The body of “imperial wizard” of the Traditionalist American Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, Frank Ancona, who disappeared this week under suspicious circumstances, was found on a river bank in a rural part of Missouri on Sunday, according to law enforcement.

Mr. Ancona, 51, was last seen Wednesday morning at his residence in Leadwood, Missouri, his wife told authorities this week. His car was located Friday evening in a remote part of nearby Washington County.

Mr. Ancona achieved national notoriety in the past given his leadership role atop the Traditionalist American Knights, a KKK-faction described as “a White Patriotic Christian organization” by its members but otherwise branded a hate group. He was extensively profiled by CNN in 2012, and in 2013 he publicly claimed responsibility for distributing recruitment fliers in neighboring Iowa.

“In the last 6 years that I’ve been president of this organization I’ve seen the numbers probably triple,” he boasted in a 2014 interview with a local NBC affiliate. He appeared on MSNBC that same year to defend the use of lethal force against demonstrators who protested the officer-involved shooting of a teenager in Ferguson, Mo.

Malissa Ancona, his wife, said she last saw her husband as he prepared for work Wednesday morning. According to police, Mrs. Ancona said her husband had received a phone call from his employer that morning and was told he had to drive across the state to make a delivery. When contacted by police, however, his employer reportedly said he wasn’t sent on a cross-state run that day.

Leadwood Police Chief William Dickey said he inspected the Ancona household this week and discovered that the contents of a safe and the Klansman’s guns had vanished as well.

“We found a safe that looked like somebody had taken a crowbar to it and beat the side out of the safe. Everything was missing from inside the safe. Right now I don’t believe it was a burglary, because she didn’t want to report anything,” he told the local Daily Journal newspaper.

“His family, which lives next door, states no, he wouldn’t have taken all of his firearms with him,” the police chief added. “The gun he usually carries on him on a daily basis was left in the house and she turned it over to us.”

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