All language subtitles for Never.Let.Him.Go.S01E01.720p.WEB.h264-EDITH

In 1988, the
American's body was found at the...

Johnson's naked
body was found at the base...

Scott
Johnson's family,

the path to this point
has been long and painful.

- Little nervous.

Our hotel room

has a perfect view to the
cliff where Scott died.

This view is...
momentous.

For 30 years, this mystery about
what happened to my brother

was this bottled-up
question mark.

It was a meteor
crashing into my life.

- Good morning. We'll call the
matter for judgment, please.

Had he lived, Scott Johnson would've
celebrated his 60th birthday

in November last year.

Because of the actions
of the offender,

Dr. Johnson's life was
cut short at the age of 27

at a time when having already
completed the work required

for the award of a
doctorate in mathematics,

he was on the verge of what is likely
to have been an extraordinary career.

He is described as a
brilliant mathematician

whose hard work and
incandescent intelligence

led him to solve three
significant mathematical problems.

With Dr. Johnson's death,
the world lost a mind

ready to contribute
substantially to its advancement.

There
are people you expect

to always be there in your life,

and you don't really necessarily
know who you are without them.

Definitely, Uncle Scott was
one of those people for my dad.

Can't look at that drop

without thinking of Scott and

the terror he went through
for the couple of seconds

that it took him to fall.

Did he trip? Was he pushed?

Did he kill himself?

You know, I had a
blizzard of questions.

And there's no way to undo it.

We tried.

So... there are 20 times more,
um, where this came from.

This is Scott and me...
and the Matterhorn.

Scott's CV, all of his

grade point averages
are near perfect.

His publications,
there is a lot, yes.

This was the computer program

that resulted in pictures
of the surface of Venus.

These are mathematical
scattering laws, who knew?

We made these in 2013.

We knew that it could only be
solved if people came forward.

"Hunting a Killer."

Way back at the beginning,
we had no clues, no suspects.

And we were really fitting each
puzzle piece in as we got them.

This is the... his
death certificate.

"Died of effects of multiple
injuries, sustained when he jumped."

I think we should
have that updated.

It was a living hell wondering

and there was always, always a
possibility that he did kill himself.

So yeah, it was very hard...
to... l-land on solid ground ever.

This was pretty emotional.

When this came to me, I think
was the deepest, longest cry.

Here's a good one.

So, this is in 1964.

Scott, Steve,
Terry, Pismo Beach.

He was beautiful.

So, we grew up in
Southern California.

Scott, my sister, and I were
born to very young parents.

My mom had my sister
when she was 18,

and me when she was 19,
and Scott when she was 21.

She met my dad when
he was popping popcorn

in a Los Angeles movie theater.

They eloped and she had
my sister shortly after.

There were
times when we were younger,

that we all shared one room.

Dad put together a
three-tiered bunk bed.

I was on the top bunk.

Was the farthest away from any
spankings that might've happened.

My sister and I think
of our childhood in two parts.

There was before divorce

and after divorce.

When I was 10, my dad,
essentially, disappeared.

He didn't send child support,
he didn't talk to us.

Mom had to be
the sole breadwinner

with no work
experience to speak of.

It was extremely difficult
for her to pay the bills.

So, between me and Scott,
we had three paper routes.

We'd get up at 3:00 in the
morning and deliver papers,

and we'd go to school,
and then we'd get home

and deliver papers again.

So there was tension in the house, and
Scott and I glued ourselves together.

We kinda lived in
a fantasy world.

We were enamored
with superheroes,

and so, we made up our own.

We were Flyman and Bosco.

Wow, this is much younger.

When Scott reached kindergarten,

he came home with a note
attached to his shirt

saying that the teacher
wanted to talk to my parents,

and they were, were kinda proud

and they had the
conference with the teacher

and she wondered why they had
sent their mentally retarded son

to a school with normal kids.

Because Scott was so awkward

and he wasn't that interested
in tying his shoes,

so the teacher thought he didn't
know how to tie his shoes.

He wore his sweater around his
neck instead of putting it on.

That's because he
liked it to be a cape.

And teacher didn't
have any idea of what,

uh, was really going
on with my brother.

Um, he was quite a bit more
brilliant than they had imagined.

Eventually, my mom found a
man who moved in with us.

He was an alcoholic, and was
very rough with me and Scott.

We were a little too
girly for, for him.

You need to act like a man.

And it was sending Scott
into a spiral of depression,

feeling bad about himself, and
feeling kind of afraid and gloomy.

When it finally culminated into
a kind of a volcanic argument

between me and the boyfriend,

my mom asked me to leave,
and when I left the house,

Scott was sorta stranded with this
man that really cast a shadow on him.

But, you know, once
he got into high school,

Scott started
showing his genius.

I remember one time Mom had a pickup
truck with a camper shell on it.

The boys were sitting
on either side of me

talking about the
theory of relativity,

and I'm like...

I couldn't even get involved
with the conversation.

So, that was a good
indicator for me.

He ended up
going to Caltech,

which is probably the hardest
college in America to get into.

And Scott found it easy.

It was like a new world for
him and a new life for him.

He went from this place where
he was constantly in trouble

for not doing his chores

to the place where
everyone idolized him.

So, lucky for me, Caltech
was just a few miles from USC

where I was at college.

So we got to spend a
lot of time together.

Uh, we liked to hike together.

Both of us were very
shy. We were quite nerdy.

When Steve and I met,

I was 18 and he was 19,

and Steve and Scott would
get together and do things.

So, it wasn't like a package
deal, I wouldn't say that,

but Scott was around us a lot.

Shy just doesn't describe Scott.

I just have to tell you that he
couldn't order at a restaurant.

He had such difficulty.

But everything that we
did, he was game to do,

and we had a fun time and
we laughed, and I thought,

"Wow... I like this kid."

You know, I mean, I was only
two years older than he was,

but I felt older and protective.

And he also, like... Steve
has a big personality,

and I could see right away the
dynamics in that relationship.

And it was clear that
Scott would defer to Steve.

And very often my role, I felt,
was to try to bring Scott out,

and say, "No, what do you think," you
know, and, "What do you wanna do?"

And make sure that he wasn't
just in the background,

like, you know, the
Steve and Rose Show.

Not a week goes
by that I don't pick up

something that Scott's
written or a picture.

So, he's always a presence.

And the unfortunate 30-year
journey to find justice for him.

There we go.

The first trip I took out to Colorado
to visit my dad after seven years.

This is his baby,
Becca, my half-sister.

And I didn't really realize
that he started another family.

- I was born in
1977 in Colorado.

Think Terry talks about
going on a road trip,

and, like, discovering
baby Becca.

Because they're so much
older, I just idolized them,

like Steve and Scott would have these
stories of these amazing adventures.

They'd be hiking mountains
and have some crazy story

about coming down in
the dark in a town.

Ugh, I guess we're gonna
start crying at the beginning.

Um, Scott, like, definitely

was shy and gentle and quiet,

and that felt really good to me.

- Where are we, Rebecca?
- Rebecca is gonna tell us

what... where we are
and where we're going.

- Where are we?
- I don't know.

He was wonderful,

and I was pretty
annoying, I'm pretty sure.

He was also ridiculously smart.

- I got into graduate
school at Harvard,

and Scott went straight from Caltech
to Cambridge University in England.

And it's the first time in our
lives that we're separated.

And he had a gloomy first
semester at Cambridge,

but he went on his
second semester

and the tone of his phone calls
and his letters picked up.

"Dear Rose, I
thought I'd take some time out now

"to write you a letter before
I go into heavy study mode,

"and have no time
left to write anyone.

"Everything happened
all at once,

"and I suddenly found myself in the
midst of a heavy Cambridge social scene

"going out with all sorts of people
and making a few very close friends.

"Second term, I had
met Michael Noone

"who's an Australian doing his PhD
on 15th-century Spanish music here.

"Maybe it's silly for me to
write to you about all this,

"but I've always had difficulty
opening up and making friends,

so this is quite an
important phenomenon for me."

He finished his
program at Cambridge,

and came back to LA with me.

And late one night, uh, we were
walking around downtown Los Angeles

over in the
meatpacking district,

and he's struggling
to tell me something

and he's really struggling, and
the only thing I could imagine was

he'd got someone pregnant.

And so, I guessed that. I said,
"And you got her pregnant?"

And he says, "It wasn't a her.

I'm gay."

And

it... the first impact was this person
that I knew better than anybody else,

I didn't know as well
as I thought I did.

He came out to both
of us, like, individually.

I will say I was nervous.

I wasn't like, "Hooray, Scott's
gay," um, because I was scared.

I knew several
people who were gay.

I knew people who
had been beaten.

Steve and I took a
break from dating,

and I dated a man who lived in
a house with all gay people.

I had seen people come
back to the house bloodied,

and I had heard stories
about promiscuity,

and he started going out, like
he'd say... he would go out

and we knew he was going out
to maybe a bar or something.

I just, literally, thought,
"This is not my brother-in-law."

I mean, you know, at the time, I was
just thinking like, "Oh, my God."

And I thought he would
be an easy target.

The AIDS epidemic
was just beginning.

And so, we were really concerned
and Scott was really concerned.

- A-I-D-S, AIDS, the most frightening
initials in America today.

- Free AIDS literature!

Please learn about the symptoms!

I was kinda
naive about the world,

so it didn't really cross my
mind that he'd get into trouble.

Or that things could happen.

I was just glad he found someone

that he was happy to be with.

Michael Noone, the man that
he fell in love with at Cambridge,

had gone back to Australia.

And he was in love
with this man for sure.

So, Scott decided he needed
to leave the United States

and move to Australia.

- Yeah, he went that
far away. That was hard.

SINGER: ♪♪ We'll sing a song of
Canberra, the nation's capital ♪♪

♪♪ It's a very pretty city ♪♪

♪♪ But it's got
no heart at all ♪♪

♪♪ You get those bad
Canberra blues ♪♪

Canberra
was an intimate, small town

with a population
of about 200,000

with a very fine university,
Australian National University.

And I recall hearing about Scott

about a month at least
before he turned up

because given the topics
that he was interested in,

given the knowledge of
mathematics, which he demonstrated,

he had a high intellect,

an excellent student,
probably close to a star.

Was a small group of graduate
students in the department.

And one of the interesting
features in the 1980s

were that three of
us were gay men.

Scott was a reserved person.

Certainly not a loud American,
if I can use that expression.

And also, I should point
out, that as a mathematician,

definitions matter and the...

On the scale of
mathematical behavior,

Scott was, in no sense, at the
introverted end of the spectrum.

During the time that
I knew Michael and, and Scott,

we had dinner
parties for friends,

and we all felt very
comfortable with each other.

And we didn't talk about sex or gay things
as, as often people would think about.

It... We talked about
world situations,

mostly about music,

um, and whether the local
wine was good enough or not.

I always felt that
Scotty was very trusting

and accepted people
as they were.

I found that very
endearing, actually.

Although he was shy,
he tried to make you

feel as comfortable as possible as he
worked through his own shyness, I suppose.

"July 24, 1986.

"Dear Steve, things seem to
be moving very slowly here

"because nothing much happens
in this city after 5 P.M.

"Everyone in Canberra is white,
and most people are public servants

"who seem to be content
with the routine.

"I, therefore, find myself in a
state of considerable excitement

when I can get to
Sydney for a weekend."

- Scott did not have an
official PhD supervisor at ANU.

And Scott identified a
particular supervisor

at Macquarie
University in Sydney,

hence Scott commuted between
Canberra and Sydney, often each week.

And Sydney was a very
different kind of city.

Quite different than Canberra.

- Sydney is rapidly
becoming for gays

the San Francisco of
the Southern Hemisphere.

There were gay
bars all over the place,

there were gay saunas.

There were gay football
teams, you name it.

There was a significant gay
male culture within the city.

Is it easy to
live a gay life in Sydney?

- It's not easy, but it's fun.

It was a bit
freer, uh, shall we say.

And so, knowing Scotty,
when you're doing a PhD,

your head is down,

and so, this would
be a release for him

to come up from Canberra,
from his studies.

What's happening
this year that's special?

This year, we get
to add a baby to the family.

Who do you
want it to look like?

- Between you and me?
- Uh-huh.

Power food for the baby.

1988, Scott visited
for that summer.

What a catch.

- We had a little apartment,
it was a one bedroom

with a living room
and a German shepherd,

and I was really pregnant.

And, you know, they...
Just, like, domestic life.

Boston, down.

This is a little slice
of American life, come on.

- Sit down.

So we would play
games, and go for walks

and listen to music, and
it was just really fun.

And then, Becca came.

Come and get it.

And it was, "Excuse
me, 'scuse me."

You know?

I spent that
summer with Steve and Rosemarie

and Scott and Boston.

All right!

- And I was really
exc... like, so excited.

They were so very
nerdy.

They had a camcorder.

It was probably the
size of a small car.

I have a reputation
in the family for being,

I don't think anyone uses the
word "shutterbug" anymore,

but

being the, the
guy with a camera.

Over the years, it became very important
that I mastered all the details.

- This was also, like,
early years of computers.

We did not have one at my house.

But they made me an
adventure computer game

on one of those old computers
with the green, faded screen

and the flashing cursor.

Like, just incredible that they, they took
the time to create an adventure for me.

They were
always on the computer.

I-I, you know, I
always joked like

I didn't know what
their faces looked like

'cause I was always looking
at the back of their heads.

Programming, they were
always programming.

I'm working
on my life's work.

I love you.

I
love you too, hon.

- The way they fed
off of each other,

finding a problem
and picking it apart,

and, like, I just think
they were so complementary.

So, that summer,
he and I cooked up

a program that could
solve any problem,

and so, that was our grand plan,

and we didn't get very far, um,
with that because... he died.

- My name's Troy Hardie.

I'm a former member of the New
South Wales Police Service.

I was a rescue squad operator.

10th of December 1988, I
was barely 24 years old.

I'd been a police officer
since May of 1984,

so I'd been in approximately
four and a half years.

I remember at some stage,
exact time I can't recall,

I was sitting there answering the
switch, fingerprinting baddies.

And the news was passed on to
me by a fellow police officer

that there's been some human remains
found at the bottom of North Head.

I set off up there
to investigate.

When I got there, I saw the
human remains of a male person,

mid-20s to early 30s.

He'd had injuries which were consistent
with falling from the top of the headland,

and the body was naked.

That's unusual. I think...
there's only ever been one body

that I've ever found at
the bottom of a headland

in all the jobs that I've
done that's been naked.

He'd been there for at least
a couple of days, potentially.

You normally see, in these jobs, the
way people land, they land headfirst.

They normally have extensive
damage up around the head.

In this instance, the remains had
extensive damage around the legs

and, uh, and lower,
lower body area,

which was consistent with them having
landed on the rocks, uh, feet first.

- Large parts of Sydney were
left without power today

following last night's
fierce electrical storm.

There was hardly a
suburb in Sydney left unaffected,

phone lines were cut, and
rail services disrupted.

It had been raining for
probably a day or two beforehand.

Saw the remnants of blood on the
body that had been washed away

by water or rain.

There was no evidence of
any third party being there.

There was no footprints
of any kind there.

We secured the remains, and we put
them into a special carry case,

put it beneath the helicopter to
take it to the top of North Head.

When I went to the top,
the one thing we did find

was an amount of clothing
that had been neatly folded.

There was a bus ticket and
some other identification

that was in there, which led
to a, an address in Canberra.

I remember having a
conversation on the phone

with a male person who told me
that he was Scott's partner.

That indicated to me that
he and Scott were a couple,

and that Scott was gay.

I then made an appointment
for Michael Noone

to attend the police
station the following day

for identifying Scott's remains

and providing a statement in
relation to his knowledge.

And when I spoke to him about
his relationship with Scott,

he told me that Scott was held in very
high regard in his field at the time.

He indicated that Scott
was well-mannered,

he was very athletic.

Michael also indicated Scott
had either had thoughts of,

or may have previously
attempted suicide.

He hadn't seen Scott
for several days

because Scott was attending
Macquarie University,

and he couldn't
tell me how Scott

had come to be found at the
location he was on the Saturday.

- How far did ya go?
- A mile.

How long did it take you?

- I don't know, about 11 minutes,
12 minutes. I don't know.

Eleven
minutes for one mile?

- I don't know. I'm
guessing, I really didn't...

That's a long time.

Long time to spend on one mile.

We were in
California with my family

in early December

right after our first
daughter, Emma, was born.

No cardiac arrest?

- I don't know yet, haven't had
it yet. I'm thinking about it.

Okay.

- We were going down to San Diego,
so Steve could run in a marathon.

Bye.

I'm not quite sure why he felt this
urgency to go check our voicemail,

but he was taking
a very long time.

And I said to my, um,
mom and dad, I said,

"I'm gonna go in and see
if everything's okay."

- Rosemarie eventually comes in,
um, uh, to find out what's wrong.

And I-I said, "Well, Michael wants me to
call him and that I'm glad you're here"

because I needed to call him and
this doesn't sound like good news.

So I called Michael and got,

um... his dad who is sobbing

telling me that
Scott... has died.

- I just didn't even know,
like, what these words meant.

And, um,

he fell from a cliff.

I have to take a break.

- And Rosemarie and I
then collapsed in tears

in each other's arms.

We couldn't imagine
a greater loss

than this... wonderful, gentle,

brilliant soul.

I'm sure that Steve
called me and told me.

I really can't remember exactly

what my reaction was.

Yeah, I'm sure I've
blocked a lot of that out.

That night,

that night, like, just everything
ch... Everything changed, um.

Everything changed.

I was 29... you know,

a young kid who had
just lost his brother.

He was holding Emma,
his eyes were kind of vacant,

and I could just almost sense
that, like, he was looking at her,

and, like, she might've been
the only thing keeping him

sane at that crazy time,

that he just was looking at
her like, "Okay, I gotta,

"I gotta hold it together
'cause I have this new baby

and I'm not gonna let her down."

And then, that's kind of the
way everybody looked at her.

Look at how big you are.

Look at how big you are, you
can't go back inside of Mommy.

I needed to find some
way to get to Australia,

so I started that in motion.

And I was
the only one working.

And so, I think that
we had to borrow money

from Steve's professor
to get him to Australia.

I couldn't go to
Australia when Scott died

and that was heartbreaking.

Mwah!

Want me to kiss him back
on the phone tonight?

You want me to?

Scott's partner picked
me up from the airport,

and I was sad when I first got
there that I had never been there.

Months before he died,

there was very
little communication.

There were a couple letters.

After Emma was born, I
spoke to him by phone,

but very little communication,

and I felt kind of ashamed that I came
for the first time after he was dead.

I'm sitting in Canberra,
which is the capital city

three hours away from
where Scott died,

and I realize I wanna
go talk to the police.

So, I said let's drive up to Sydney
to the town where Scott died,

which is called Manly,

whose motto is, "Seven miles from
Sydney, a thousand miles from care."

And I remember thinking, "He
was 10,000 miles from care."

That I was unable to help him.

I walked into the police station and met
with this young constable, Troy Hardie.

And he was sympathetic, very friendly,
affable, "Sorry for your loss."

And it dawned on me in the first
few minutes that we were talking

that he had closed the case.

I was asking questions like,
"Have we checked phone records?"

"Have you taken his
picture along The Corso

to see if anyone
recognizes him?"

"What were his last
few movements?"

"Have you talked to
any of his friends?"

"Did you find a note?" "No,
we didn't find a note."

"Where's Scott's
wallet?" "No wallet."

He always carries this wallet.

And he said, "Well, we
talked to the professor

"who had called him
earlier in the day,

"and we talked to his partner who said
he hadn't talked to him all week long,

"and that's what we've done.

"But did you know that your
brother was homosexual?

"And this is where people
go to jump especially

"homosexuals.

"And by the way,

"his boyfriend mentioned
something about Scott,

at some point, had thought about
jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge."

And... and I said, "I-I
have never heard this story.

I-I-I don't know what
you're talking about."

And he said, "Yeah, apparently,
there was a previous episode."

And so, I had to find some
way to comprehend that

while we walked out the door.

It's only about a three-minute
drive from the police station,

so it's very close to,
to the police station.

So my head's wildly spinning.

We park, we walk up the trail,

and the constable steps up
on a few rock protrusions

to get up to this smooth platform
about the size of a barn door.

I started looking around to see if
there's a note that anyone missed.

And then I started wondering
whether it was something...

someone did on purpose.

Was there an altercation?
Did they get into a fight?

Did he push him?

So we spent a few minutes, it
was on the verge of raining,

so we were kind of in a hurry,

and it was dusk now,
so the sun was setting.

So, we climbed down
off the platform

and walked to our
respective cars,

and the constable
thanked me, he was sorry,

and that was, that was it.

My initial finding of
suicide was done in good faith

and was made on all the evidence
that was presented at the scene

or lack of evidence that
was presented at the scene.

He was found naked at the
bottom of the headland

with his clothes neatly
folded at the top of the cliff

with his identity clearly
displayed on top of those clothes

when I first viewed them.

I had evidence telling me
that... From Michael Noone that

Scott had thought about suicide,

and the time when I handed
it off to the detectives,

there was no evidence there to
indicate anything other than suicide.

And that was what I put in my
report of death to the coroner.

The body
arrived at the mortuary

and was formally
handed over by police.

In terms of the process and
autopsy, it was very much approached

as a suicide right
from the beginning.

The toxicology testing, which was
in the form of an alcohol test,

was negative.

Testing was done for both HIV and
for Hepatitis B prior to autopsy

and both were negative.

At the time, I think
it's fair to say

there were very significant
concerns about AIDS.

I don't know, um,

if I was aware of Scott's
sexual orientation at the time,

but it was the case that
various groups of cases

were routinely tested for HIV
and Scott was one of those cases.

Scott's injuries involved
many parts of the body.

There was injury to the chest,
there was injury to multiple limbs.

There was severe, absolutely
unsurvivable head injury.

Just very, very severe injury
absolutely incompatible with life.

And I don't want this to come out wrong,
but it was, to me, a routine case.

The pathologist isn't
there to solve crimes

to start saying that, you know,

Colonel Mustard with a
candlestick did it in the study.

That's just not the way
forensic pathology works.

- Suddenly, you get an email
which tells you that he's dead.

And so, it was a very
significant shock.

I regarded him as
somebody who had

an excellent potential
future as an academic,

which is what, I
believe, he wanted to do.

I would not have...

If somebody had asked me beforehand,
"Is Scott a potential suicide case?"

I would have
absolutely rejected it.

That Scott would commit
suicide didn't reconcile at all.

He was happy and content, and
looking forward to, to finishing off

and getting his PhD.

Fourteenth is when the
notice appeared in the newspaper

that said "no suspicious
circumstances."

Police actually told the press there
were no suspicious circumstances.

So I was pretty tied
in knots by this point,

and I was not at all satisfied
that Scott committed suicide.

What I decided to do next was
try to retrace Scott's steps,

and I caught the
ferry out to Manly.

It's a 30-minute ferry ride.

And the first thing you do is
you pass the Sydney Opera House

and the Sydney Harbor Bridge,

and it's one of the most
beautiful harbors in the world.

Then, after about 20 minutes,
you can see the cliffs,

and there's North
Head where Scott died.

Before I went up to the cliffs,
I stopped at the police station

to see Troy Hardie again.

- Steve was, was very,

um...

What's the word I'm looking for?

Very passionate
about his theories

and the fact that his brother would
not have... committed suicide.

I was really mystified.

It just didn't seem possible
that he would've killed himself

without saying goodbye.

I couldn't imagine.

He had his little niece

who was six weeks old.

He would've wanted
to see his niece.

And the constable just listened
to me, expresses sympathy,

and waited for me to leave.

I decided, at that point, I had
more questions for his partner.

I retraced my steps in reverse and
came back to Michael's parents' house.

And I went for a
walk with Michael

to ask him one more time what
was going on in their lives,

you know, whether there
was a precipitating fight.

And I said, "If you guys broke
up, that's totally understandable,

"and I-I don't, I don't blame you for
anything Scott might have been doing,

"um, being up there
with somebody else,

accident, no accident,
suicide, it's not your fault."

And he

ran inside his house and told his parents
that I had accused him of killing Scott.

His mother came out and told me I
was no longer welcome at the house.

- And Steve called me
and he was just like,

"Oh God," you know, "we
got into an argument,"

and he was a little panicked,

and he was like, "Rosemarie,
Rosemarie, Rosemarie,

I don't know what's
happening down here."

And so, I
flew back to America.

But even on my trip back home

and even during the funeral
that we had in California,

I was far from
letting go of this.

- We got too many dryers,
need more washers.

- Okay, four hours
'til the New Year.

I spent the rest of December

typing up notes that I
took while I was in Sydney.

And the third week after Scott died, the
Manley Police gets a 50-page document

from the victim's family
with all these questions,

kind of a punch list of questions I
thought police should go investigate.

My best friend, Chris Grace,
had gone into city politics

and had gotten to know
Senator Ted Kennedy.

And so, Ted Kennedy sent a letter
to the ambassador in Australia

inquiring about Scott's death.

Wasn't like I was bullying
or going overboard,

uh, I just wanted to know
about why, why my brother died.

So, I get a notice in February that
there's gonna be an inquest in March,

which I learned was supposed
to be a matter of course.

The coroner's
findings in the inquest

was that it was a suicide choice
by Scott to end his own life.

'Cause there was nothing there
to indicate anything different.

So, between
the detective

saying that Scott
disrobed and jumped,

and his partner saying there
was a previous suicide attempt

of uncertain date,

that was the end of the inquest.

And the coroner said, "And I'm
sorry to say, Mr. Johnson,"

and he stared right at me, "that
your brother was introverted

"and intelligent.

"And unfortunately,
those are just

"the type of people that
tend to commit suicide.

Your brother committed suicide."

Gaveled it closed and...
that was, that was

the last official act on
Scott's case for 20 more years.

- The police told us
that it was suicide,

and that was the truth,
like the capital T truth.

And that left us, as a
family, to figure out, like,

how did we miss

that Scott could kill himself.

Death is never easy

and everybody goes through that
process in a different way.

But Scott's death was always
like the big elephant in the room

because, um... it was just
no getting away from it.

We were just trying to
process what his suicide meant

and how it could have come about

because we were, on the
one hand, disbelieving

and on the other hand, it was the
reality that was in front of us.

And... so we all then had our
own private, little hells,

like our hells of how
we let Scott down.

But after a while, it was just,
this is the hand we were dealt.

And one way or
another, life went on.

Peek-a-boo.

In 1990, my wife's
pregnant with our second child,

and I'm interested in this
new computer revolution.

So I started tinkering
in my garage.

An electrical engineering
professor friend of mine at USC

told me George Lucas was
just on campus and he told us

movie theaters are gonna be receiving
movies digitally in the future

and not in tin
cans on celluloid.

You know, you need to be thinking
about digital image compression.

And I got hooked on the
idea of solving the problem.

My friend from grad
school quit his job,

and we started a company with
our names, Johnson-Grace.

- Kiss Emma.

We just had, like, no money.

The wolves were at the door.

It was the worst time that
you could possibly think of.

What?

Me?

But Steve just kept,
like, pluggin' away.

He said, "I have an idea and I
think this is gonna be a good idea."

This is now '93.

When people were dialed
up to online services,

like America Online and
Prodigy and CompuServe,

it took about an hour to
receive a full-screen image.

And after about a year
and a half of tinkering,

I came up with an algorithm
and that made that six seconds.

This attracted the
attention of America Online.

They licensed my technology
for a lot of money.

- Good morning, America Online.

- And enabled me and Chris to hire
a few people and feed our families.

The relationship with America Online
was with a very, very productive one.

America Online bought
the company in '96,

and then I went on to
run their R&D division

for the rest of the decade,

which was a hell of a stint because
the internet became mainstream.

It was the golden age for
nerds, and Scott missed it all.

I think many times during the day,
"What would Scott think about this?"

"How exciting this is, I
wanna share it with Scott."

Um, this happens many
times a day still.

You have great control
over the dog there, Scott.

How do you teach
her to run away...?

Scott really missed
something and the world missed him.

He was this creative
mind, this elegant mind.

What a team we would've made

but also, how much more
enjoyable life would've been.

Now we have two
daughters and a son

and how much... they
would've enjoyed their uncle.

For years,
Scott's case is just quiet.

You know, we talk about Scott

and we just, just... He's just
a part of our lives the way

we would talk about
anybody else who we miss.

You know, so we just were
livin' our little lives.

Basically, things were quiet.

And then Michael... ya
know, thank you, Michael,

Michael sent an
article to Steve.

We learned about these men are
showing up at the bottom of cliffs.

And everything started again.

In 1989 in Sydney,

John Russell met his
death falling from a cliff

the same year TV presenter
Ross Warren went missing,

his body never found.

Gilles Mattaini went for a walk
in 1984 and never returned.

These three homosexual men
didn't know each other,

but police believe they may all have
been the target of gay hate crimes.

Police renewed their
investigations this year

and today staged a reenactment
of Mr. Russell's death,

pushing a dummy over
the cliff several times

to gauge if the 31-year-old
fell or was pushed.

I was in law school.

It was literally my last
finals of law school,

and Steve sent
me, like, an email

with a bunch of attachments
of newspaper articles.

And it was an
explanation that fit in a way that

Scott killing himself never fit.

In my mind, the
picture totally changed.

Anyone who may have
information about the incidents...

My
brother-in-law was pushed.

And he was falling,
and he was afraid,

and we weren't there.

It was heartbreaking.

I mean, the truth completely
changed and the world changed.

Somebody took his life from him.

And then I thought,

"And what is it gonna
do to my husband?"

You know, "What is it
gonna do to Steve?"

This is... It's not,
it's not closure, it's...

It opens up a whole
different thing, you know?

- I let go of even the remotest
chance that Scott had suicided.

It was quite a windfall of
relief for me, in some sense.

Although, suicide's
just another mystery.

So I was trading that
mystery for this one.

Who killed him?

Why?