ST. FRANCOIS COUNTY • A Missouri Ku Klux Klan leader might have been shot in his sleep because he had told his wife he wanted a divorce, St. Francois County Prosecutor Jarrod Mahurin said Monday after filing murder charges. 
 
 “It may have been a marital issue,” he told a reporter. He said Frank Ancona, 51, was shot in the head between 2 and 3 a.m. on Thursday. 
 
 Malissa Ann Ancona, 44, of Leadwood, Mo., and her son, Paul Edward Jinkerson Jr., 24, of Belgrade, Mo., were charged with first-degree murder, armed criminal action, tampering with physical evidence and abandonment of a corpse. 
 
 Jinkerson shot his sleeping stepfather in the bedroom of the victim’s home in Leadwood, sheriff’s Detective Matt Wampler wrote in an affidavit accompanying the charges. Ancona’s body was taken in Jinkerson’s vehicle to an area outside Belgrade, where it was dumped near the Big River, Wampler wrote. 
 
 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. 
 
 The Park Hills Daily Journal said Ancona was reported missing Friday, when his employer called Leadwood police to say that he failed to show up work Wednesday or Thursday. A neighbor said Ancona had a job delivering parts for a St. Louis auto supply company. 
 
 Malissa Ancona told investigators that he had been sent on a trip deliver a part, but the employer denied that, the newspaper said. She told authorities she had last seen her husband Wednesday. 
 
 When investigators searched the Ancona home Saturday, they found “extensive blood evidence” in the master bedroom, officials said. 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. 
 
 Mahurin said that both Ancona and Jinkerson were involved in disposal of the body and the cleanup. 
 
 Police also 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 to file for divorce when he returned from his work trip. 
 
 Frank Ancona’s abandoned car, found before his body was, appeared to have been “wiped down,” the prosecutor said, based on a chemical smell. Nearby was a pile of what appeared to be burned clothing, he said. 
 
 Mahurin was not aware of any significance to the site where the body was left, other than it was nearby. 
 
 The prosecutor said Jinkerson did not live with the Anconas but stayed with them occasionally. He called Jinkerson’s relationship with Frank Ancona “so-so,” saying that there had been issues in the past but not lately. 
 
 Both defendants could be arraigned as early as Tuesday, he said. They were held in jail without bail. 
 
 Jinkerson also faces unrelated charges of property damage and attempted stealing, and was jailed over the weekend on a warrant that was issued after he was accused of violating his probation in a 2016 drug possession case. 
 
 Eric Barnhart, a lawyer who represents Jinkerson in other cases, reacted to the murder charge by saying, “I don’t believe it for a second that he did it.” Barnhart said he did not know if he will represent Jinkerson on the murder charge. 
 
 Barnhart also said he did not believe that Jinkerson was involved in any hate groups. The young man was attending a local college, the lawyer said. Jinkerson’s Facebook page says he is studying computer science at Mineral Area College in Park Hills. 
 
 Leadwood police referred a reporter’s questions to the St. Francois County Sheriff’s Office and the Missouri Highway Patrol, which were not available for comment. 
 
 On Friday night, Malissa Ancona had said on Facebook that her husband was missing and asked that anyone with information call the police. In online comments the next morning, she thanked friends for their good wishes and wrote, “My heart is breaking.” 
 
 James Russell, 58, who lives next door to the Ancona residence, said the couple had lived there for about five years. 
 
 Russell said he frequently heard Malissa Ancona screaming at her husband. Russell said he did not hear any gunshots on the day in question. But he did hear the banging of metal on metal in the predawn hours. Russell said he presumes that Malissa Ancona was seeking access to her husband’s safe. 
 
 He described Frank Ancona as a good man who was working to change attitudes about the Klan. Russell said Ancona hosted a few small Klan gatherings at the house in recent years, including one in which Ancona and perhaps 10 others wore robes and burned a cross. 
 
 “Everybody is talking about the Klan thing, but they are living in the past,” Russell said, “Frank was trying to improve the Klan and make it a force for good.” 
 
 Ancona has been quoted in stories in the 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. 
 
 Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks hate organizations, said that Ancona’s group was “not very significant at all. This was one of the smallest groups out there.” 
 
 Potok said the members received a lot of attention because they frequently handed out leaflets. He said he would be surprised if there were 40 members spread out among chapters in Potosi, Hayden, Idaho and Pennsylvania. 
 
 Ancona had been in a dispute with other Klan leaders, Potok said, who accused Ancona of being secretly Jewish and Malissa Ancona of being a Wiccan. Both were untrue, Potok believes, but the accusations are typical of the Klan world today, which consists of 29 different named organizations, “each one claiming to be the one true Klan and denigrating the others.” 
 
 Tony Rothert, who as legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Missouri had represented Ancona in his court fights, called him a “complicated and conflicted man.” Rothert estimated his followers numbering in the low double digits. 
 
 “I and the (ACLU) found his views abhorrent and would say so. He understood that and recognized how unrealistic his views were at some level,” Rothert added. 
 
 An old Twitter page for Malissa Ancona contains links to Ancona’s group and describes her as a member. Lately on social media, however, she was focused on creating a no-kill shelter for pets. 
 
 Russell, the neighbor, said Frank Ancona grew up in the Potosi area. 
 
 The Ancona home is a small, white frame house in need of repairs. Chicken wire is stapled across the posts of the front porch. Russell said Malissa Ancona had many pet cats, several of which were seen wandering the property Monday. Two dogs were barking inside the home. 
 
 An American flag was nailed to the front porch. Next door, on the other side from Russell’s home, is a blue mobile home where the victim’s father lives. Out back is a white shed bearing two faded flags — the American flag and the Confederate battle flag. 
 
 Family at Frank Ancona’s daughter’s home declined to comment to a reporter. 
 
 Leadwood, a town of about 500 people, is near Park Hills, about 70 miles southwest of St. Louis. As its name implies, it used to be the home of a lead mine and is in the heart of Missouri’s old Lead Belt. 
 
 Kim Bell of the Post-Dispatch and The Park Hills Daily Journal contributed to this report. Tim O’Neil reported from Leadwood. ||||| Frank Ancona, the outspoken imperial wizard of the Traditionalist American Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, was found shot to death Saturday near Belgrade, Mo. 
 
 The body of the 51-year-old Leadwood, Mo., resident was discovered near the Big River by a family fishing in the area, according to Washington County Sheriff Zach Jacobsen in southeast Missouri. 
 
 Washington County coroner Brian DeClue told The Kansas City Star that Ancona died of a gunshot wound to the head. 
 
 “It was not self inflicted,” he said. “This is now a homicide investigation.” 
 
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 The KKK group’s national headquarters is in Park Hills, Mo., about an hour’s drive southwest of St. Louis. Ancona shares a name with a car dealer in Olathe, but the two are not related or connected in any way. 
 
 Ancona’s KKK group is among the newest and most visible of the Klan factions in the country, although it’s not considered the largest. Founded around 2009, the Traditionalist American Knights have made headlines in recent years for such actions as distributing fliers during the Ferguson, Mo., protests warning that they were poised to use lethal force to protect themselves from demonstrators. 
 
 The group also regularly leaflets neighborhoods in cities around the country in an effort to recruit more members. And three of its members were charged in Florida in 2015 with plotting to kill a black man. 
 
 Jacobsen said authorities learned on Friday that Ancona had disappeared and that his car, a 2015 black Ford Fusion, had been located by a U.S. Forest Service employee on Forest Service property near Potosi. He said deputies secured the area and on Saturday he requested assistance from the Missouri Highway Patrol. 
 
 “During the investigation, one subject was arrested on an unrelated warrant and two search warrants were executed in Washington County,” Jacobsen said. “Subsequently, a body was discovered on the bank of the Big River near Belgrade, Mo., in southern Washington County ... The body was identified as Mr. Ancona, and his family has been notified.” 
 
 Ancona had not been seen since Wednesday morning, authorities said. Leadwood Police Chief William Dickey told the Park Hills Daily Journal that police learned Ancona was missing when they were contacted by his employer. Ancona’s wife, Malissa, told police that her husband had received a call from work saying he needed to deliver a vehicle part across the state. But the employer told police that Ancona was not sent on a delivery run. 
 
 Dickey told the Daily Journal that a search of Ancona’s home found a safe that looked as though someone “had taken a crowbar to it.” Everything was missing from the safe, Dickey said, and Ancona’s firearms were missing from the house. 
 
 The police chief also said that he questioned Malissa Ancona about a Facebook post she’d made the day he disappeared. In the post, she said she was seeking a new roommate. Dickey said Malissa Ancona told him that when her husband left, he said he was filing for divorce when he got home, so she figured she would need a new roommate to help pay the bills. 
 
 Ancona’s son, also named Frank, posted on his Facebook page Friday that “no one has heard from him, no one has seen his car or seen him personally since February 8th.” 
 
 “His bank account hasn’t been used, his cellphone has been turned off goes straight to voicemail,” he wrote. “Time is ticking, the more time we wait, the stronger the bad possibilities become!” 
 
 News of Ancona’s death lit up social media late Saturday and early Sunday, with a barrage of comments from those expressing delight with his demise. 
 
 Ancona had posted recruiting videos and cross burnings on YouTube and was profiled in a domestic terrorism series published by The Star in 2015. 
 
 Those who monitor extremist groups say violence is nothing new among some white nationalist groups. 
 
 “Infighting is quite common,” said Devin Burghart, vice president of the Kansas City-based Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights. “Among the folks we’ve dealt with who are defectors, the internal fighting is one of the most common reasons why people decide to get out of the movement — because they fear for their lives.” 
 
 In December, an argument over the leadership of another KKK group appears to have led to the stabbing of an Indiana man who was attending a Loyal White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan “pro-Trump” parade in North Carolina. 
 
 One of the two men charged in connection with the stabbing is the group’s California state grand dragon. The other, Chris Barker, is the imperial wizard of the North Carolina-based group who has been engaged in a verbal battle with Ancona for years. 
 
 Burghart said it will be interesting to see what happens to Ancona’s KKK faction now that its leader is gone. 
 
 “Do they just go away — which would be awesome — or is there a second-in-command who’s going to step up and take his place, and if so, what direction does he want to take their faction?” he said. “Do they go the David Duke-ish mainstreamer route, or do they go the more hard-core route?” 
 
 In a series of interviews with The Star in 2014 and 2015, Ancona described his Klan as a Christian organization and a fraternal order. 
 
 “The only things secret about the Klan are that our rituals and ceremonies are only for members to see,” he said. “That’s part of the mystique of being a member.” 
 
 He said his Klan was not a hate group: “How can you be a Christian organization and hate other people? 
 
 “I’ve actually taken a lot of heat from other white nationalists because of that,” he said. “I’m called an N-lover and a Jew, blah, blah, blah. I’m doing everything I can to hold it to the principles it’s supposed to be by.” 
 
 But the group’s website is filled with race-based language, including this statement: “This Order will strive forever to maintain the God-given supremacy of the White Race.” 
 
 Ancona, a self-employed contractor, said his organization had members from every state except Alaska, Hawaii, Nevada and Utah. Missouri contributed many members, he said. 
 
 “Missouri’s always been a strong Klan state,” he said. “Kansas, not so much.” 
 
 Ancona was not popular with other KKK groups and was vocal in his criticism of them. He told The Star that there were few Klan organizations in the country that he considered legitimate and had been in squabbles with some of them. 
 
 Although Ancona claimed his Klan had thousands of members, actual figures are impossible to come by for such groups. Watchdog groups say the numbers are grossly overstated. 
 
 Burghart said while the Traditionalist American Knights was one of the more active Klans, distributing fliers in cities across the country on a regular basis, “I think they only had a few hundred members.” 
 
 “The Klan itself is nowhere near where it was in the ’80s and ’90s,” he said. “You’re looking at probably a couple thousand nationwide who still want to engage in that kind of stuff.” 
 
 Ancona said his organization did not condone violence. Those who do, he said, “are not following the Klan doctrine.” 
 
 But in 2015, authorities in Florida arrested three members of the Traditionalist American Knights on charges of conspiracy to commit murder. The suspects, current and former employees of the Florida Department of Corrections, allegedly plotted to kill a former inmate after his release from prison. The murder allegedly was to be in retaliation for a fight between the inmate, who is black, and one of the corrections employees. 
 
 According to an arrest affidavit, authorities were notified of the murder scheme by a confidential informant inside the Klan. The informant was present during discussions involving the three suspects. 
 
 Ancona’s Klan also drew media attention during the 2014 protests in Ferguson, Mo., when members distributed fliers as the city awaited a grand jury’s decision on whether to indict the officer who shot and killed an unarmed 18-year-old black man. The fliers warned that they would not tolerate violence by protesters and would use lethal force if necessary to defend themselves. 
 
 Critics said the Klan was trying to incite violence. Ancona told The Star that he was not inciting violence but letting those making terrorist threats know that they wouldn’t “sit back and let somebody throw a Molotov cocktail” at them. 
 
 On a video posted online, however, he used much harsher language. 
 
 “These people are acting like savage animals,” he said of protesters. “And that’s what they are, is a bunch of savage beasts.” 
 
 Ancona told The Star that members of the Traditionalist American Knights of the Ku Klux Klan would gather at his house for an annual Christmas party. 
 
 “And we had a cross lighting right in my backyard,” he said in 2015. “The police kept their eye on us, and people were driving by and taking pictures, but we didn’t have a single incident.” 
 
 Ancona said his group held cross lighting ceremonies a minimum of every three months. 
 
 “We’ve got property in four or five locations here in Missouri and a few in Tennessee and Virginia, Florida,” he told The Star. 
 
 He called the event a “Christian ceremony.” 
 
 “The cross is wrapped with a few layers of burlap that is soaked in what we call Klansmen’s cologne,” he said. “It’s basically a mixture of kerosene and diesel. .. It’s kind of a spiritual thing. It’s almost like a revival at a church. You kind of come away feeling on fire for Christ and you want to go out and spread the word.”
– The wife and stepson of Missouri KKK leader Frank Ancona were charged Monday with his murder. Police say 24-year-old Paul Jinkerson Jr., the son of Ancona's wife, Malissa Ancona, 44, shot 51-year-old Frank Ancona while he was asleep Thursday in his bedroom, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports. Police say Ancona's body was driven away in Jinkerson's vehicle and dumped. They say Malissa Ancona confessed to that scenario, and told police she helped to clean up and try to hide what happened. Police found "extensive blood evidence" in the master bedroom of the couple's Leadwood home. Ancona and Jinkerson have been charged with first-degree murder, tampering with physical evidence, and abandonment of a corpse. The body of Ancona, who was reported missing by his employer last week, was found Saturday. The coroner also revealed Monday that Ancona, who identified himself as a KKK imperial wizard, was shot in the head with a shotgun-like weapon at close range and did not have any other bullet wounds on his body, Time reports. Authorities have not speculated publicly on a motive. When police searched the Anconas' home, they found a broken-open safe and discovered Frank Ancona's guns were missing. Malissa Ancona, who was at the home with Jinkerson when police came to search it, per the Daily Journal, claimed her husband had taken them, and that he planned to file for divorce when he got back from his trip. But his family says he wouldn't have taken all his guns with him, and the gun he typically did carry on a daily basis was still at the house. Authorities then searched around his vehicle, which had been found abandoned on Thursday, and found a burn pile.