After 33 years, Scott Phillip White last week confessed to the infamous homophobic murder of 27-year-old American PhD student Scott Johnson, who was thrown off the Bondi cliffs in 1988.

Tamworth's Mark Haines, just 17, died earlier that year, on January 16, 34 years ago this week.

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As with Mr Johnson, police said Mr Haines killed himself - but family did not believe them.

Uncle Don Craigie travelled from Moree the very same day in 1988 his nephew died and walked the railway track where it happened, south of Tamworth.

He has never changed the opinion he formed that day, that another person must have been there when Mr Haines died.

But despite a half-a-million dollar reward offered by the state government, the family have been in the dark about what really happened ever since.

Mr Craigie said the Scott Johnson case gives them hope.

"We would hope so. We can live in hope. That's why every year I do what I do to make sure he is not forgotten," he said.

Like Mr Johnson's family, their family was also let down by "incompetent" and even "prejudiced" policing in the 80s, he said.

The family is hoping for a new coronial inquiry into the case, as happened for the Bondi murder.

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A police investigation into the death, which was referred to the state's homicide squad in 2018 and later reopened by Oxley police, has since closed.

The police report has been forwarded to the homicide squad for their input and will then be forwarded to the coroner, who can order a full inquiry, Mr Craigie claimed.

The family has always believed that Mr Haines was murdered at a separate location from where the body was found.

The theory was backed up by forensic pathologists and evidence as part of the ABC documentary series Cold Justice.

Mr Craigie said he immediately realised the 17-year-old would not have been able to walk the route he'd supposedly taken, carrying the items police claimed he had stolen.

There was also barely any blood on the railway tracks where his nephew was hit by a train - and the young man had a head injury his uncle believes he received before the train hit him.

The family has spent the last three decades demanding answers.

"It's a pity the authorities back then did not treat this matter as seriously as they would a non-Aboriginal person," he said.

"We would not be having this conversations if that was the case. Taking that into consideration, I'd say people were very negligent back then."

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