The Rowlingson Brothers - Criminal Discourse Podcast

After Robert Rowlingson discovered his teenage brother Anthony’s connections to the Ku Klux Klan, he threatened to report Anthony to the police. In response, Anthony said he “examined the problem at hand,” and “felt that the murder of Robert was the most viable [solution]…I did it because I had to.” On July 15, 2007, Anthony executed his brother to protect his secret. His teacher, the Klan leader who mentored him, helped dispose of the body. The teacher’s been a free man since 2013, and Anthony may be released in 2023. This is the Queensland, Australia case of the Rowlingson brothers and the deadly consequences of extreme ideology coupled with young, impressionable minds.

Pastoral Pittsworth

Robert and Anthony Rowlingson grew up in Pittsworth, a sleepy, pastoral town renowned for its animal agriculture and high-quality grain production. It’s about two hours west of Brisbane and is part of the Darling Downs farming region of rolling hills and pastures rich with natural resources. Pittsworth is within the Toowoomba local government area of Darling Downs, and this is all in the southeastern portion of the state of Queensland. That’s the northeastern corner of Australia that includes Brisbane and the Gold Coast.

In 2007, the quiet, rural community of Pittsworth had just about 3,000 residents. That included 19-year-old Robert Rowlingson and his 16-year-old brother Anthony. The brothers were destined to become the fourth generation on their family’s grain and cattle farm, or at least that’s what their parents, John and Wendell, had hoped.

Simmering sibling rivalry

The Rowlingson home was a stable, loving one, but that seemed to benefit one son more than the other. Robert was an outdoorsman and an apprentice motor mechanic who was a natural with farm machinery. This earned him a favored spot with his father working on the farm. On the other hand, Anthony preferred indoor activities, and his parents referred to him as nocturnal for his habit of staying up all night playing video games.

Robert was popular at school and around town. A close friend and schoolmate described him as “a ball of laughter.” A family friend said he “was one of these lovely, bigger, softer, wonderful young men. A big teddy bear type of a boy, and everybody liked him.” Anthony had a social life, but it wasn’t quite the same. He was disruptive in school and written up for things like carrying a walking stick disguised as a sword on the school playground and trying to sell homemade bombs to other students.

Anthony’s parents, teachers, and doctors were concerned that his obsession with weapons and violent media was unhealthy, but it was easier to dismiss when he was also getting good grades and excelling in cadets. But it was turning into more than an obsession: in the weeks before murdering his brother, Anthony made a hit list of seven people to kill after his brother – five students, including friends of his brother’s and bullies from his past, and his two parents.

Around this same time, Robert found Anthony standing over him with a rifle. When confronted, Anthony simply shrugged and walked away. One weekend before the murder, Robert caught Anthony watching him through a rifle scope. He told a friend and coworker about the tense situation at home, saying “Anthony will never stop hating me.”

No one predicted that Anthony’s simmering anger would reach a tragic boiling point. He had long felt that his older brother was overbearing, stubborn, and arrogant, and the laptop incident would make Robert a threat to Anthony’s private, secret world.

Secrets exposed

The laptop that seemingly set Robert’s murder in motion contained materials that revealed Anthony’s involvement in the Ku Klux Klan. It was the personal laptop of Graeme McNeil, a 43-year-old teacher and counsellor at Pittsworth State High School, where he served as a sort of mentor to Anthony, a year 11 student. Graeme was also a leader in an Australian branch of the Ku Klux Klan. His laptop contained Klan speeches he’d written, order forms exposing the names of other Klan members, and emails with other Klan officers.

Robert discovered the laptop and its Klan-related contents, but it seems he was primarily concerned about his brother’s welfare. When Robert confronted Anthony over family dinner, he urged his brother to end his relationship with Graeme and all affiliations with the Klan. Robert threatened to share what he found with police if Anthony didn’t follow through. He also revealed that he had already told some of his friends about what he had learned.

Anthony is someone who “values secrecy and control above all things.” He was used to manipulating and threatening people to get what he wanted, but Robert was always invincible to his intimidation tactics. The laptop incident was a breaking point in the brothers’ relationship where Anthony made the leap to rationalizing murder. He would explain afterward that he believes murder is justified to protect important secret information and that he would do it again to a friend or family member.

Anthony even went so far as to say that he probably would warn a friend before murdering them, but he didn’t warn Robert because then he might have prepared and prevented it, and he didn’t feel as emotionally connected with Robert as his friends. In the end, Anthony wouldn’t say that he felt Robert deserved to die, but that he was justified in killing Robert because “he couldn’t keep his mouth shut.”

Brother executes brother

In 2006, Anthony had stolen a key to his father’s gun safe “as a precaution so that I had access to…a firearm in case it was necessary to be used.” On Sunday, July 15, 2007, after Robert’s threat to reveal his and Graeme McNeil’s Ku Klux Klan involvement, Anthony used that stolen key. He selected a .243 caliber rifle, choosing the heavy caliber because he felt it would be more effective for the horrible act he was about to commit against his brother.

It was a chilly winter’s day, and Robert was working on his car in one of the farm sheds. While he was tinkering under the hood, Anthony walked up behind him and shot him in the back of the head. “His head exploded like a watermelon when I pulled the trigger,” he would later tell police. Robert was dead with this first shot, and he slumped to the ground. “I shot him [a] second time to make sure he didn’t suffer,” Anthony said. The boys’ father, John Rowlingson, would later say, “it was an execution, not a shooting.”

Anthony realized that he couldn’t make it look like an accident after that second shot, so he began cleanup efforts. He used a forklift to load Robert’s body into the trunk of his car, the same one he had been working on. Next, Anthony used sand to try and cover up the blood that had pooled on the ground. Anthony reflected during his confession that he “failed” in the cleanup effort, leading to his arrest, and that’s what he would do differently if given the chance.

Then, Anthony called Graeme McNeil.

Teacher turned accomplice

Graeme McNeil was a math and science teacher, and he also counselled troubled youths at Pittsworth State High School. He was a mentor to some of them, providing his personal phone number and email address should they have a need to contact him outside school hours. Anthony Rowlingson was one such student Graeme had taken under his wing, and his parents appreciated Anthony having a supportive role model who made him feel positive about school. They were not only grateful for Graeme – they trusted him with their son.

Anthony says he and Graeme had “an understanding,” and he asked Graeme to meet him at a bakery in Pittsworth to discuss a problem he needed Graeme to help him deal with. When they met and Graeme got into the passenger seat, Anthony said, “the problem is in the boot,” referring to Robert’s body in the trunk of the car. Then, he told Graeme what he had done.

The pair drove to a bridge on the Clifton-Layburn Road, about 40 minutes from the Rowlingson family farm. Together, they threw Robert’s body off the bridge into the floodway. On their return trip, they stopped at a public restroom to wash blood off themselves. Anthony offered Graeme a bullet casing as a memento. Graeme advised Anthony “to destroy whatever information he had on me. I asked him to do this because I didn’t want that information getting into other people’s hands. I made it clear that, in my position, if that is found out, it’s going to cause a lot of problems for me and my family.”

The next day, a Monday, Anthony went to school and Graeme went to work at Pittsworth State High School as if they hadn’t disposed of a corpse together the night before.

Missing person to murder victim

John and Wendell Rowlingson were at a friend’s house when their son was murdered, and when he still wasn’t home on Monday morning, they assumed he had spent the night with friends. Concern grew when Robert didn’t show up for work, and then a friend found his abandoned car on a back street in Pittsworth, and there was a shovel in the backseat. Around the same time, John Rowlingson noticed the forklift had been moved, and he saw blood on it. He also found pools of blood covered with sand and a spent rifle casing near a farm shed.

When John questioned Anthony about his findings, Anthony told him he shot a cat. Not believing him, and listening to Wendell’s maternal instincts that Anthony had something to do with Robert’s disappearance, John called the police. They picked Anthony up for questioning on Tuesday, July 17, after school, just two days after the murder. Anthony would say later that he knew he was already “done for” but that he enjoyed seeing how far he could string authorities along before they figured it out.

Anthony first told police he was with a girlfriend when Robert went missing, but he didn’t have a girlfriend who could confirm the alibi. Next, he told police that three men in balaclavas showed up at the farm, beat him, and asked for Robert. Shortly after that, Anthony felt that the time was right and finally confessed to the murder. Before he would reveal the location of Robert’s body, Anthony attempted to make a deal to hide Graeme’s involvement:

Officer: Well, are you prepared to show us where he is now?
Anthony: Perhaps, although I am not sure it is the right time in the game.
Officer: Well, this is not a game we are talking about the murder of your brother. We need to know if you will talk to us further about this, because we need to get a Justice of the Peace back here so we can interview you properly.
Anthony: Well, I may be willing to assist, but I would like you to do something for me. I am in possession of some incriminating information about a colleague of mine, and if you give me a guarantee that you will destroy it, I will show you where my brother is, and tell you everything.

Police didn’t negotiate with Anthony, and they were able to recover Robert’s body that same day.

Even though Anthony didn’t implicate Graeme McNeil initially, police discovered through phone records that Anthony had called him around the time of Robert’s murder. When they interviewed Graeme, he admitted to his involvement but initially claimed that he only helped Anthony because he was afraid of what Anthony could do to him.

Anthony contended that he fantasized about killing Robert long before he crossed paths with Graeme McNeil, but Anthony’s parents believe Graeme was the major influence and perhaps the only reason that Anthony killed his brother. In fact, they believe Graeme may have ordered Anthony to do it. Anthony told his dad that “he did not hate his brother, but that he had been told he had a month to do it.” The Rowlingsons expressed a feeling of betrayal toward the man they trusted as Anthony’s mentor and role model.

Extreme Ideology

Once the particulars of this crime are sorted out, the key issue is how much responsibility lies with Anthony Rowlingson, a minor, versus his teacher and the influence of the Ku Klux Klan’s extreme ideology on a young, impressionable mind. To analyze that properly, we first need to understand a little more about the Klan, how it operates in Australia, and what its goals are, then learn how Anthony and Graeme and their crime against Robert fit into that dark world.

The Ku Klux Klan was formed by Confederate veterans in the wake of the American Civil War. Although it may have begun as a social group, some members quickly took extreme measures in reaction to reconstruction-era politics that they felt threatened, punished, or otherwise unjustly targeted them. Early activities included targeted violence against African Americans, including murder and voter intimidation, all in an attempt to maintain or regain control of the Southern United States from the federal government.

This morphed into the Klan we recognize today, a highly secretive terrorist group whose aim is to “purify” society according to their white supremacist values. Their iconic white robes and hoods were designed to disguise members’ identities and intimidate the public. They’ve made repeated attempts to legitimize their activities by aligning with conservative and far-right political groups as well as Christian religious groups, although most of those groups denounce that affiliation. More recently, the Klan has aligned itself with neo-Nazism and anti-Islamist views.

Membership in the United States is probably around a few thousand at any given time, with limited international reach. It’s impossible to pinpoint an accurate number given members’ secrecy and the Klan’s fear tactic of overinflating membership counts. In 1995, the Klan started online forums and marketplaces. The internet also made it easier for the Klan to expand its reach beyond the United States. Klan chapters exist in South Africa, Mexico, Brazil, Cuba, the United Kingdom, Germany, Australia, and New Zealand.

The Klan in Australia

Before the Ku Klux Klan tried to establish a foothold in Australia in the late 1990s, there were already violent fundamentalist groups operating in Queensland, like Christian Identity, neo-Nazis, and the League of Rights. Australian police reports detail attackers claiming to be Klansmen targeting Aborigines and Jews back through the 1980s with harassment, shootings, and beatings. In 2007, residents in Toowoomba were among those in three Queensland cities to be targeted with pamphlets promoting Klan membership. The materials came from the United States and were “distributed around.”

After Graeme McNeil’s arrest made headlines, Toowoomba police said nothing significant had come of the pamphlet investigation and that there hadn’t been any Klan-related problems since. But regional residents reported personal encounters with Klansmen, some of them teenagers, driving around with hoods and robes on, harassing them with racial slurs, and throwing eggs at their homes. Residents also recalled receiving recruitment letters and racists leaflets, unsolicited, and observing farmhouse Klan meetings.

One long-time Pittsworth resident downplayed the Klan concerns, saying, “just because we had one bizarre individual living here [referring to Graeme McNeil]…doesn’t mean Pittsworth should be painted as a racist hillbilly town. Pittsworth is a very racially tolerant town. The teacher was, unfortunately, a dangerous eccentric.”

Perhaps Australians are wary of the potential Klan activity in their communities because of its ties to the nationalist, far-right political parties that also cropped up in the late 1990s. These parties, primarily One Nation and Australia First, have been criticized for their racist rhetoric, anti-immigration policies, and intolerance of multiculturalism. One Nation and Australia First are just two of several far-right parties competing for political power in rural Australia, and there are organized youth movements elements to each of them.

Paul Coleman, a founding member of One Nation, was ousted from the party in 1999 after he publicly shared that he was the leader of the Ku Klux Klan’s operations in Australia and actively recruiting members through online forums. At the same time, Australia’s Defense Minister acted on reports that Australia’s military – both veterans and those serving – had joined Klan branches in three states, including Queensland. Australia’s Immigration Minister warned travelling Klansmen that they would face tougher security measures when trying to visit the country.

In 2009, David Palmer, the new head of Australia’s Klan operations, reignited fears when he said that several Klansmen were secretly members of Australia First. He said the Klan isn’t “interested in actually registering as a party. Our main idea was we would move in and take back what we consider our Aryan parties. [The Klan] is a white pressure group; a white social group for white families. But also a reserve in case the ethnics get out of hand and they need sorting out.” Australia First’s leadership denied any such infiltration.

Graeme McNeil would have been in his early 30s when the Ku Klux Klan began actively recruiting Australian members. He was born and educated in Brisbane, earning a bachelor’s degree and teaching diploma from the Queensland Institute of Technology. While he embarked on his teaching career, he also became an ordained minister and preached at the non-denominational Cross of Christ Ministry in a rural area west of Toowoomba. Neighbors in his tiny town of Cambooya thought of him as a model citizen and remembered that he liked to be called “Reverend.”

Graeme took a brief hiatus from teaching to startup a computer repair business, but that was unsuccessful. In 2001, he returned to teaching at Pittsworth State High School, where he met Anthony Rowlingson. At the same time, Graeme was leading a double life as a Supreme Chaplain in the Ku Klux Klan, an “Imperial Kluk.” One of his relatives was also a member.

After assessing Grame’s influence over Anthony and Anthony’s mental fitness for trial, a court-appointed psychologist who examined him said, “Anthony would, I believe, have been susceptible to influence by the teacher and this could have fostered an interest in the Klu Klux Klan. It may also have acted to enhance his feelings of specialness and acted to harden a developing anti-authoritarian trait, and possibly of callousness. Any influence would not have extended to a point where Anthony would have been unaware of the wrongfulness of his actions. It may have acted to distort his beliefs about his justification in acting as he did.”

Contested sentences

On August 8, 2008, Anthony Rowlingson plead guilty to murdering his brother, he said to save his parents from being dragged through a trial and the subsequent media badgering. He had been deemed mentally fit to instruct his counsel and to assume full responsibility for his actions. Anthony knew that killing his brother was wrong and didn’t show any remorse for it – he felt justified in his actions and regretted his failures in covering it up.

On September 15, Anthony received a life sentence for murder with a minimum of 15 years before he would be eligible for parole. He was also charged with a few other crimes and given concurrent sentences: nine months for interfering with a corpse, three months for unlawful use of a motor vehicle, and 12 months for stealing. The stealing charge stemmed from an incident the same week as the murder when Anthony stole two vehicle registration plates from a car dealership in a nearby town and hid them in a briefcase in his room. He was credited with 426 days of time served during pre-sentencing custody and instructed that he would serve most of his time in an adult correctional facility.

In addition to this sentencing, the judge in Anthony’s case allowed for his name to be published despite the fact that he was a minor at the time he committed the crime. This was for two reasons. Chiefly, since Anthony presents a future violent risk, it’s important that members of his community be able to identify him and know what he’s capable of, should he ever be released. The other issue was that Anthony’s parents wished for privacy, but the judge argued that “all their friends and all of the people who know them will know about this, in any event. There will be nothing new about that.”

Anthony’s attorneys unsuccessfully appealed this ruling in December 2008, saying the sentencing was too extreme and asking instead for a sentence of 12-13 years. That judge stood by the life sentence, describing Robert’s murder as “cold-blooded,” “premeditated,” “cowardly,” and “heinous.” He listed Anthony’s “lack of remorse” and his “attempt to fool the police and [his] family,” as examples of behavior supporting a life sentence. He also noted “that the sentence imposed on the applicant should mark the community’s denunciation of fratricide” and that Anthony “poses a real and continuing danger to the community.”

Psychologists’ assessments of Anthony’s personality also persuaded the court – they ultimately concluded that he posed a moderate to high risk of committing another murder in the future. Anthony was diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder and Oppositional Defiance Disorder at age 10. These were treatable disorders, and his impulsive behaviors were rarely present outside school. Robert’s murder was premediated, targeted violence, not an impulsive, heat of the moment attack, making the defense’s argument that Anthony could be treated a moot point when it came to sentencing.

Experts said even as an older teen, Anthony met the criteria for Narcissistic Personality Disorder. He has a grandiose sense of self-importance and entitlement, he is interpersonally exploitative, and he lacks empathy for others. They reported that he also displays some antisocial and schizoid personality characteristics. Stopping short of assigning a clear motive, they attribute multiple factors leading up to Robert’s murder, including Anthony’s unhealthy interest in violence, the resentment and jealousy he held toward his brother since early childhood, and the fact that he felt Robert violated his private, secret world.

By Anthony’s own admission, he would kill someone else who threatens his sense of control or gets in the way of an important goal of his. He doesn’t feel that what he did was wrong but does recognize that it “is wrong by society’s viewpoint.” Anthony will override rules and laws for his own personal interests, construing situations in such a way that it justifies his use of violence. Psychologists believe that it would be impossible to get Anthony to empathize with his victims, but therapy efforts could focus on rewards and consequences, helping Anthony to understand how prosocial behavior benefits him and how antisocial behavior is harmful to him. However, Anthony has also stated that he doesn’t view his prison sentence as a punishment.

Graeme McNeil’s case was handled separately, and in May 2010 he plead guilty for his role in Robert Rowlingson’s murder and for making false statements to police. Graeme was sentenced to eight years imprisonment for being an accessory after the fact of murder, but he was paroled after just three years. He moved in with his parents in Pittsworth and was still living there in 2015.

Shockingly, Graeme was only banned from teaching for five years, meaning since 2015 he could reapply for his teaching license. It’s unclear what has happened to Graeme in the years since then, but in response to public outcry, leadership in Queensland launched a task force to assess and reduce the risk of racist activity within the state’s schools.

Time marches on

John and Wendell Rowlingson continue to maintain a supportive relationship with Anthony, visiting their son in prison every month. They are hopeful that he will be released in 2023. They also have a daughter, an older sister to the Rowlingson brothers, who’s been kept out of the spotlight. Dreams of continuing the family farm are gone now; they sold the land once the painful memories became too much to bear.

John and Wendell essentially lost two sons back in 2007, and they blame the influence of extreme ideology from Anthony’s trusted mentor at an impressionable age. In the divisive and violent political climate of 2022, it might be easier to understand the influence of the Ku Klux Klan or groups like them on troubled youths, but that still doesn’t excuse what Anthony did to his brother in the eyes of the law. Whether he is paroled in the coming year or not, it may be wise to heed experts’ warnings about Anthony’s risk of reoffending.

As the judge said during Anthony’s 2008 appeal, his “conduct and his attitude to his offending [is not] explicable as a consequence of the manipulation of an immature young man either by his teacher or by the baleful influence of the Ku Klux Klan. The reports of the psychiatrists and psychologist afford no support for such a suggestion or for any confidence that his deficits in terms of empathy will be overcome as he grows older.”

Perhaps it will depend on whether Anthony Rowlingson – now a man in his thirties – has changed since 2007. Does he still feel justified for executing his brother, or does he feel remorse? Is he still protecting Graeme McNeil? Is he still active with the Klan or other white supremacy groups behind bars? We’ll leave that up to the Australian courts to decide, with the opinions of Anthony’s parents, two living victims of this crime, in their minds in alongside the expert opinions.