-hate murder victim Scott Johnson says he is ready and willing to deliver on his offer to pay a $1m reward.

Steve Johnson in Sydney in 2017. Picture: AAP

The brother of alleged gay-hate murder victim Scott Johnson says he is ready and willing to deliver on his offer to pay a $1m private reward for information leading to an arrest and conviction.

“I will provide the entire million dollars if that’s what the (NSW Police) Commissioner thinks is deserved,” Steve Johnson told The Australian from the US. Mr Johnson’s extraordinary quest of more than 30 years to find the truth about his brother’s death culminated in Scott Phillip White’s arrest in Sydney on Tuesday for murder.

Throughout three inquests, Mr White, who was 18 when he alleg­edly killed Johnson in Decem­ber 1988, had never been associated with the death, Mr Johnson confirmed.

“He has never been on our radar,” he said. “So he did not appea­r in the inquests, he was never talked to prior to (Detective Chief Inspector Peter Yeomans) taking the case.”

The naked body of Johnson, 27, an exceptional American mathematician, was found at the bottom of a 60m cliff at North Head in Manly, on Sydney’s northern beaches, below a known gay beat. The first inquest found his death was a suicide; the second ended with an open finding.

In 2017 at a third inquest, then state coroner Michael Barnes found the death was a gay-hate killing, rejecting the continuing assertions of some police officers that Johnson took his own life.

The findings prompted NSW Police Commissioner Mick Fuller to order a fresh investigation, Strike Force Welsford, with the NSW government upping its $100,000 reward to $1m in Decemb­er 2018. That was supplemented by Mr Johnson’s $1m offer in March this year.

Mr Johnson said police had reveale­d little about the evidence but he was aware Mr White, 49, was alleged to have a connection to at least one person whose name had come up at the 2017 inques­t. “There was information that came out of the inquest that was very, very useful in identifying this person,” he said.

“And then there was addition­al inform­ation that came out after the announcements of the $2m rewards.” The private reward was backed by a legal agreement and was set up to be awarded entirely at the Police Commissioner’s discretion­, he said.

More important than the amount of money was that the public saw police were taking the investigation seriously. “They saw the commissioner standing with me and the commissioner saying things that built trust in the community,” Mr Johnson said. “(Mr Fuller) was even in March … apologising to the community for the mistakes of the past and ­saying that they were honestly trying to solve this and it’s safe to come forward.

“The reward itself isn’t enough for some people, especially people close to a perpetrator. They need to know that they can trust the officials­ working on the case.”

Mr Fuller said this week that one witness was eligible for part of the $2m on offer.

Mr Johnson is a self-made man who in the early 1990s heeded comments from legendary film­maker George Lucas that the future was in digital image compression. Developing technology that was said to be streets ahead of anything else available, he and a friend formed a company that they sold to AOL in 1996 for a reporte­d $100m windfall.

He faced years of hostility from NSW police as he tried to have his brother’s death properly investigated.

Mr Johnson said as things were finally going his way in March, the lead detective, Chief Inspector Yeomans, was hospitalised after becoming seriously ill.

“He told me the other day that he had a sign on his door of the hospital room, ‘Strike Force Welsford HQ 2’.

“He kept it going. They just kept soldiering on.”