| Paul Avery | |
|---|---|
| Born | August 20, 1934 Honolulu, Hawaii, United States |
| Died | December 10, 2000 (aged 66) San Juan Islands, Washington, United States |
| Occupation | Journalist, Author |
| Spouse | Margo St. James |
Paul Avery (August 20, 1934 – December 10, 2000) was an American police reporter, best known for his stories on the infamous serial killer known as the Zodiac, and later for his work on the Patricia Hearst kidnapping.
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Avery was born in Honolulu Hawaii, the son of U.S. Navy officer and pilot H. M. Avery and the former Frances Cannon. He was raised and educated in Honolulu, Oakland, California, and Washington, D.C.. Avery started his career in journalism in 1955, working at a variety of newspapers in Mississippi, Texas and Alaska before returning to Hawaii and hiring on at the Honolulu Advertiser where he was appointed the paper's Big Island bureau chief. He was 23 years old at the time.[1] Avery joined the San Francisco Chronicle in 1959. In the mid-1980s, after working for The Sacramento Bee and writing a book about the Hearst kidnapping, he signed up with the then- Hearst-owned San Francisco Examiner, where he stayed until his retirement in August 1994.
Perhaps the most famous story of Avery's career was the Zodiac case, a series of killings -- unsolved to this day -- that began in December 1968 and ostensibly ended with the death of a San Francisco cab driver in October 1969. At the time, Avery was a police reporter at San Francisco Chronicle.
For a long time, it was thought that the Zodiac's activities were limited to the Bay Area, but Avery discovered a 1966 murder in Riverside that he linked to the Zodiac.
The Zodiac soon wrote Avery (misspelled by the Zodiac as "Averly") a Halloween card, warning, "You are doomed." The front of the card read, "From your secret pal: I feel it in my bones/you ache to know my name/and so I'll clue you in . . ." Then inside: "But why spoil the game?" Just as quickly as the threat was made public, a fellow journalist made up hundreds of campaign-style buttons, worn by nearly everyone on The Chronicle staff, including Avery, that said, "I Am Not Paul Avery." It was during this time that Avery began carrying a .38 caliber revolver.
When Patricia Hearst was kidnapped in February 1974, Avery joined forces with Chronicle reporter Tim Findley to produce a series of stories detailing the kidnapping and writing about the members of the little-known band of revolutionaries called the Symbionese Liberation Army.
Avery covered the Hearst case until the newspaper heiress-turned-bank robber was arrested in September 1975. Avery then holed up on his houseboat at Gate 5 in Sausalito with Boston writer Vin McLellan to write The Voices of Guns, a book on the SLA and the Hearst kidnapping."[2]
Despite his progressive illness (Avery suffered from emphysema), Avery carried on his life-long love of crime and journalism until the end of his life. After joining the Sacramento Bee in 1976, he discovered that authorities had wrongly charged an innocent man with murder and the reporter was instrumental in convincing detectives to drop the charges.[2]
Paul Avery died of pulmonary emphysema in West Sound, Washington on Orcas Island, located in the San Juan Islands of north Puget Sound. Avery's loved ones scattered his ashes in the San Francisco Bay.
While covering the war in Vietnam, Avery suffered a spinal fracture when a falling tree limb knocked him from atop an armored personnel carrier.[1]
At the time of his death, Avery was married to Margo St. James, a feminist organizer and founder of the prostitutes' rights group COYOTE (Call Off Your Old Tired Ethics). He had two children from an earlier marriage, Charles Avery and Cristin Moak.[1]
Avery was portrayed in the 2007 film Zodiac by Robert Downey, Jr. The film details his involvement in the Zodiac case including his discovery of the 1966 Riverside murder, the threat on his life, the "I Am Not Avery" buttons, his involvement with cartoonist turned Zodiac expert Robert Graysmith, as well as his eventual physical decline, including his abuse of cocaine and alcohol, ending with a brief mention of his fatal illness.
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