Former ABC Lateline host Emma Alberici has been grilled at an inquiry about an explosive interview in which a senior NSW police officer alleged there was political interference in the investigation into US national Scott Johnson’s death in Manly and claimed he may have died by suicide.
Alberici’s interview in 2015 with then detective chief inspector Pamela Young, who had supervised a reinvestigation into Johnson’s death, has become a flashpoint in the state’s Special Commission of Inquiry into LGBTIQ hate crimes and pitted Young against her former boss, Mick Willing.
Emma Alberici, right, outside the LGBTIQ hate crimes inquiry in Sydney on Thursday.Credit: Kate Geraghty
Johnson’s killer, Scott Phillip White, was sentenced this year to a maximum of nine years in prison after pleading guilty to manslaughter over the 27-year-old’s death near a gay beat in Manly in 1988.
Giving evidence at the inquiry in Sydney on Thursday, Alberici cast doubt on claims by Willing, a former deputy police commissioner who was commander of the homicide squad at the time of Young’s interview, that he did not approve Young’s appearance on the program.
Alberici said in a statement tendered at the inquiry that she spoke to Willing “in preparation for the interviews both before and after”. She had told colleagues in an internal email that the interview “will be explosive”.
Former NSW Police deputy commissioner Mick Willing at the LGBTIQ hate crimes inquiry in February.Credit: Peter Rae
“I also met [Willing] in a coffee shop in North Sydney ... in 2017,” Alberici said in the statement. “He sat with me for about two hours, during which he said things to me such as, ‘I am so sorry about what happened to Pam. I wanted her to do the interview so that the general public could see that we were not homophobic and not negligent and that [the] Johnson family were insufferable.’
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“He also said, ‘I thought that once it was public, and the scandalous misdirection of investigation resources was exposed, the political pressure would stop. I had no idea the commissioner would be as enraged as he was about the interview and Pam got the blame, unfortunately’.”
Willing issued a statement on April 14, 2015, the day after the interview, in which he suggested some of Young’s comments “were inopportune in light of the coroner’s decision yesterday to hold a third inquest [into the Johnson death], a decision that is fully supported by the NSW Police Force”.
Young told Lateline that Johnson’s brother Steve had used “influence” on the government “to make the death of Scott a priority in my office over other jobs that we had”, and accused the police minister of “kowtowing” to the family in setting up a reinvestigation into Johnson’s death in February 2013. She said there was “still evidence and information that Scott may have suicided”.
The then DCI Pamela Young during the ABC Lateline interview in April 2015.Credit: ABC
Willing has told the inquiry he did not know Young would participate in a studio interview, as opposed to giving background comments and appearing in an uncontroversial “door-stop” statement outside the then Glebe Coroner’s Court, and was “shocked” and “angry” when he heard Young’s comments on air.
Mark Tedeschi, KC, acting for the NSW Police Force, put it to Alberici that Young “presented to you prior to the interview as being a lone whistleblower prepared to put her career on the line to protect the legitimacy of her investigation”.
Alberici said that was “not true” and “seems quite absurd”.
Scott Johnson's body was found at the base of a cliff at North Head on December 10, 1988.
Tedeschi does not represent Willing, who left the force last year and has retained his own barrister. Young left the force in 2015 and is expected to give evidence at the inquiry next week.
Alberici praised Young in her statement as a “technically excellent and dedicated professional” and alleged she was “sacrificed in this matter”.
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