Former Fox television anchor Angelynn Mock received a life sentence after pleading guilty to fatally stabbing her 80-year-old mother in bed at the family’s Wichita home.
Mock, 48, pleaded guilty to first-degree murder in the Halloween night killing of Anita Avers and was sentenced Monday to life in prison, with parole possible only after 25 years. She told the judge she does not intend to appeal.
The sentence closes a case that began when Wichita officers found Avers unresponsive in her bedroom and her daughter outside the house with bloody hands. For a woman who once delivered the news on local Fox stations, the courtroom ending was a life term for the murder of her own mother.
On October 31, 2025, Avers was found in her Wichita home with multiple stab wounds to her face and torso. She was wearing only underwear and a bra. Paramedics took her by ambulance to a local hospital, where she later died.
Daily Mail reporting on the affidavit and court file describes several kitchen knives and a cheese grater “laid out on a pillow” next to Avers, with blood on the utensils.
Mock had called 911. Officers found her outside holding a towel to her hands. Her stepfather, Barry Avers, was at work when the attack happened.
In statements captured in the affidavit, Mock told a dispatcher that her mother tried to kill her, so she stabbed her in return. She said she had gone into the bedroom to talk about an upcoming job interview with KSN, the local NBC affiliate, and that she framed the talk around her past work as a news anchor.
Mock claimed Avers grew jealous, did not want her to get the job, and was “sharpening knives with bigger knives” before coming after her. She told police she “grabbed a knife ‘and got on top of her.’”
She also attributed ugly words to her mother and offered her own reason for the stabbing. Court material records Mock saying Avers told her, “I know you're f***ing Jesus Christ,” and that she struck because Avers “started spewing venom at me out of her f***ing mouth.”
Those are Mock’s claims. The physical scene the affidavit describes is an elderly woman in bed, wounded in the face and torso, with bloody kitchen tools placed on a pillow beside her.
At sentencing, Avers’ stepdaughter, Sonja Kreutziger, rejected any picture of a sudden struggle between equals. She said the woman relatives thought they knew was not the person who killed Anita.
Kreutziger’s victim impact statement, carried in local coverage cited in the case reporting, was blunt about how Avers died.
"The person I knew as gentle, kind Angie did not just murder her mom; she ambushed Anita while Anita was in bed asleep."
She went further on what the crime looked like to the family.
"This was so out of character for the Ange we thought we knew, so devastating, so calculated, so demonic."
Mock appeared disheveled and sobbed as the life term was imposed. The plea and the sentence left no trial fight over the first-degree murder charge she admitted.
Mock’s public career was in local television. She anchored at Fox 2 in St. Louis from 2011 to 2015 and also worked at KOKH Fox 25 in Oklahoma City. About a decade before the killing, she was a familiar face on a Missouri Fox newscast.
Barry Avers told police that period ended after she was laid off following “an explosive situation involving alcohol.” By the time of her arrest in the murder case, she was working in sales for a data management software company. Reporting cited in the file noted a LinkedIn profile tied to that job that was later deleted.
Before the guilty plea, the court ordered a competency evaluation. In July, a judge ruled Mock competent to stand trial. She then admitted first-degree murder and accepted a life sentence with the 25-year parole gate, while stating she would not appeal.
First-degree murder is the charge Mock chose to admit. The affidavit material police assembled put her at the house, on the phone to 911, and outside with blood on her hands while her mother lay wounded in bed.
Kreutziger’s statement fixed the family’s view of the same facts: an 80-year-old attacked while asleep, not a clean claim of self-defense after a fair fight. Mock’s own words in the file swung between a story of her mother coming at her with a knife and a story of “venom” and jealousy over a possible TV job.
Wichita police documented the weapons, the wounds, the 911 call, and the interviews. The court tested competency, took the plea, and imposed life. Parole cannot even be considered for a quarter century.
An elderly mother stabbed in her own bed should never need a former anchor’s résumé to matter. Law and order still means the person who did it serves the time.
