KKK Grand Wizard Frank Ancona was found dead by a Missouri river on Sunday after his son reported him missing. Now his wife and stepson have been arrested on suspicion of murder.
Truly, this is a weird story.
Apparently Ancona's son got concerned when he had word that his father had been missing since Wednesday night.
In a statement posted to Facebook Monday, his son Frank Ancona gave his take on what happened when he discovered his father was missing.
“I worked my ass of since I came home from work on Thursday when they told me my father hasn’t been heard from since later Wednesday night. I went to my dads house with the police, I questioned Malissa and PJ, I pushed and pushed for everything and anything that would find my father.” He thanked the Sheriff’s department for their work, and also claimed that his father’s involvement in the KKK was preventing him from raising money, presumably for his father’s funeral.
“The GO FUND ME PAGE I made has been shut down by them for my dad being in an organization,” he wrote.
While he was searching for his father, Ancona's wife Malissa was advertising on Facebook for "a new roommate," claiming that Ancona had threatened divorce when he left the house that day.
As it turns out, she was busy cleaning up the crime scene after her son Paul Jinkerson, Jr. shot Ancona in his bed and then took the body out to dump by the river.
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 was the Grand Wizard of a small KKK faction called the Traditionalist American Knights. While his group was quite small, he was certainly vocal about its focus, and even had a reusable cross to use when his group engaged in cross-burnings.
Apparently for some, though, Ancona was working to "improve" the group's image.
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.
It will be interesting to find out if Frank Ancona was a domestic abuser, or if his wife and stepson were just more evil than he. There is the suggestion that Jinkerson had some drug problems as well.
In any event, it looks like this one KKK group is leaderless -- for the time being.
