The wife of a Missouri Ku Klux Klan leader has admitted to shooting him dead two years ago.
Malissa Ancona, 47, was sentenced to life in prison under a deal in which she pleaded guilty to second-degree murder, tampering with evidence and abandonment of a corpse in the February 2017 death of Frank Ancona Jr, the St Louis Post-Dispatch reported.
Ancona, who had identified himself as a KKK imperial wizard, had recently asked his wife for a divorce, according to officials and court records.
She initially reported her husband missing, and a family fishing in southeast Missouri found his body near a river days later. Ancona later claimed her son, Paul Jinkerson, shot him while he was sleeping.
Jinkerson still faces trial, but his mother said on Friday he had no role in the shooting, but that he did help clean up the crime scene and dump the body.
"I fired both shots that killed my husband," she told Circuit Judge Wendy Wexler Horn.
Asked how the plea would affect Jinkerson's trial, his lawyer, Eric Barnhart, responded, "I mean the true killer ..." before having his sentence finished by Jinkerson's father: "admitted her guilt today."
Ancona originally told police that her son shot her husband with a 9 mm handgun and agreed to testify last year, but later changed her story saying that she was "under the influence" at the time and could not recall what happened.
During Friday's court hearing, Ancona's father, Frank Ancona Sr, told the judge that his son was killed because he was planning on leaving Mrs Ancona, whom he called a "terrible wife."
Ancona Jr's daughter, Carolyn, said: "He didn't deserve this. No one deserves this."