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Frank Felix and Joshua Acosta (Fullerton Police Department).
A 33-year-old California man will spend the rest of his life in prison for murdering three people, including the parents of a 17-year-old girl he became obsessed with after meeting her in the “furry” subculture nearly nine years ago.
Frank Sato Felix was found guilty last year of three counts each of first-degree murder and enhancements of multiple murders, the Orange County District Attorney’s Office said. On Friday, a judge sentenced him to three life terms behind bars.
The victims were 39-year-old Jennifer Goodwill-Yost, and her husband, 35-year-old Christopher Yost, along with their friend Arthur “Billy” Boucher, who happened to be spending the night at the home at the time of the murders.
According to a courtroom report from the Orange County Register, Yost’s sister made a victim impact statement.
“No sentence can erase the horrors of that night,” she said.
Felix also made a brief statement in which he reportedly called himself a “beast.”
“To the families and the victims, I would trade places in a minute with those who were killed,” he reportedly said.
As Law&Crime previously reported, prosecutors say the teen girl in 2016 “was introduced by her mother to the ‘furry’ subculture, which involves people dressing up in animal costumes.” It was at these events where the girl met Felix, then 25 years old, and his buddy Joshua Charles Acosta, an Army mechanic stationed at Ft. Irwin in Barstow, who was 21 at the time.
According to prosecutors, Felix became “obsessed” with the girl and was eventually “romantically involved” with her.
Goodwill-Yost and her husband, 35-year-old Christopher Yost — the girl’s stepfather — disapproved of the relationship. Felix decided he needed the parents out of the way so the 17-year-old girl could run away with him. He gave Acosta a shotgun and ammunition and on Sept. 24, 2016, they drove to the Yost home in Fullerton.
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They waited until the Yosts and Boucher went to sleep. The girl came outside and sat with Felix in his truck parked in the driveway. Armed with the shotgun, Acosta slipped inside the home. Acosta executed Boucher as he slept on the couch. He then went into the master bedroom where he shot Goodwill-Yost in the face. Yost ran for his life and tried to escape to a patio area. But Acosta tracked him down and shot him in the head.
Acosta, Felix and the girl headed back to Felix’s house in Sun Valley, where they burned their clothes and tried to destroy their cellphones, prosecutors said. Meanwhile, the Yosts’ other children, ages 6 and 9, were sleeping in the home at the time of the murders and woke up to find their parents and Boucher dead. They called 911.
After an investigation, Fullerton police arrested Felix at his home and Acosta at Fort Irwin. Prosecutors charged Acosta with three counts of first-degree murder. A jury convicted him in 2018, and a judge sentenced him to life in prison.
“Two little girls, six and nine, went to sleep not knowing the last time they would see their parents would be when they woke up to find them shot to death,” Orange County District Attorney Todd Spitzer said in a statement. “The trauma inflicted on those little girls compounded by the loss both of their parents in such a violent way is beyond heartbreaking. Violence is never the answer, and a sick and twisted plan turned into life behind bars for two young men.”
As for the teen girl, the Orange County Register reported that she testified at Acosta’s trial that she had no knowledge of the plot to kill her parents. She reportedly told the jury that her stepfather had been molesting her for more than a decade. After telling Felix about the abuse, she claimed he threatened to tell her mother about the molestation unless she had sex with him. Prosecutors never charged her with a crime.