In the cells below Sydney's King Street court complex, Scott Phillip White offered his defence lawyers an apology.
"I appreciate your work, but I can't handle it," he told them in January last year.
White had just blindsided his team by proclaiming "guilty, I'm guilty" at what was meant to be a brief procedural step as his case crept closer to trial over the 1988 death of American mathematician Scott Johnson.
The 27-year-old's death, at the cliffs of a gay beat in Manly, sparked one of Sydney's longest-running mysteries.
It had already involved three inquests and a $2 million reward for information.
But few could have predicted the convoluted path the case would take through the justice system after that unexpected plea, including having his conviction overturned on appeal.
On Thursday, the matter took yet another twist when it was revealed White's lawyers had held formal discussions with prosecutors, resulting in him instead pleading guilty to the lesser charge of manslaughter.
For Steve Johnson, it represented one of the most emotional moments in the long push to find out what happened to his brother.
"My family and I are incredibly grateful," Mr Johnson said after listening to the court hearing from the United States.
"It was also a reflection of a long road that we've all travelled, so many of us."
The primary judge's denial of White's attempt to withdraw the plea to murder set the stage for his appeal, but police work continued.
Steve Johnson said there was "one last piece of evidence" that brought White's defence team "to the table to negotiate".
Described as a brilliant mathematician who possessed remarkable, incandescent intelligence, Scott Johnson had studied at Cambridge University and the Australian National University.
He loved travel, climbing, hiking, and classic Hollywood movies.
As she sentenced White for murder in the NSW Supreme Court last year, Justice Helen Wilson noted Dr Johnson had already solved three significant mathematical problems.
"With Dr Johnson's death the world lost a mind ready to contribute substantially to its advancement," she said.
White was 18 and homeless in 1988.
He discovered he was gay at age 15 but kept it secret, concerned about his family's reaction.
Justice Wilson laid out publicly a brief but intriguing background to his arrest.
In 2020, he told two witnesses that he met Dr Johnson at the Brighton Hotel before they went to North Head.
He claimed there was a fight.
"I punched him … He went backwards and I tried to grab him … And he fell," he told the witnesses.
Yet when he was arrested later that year, White claimed he made those comments to get the two "off me back".
Nearly two years on, sitting with his lawyers in the King Street cells, White would offer similar sentiments.
"I didn't do it, but I'm saying I did it," he said, according to a file note of their conference.
At that point, White expressed concern his ex-wife, Helen, would "come after me again" and that he was "better off in here".
During the sentence, Justice Wilson could not conclude beyond reasonable doubt White committed a gay hate crime, but she suggested his own "self-loathing" fed his indifference to his victim's fate, sentencing him on the basis of his reckless indifference to human life.
White, now 52, continued to maintain his innocence.
He could be heard crying on a video link from prison as a panel of three judges began considering his case in the NSW Court of Criminal Appeal in October, and was so distressed he didn't want to listen to the rest of the proceedings.
The appeal judges ruled that Justice Wilson applied the wrong legal test in determining whether White's plea to murder could be withdrawn.
The conviction and sentence were quashed — and Justice Wilson's decision in relation to the plea backflip was set aside — leaving him again in a position where he needed to apply to withdraw the plea to murder in the NSW Supreme Court.
On Thursday, it was revealed the Crown had agreed not to oppose that application if White instead pleaded guilty to manslaughter.
White appeared calm and quietly sat in the dock next to a solicitor as Justice Robert Beech-Jones asked him specifically whether he understood he was accepting legal responsibility for the death but not for a murder.
"Yeah I do," he replied.
Outside court, Detective Chief Inspector Peter Yeomans said there was no sense of disappointment about a plea to a lesser charge.
"Not at all," he said.
"We had Mr White get up today and say to the court, say to the family, that he killed their brother, their uncle."
"There was a significant amount of evidence against Mr White."
The now-signed statement of agreed facts reveals that weeks before the Court of Criminal Appeal heard his matter, White made a phone call to his niece while in prison.
In it, he "made admissions to hitting Dr Johnson at the cliff", consistent with his earlier admissions to the other two witnesses.
That document explains his liability for manslaughter as being a punch which caused Dr Johnson to "stumble back and fall off the cliff".
Steve Johnson says reading the material was "heartbreaking".
But he's also not sure he's convinced White's version is completely forthcoming, and wonders whether White went to North Head to "hunt" Scott or whether they went together.
And one crucial question still lingers — why?
"I'll always hope that some day he'll find it in his heart to maybe tell us a little bit more about why he was there with my brother and what his intention was," Steve Johnson said.
"I guess a corner of my heart will wonder if I could ever have a conversation with the man."
White will be sentenced in June.
