As the cops packed the back of the squad car, one of the men objected, shouting that the car was illegally crowded. While the two cops switched around to force him in, the others scattered out of the car. From the donut shop, everyone poured out.
The police faced a barrage of coffee cups, spoons, trash. Gay people danced about the cars." - John Rechy They fled into their car, called backups, and soon the street was bustling with disobedience. The date of the riot has since been corrected to May 1959. and the surrounding area was home to several clubs and bars popular with gays - the Biltmore, Brass Rail, Cellar (521 S. The network of gay hangouts came to be known as "The Run." There were also numerous small eateries, one of which was Cooper's Do-Nuts, a 24 hour coffee and donut spot popular with a clientele comprised in part of multiracial trans people and hustlers. CANBERRA, Australia (AP) - A man told police he killed American mathematician Scott Johnson in 1988 by pushing the 27-year-old off a Sydney cliff in what prosecutors describe as a gay hate crime, a court heard on Monday.The men’s bar…had been a cruising spot even before the war, uniformed soldiers would be “packed three-deep” (Gay LA).ĭuring the 1940s and 50s, the Biltmore’s Grand Avenue Bar served a rendezvous point for Los Angeles’ gay community. Scott White, 51, appeared in the New South Wales state Supreme Court for a sentencing hearing after he pleaded guilty in January to the murder of the Los Angeles-born Canberra resident, whose death at the base of a North Head cliff was initially dismissed by police as suicide. White will be sentenced by Justice Helen Wilson on Tuesday. He faces a potential sentence of life in prison. White said in the interview he lied when he had earlier told police that he had tried to grab Johnson and prevent his fatal fall.Ī coroner ruled in 2017 that Johnson “fell from the clifftop as a result of actual or threatened violence by unidentified persons who attacked him because they perceived him to be homosexual.” He went over the edge,” White said in recorded police interview in 2020 that was played in court. The coroner also found that gangs of men roamed various Sydney locations in search of gay men to assault, resulting in the deaths of some victims. Some people were also robbed.Ī coroner had ruled in 1989 that the openly gay man had taken his own life, while a second coroner in 2012 could not explain how he died. His Boston-based brother Steve Johnson maintained pressure for further investigation and offered his own reward of 1 million Australian dollars ($704,000) for information. White was charged in 2020 and police say the reward will likely be collected. White’s former wife Helen White told the court that her then-husband “bragged” to their children of beating gay men at the clifftop well-known for gay meetups. Helen White said she read a newspaper report in 2008 about Johnson’s death and asked her husband if he was responsible. “The dumb (expletive) ran off the cliff.” “It’s not my fault,” Scott White allegedly replied. “I said, ‘It is if you chased him,’” Helen White told the court.
Under cross-examination, Helen White denied she had been aware of a AU$1 million reward for information on Johnson’s murder when she reported her former husband to police in 2019. She said she only became aware of a reward when the victim’s brother, Steve Johnson, doubled the sum in 2020. Steve Johnson said in his victim impact statement that, “With a vicious push, Mr. “This man (Scott Johnson) who once told me he could never hurt someone even in self-defense died in terror,” the brother added. Steve Johnson said he appreciated White’s guilty plea. “If he had turned himself in after his violent action, I would have had a little more sympathy.