BY ALEC SMART On Thursday 30 November, Glebe Coroner’s Court released their findings on a mystery that has intrigued the public since the victim was found
cityhubsydney.com.au
Pushed, not jumped
Blue Fish Point, near Manly, where Scott Johnson was probably pushed over the cliff by gay bashers. Photo: Alec Smart
BY ALEC SMART
On Thursday 30 November, Glebe Coroner’s Court released their findings on a mystery that has intrigued the public since the victim was found naked at the base of a cliff south of Manly in 1988. NSW Police insisted at the time that the victim, Scott Johnson, had committed suicide, but the new inquiry – the third in almost 30 years – has found otherwise.
NSW State Coroner Michael Barnes declared, “Mr Johnson fell from the cliff top as a result of actual or threatened violence by unidentified persons who attacked him because they perceived him to be homosexual.
“I am of the view it is very unlikely Scott took his own life.”
The coroner was also critical of the Police.
“Regrettably, those responsible for the initial investigation quickly jumped to conclusions without thoroughly and impartially examining all the facts,” he said. “By the time numerous mistakes were recognised it was too late to properly test the evidence to find the truth.”
On 10 December 1988, Scott Johnson’s crumpled, naked body was found by a 13-year-old boy and two spear fishermen on a rock ledge at the base of Blue Fish Point, two days after he was last seen alive. It appeared he had fallen 50 metres from the cliff top above, in an isolated spot half way between Manly’s Shelly Beach and North Head.
Although no suicide note was found, Scott’s clothes were discovered neatly folded at the top of Blue Fish Point, 10 metres from the edge, along with some personal items and a bus ticket from Lane Cove, where the 27-year-old American mathematician had been staying.
The initial investigation by Manly Police proclaimed there was no evidence of foul play. Constable Troy Hardie, a Manly police officer who partially oversaw the case in 1988, concluded there were “no suspicious circumstances.”
“There was no evidence of any foul play, so I believed it was suicide,” Mr Hardie later told the Coroner’s Court.
Indeed, within 24 hours of the body being found, investigating officers wrote ‘NFA’ – No Further Action – on the police occurrence pad, and maintained that view, despite suspicions raised by Scott’s family and associates.
A subsequent inquest held at Glebe Coroners’ Court just three months later, on March 16 1989, issued the finding that Scott ended his own life. NSW State Coroner Derrick Hand accepted a presentation by the head of the police investigation, Detective Sergeant Doreen Cruickshank, that Scott’s clothes folded neatly and no obvious sign of a struggle suggested he had a premeditated plan to jump.
And yet scepticism about Scott’s ‘suicide’ began from the outset. Dr Johan Duflou, who performed the autopsy on Scott’s body, told the first inquest in Glebe that Scott’s fall was so disfiguring that the police officers’ insistence there were no ‘defence wounds’ was forensically inaccurate. “There was nothing to suggest one way or another – suicide, accident or homicide.”
Blue Fish Point is a scenic location about half way along a bush trail that leads from Shelly Beach, south of Manly, to North Head, near the entrance to Sydney Harbour. It is accessed by a sandy coastal track that snakes through dense forest around abandoned WWII concrete artillery bunkers, east of an army barracks and the North Head Wastewater Treatment Plant.
The forested area surrounding the path is a notorious ‘beat’ for homosexual liaisons, and this was publicly known in the 1980s. The most popular spot for gay trysts is right on the cliff edge itself at Blue Fish Point, sheltered behind a three-metre high sandstone wall that runs its length and obscures the headland from the path behind – and potential witnesses. Entry is obtained through a hole in the wall.
Scott, a graduate student who had recently submitted his dissertation in mathematics for the Ph.D he was studying at the Australian National University in Canberra, was highly intelligent. He had achieved excellent academic grades from the University of California and the University of Cambridge and, like the familiar joke that rocket science is the domain of the brilliant, had actually worked at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
He was also a keen mountain climber and long-distance runner, and neither smoked nor drank. He had no history of depression or mental illness, and an autopsy revealed he was not HIV positive.
I really, really hope they find the <censored> individual(s) who did this- hate crimes make me SO angry!!! There is NO excuse!!!
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