On May 4, 1876, James Carroll, Thomas Duffy, James Roarty, Hugh McGehan, and James Boyle, were placed on trial in Schuylkill County Court at Pottsville, for the murder of Benjamin F. Yost, of Tamaqua.
The details of this revolting crime and the apprehension of the Mollie Maguires are of interest as they reveal the terrible horrors experienced in the anthracite coal fields during the reign of this lawless organization.
James McParlan, the Pinkerton detective, who joined the Mollies under the alias of James McKenna, and successfully brought their leaders to the gallows, was working on the Gomer James murder outrage, when he learned that the next victim was to be an excellent and competent policeman of Tamaqua, of the name of Benjamin F. Yost.
McParlan had been unable to learn sufficient of their designs to get a warning to Yost, as he had so frequently done in other cases.
Yost had experienced considerable trouble with the Mollies, especially as he had several times arrested James Kerrigan, their local leader, for drunkenness. Barney McCarron, the other member of the Tamaqua police force, had also come in for his share of their ill-will, but, from his German parentage, Yost was the more intensely hated. Yost had been threatened several times but was a fearless man, a veteran of the Civil War, where he displayed conspicuous valor on many battlefields, and a policeman who served his community with fidelity.
About midnight of July 5, 1875, the two policemen in passing Carroll’s saloon, noted that the place was still open, went inside and saw Kerrigan and another man drinking.
The policemen proceeded with their duties, and extinguished the street lamps on their route. They arrived at Yost’s residence about two o’clock and partook of a lunch, preparatory to finishing up the night’s work.
The two officers parted at Yost’s front gate, and Mrs. Yost, looking out of her bedroom window, saw her husband place a small ladder against a lamp post a short distance from their home, and step upon the rungs, but he never reached the light.
The woman saw two flashes from a pistol; heard the two loud reports and saw her husband fall from the ladder. She ran down the stairs and into the street, and met the wounded man, staggering and weak with loss of blood, clinging to the fence, looking toward his once happy home.