Warning: The following story contains language which may offend some readers.
Thanking police or lawyers at the end of a big trial is commonplace for a victim's family.
But singling out the wife of the man who killed your brother for special praise?
That's exactly what Steve Johnson did yesterday when Scott Phillip White was jailed for 12 years over one of Sydney's longest-running murder mysteries.
"We have someone new to thank, his ex-wife Helen White, who courageously came forward," Mr Johnson said while speaking to reporters outside court.
He said Ms White had sacrificed her own safety to testify against her former husband and tell authorities what she knew.
It was the crucial development the case needed after more than three decades of dead ends.
Scott Johnson was a modest yet high-achieving American mathematician who the court accepted died at the hands of White in 1988.
Johnson, then 27, plunged off a cliff at Manly's North Head.
While the specific events that led to that moment remain unclear, in sentencing, Supreme Court Justice Helen Wilson said White immediately fled the area, which was a known gay beat.
He would likely have got away with his crime if it weren't for his ex.
During sentencing submissions earlier this week, Ms White told the court she decided to write an anonymous letter to police in 2019 after watching a TV show about gay-hate murders.
After hearing White "brag" about "bashing poofters" she asked him in 1988 — and then again in 2008 — if he was responsible for killing Johnson, whose picture she had seen in two newspaper articles.
His responses only raised her suspicions.
He told her the "only good poofter is a dead poofter" and it wasn't his fault if the "dumb c**t had run off the cliff".
Around 10 years later, after watching a television program on gay-hate murders, which discussed Johnson, she decided to do some digging of her own.
During an online search, she found mention of Detective Chief Inspector Peter Yeomans, who was leading a new strike force into Johnson's death, and decided to write him an anonymous letter detailing what White had said.
At the time, there was a $1 million reward on offer for any information that led to a conviction, but Ms White said she had never heard about this, likely because she lived interstate at the time.
Nevertheless, her ex-husband's legal team sought to paint her as a money-hungry, scorned lover who was so desperate for the reward she lied about the existence of the newspaper articles and the conversations with White.
NSW Police would not confirm if any money had been paid to Ms White.
His lawyers said they could not locate any articles from the time periods Ms White provided and questioned why she didn't mention her suspicions when she reported White to police for domestic violence offences in September 2008.
But Justice Wilson dismissed these suggestions, saying it was "unsurprising" Ms White may have given incorrect dates for the articles and there was "no reason" to mention Johnson during a police interview about domestic violence perpetrated against her.
A surprise guilty plea
Tuesday's sentencing hearing was told White was a violent young man who got into many fights because he was "drunk" and "stupid".
Justice Wilson said the evidence suggested he had been troubled by what he did to Johnson for much of his life.
That contrition may have prompted his surprise guilty plea in January, which came against the advice of his lawyers.
Yesterday, Justice Wilson said White had tried to discuss a guilty plea with his legal team on four prior occasions, before he took matters into his own hands.
Justice Wilson said that, in a medical report submitted to the court, White told a doctor a guilty verdict might help put the family at "rest". And in 2020 when he confessed to the murder in the presence of police he said he could "never cope with it".
But only two months later, he withdrew the confession telling police he had been "full of s**t" because "I just had to say somethin' to get these guys off me back".
The court was told that, at the time of the murder, White was a disturbed 18-year-old who was struggling with his own sexuality after growing up in a homophobic family.
He had already attempted suicide multiple times.
It emerged in court this week that White himself is gay.
It will never be known why Johnson and White went to North Head together but agreed facts before the court state the pair met at the Brighton Hotel in Manly before the American proposed heading to the cliffs.
The court accepted White couldn't remember if the pair had been intimate and that he hit Johnson after the American took his clothes off, leading him to fall from the cliff.
Justice Wilson said White's actions amounted to "reckless indifference" but did not meet the legal standard to be deemed a gay hate crime.
Although Johnson would "never hurt a fly" according to his family, the court was told violence was White's go-to coping strategy after a dysfunctional upbringing, in which his alcoholic parents encouraged him to fight with his siblings for their entertainment.
This troubling start to life resulted in White being homeless from the age of 14 and many stints in jail.
But the man who sat in the Supreme Court dock this week was a far cry from the teenager on the cliff.
The 51-year-old has not been in trouble with the law for 15 years and has more recently lived a quiet existence, caring for his alcoholic mother.
White has already lodged an appeal against his conviction.
The looming hearings were the elephant in the room during Tuesday's sentencing, but Steve Johnson maintained the outcome had brought out the "best in Australia" and thanked all those who had brought attention to his brother's murder.
There were many times in the last 34 years the Johnson family doubted whether anyone would ever be jailed, as police initially treated the death as a suicide and three coronial inquests all came to different conclusions.
Outside court, Steve, who lives in the US, said he loved Australia and Sydney.
"I'll be very sad to leave," he said.
"It's a farewell for now to Australia. I hope I'm not back because of this case."
