The wife of a Ku Klux Klan leader found fatally shot over the weekend was being held on suspicion of first-degree murder, it was reported Monday.
No charges have been filed against Malissa Ancona, 44, of Leadwood, but she has been placed on a 24-hour hold, a jail official told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. The body of her husband, Frank Ancona, 51, was found Saturday near the Big River by a family fishing near Belgrade, about 70 miles southwest of St. Louis.
An autopsy conducted Sunday found Ancona died as a result of a gunshot wound to the head. He had been interviewed by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and other outlets for his role as an “imperial wizard” in the hate group, his local leafletting efforts — and being depicted wearing a white hood and robe in front of a burning cross on the website for the Traditionalist American Knights of the Ku Klux Klan.
“The media will tell you the KKK is dead, gone, irrelevant,” the website reads. “They have tried since the birth of the Klan to downplay the influence and power of the KKK … We cannot allow this. The time has come to awaken from our hypnotic sleep before we and our children wake up to a hell we can never escape from.”
Washington County Sheriff Zach Jacobsen said a US Forest Service employee found Ancona’s car outside Potosi on Thursday, but he wasn’t reported missing until a day later. Co-workers were concerned because he had missed two days of work, which was out of character for him, the Park Hills Daily Journal reports.
Officers interviewed Ancona’s wife and his stepson at his home in Leadwood — where “all indications” showed Ancona had been killed, according to the newspaper. Malissa Ancona told investigators he disappeared after getting a call from work that he had to drive across the state to deliver a part.
Frank’s son, Frank Ancona Jr., told police that other relatives said they had not heard from Ancona and a call to his employer verified that he wasn’t sent across Missouri to deliver a part, the newspaper reports.
Officer then entered Ancona’s house, where they found an empty safe. Malissa Ancona told police that Frank Ancona said earlier that he was traveling out of state and intended to file for divorce when he returned, claiming he took all of his guns from the safe except the one he carried regularly as a concealed carry permit holder.
Malissa Ancona told police the threat of divorce prompted her to write a Facebook post seeking a roommate, but other relatives living nearby said Ancona would never have taken all of the firearms with him, the newspaper reports.
Ancona was identified in a 2014 story in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch as an imperial wizard with the Traditionalist American Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, a group at the center of a legal fight over a gathering of members at the Fort Davidson State Historic Site, a Civil War battlefield in Missouri.
Leadwood Police Chief William Dickey said Ancona was last seen by Malissa Ancona early Wednesday. On Saturday, authorities found evidence of a burn pile near Ancona’s vehicle and later executed two search warrants, arresting one man on an unrelated drug charge. While officers were waiting for the warrant to be issued, Ancona’s body was found, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports.
Several calls seeking comment from Jacobsen were not returned Monday.
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