An inquiry into LGBTQ+ hate crimes has heard there was a desire from some police officers investigating the 1988 death of American mathematician Scott Johnson to “defeat” Johnson’s family who were perceived to be “pushing” for a homicide investigation.
Johnson was found dead at the bottom of a cliff in Manly, below a popular gay beat.
His death was initially ruled a suicide in an inquest in 1989, but campaigning by Johnson’s family led to another inquest in 2012 in which the coroner made an open finding and recommended police reopen the case. In 2017, a third inquest found the 27-year-old had been violently attacked by someone who perceived him to be gay.
In 2020, Scott Phillip White was arrested over the death and in February this year pleaded guilty to manslaughter. He is due to be sentenced on 6 June.
At the special commission of inquiry on Monday, the former deputy NSW police commissioner and former head of the homicide squad, Michael Willing, said police had divided opinions about whether Johnson had taken his own life, met with misadventure or been the victim of a homicide. But he agreed some police had continued to pursue the theory that Johnson’s death was a suicide after the third inquest had been announced in April 2015.
Examining to what extent police might have been biased against the possibility of violence in Johnson’s death, Peter Gray, counsel assisting commissioner Justice John Sackar, asked Willing about an episode of ABC’s Lateline program from April 2015.
In that broadcast, former detective chief inspector Pamela Young told journalist Emma Alberici that police couldn’t eliminate their suicide theory, that the Johnson family was “using definitions of gay-hate crimes that suits their purpose”, and that former police minister Michael Gallacher had been “kowtowing” to pressure from Johnson’s family.
Steve Johnson, Scott’s brother, told Alberici in the same episode, “We think that the police spent a lot more time looking for evidence of suicide than for evidence of violence”.
Asked by Gray if he agreed that some investigators had “considerable attachment” to the possibility that Johnson had taken his own life, Willing said he did agree but added that his own view had “changed at various times … I thought ultimately that you couldn’t determine one way or another”.
The inquiry was shown police notes and communications in which Young said she wanted to “defeat” the Johnson family by a finding of misadventure, suicide, or an open finding at the third inquest. They also described Young’s view that the Johnson family were “opponents” of police.
Willing distanced himself from those views, saying the relationship between Johnson’s family and police was “certainly an adversarial relationship that evolved over time … I didn’t consider defeating them to be an objective.”
The inquiry was also shown emails that indicated Young’s 455-page report into her investigation of Johnson’s case had been given to Alberici weeks before the Lateline episode aired. Willing told the inquiry this was done without his knowledge.
Young was stood down from the Johnson case after the episode aired and left NSW police in 2015.
Willing agreed with Gray’s assertion that police emails from the time of 2017 coronial finding of potential homicide indicated some investigators were “upset because they were dead against a finding of homicide”, and that it was not an indication of “open-mindedness” on the police’s part.
Willing resigned from the NSW police in 2022 after an unsuccessful campaign to become police commissioner.
The inquiry’s hearings continue this week.
