The wife of a Ku Klux Klan leader has been sentenced to life in prison after she admitted to murdering him two years ago.
Malissa Ancona, 47, pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and other charges in a court in the US state of Missouri on Friday April 19.
Ancona admitted it was she who shot her husband, Frank Ancona, dead two years ago. Mr Ancona was a member of the Traditionalist American Knights of the Ku Klux Klan (TAKKKK).
The racist group describes itself as a ‘White Patriotic Christian organisation that bases its roots back to the Ku Klux Klan of the early 20th Century’.
The self-styled ‘imperial wizard’ was shot dead in a bedroom in the family home in Missouri and his body was dumped next to a river.
Ms Ancona told Judge Wendy Wexler Horn:
I fired both shots that killed my husband.
Court records show she also admitted to cleaning the walls of the room in the home in Leadwood, Missouri, as well as removing any soiled bedding.
She said she dumped the body in nearby Belgrade after committing the murder in February 2017.
In the days following the murder, Ms Ancona then reported her husband, 51, missing and even appealed for his return on Facebook.
He had asked for a divorce, court records said.
In Friday’s deal with prosecutors, Ancona pleaded guilty at St Francois County Circuit Court to second-degree murder, tampering with evidence and abandonment of a corpse, the St Louis Post-Dispatch reported, per the BBC.
The guilty party had initially said her son, Paul Jinkerson, carried out the killing but in court on Friday confirmed this had been a lie.
Prior, Ms Ancona had said her son fired the shots which killed her husband and agreed to testify against him in court. Jinkerson still faces trial.
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A former emo kid who talks too much about 8Chan meme culture, the Kardashian Klan, and how her smartphone is probably killing her. Francesca is a Cardiff University Journalism Masters grad who has done words for BBC, ELLE, The Debrief, DAZED, an art magazine you’ve never heard of and a feminist zine which never went to print.