In the year 2000, Stephen Page, a former detective in New South Wales, where Sydney is located, received a letter from a mother whose young son, Ross Warren, disappeared around the same time as Scott Johnson. Warren’s remains were never recovered, but some of his belongings were found near a cliff, similar to Johnson’s case. By 2005, Warren’s cause of death was ruled to be murder — he was likely pushed over the edge. Moreover, evidence emerged that Warren wasn’t the only man killed in that manner.
Back in the U.S., Johnson’s brother Steve (pictured) learned that similar cases to his brother’s death had been reopened and took matters into his own hands, hiring private investigator and journalist Daniel Glick. With Glick’s help, among others, Johnson’s case was reopened in 2012 and viewed through the lens of a possible hate crime — gangs of young men were believed to have harassed, beaten, and killed gay men in the area where Johnson was found dead.
In the 2012 inquest, though, a coroner declared Johnson may have accidentally fallen or been murdered in a hate crime. Johnson’s initial cause of death — suicide — was thrown out. The next year, Steve told The Sydney Morning Herald, “[W]e started hearing from other families and other men who had survived vicious assaults around the time Scott died. I was shocked to learn how many gay men had died … there were hundreds, possibly thousands, of assaults against gay men during this era.”
