The widow and stepson of a Missouri Ku Klux Klan leader who investigators say was shot in the head as he slept in his bed have been charged over his death.
Widow Malissa Ann Ancona, 44, and her 24-year-old son, Paul Edward Jinkerson Jr., have been charged with first-degree murder, tampering with physical evidence and abandonment of a corpse, The Associated Press reported Monday.
Ancona’s body was found Saturday along the Big River by a family out fishing in the town of Belgrade, some 20 miles from Ancona’s home in Leadwood.
Police determined that he had been shot before dawn Thursday in his bed and transported to the river in Jinkerson’s vehicle, according to a court affidavit filed by St. Francois County Sheriff’s Department detective Matt Wampler.
Malissa Ancona posted a note on her Facebook page Friday saying her husband was missing and “do please if anyone sees anything call the police.”
She also said she was looking for a new roommate.
After his boss reported him missing Friday, Ancona told officers he had been sent away Wednesday on a job delivering auto parts, a claim his employer denied, police said.
Investigators found “extensive blood evidence” in the couple’s master bedroom, according to Wampler’s affidavit, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported.
Police said Ancona allegedly admitted during a police interview that her son had shot her husband, and she had helped clean up the blood and conceal the murder.
A busted safe in the home had been emptied of Ancona’s various guns, police said. His widow said he had taken them and planned to file for divorce when he returned from his work trip, officials said.
Ancona was the self-described imperial wizard of the Traditionalist American Knights of the Ku Klux Klan.
A photo on the organization’s website shows him in a white hooded robe in front of a burning cross. In a message from him on the site he says KKK members “must defeat ... communist socialist anti-God anti-white anti American enemies within our own borders.”
His widow and stepson were being held in jail Monday without bail.