A quote from the article below. It is titled..
Coroner Kidd To Empanel Jury To Probe Triple Tragedy Here: Mad Effigy of Mrs. Yost Found At Residence
(The West Virginian, April 8, 1948, evening edition).
“’Hell’s Half Acre’ are the words chiseled into the stone steps…On the inside [of Yost’s home] Yost, alone and bitter, fabricated a horrible revenge on the world and on himself… [The inside of this house] was a quiet place… a haunted place… Yost had intended as a funeral pyre, the half-burned floor and walls which had been licked by flames from the basement, where the fire bomb[s] had been set to go off at 4 o’clock. And in what might have been called the breakfast room, off the kitchen, was the crowning horror of all—far worse than the bloody scene at Attorney Moroose’s office yesterday. It was seated at the table, a mad effigy of a woman… It was… a thing fabricated out of excelsior covered by muslin, with a plastered neck and a painted face and dirty straw for hair, what one might see in a nightmare. Years ago, Yost was an upholsterer, and there was a certain craftsmanship to his creation, but there was something about it that stood the hair on end. Across from the effigy, as the police believe, sat Yost for who knows how many weeks. There he ate, presumably, and thought about what life had done to him. And his thoughts became darker and darker as he looked into the future.” – The West Virginian, April 8, 1948, evening edition.