Killer made hit list of students - KKK link.
15.05.2010
By: Michael McKenna, Tony Koch
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A TEENAGER who murdered his brother in 2007 and disposed of the body with the help of a teacher who was a senior member of the Ku Klux Klan allegedly tried to sell homemade bombs at school and fantasised about becoming a hit man.
Former classmates at Pittsworth State High School, where Anthony David Rowlingson was in Year 11, also claimed he had compiled a list of students to kill after murdering his older brother.
Rowlingson, then 16, is understood to have compiled a list of seven more victims including his parents -- before he ambushed his brother Robert, 19, and shot him in the head from behind on the family property, outside Toowoomba.
A police search of the family farm discovered he had earlier downloaded ``Hit man on Line'', a substantive guide for the underworld assassin.
Police sources said he was ``fantasising'' about becoming a hit man.
Rowlingson indicated to psychologists after the murder that he had killed Robert because his brother had been telling people about his close relationship with maths teacher and confessed KKK chaplain Graeme Frederick McNeil.
On Thursday, McNeil was sentenced to eight years prison after pleading guilty to helping dump Robert's body.
Court documents obtained by The Weekend Australian reveal that Rowlingson, who has shown no remorse over the murder for which he is serving life imprisonment, had an obsession with guns and explosives.
``His interest in violent movies, violent computer games, weapons and explosives further highlights potentially favourable attitudes towards the use of violence,'' forensic psychologist Bruce Watt told the court after assessing the confessed killer.
Several former classmates at Pittsworth State High School, about 40km southwest of Toowoomba, told The Weekend Australian how the estranged but brilliant student carried a walking stick -- that disguised a sword -- around the playground.
Former student Jesse Moir, 19, who grew up with Rowlingson, said he was later told he was on a list of targets that were going ``to be killed after he was finished with Robert. Me and one of my mates picked on him in Grade 8 and I guess he never really forgave us,'' Mr Moir said.
``I have been told that I was on the list of people to kill, and it was pretty scary but I knew he had been locked up.
``In Year 10, about a year before he killed Robert, he was trying to sell homemade bombs at school and asked me, but I wasn't interested.
``It was weird but I didn't complain about it.''
Mr Moir said that two months before the killing, he had worked as a cotton picker with Robert in NSW for three weeks.
``We got pretty close; he was a good bloke and he told me about how he fought with his younger brother and said `Anthony will never stop hating me','' he said.
Rowlingson has been evasive with police over his motivation for the murder, but hinted at the KKK undertones in a session with psychiatrist Scott Harden after his arrest. ``He intimated that it had something to do with Robert telling people about contact (that) Anthony had had with someone who was allegedly in the Ku Klux Klan, but Anthony would not discuss this is any detail,'' Dr Harden said.
Anthony Rowlingson's family believes the Ku Klux Klan influenced or ordered their son to murder his brother.
His father, John, told The Weekend Australian that he spoke to his son after the murder and asked why he killed his brother.
``He said he did not hate his brother, but that he had been told he had a month to do it (kill him),'' John said.
``He was being influenced by this person or persons in these things he did.''
Anthony pleaded guilty in 2008 to murder and is serving a life sentence.
When Anthony was arrested and taken to the Pittsworth police watchhouse, his parents visited him and became upset.
The police records state that Mrs Rowlingson left and Anthony said to his father: ``What's up, Dad? You know you lost me 12 months ago. This is all part of a bigger plan.''
