Paul Avery

Paul Avery (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.

He was born in Honolulu, the son of U.S. Navy officer. He was raised and educated in Honolulu, Oakland, California, and Washington, D.C.. Mr. Avery started his career in journalism in 1955 working at a variety of newspapers before joining 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 intense story of Mr. Avery's career was the Zodiac case, a series of killings -- unsolved to this day -- that began in October 1966 and ostensibly ended with the death of a San Francisco cab driver in October 1969. At the time, Mr. Avery was a police reporter at The Chronicle.

For a long time, it was thought that the Zodiac's activities were limited to the Bay Area, but Mr. Avery discovered a 1966 murder in Riverside that he linked to the Zodiac.

The Zodiac soon wrote Mr. Avery a letter, warning, "You are doomed." Just as quickly, someone made up hundreds of campaign-style buttons, worn by nearly everyone on The Chronicle staff, including Mr. Avery, that said, "I Am Not Paul Avery."

When Patricia Hearst was kidnapped in February 1974, Mr. 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.

Mr. Avery covered the Hearst case until the newspaper heiress-turned-bank robber was arrested in September 1975. Mr. 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.." [ [http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2000/12/13/MN35304.DTL Paul Avery, Longtime Newspaper Reporter ] ]

At the time of his death, Avery was married to Margo St. James, a feminist organizer who founded the prostitutes' rights group COYOTE. He had two children from an earlier marriage, Charlie Avery and Cristin Moak.

Paul Avery died of pulmonary emphysema in West Sound, Washington on Orcas Island, located in the San Juan Islands of north Puget Sound.

He was portrayed in the 2007 film "Zodiac" by Robert Downey Jr..

External links

* [http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2000/12/13/MN35304.DTL Paul Avery obituary on SFGate.com]

References