A woman who once anchored television newscasts in St. Louis stood before a Kansas judge on August 21, 2026, and admitted she killed her own mother. Angelynn E. Mock, 48, entered a guilty plea on a single count of first-degree felony murder for the stabbing death of Anita L. Avers, 80, inside the south Wichita, Kan., house where the two lived together. Avers was killed on October 31, 2025.
Sedgwick County District Judge Faith Johnson accepted the plea, which carries a presumptive sentence of life in prison. Mock would not become eligible for parole until 25 years have been served. Sentencing is set for October 5 at 11 a.m., and family members will be able to speak to the court then. Mock stays in custody in Sedgwick County in the meantime.
A Halloween Morning Attack
Court records place the attack just before 8 a.m. on Halloween, with Avers in her bed at the time. The residence sits in the 1500 block of East Crowley, in the neighborhood near Hydraulic and Wassall on the city’s south side.
Police arriving at the address encountered Mock outdoors, blood on her. A probable cause affidavit states she told officers she stabbed her mother "to save herself," maintaining that Avers had struck first. Per the affidavit, Mock also said her mother resented her and was trying to keep her from getting hired at a local TV station.
Inside the house, the scene contradicted that account. Avers was found in bed under blankets. The affidavit describes four bloody kitchen knives and a bloody cheese grater laid out on a pillow next to her body.
Officers arrested Mock that October 31, 2025, and she was booked into the jail run by Sedgwick County. On November 4, 2025, prosecutors filed a charge of premeditated first-degree murder against her. That count was replaced by first-degree felony murder in the plea agreement she accepted on August 21, 2026.
Public comment on the stabbing came from two law enforcement officials: Wichita Police Chief Joe Sullivan, along with Wichita Police Capt. Roderick Miller. A family mortuary published an obituary for Avers online.
Delusions Detailed in the Affidavit
Long before that Halloween morning, Mock’s life had unraveled. She had been living with her mother and stepfather for about four or five years, arriving after a St. Louis television news station fired her following an alcohol-fueled blowup that the affidavit describes.
The affidavit says Mock had schizoaffective disorder, a severe mental illness that produced hallucinations, fits of anger and delusional episodes. During those episodes, the document states, she said she was able to talk with God directly, thought the people near her were robots and made threats to blow up everyone.
Her stepfather told investigators that Mock had originally been diagnosed with bipolar disorder before doctors revised the diagnosis to schizoaffective disorder. Those mental health details, rather than the physical evidence collected at the home, ended up steering the case over the following months.
A Case Halted by Competency Rulings
Almost immediately, the prosecution ground to a halt. A judge sent Mock to Larned State Hospital — the Kansas psychiatric facility that handles defendants in the criminal justice system — for evaluation of her competency and for treatment.
Word came on January 18, 2026, that she had been ruled not competent to stand trial and that proceedings were suspended. The killing of an 80-year-old woman sat unresolved, with no trial on the calendar and nothing settled for her relatives.
That freeze ended the following July, after a judge with the Sedgwick County District Court reversed the previous ruling and found Mock competent. The case moved forward again, though it never reached a jury.
Kansas law does not require prosecutors to establish premeditation for first-degree felony murder; they need only show that a death happened during an inherently dangerous felony. For Mock, the practical result is the same — life in prison, with no shot at parole for at least a quarter-century.
She had once read the news to St. Louis audiences. Her last stretch of freedom was spent jobless in the East Crowley house and, as the affidavit portrays it, slipping further from reality. Both of those realities were in the courtroom the day she entered her plea.
What investigators discovered in the bedroom undermined the story Mock gave officers, that her mother had come after her. Pleading guilty settles who is responsible. It leaves untouched the harder question that shadows the case — how a daughter’s well-documented delusions went unaddressed for years under the roof of the woman who had taken her in.
