Critics explained away her success as a fluke of morbid curiosity. People tuned in, the critics argued, to see how this inexperienced woman would handle the crushing pressure of replacing one of America’s most beloved anchors on television’s longest running news program. The problem with their argument was that Avery’s ratings never came down. That she was young and attractive certainly didn’t hurt her rising star, and Avery admitted that her looks likely drew a certain male demographic that might not normally tune in to a newsmagazine show. But her looks were not the source of her success. It was her talent, her charisma, and the content of her show that kept the ratings sky-high. The abundance of press hadn’t hurt either. During the past year she graced the covers of entertainment magazines, gave countless interviews and photo shoots, and was the subject of a three-part exposé by Events Magazine on her natural abilities in front of the camera and her rise to the top of the cable news food chain. And yet somehow, through it all, she had managed to keep her past hidden.

Avery’s forte was true crime, finding an unsolved mystery and dissecting it for her audience in a way that hooked them and refused to let go. Her dark and edgy foray into some of the country’s most sordid crimes was where she made her name. But to contrast the sinister stories she covered, Avery also told stories of survival and hope. It was these stories of miracles and beating the odds that kept people tuning in. Not a week went by without Avery featuring some sort of real life, plucked from Middle America, feel-good story—like Kelly Rosenstein, the woman who sank her minivan into Devil’s Gate Reservoir in Pasadena after a drunk driver forced her off the road. The indomitable mother of four had not only managed to escape the sunken vehicle, but had miraculously done so with all of her children in tow. Avery interviewed the woman a week after the accident. With as many as six hundred people dying each year in the United States due to a submerged vehicle, how had this soccer mom managed to escape? It was simple. Years earlier Mack Carter had demonstrated the best way to escape a car after it sank to the bottom of a lake. Kelly Rosenstein had watched the episode and remembered what she saw.