ST. FRANCOIS COUNTY, Mo. — The wife and stepson of a Missouri KKK leader who was fatally shot last week were charged Monday with his murder.
ST. FRANCOIS COUNTY, Mo. — The wife and stepson of a Missouri KKK leader who was fatally shot last week were charged Monday with his murder.
Malissa Ann Ancona, 44, and Paul Edward Jinkerson Jr., 24, were both charged with first-degree murder, tampering with physical evidence and abandonment of a corpse.
Jinkerson shot Frank Ancona, 51, on Thursday in his bedroom while he was asleep, St. Francois County Sheriff’s Det. Matt Wampler wrote in the probable cause statement. Ancona’s body was then taken in Jinkerson’s vehicle to an area near Belgrade, Mo., where it was dumped, Wampler wrote.
When investigators searched the home Saturday, they found “extensive blood evidence” in the master bedroom of the Ancona home in Leadwood. Malissa Ancona told police in a recorded interview that Jinkerson shot her husband, and she helped clean up the blood and tried to cover up the crime, Wampler wrote.
Ancona’s body was found in the Big River near Belgrade, Mo., in Washington County over the weekend.
St. Francois County Prosecuting Attorney Jerrod Mahurin declined to speculate on the motive for the crime.
Ancona was being held pending charges. Jinkerson was already in jail on an unrelated warrant. Court records show a judge in Washington County issued a warrant after Jinkerson was accused of violating his probation in a 2016 drug possession case.
“I don’t believe it for a second that he did it,” said lawyer Eric Barnhart, who represents Jinkerson in an unrelated case in which he faces property damage and attempted stealing charges.
Barnhart said that he did not yet know if he would be representing Jinkerson if he’s charged with Ancona’s murder.
Barnhart said that he did not believe that Jinkerson was involved in any hate groups. He was attending a local college, the lawyer said.
Leadwood police referred a reported to the St. Francois County Sheriff’s office and the Missouri Highway Patrol, which couldn’t be immediately reached for comment.
The Park Hills Daily Journal reported Sunday that Ancona had been shot in the head.
His vehicle had been found abandoned near Potosi, in Washington County, on Thursday.
He wasn’t reported missing until the next day, when his employer called Leadwood police to say that Ancona failed to show up to work Wednesday or Thursday.
Malissa Ancona told investigators that Frank Ancona’s employer asked him to deliver a part, but the employer denied that, the newspaper said. She said that she had last seen him Wednesday.
When officers searched the house, they found a safe that had been broken open. Frank Ancona’s guns were missing.
Malissa Ancona told police her husband took them and was planning on filing for divorce when he returned from his work trip.
Authorities searched the area around Frank Ancona’s car Saturday morning and found a burn pile, and later executed two search warrants. They also learned about the discovery of Ancona’s body.
Ancona called himself an imperial wizard with the Traditionalist American Knights of the Ku Klux Klan.
A website for that group features an image of Ancona in a white hood and robe standing in front of a burning cross. His wife is shown next to him in another photo.
Ancona has been quoted in stories in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch about KKK leafletting in Desloge. His group was also at the center of a legal fight over a gathering of members at Fort Davidson State Historic Site, a Civil War battlefield in Pilot Knob, Mo.