He later worked at the Victoria Advocate (Victoria, Texas), the Anchorage Daily Times (Anchorage, Alaska), the Honolulu Advertiser (Honolulu, Hawaii), where he was appointed the paper's Big Island bureau chief at 23;[2][3] and the San Luis Obispo Telegram-Tribune (San Luis Obispo, California).
In the second half of the 1960s, Avery took a leave of absence from the Chronicle and moved with his family to Vietnam, where the United States was increasing its involvement in armed conflict.
In the mid-1980s, after working for The Sacramento Bee and writing a book about the Patty Hearst kidnapping, he signed up with the then- Hearst-owned San Francisco Examiner.
Avery received notice for his reporting on the Zodiac Killer case, a series of killings that began in December 1968 and ostensibly ended with the death of a San Francisco cab driver in October 1969.
Avery 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.
[6] While covering the war in Vietnam, Avery suffered a spinal fracture when a falling tree limb knocked him from atop an armored personnel carrier.
[9] At the time of his death, Avery was married to Margo St. James, a feminist organizer and founder of the sex worker's rights group COYOTE (Call Off Your Old Tired Ethics).