The Gay Hate Crime That Went Unsolved for Over 30 Years

Australian True Crime

Meshel Laurie

True Crime

4.6 • 979 Ratings

🗓️ 25 August 2024

⏱️ 73 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Scott Johnson's naked body was found on the rocks at Blue Fish Point near Manly in Sydney in December 1988. Above him loomed the jagged cliffs from which he had fallen the night before.

Manly police were quick to declare his death a suicide, even though gay men were being found in similar circumstances around the Sydney shoreline with shocking regularity.

Scott was, and still is, deeply loved by his friends, family and older brother, Steve Johnson.

Steve refused to give up in his pursuit of justice for Scott. His crusade uncovered the truth about decades of gay hate crimes in Sydney and the police inaction that allowed them to thrive.

Steve Johnson has just released a book called A Thousand Miles from Care, and he joins us on Australian True Crime to talk about it.

You can purchase "A Thousand Miles from Care" by clicking this link.

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CREDITS:

Host: Meshel Laurie. You can find her on Instagram

Guest: Steve Johnson

Executive Producer/Editor: Matthew Tankard

This episode contains extra content from The ABC, Nine Entertainment and Seven West Media.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Can We Be Be Real? This is the other podcast I host and we are about to hit 1 million downloads.
0:05.7	You can show your support by hitting the subscribe or follow button to get the latest episodes in your feed.
0:11.8	Search, Can We Be Real, wherever you get your podcasts?
0:20.0	You've stopped someone carrying a large amount of drugs. He's just a teenager.
0:25.3	He's exhausted, scared, not giving you his name, where he's from or where he's going.
0:32.3	He's broken the law but maybe he really needs your help so how do you get him
0:37.8	talking if you think you could be a regular or volunteer police
0:42.0	constable such met careers.
0:45.0	Change needs empathy.
0:47.3	Change needs you.
0:52.3	This is a true crime podcast as the title suggests so please consider this your
0:56.5	warning that it's not suitable for children and it probably will contain
1:00.2	content that may be triggering to some people.
1:03.0	Also, it's an Australian true crime podcast,
1:05.7	so Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander listeners
1:08.6	should be aware it may contain the voices of deceased people.
1:19.0	The producers of this podcast recognize the traditional owners of the land on which it's recorded.
1:25.0	They pay respect to the Aboriginal elders past, present and those emerging.
1:39.0	Gay men just didn't, basically didn't report crime to police. For 12 years I was the police gain as being client consultant. I just happened to be reading the
1:44.8	Sydney Morning Herald, saw an article and went, hmm, that's not a suicide, that's a gay
1:50.0	hate murder. I immediately sent an email to police saying, look I think you've got it wrong,
1:55.2	I think this is actually a gay hate murder and I think you need to get a detective onto it to
	...

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