The wife of a Missouri Ku Klux Klan leader was sentenced to life in prison Friday after admitting she fatally shot her husband two years ago, cleaned up the crime scene with her son’s help and then disposed of the body.
Malissa Ann Ancona, 46, of Leadwood, pleaded guilty to second-degree murder, tampering with evidence and abandonment of a corpse in the death of 51-year-old Frank Ancona Jr., according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Frank Ancona was the imperial wizard of the Traditionalist American Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, the newspaper reported.
Her son, Paul Jinkerson Jr., 26, of Belgrade, faces the same charges as his mother, the newspaper reported.
"I fired both shots that killed my husband," Malissa Ancona told the judge, according to the Post-Dispatch.
Eric Barnhart, the attorney representing Jinkerson, told the newspaper he expects Malissa Ancona's admission to help his client at his trial, set to begin May 6.
Credit: St. Francois County Sheriff's Department via AP
Credit: St. Francois County Sheriff's Department via AP
St. Francois County prosecutor Melissa Gilliam asked Malissa Ancona to clarify her role in her husband's death, the Post-Dispatch said. She told Gilliam her son was involved in the aftermath -- cleaning blood from the bedroom walls, getting rid of bloody bedding and dumping Frank Ancona's body about 20 miles away near Belgrade -- but that she acted alone in the shooting.
Malissa Ancona initially reported her husband missing, but later told police her son fatally shot her husband while he slept on Feb. 9, 2017. According to the Washington County Sheriff's Office, Frank Ancona's car was found abandoned in a remote part of the county by a U.S. Forest Service employee.
The Riverfront Times reported that a pile of burned clothes was found nearby.
Frank Ancona's body was found two days after the slaying on the bank of the Big River, the Sheriff's Office reported. He had been shot twice in the head, once with a 9 mm handgun and once with a shotgun, according to The New York Times.
A family who went to the river on a fishing trip made the gruesome discovery.
Frank Ancona's father, Frank Ancona Sr., told the judge Friday that he had to identify the body of his only son, who he said had "no face left" after the murder. According to the Post-Dispatch, the defendant's former father-in-law described her as a "terrible wife" and a "piece of (expletive)."
He often asked his son, "Why, why do you stay with her?" the grieving father told the judge. According to Malissa Ancona's Facebook page, the couple was married since 2010.
Ancona Jr. had decided to leave the marriage prior to his death, authorities said. Malissa Ancona told investigators upon her arrest that her son killed his stepfather after he requested a divorce.
The Riverfront Times reported that investigators found bloody clothes at Jinkerson's home, as well as blood in his car. Surveillance footage from a gas station near the river and the wooded road where Frank Ancona's car was found showed mother and son driving by, one driving Frank Ancona's Ford Fusion and the other, Jinkerson's Chevy Impala.
The camera showed them passing by again a short time later. That time, both were in the Impala, the newspaper reported.
When a search warrant was executed at the Ancona home, investigators found blood on the bedroom ceiling and soaked into the couple's mattress, the Riverfront Times said.
The guns used in the attack were found in the river near Frank Ancona’s body and in a pond in St. Francois County -- where Malissa Ancona said they would be.
Malissa Ancona maintained that Jinkerson pulled the trigger -- and agreed to testify against her son -- until last September, when she wrote a letter to Judge Wendy Wexler Horn in which she confessed to the slaying. According to the Post-Dispatch, Malissa Ancona wrote that she wanted to "let the court know now that he did not pull the trigger, (I DiD)."
She wrote that she was "under the influence" when she spoke to detectives following her husband's death. The Riverfront Times reported that Malissa Ancona was addicted to prescription pain pills.
Frank Ancona’s ex-wife, Kellie Ancona, described him as “very, very kindhearted” and a good father and grandfather. His daughter, Carolyn Ancona, wept when talking about her father.
"He didn't deserve this. No one deserves this," she said, according to the Post-Dispatch.
Before his death, Frank Ancona led a branch of the Ku Klux Klan that the Southern Poverty Law Center has defined as a hate group. As of last year, the Traditionalist American Knights of the Ku Klux Klan still had chapters in Florida and South Dakota, the SPLC website says.
The Post-Dispatch reported that a since-suspended Twitter account in Malissa Ancona's name contained links to the Klan group and described her as a member.
According to a 2014 federal court filing, Frank Ancona described the group as "comprised of white Christian patriots, people who care about their nation and their race." He and his group had sued the small city of Desloge, Missouri, after city officials tried to keep the group members from handing out leaflets to drivers stopped at intersections. The Klan group was represented by the ACLU of Missouri.
"We do not commit acts of violence, and we believe in perpetuating our race," Frank Ancona said in his description. "We believe in having children and grandchildren, white ones․ We believe in the Constitution as it was originally written by our forefathers that founded this nation."
Frank Ancona told the New York Times in an interview published a week before he was slain that he had been a Klan member for more than 30 years. He said he formed the Traditionalist American Knights in 2009.
Credit: Ben McCanna/Portland Press Herald via Getty Images
Credit: Ben McCanna/Portland Press Herald via Getty Images
He and his group made news in the days before his death because of fliers the group distributed overnight in neighborhoods in Maine. He told the New York Times he did not understand why anyone was afraid of the Klan.
"If you follow the doctrine of the Klan, it is a positive Christian organization that brings benefits to people," Frank Ancona told the newspaper. "I don't focus on the negative history."
During the 2014 protests following the fatal police shooting of Ferguson teen Michael Brown, however, Frank Ancona and his group passed out leaflets in which they vowed to use lethal force against protesters. The fliers, one of which was obtained by MSNBC, read, "Attention: To the terrorists masquerading as 'peaceful protesters! You have awakened a sleeping giant."
As Missouri awaited a grand jury decision on whether the officer who killed Brown, Darren Wilson, would be criminally charged, Frank Ancona told MSNBC's Chris Hayes that the Klan would not tolerate violence during the protests.
"It's a bit ironic for you to talk about how bad violence is when you're telling people that you're going to arm yourself and shoot," Hayes responded. "You're advising people of what the law is for being able to shoot someone. That seems, I think, to everyone seeing this like incitement. It seems like you are attempting to bring about the exact same thing you're saying that you are against."
Frank Ancona disagreed, saying it was aimed at people making “terroristic threats” and informing them that the people of Missouri have the legal right to protect themselves from attackers.
"It's basically educating them on that law and letting them know what their options are," he said. "You know, you don't have to sit back and let somebody throw a Molotov cocktail at you and just sit there and take it. There's remedies under the law."
Around that same time frame, Frank Ancona sat down for an interview with a member of the hacker group Anonymous, which later claimed to have hacked Ancona's Klan group's files and released what it said was his personal information.
In his New York Times interview the week before he was killed, Frank Ancona said the only part of the Klan doctrine he believed people might see as a negative was the group's policy against the mixing of races.
"We need to preserve the white race because we are the ones who keep civilization civilized," he said.
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