Reclusive KKK teacher, Graeme MacNeil, who helped hide murdered boy’s body still living in Darling Downs

Sixteen years ago today, Anthony Rowlingson came to his teacher Graeme MacNeil with a dead body in his vehicle. Instead of calling the police, the teacher attempted to help him get away with the cold-blooded crime. Now he lives a quiet life in a scenic country town.

“What happened with that boy had nothing to do with me.”

This is all Graeme MacNeil had to say when asked about the possible parole release for the murderer whose crime he helped conceal.

The 59-year-old man lives on a quiet street in Cambooya, a short distance from Pittsworth State High School where he worked as a maths teacher in 2007 and would ultimately form a mentoring relationship with Anthony Rowlingson, then aged 16.

Sixteen years ago to the day, Anthony approached his 19-year-old brother Robert while Robert was working on a car at their family home and shot him with a .243 rifle.

Anthony then shot his brother a second time before loading his corpse into a car and taking it to MacNeil.

Graeme MacNeil at home in Cambooya, Thursday, July 13, 2023.

At the time it was reported that the shooting occurred on the family farm after Robert had discovered KKK material in Anthony’s room and on a laptop computer lent to the troubled student by his teacher and counsellor, MacNeil.

Documents obtained by NewsCorp show that MacNeil confessed to police that he was the Imperial Kluk of the Ku Klux Klan, which he said was also known as supreme KKK chaplain.

Together they hid Robert’s body under a bridge on Clifton-Leyburn Rd between Pittsworth and Clifton on July 15, 2007.

The ruse did not last long, and Anthony was soon picked up for questioning and charged with murder.

Anthony Rowlingson in a copy pic from 2006 grade 11 class of Pittsworth State High School, Qld year book. Anthony was convicted over the 2007 shooting death of his older brother Robert Rowlingson.

Anthony pleaded guilty in 2008 to murder and was jailed for life, with the judge taking the unusual step of allowing the publication of his name even though he was a minor on the grounds that the crime was so heinous.

MacNeil would go on to be charged with being an accessory after the fact of murder in helping Anthony dump the body of his brother Robert.

According to an earlier report by The Australian, MacNeil told police he had lent his personal computer to Anthony before the murder and that Rowlingson had “taken liberties with my laptop” and downloaded details of his involvement with the KKK.

Supplied photo of Robert Rowlingson, 19, from Pittsworth in Queensland, who was murdered by his brother Anthony Rowlingson in 2007.

“I asked him (after the murder) to destroy whatever information he had on me,” MacNeil said in his police statement in July 2007.

“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 material included letters I wrote to address the Klan, copies of order forms for stuff to come across, and emails to other (KKK) officers.”

Court documents from Anthony’s sentencing in 2008 show that MacNeil had told Anthony he was a member of the KKK and they had “some philosophical agreement about being critical of the government”.

Pittsworth High school teacher Graeme McNeil , arriving at Toowoomba Supreme Court to be sentenced for being an accessory after the fact in murder, by helping dispose of the body of Robert Rowlingson, shot by one of his students, Anthony Rowlingson.

In a psychiatrist report prepared for the sentencing, Dr Scott Harden said that at times, Anthony did show remorse for his actions.

“He reported that when the teacher told him he was a member of the Ku Klux Klan ‘I was a bit speechless, I was shocked and surprised’,” Dr Harden said.

“He also (reported) that they talked about schoolwork, he reported that he had phoned this teacher for assistance in disposing of his brother’s body because he ‘felt he was someone I could talk to and trust, he came to talk and I told him that my brother was in the boot, he didn’t object, we didn’t talk about it much’.”

MacNeil pleaded guilty to the offence in Toowoomba Supreme Court and was jailed for three years.

Upon his release in 2011, MacNeil had his teaching licence suspended for five years – the maximum ban allowable at the time.

“The (Queensland Civil and Administrative Tribunal) regards the respondent’s behaviour in this matter as so grave that were a longer period of prohibition available to it then such a longer period would have been applied by the tribunal,” the decision read.

His ban was used as a case study when the Queensland government would move to increase that penalty to lifetime bans for teachers convicted of major crimes punishable, from 2012 onwards.

Anthony has applied for release on parole. When The Chronicle approached MacNeil he refused to comment about why he helped Anthony dispose of his brother’s body.

Originally published as Reclusive KKK teacher, Graeme MacNeil, who helped hide murdered boy’s body still living in Darling Downs