A former St. Louis television news anchor has admitted that she killed the woman she lived with — her own mother. Angelynn E. Mock, 48, pleaded guilty on August 21, 2026, to one count of first-degree felony murder in the death of 80-year-old Anita L. Avers, who was stabbed on October 31, 2025, inside the south Wichita, Kan., home the two shared.
Mock entered the plea before Sedgwick County District Judge Faith Johnson, and it carries a presumptive sentence of life in prison, with parole possible only after she has served 25 years. Sentencing before Johnson is set for October 5 at 11 a.m.
A Halloween Morning Attack
Shortly before 8 a.m. on Halloween, according to court records, Avers was in bed when her daughter attacked her. The house stands in the 1500 block of East Crowley, near Hydraulic and Wassall, on Wichita’s south side.
Wichita police officers who responded found Mock outside the home, covered in blood and holding a towel over her bloodied hands. She had stabbed her mother “to save herself,” she told them, according to a probable cause affidavit, and she insisted that Avers had been the one to attack first. Questioned by investigators, she said she had walked into her mother’s bedroom and found Avers “sharpening knives.” Jealousy was the motive she offered: her mother, she claimed, was jealous and did not want her to land a job at a local television station, the affidavit says.
Inside, investigators found a scene that told a different story. Avers’ body lay in her bed beneath blankets, and on a pillow beside her someone had arranged four bloody kitchen knives and a bloody cheese grater, the affidavit says. Police records cited in reporting published August 26, 2026, say Avers was found unresponsive in her bed with multiple stab wounds, was taken to St. Francis Hospital and was pronounced dead at 8:26 a.m. that morning. A separate account published August 27, 2026, says the affidavit describes multiple stab wounds to her face and torso, and that she was found wearing only underwear and a bra and was taken away by ambulance before dying of her injuries.
Booked into the Sedgwick County Jail, Mock was arrested that same day, October 31, 2025. Prosecutors charged her on November 4, 2025, with premeditated first-degree murder — the count that became first-degree felony murder under the plea she entered on August 21, 2026.
The stabbing drew public comment from Wichita Police Chief Joe Sullivan and Wichita Police Capt. Roderick Miller. A family mortuary posted an obituary for Avers online.
Delusions Detailed in the Affidavit
Long before that morning, the court file shows, Mock’s life had come apart. She had shared a home with her mother and stepfather for roughly four or five years, moving in after a St. Louis television news station let her go in the wake of an alcohol-fueled blowup described in the affidavit.
Her career and her mental health deteriorated together. Schizoaffective disorder, a serious mental illness, brought hallucinations, angry outbursts and delusional episodes, the affidavit says. During those episodes, the document states, she claimed she could speak directly with God, believed the people around her were robots and threatened to blow up everyone. Reporting published August 26, 2026, on the probable cause affidavit says Mock told investigators she had gone to her mother’s room to discuss an upcoming job interview at KSN, that Avers came at her with a blade and the two fought, and that she believed her mother was the devil.
Police were told by Mock’s stepfather that she had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, a diagnosis later revised to schizoaffective disorder. Those details from the affidavit would shape the months that followed far more than anything investigators collected inside the house.
A Case Halted by Competency Rulings
Almost as soon as it began, the prosecution stalled. Judge Jeffrey Goering ruled in January that Mock was not mentally competent to stand trial and ordered her to Larned State Hospital — the state’s psychiatric facility for defendants in the criminal justice system — for evaluation and treatment, according to reporting published August 26, 2026.
News of that finding surfaced on January 18, 2026, when it was reported that Mock had been found not competent to stand trial and that the case against her had been paused. The killing of an 80-year-old woman sat in legal limbo, with no trial date and no resolution for her family.
July 2026 changed that. A Sedgwick County District Court judge reversed the earlier ruling and found Mock competent to stand trial. The case picked back up, and it ended not with a jury, but with a plea.
Prosecutors pursuing first-degree felony murder under Kansas law need not prove premeditation — only that a death occurred during the commission of an inherently dangerous felony. For Mock, the distinction changes little: a life sentence, with the door to parole closed for at least a quarter-century.
St. Louis viewers once watched her deliver the news. Her final months of freedom were spent in a house on East Crowley, unemployed and, according to the affidavit, increasingly detached from reality. Both of those facts sat side by side in a courtroom on the day she pleaded guilty.
What investigators found in the bedroom undercut the account Mock gave officers, that her mother had turned on her. Responsibility is settled by her guilty plea. The harder question is not, and it hangs over a case in which a daughter’s documented delusions ran unchecked for years inside the home of the woman who took her in.
In October, Johnson is expected to formally impose the sentence, and relatives will have the opportunity to address the court. Mock remains in custody in Sedgwick County until then.