Warrant reveals new details in triple killing among Calif. "furry" community
SANTA ANA, Calif. -- Court documents reveal that Fullerton police responding to a 911 call from a young girl last month found the 6-year-old and her 9-year-old sister on the front porch of a home and three bodies and a bloody scene inside.
A search warrant affidavit obtained by the Orange County Register Monday reveals new details in the killings, in which the suspects and one of the victims attended “furry” events where some participants dress up in colorful animal costumes, according to friends and their social media pages.
The warrant says officers discovered the girls’ mother, Jennifer Yost, 39, dead on a bed and their father, Christopher Yost, 34, dead in the backyard Sept. 24. Their friend Arthur Boucher’s body was on a couch.
The newspaper says investigators determined all victims died from shotgun blasts. No motive has been identified.
Joshua Acosta, a 21-year-old Army private, and 25-year-old Frank Felix were each charged last week with three counts of murder. The paper reported that the two suspects as well as Jennifer Yost were active “furries.”
Officers went into the home after the initial call, then obtained a warrant for an investigative search.
Jennifer Yost’s 17-year-old daughter, also active in the “furry” community, had initially been reported missing after the killings. But police announced Sunday she had been found safe, the same day they announced the arrest of Acosta, Felix, and a 17-year-old girl on suspicion of murder, the paper reported.
Citing privacy laws for minors, police wouldn’t say whether the girl arrested was Yost’s teen daughter. Charges have not been filed against the girl, according to the paper.
Jennifer Yost’s friend Melinda Giles said they became friends after she met Yost and her teenage daughter last year at a gathering of “furries.”
She said she also saw Felix and Acosta at furry events, and had met Felix at the Yost family home.
She said Jennifer Yost told her several weeks ago that she had forbidden Felix from seeing her teen daughter.
“To protect her daughter, Chris and Jenn were like, ‘We don’t want you to be friends with our daughter anymore,’” Giles said last week, adding that the couple was warm, generous and recently helped her move into her new home. “It is really sad because they didn’t deserve that. Those little girls didn’t deserve to wake up to dead parents.”