Missouri Auditor Tom Schweich, one the leading Republican candidates for governor of the state, died in a St. Louis hospital on Thursday after shooting himself in his home, the Associated Press reports.

"Everything at this point suggests that it is an apparent suicide," Clayton Police Chief Kevin Murphy told reporters Thursday afternoon, saying there was "nothing to suggest anything other than that."

Minutes before the 911 call was made from his home, Schweich reportedly called the St. Louis Post-Dispatch to request an interview concerning "Schweich's belief that a top state GOP official had spread false information about him."

An editor at the newspaper says that in the days leading up to his death, Schweich had privately shared plans to accuse Missouri GOP Chairman John Hancock of making anti-Semitic remarks against him.

According to Hancock, Schweich—who had Jewish heritage but attended an Episcopalian church—called the chairman last November to say "he was aware I had made anti-Semitic remarks," a claim Hancock calls "demonstrably untrue."

"This whole thing doesn't make any sense," Hancock told the Post-Dispatch. "Three months of allegations about me that are not true don't make any sense. Suicide doesn't make any sense. It is a tragedy."

[Image via AP Images]