They're in their 40s now, the gangs who rampaged around the Bondi-Tamarama cliffs and bashed gay men in the late 1980s. They included The Bondi Boys and the girls who ran with them. Older today, and probably wiser, perhaps they've grown a conscience, or a spine.

Or maybe, after all these years, they will be tempted by the $100,000 rewards announced on Tuesday to dob in the killers of three gay men who died separately more than 25 years ago. The lure is offered 10 years after deputy state coroner Jacqueline Milledge delivered a scathing verdict on the "lacklustre", "disgraceful" and "shameful" police investigations that concluded John Russell, 31,and Wollongong newsreader Ross Warren, 24, had fallen accidentally to their deaths from the cliffs.

She found Mr Russell was thrown, that Mr Warren - whose body was never found - was also murdered, and that 27-year-old Frenchman Gilles Mattaini, who vanished, was likely to have met a similar fate.

Homicide squad commander Detective Superintendent Michael Willing said on Tuesday: "We believe there are still people in the community who know what happened to these men and we hope these rewards will be an incentive for those people to come forward."

Informing the Milledge inquest was the three-year Taradale investigation led by then homicide detective Steve Page. His team re-interrogated the so-called Alexandria Eight, some of whom, while in jail for the 1990 bashing murder of gay man Richard Johnson, were secretly recorded boasting about earlier exploits on the Bondi-Tamarama cliffs. Taradale also bugged the phones of more than 20 members of the Bondi Boys and their girlfriends, who, a decade after police first interrogated them, spoke of "poofters" and the cops hassling them about a "faggot" who "went off" Marks Park, which had been a gay beat surrounded by the Bondi-Tamarama sea cliffs.

The Bondi Boys had also used the graffiti tags PSK - Park Side Killers - and PTK, for Prime Time Kings or Part Time Killers. But there was never enough hard evidence to charge anyone over the three cases and Sean Cushman, while named as the leader of the Bondi Boys, told the inquest: "I was never in a gang or crew. We didn't roll homosexuals."

Peter Rolfe, from the Survivors After Murder support group, campaigned tirelessly for the rewards. Standing alongside Detective Superintendent Willing, he spoke for the families of John Russell and Ross Warren, who said they were "haunted by the deaths" and suspected there were people who were "similarly haunted by the knowledge that they hold".

"We would implore you to take advantage of the rewards being offered, so that not only may our haunting be resolved but in some small way, your haunting may also be relieved."

Police gained approval for rewards last year but they were delayed by the announcement of a fresh coronial inquiry, to begin later this year, into the death of 27-year-old American mathematics prodigy Scott Johnson, who plunged from a cliff on North Head in December 1988.

A police report to the coroner on Mr Johnson's death discounts his family's belief that he was murdered amid an "epidemic" of gay-hate violence. It gives weight to the original police finding that he committed suicide.

The report, by Detective Chief Inspector Pamela Young of the Unsolved Homicide Team, also casts doubt on the epidemic theory of experts, including the former police gay liaison Sue Thompson, who had identified up to 30 potential unsolved gay-hate murders from the late 1970s to late 1990s. The report puts eight unsolved murders in the gay-hate category.

Chief Inspector Young, who had a publicised feud with the Johnson family, has been removed from that case at the request of State Coroner Michael Barnes, who complained that an "unprecedented" interview she gave to the ABC's Lateline could undermine public confidence in her impartiality.

Steve Page, the Taradale investigator, has criticised the original police investigation into the Johnson case and the Young report.

Anyone with information should contact Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000.