The Police Say in Sydney They Might Have A Suspect On The Murder of Gay 31 Y.O. Scott Johnson
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| One $ MIllion Dollar Reward $ |
I want to publish this posting again. Ive seen a movie made on this murder and I have been posting on it as soon as I heard something from Austrralia on the 0ver 10 years I have been posting on this blog.. MY first posting was showing the cliff in Sydney in which gays felt the privacy and liberty to put on their briefs or even naked go down to the beach and sun in the afternoon sun. They did the same on top of the hil. There you had some cruising because you had grass and sand, which somehow turn many of us on..lol. I remember my days in Ft. Laudedale on the Hollywood beach. The last time I went they had gunpacking park police everywhere and they were not shy to say your shorts were too short.
This was 2002. After 9/11. What I could not figure out is why Park police had a saying how you lay in private by the beach. After 9/11 they gave them the same powers as police. This was one of the decission that Mayor Rudy Giulliani, now a law braker with Trump himself. Nudity is one thing but having skimpy shorts? Iam sorry there was this guy that turns your head around and you know you do his but then loose track. He called while I was in the moving truck towards New York City. He should have called before, I didn't call afraid to turn him down on a get together call. I wa so bussy getting my move together, it was not a simple thing but I need a book for that. May be if he called I could explain. I lost coverage in NY and had to switch from ATT which I loved in Fl., to another carrier. I lost most of my list of calls and I lost his and he lost mine. That is life! But is one of those things you wish you could have done better.
These are things you do when you are single and I nor Steve Johnson deserve to be beaten up by the police or friends of the police because we are not straight. We do nothing different from the straight world but our world is spot-lighted as people that deserve death.
Iam glad the family have stayed on this and now the police say they are working on it , no a suicide as reported, And might have one suspect. Actually it took more than one person to hide this murder. The police and the Australian media Particularly in Sydney are culpable of this.
Adam Gonzalez, Publisher
A_*_F
Homicide detectives are a step closer to solving the 1988 suspected gay-hate killing of Scott Johnson, with the chief police investigator confirming the search was now focused on one individual.
Mr Johnson's naked body was found at the base of a cliff near North Head on Sydney's northern beaches in December 1988.
Steve Johnson, left, and Detective Chief Inspector Peter Yeomans in 2018 on the cliff at North Head, the site of Scott Johnson's death.
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| Steve Johnson, left, and Detective Chief Inspector Peter Yeomans in 2018 on the cliff at North Head, the site of Scott Johnson's death.CREDIT:JESSICA HROMAS |
Police initially concluded the 31-year-old US mathematician had died by suicide, but a 2017 coronial inquest found he had most likely been the victim of a "gay-hate attack".
More than 30 years after the first bungled police investigation into Mr Johnson's death, Detective Chief Inspector Peter Yeomans has confirmed the investigation had narrowed on a "particular individual".
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The last family photo of Scott Johnson.NSW POLICE
It comes after the NSW government raised a $100,000 reward for information to $1 million in 2018. The amount was then increased to $2 million on Tuesday when Mr Johnson's brother Steve agreed to match it.
"Since the reward was increased in December 2018, we have received an incredible amount of information from the community ... [and] we identified and revisited information relating to people who were known to have a specific bias around the time of Scott’s death," Chief Inspector Yeomans said.
He added that "there may have been bragging" about the events surrounding Mr Johnson's death.
"This has led us to some very specific lines of inquiry, with our current focus on a particular individual."
After campaigning for more than 30 years for justice after his brother's alleged murder, Steve Johnson said it was a "revelation".
"This is the first time they have ever said that. It was very emotional, to tell you the truth," he said.
"To go for so long with an intransigent police force, totally uninterested in investigating my brother's death as a homicide, to a team clearly dedicated to solving it. And then to learn they are this close to solving it ... it leaves me hopeful and emotional."
An initial investigation in 1988 by the Manly Local Area Command found no suggestion of foul play in regard to Mr Johnson's death, before an inquest in 1989 determined that he had died by suicide.
On Tuesday, NSW Police Commissioner Mick Fuller said the original investigation was a reflection of "broken" community attitudes at the time when homosexuals were wrongly seen as "second-class citizens".
After 30 years of waiting, NSW police are pursuing justice for my brother
"We're not proud of our history," Commissioner Fuller said of a number of police investigations linked to suspicious deaths in Sydney between 1976 and 2000, a third of which have since been found to have resulted from suspected or confirmed gay-hate bias.
Steve Johnson said it first became clear in February that investigators were making progress, although at the time he had "no idea they were focused on a certain person of interest."
"I asked what I could do to help ... that's when I proposed that I be the one to raise the reward to $2 million. I thought it was important to do that right now because they seemed to be on the brink of a breakthrough, so I thought I could give it one big push," he said.
"In my phone calls with DCI Yeomans over the last two months they became progressively more hopeful. These calls used to end with, 'Please don't get your hopes up.' They've stopped telling me that.
"Police are serious about solving this case. I would urge anyone with more information to please call Crime Stoppers."
By Lucy Cormack on Sydney Morning Herald
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