He wanted to make the KKK seem kind.
Slain Ku Klux Klan leader Frank Ancona, who was murdered allegedly by his wife and stepson, spent the last years of his life trying to normalize one of America’s oldest hate groups.
He seized PR opportunities to promote the Klan as a sort of fraternity for white Christian men — one that, he claimed, just had a bad rep.
“We don’t hate people because of their race. We are a Christian organization,” Ancona told NBC affiliate WWBT in March 2014, after he distributed recruitment fliers around Chesterfield, Va.
“We want to keep our race the white race,” he added.
“We want to stay white. It’s not a hateful thing to want to maintain white supremacy … All Klansmen are supposed to be murderers, and wanting to lynch Black people, and we’re supposed to be terrorists. That’s a complete falsehood,” he said.
Ancona was the imperial wizard — the highest-ranked position — of the Traditionalist American Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, a branch he oversaw from his home in Missouri.
His statements were a rosy rewrite of the Klan’s long and bloody history, and Ancona contradicted himself in threats of violence against opponents.
The Klan is one of the most notorious hate groups in America, dating to the mid-1800s, and its history is filled with instances of members lynching, terrorizing and raping black people.
Ancona was never directly connected to any racial violence. But he implied he was eager for it during the 2014 protests in Ferguson, Mo., over the deadly police shooting of unarmed black teenager Michael Brown.
Ancona helped distribute Klan flyers that warned protesters they had “awakened a sleeping giant.”
“We will use lethal force as provided under Missouri Law to defend ourselves,” the flier said.
“You have been warned by the Ku Klux Klan! There will be consequences for your acts of violence against the peaceful, law abiding citizens of Missouri.”
The fliers brought Ancona brief national attention. He went on MSNBC and claimed hundreds of St. Louis County residents had been calling the Klan to complain about protesters.
“All these calls are coming in from people saying, ‘What should we do, what should we do,'” Ancona told “All In” host Chris Hayes.
On the website for his Klan group, Ancona posted a photo — which appears to be edited — of himself saluting a burning cross.
In other media, though, Ancona stuck to his message of a friendlier Klan.
Later in 2014, Ancona sat for an interview with a member of the hacking collective Anonymous after the group leaked some of his personal information online.
“I don’t believe in promoting no violence,” Ancona said, sitting in a restaurant.
“Why would we want to see innocent people getting hurt?”
He insisted he had nothing to hide about his Klan membership. To prove it, he stood up and showed off his KKK belt buckle.
Ancona appeared last year in “Accidental Courtesy,” a documentary about Daryl Davis, a black musician who builds bonds with Klan members. In one scene, Ancona appears in his Klan robe to shake Davis’ hand and present him the Klan’s “certificate of friendship.”
Ancona’s supposedly open-minded acts riled at least one fellow Klansmen who knew him.
Robert Jones, the Imperial Klaliff of the Loyal White Knights, went as far as insisting Ancona could not be a white Christian.
“Frank Ancona is also Jewish and his wife is Jewish and he’s being exposed all through the Klan world as a fake and he ain’t even white,” Jones told New Lenox Patch, in Illinois, in 2014.
It’s unclear how much sway Ancona held within the Klan, because reports of his own influence didn’t add up. He claimed his branch alone had up to 5,000 members nationwide. But the Southern Poverty Law Center estimates the Klan as a whole has only 4,000 members today.
Ancona went missing last Wednesday, and police found his body in a river over the weekend, with a gunshot wound to his head.
His wife, Malissa Ancona, and son Paul Jinkerson were arrested and charged Monday with his murder.
Prosecutors said the two planned the slaying well in advance — and that it stemmed from a domestic dispute, rather than any of Ancona’s Klan activities.
