Image copyright St Francois County Sheriff Image caption Malissa Ancona was sentenced to life after admitting second-degree murder

The wife of a Ku Klux Klan leader in the US state of Missouri has admitted shooting him dead two years ago.

Malissa Ancona, 47, was sentenced to life after pleading guilty to second-degree murder and other charges.

She had initially said her son, Paul Jinkerson, carried out the killing but in court on Friday said this was not the case. He still faces trial.

Frank Ancona, a self-styled "imperial wizard", was shot dead in a bedroom and his body dumped next to a river.

In a deal with prosecutors, Ancona pleaded guilty on Friday at St Francois County Circuit Court to second-degree murder, tampering with evidence and abandonment of a corpse, the St Louis Post-Dispatch reported.

Image copyright TAKKKK Image caption Frank Ancona was a member of the Traditionalist American Knights of the Ku Klux Klan

"I fired both shots that killed my husband," Ancona told Judge Wendy Wexler Horn, the paper reported.

She admitted cleaning the walls of the room in Leadwood, Missouri, and removing bedding before dumping the body in nearby Belgrade in February 2017.

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She then reported her husband, 51, missing and appealed for his return on Facebook. He had asked for a divorce, court records said.

She had initially said Mr Jinkerson fired the shots and agreed to testify against him.

Mr Ancona was a member of the Traditionalist American Knights of the Ku Klux Klan (TAKKKK), which describes itself as a "White Patriotic Christian organisation that bases its roots back to the Ku Klux Klan of the early 20th Century".