Anita Avers, a longtime therapist and mother, was 80 when she was fatally stabbed inside her home on Halloween morning.
WICHITA, Kan. — The criminal case that followed Anita Avers’ death has been widely identified with her daughter’s former television career. A guilty plea now brings the focus back to the 80-year-old therapist whose killing started the case and to the sentence her daughter is expected to receive.
Angelynn Mock, 48, pleaded guilty Aug. 21 to one count of first-degree murder in Avers’ Oct. 31, 2025, death. Mock entered the plea before Sedgwick County District Judge Faith Johnson after a months-long interruption in the case over her competency to stand trial. She is scheduled for sentencing Oct. 5. The offense carries a presumptive sentence of life imprisonment with parole eligibility after 25 years, according to the district attorney’s office and court reporting. The plea eliminates the need for a jury trial and turns the remaining court proceeding toward punishment.
Avers had spent years helping clients before her own life ended violently inside the Wichita home she shared with family. Her obituary said she was born in Duluth, Minnesota, in November 1944 and grew up in Waterloo, Iowa. She later lived for more than 30 years in Minneapolis before moving to Wichita in 1998. There, she completed a master’s degree at Friends University and became a licensed clinical marriage and family therapist. The obituary described counseling as a special gift Avers believed she could offer others and also remembered her love of cooking, knitting, faith and long friendships.
She married Barry Avers in 2002 and was part of a large blended family, according to the obituary. At the time of her death, she was still known professionally for counseling work involving adults, couples and families. The facts of the homicide have inevitably overshadowed much of that biography in subsequent coverage. Yet Avers’ professional and family history supplies important context: She was not merely the victim named in a murder case involving a once-recognizable broadcaster, but a longtime Wichita-area therapist with her own career, relationships and community connections.
The events that placed her name in court records began shortly before 8 a.m. on Halloween 2025. Wichita police responded to a reported cutting at a residence in the 1500 block of East Crowley. Officers found Mock outside. Inside, they found Avers unresponsive in her bed with multiple stab wounds. She was transported to St. Francis Hospital and pronounced dead at 8:26 a.m. Mock had injuries and received treatment before she was booked into jail. The Sedgwick County District Attorney’s Office filed a first-degree murder charge Nov. 4 after reviewing the investigation by Wichita police homicide detectives.
The early evidence produced competing descriptions of what had happened. Mock told authorities she acted in self-defense. According to a probable cause affidavit, she said she had gone into her mother’s room to discuss a possible job opportunity and encountered Avers with knives. She claimed her mother attacked her. Detectives noted, however, that Mock gave inconsistent accounts about who used a knife first. Police also described finding several bloodstained kitchen implements in the bedroom area. Before the guilty plea, those details formed part of an allegation prosecutors would have had to present and prove in court.
Other statements made after the killing quickly raised questions about Mock’s mental condition. The affidavit described her making remarks that indicated she believed Avers was the devil. Mock’s stepfather told detectives she had a history of psychiatric treatment and said a previous bipolar disorder diagnosis had later been revised to schizoaffective disorder. He also described past episodes of delusional behavior. Those claims were attributed to family and police records; they did not themselves resolve any legal question about competency, criminal responsibility or motive.
The court addressed competency separately. In January, District Judge Jeffrey Goering found Mock incompetent to stand trial and ordered her to Larned State Hospital for evaluation and treatment. Criminal proceedings were effectively suspended because defendants must be able to understand the case and assist their attorneys. The murder charge was not dismissed. In late July, after another professional assessment, Goering found Mock competent to proceed. That restored the court’s ability to move the prosecution forward, and Mock entered her guilty plea several weeks later.
The rapid move from restored competency to a plea prevented the case from reaching a trial in which jurors might have heard competing experts, investigators and family testimony. It also means there will not be a jury verdict evaluating Mock’s initial self-defense account. Her guilty plea instead constitutes an admission to first-degree murder. The sentencing hearing will address the legal consequences of that admission, while some factual questions about the precise sequence of the confrontation may remain known only through Mock’s varying statements and the physical evidence gathered by police.
Mock’s public career had helped draw attention to the case from the first days after her arrest. She had worked in television journalism in several markets and spent four years as a morning anchor at KTVI Fox 2 in St. Louis, from 2011 to 2015. She also had earlier reporting experience in Nebraska and other states. By 2025, she had moved away from regular on-air work. According to the affidavit, Mock told police she had been considering another television opportunity around the time of the killing, and she said that was the subject she intended to discuss with Avers that morning.
The affidavit contained additional family context that did not fit a simple narrative of constant conflict. Mock’s stepfather told investigators that the mother and daughter had interacted the night before and that the exchange seemed ordinary to him. He described their relationship as having difficulties at times but also being close. He said he knew about earlier mental health crises and believed Mock had received treatment. His statements illustrated why investigators examined both the immediate confrontation and a longer family history, though neither provided a complete independent account of what took place inside Avers’ bedroom.
For prosecutors, the central legal allegation was more direct. Their November charging announcement accused Mock of first-degree murder after the Wichita Police Department’s Homicide Section completed its initial investigation. At that stage, Mock was presumed innocent. The proceedings then detoured into competency litigation rather than a conventional march toward trial. The Aug. 21 guilty plea fundamentally changed that posture: Mock accepted criminal responsibility for the charged offense, leaving sentencing rather than guilt as the principal unresolved issue before the district court.
The life sentence associated with the plea includes eligibility for parole after 25 years. Eligibility is not the same as guaranteed release; it means the possibility of parole consideration after the required period under the sentence described in the plea coverage. Johnson is expected to formally address the punishment when Mock returns to court Oct. 5. Until that hearing, the sentence has not yet been entered as the final judgment.
The approaching hearing will close another stage of a case that has moved through homicide investigation, disputed early accounts, psychiatric evaluation, treatment, restoration of competency and a guilty plea. For Avers’ surviving relatives, it also comes nearly a year after the morning she was taken from her home to a hospital and pronounced dead. Whatever attention Mock’s former television career brought to the prosecution, the final judgment will concern the first-degree murder of Anita Avers.
Author note: Last updated September 30, 2026.