The wife of a Ku Klux Klan leader in Missouri admitted in court Friday that she fatally shot her husband in 2017 and dumped his body.
“I fired both shots that killed my husband,” Malissa Ancona, 47, told Circuit Judge Wendy Wexler Horn about Frank Ancona Jr., 51.
Her husband was imperial wizard of the Traditionalist American Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. The group was at the center of a legal fight in 2010 over a gathering of members at Fort Davidson State Historic Site, a Civil War battlefield in Pilot Knob, Mo.
After cleaning the walls of their bedroom with her son’s help, Ancona disposed of her husband’s body near the bank of the Big River near Belgrade, Mo.
Ancona pleaded guilty to second-degree murder, tampering with evidence, and abandonment of a corpse. As a part of a plea deal with prosecutors, she was sentenced to life in prison.
St. Francois County prosecuting attorney Melissa Gilliam then accused Ancona of “acting with another.” Ancona’s son, Paul Jinkerson Jr., is facing the same charges.
Ancona said that her son was only involved in the cleanup and the disposal, but had no hand in the murder. In response to the charges brought against Jinkerson, his lawyer Eric Barnhart responded, “I mean the true killer … admitted her guilt today.”
Ancona had initially reported her husband was missing, then told police that her son shot her husband with a handgun and agreed to testify against him. But in letters from jail last year, Ancona took the blame, saying she was “under the influence” and couldn’t recall what happened when her husband was shot.
Frank Ancona’s group was one of the smallest groups out there, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center.
