Hell and Gone Murder Line: Eugene and Raymond Horsch

0:46Speaker 1:School of Humans.

0:49Speaker 2:Helen Gone Murder Line actively investigates cold case murders in an effort to raise public awareness, invite witnesses to come forward, and present evidence that could potentially be further investigated by law enforcement. While we value insights from family and community members, their statements should not be considered evidence and point to the challenges of verifying facts inherent in cold cases. We remind listeners that everyone is presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. Nothing in the podcast is intended to state or imply that anyone who has not been convicted of a crime is guilty of any wrongdoing.

1:26Speaker 2:Thanks for listening.

1:30Speaker 1:At around 8 o'clock in the morning on June 19, 2026, federal park ranger Paul Schultz was parking his patrol vehicle near the corner of 6th and Market Streets in Philadelphia when he noticed a black BMW parked behind him. The BMW was illegally parked and it was parked next to a fire hydrant. So the Ranger got out and approached the BMW and the man in the driver's seat, 44-year-old Eugene Horsch. And as the Ranger walked toward the driver's side of the car... he heard a woman's voice coming from the back seat, a voice that said, you're going to hurt me. The ranger noticed sores on Eugene Horsh's arms and face, and when he looked in that back seat, he saw that the female passenger also had sores on her body and was behaving in what the ranger described as a twitchy and agitated manner. In the driver's door, he could see a butane lighter and saw that Eugene was holding a pair of tweezers, the ranger believed what he was seeing was consistent with drug use. So he asked both of them for their identification. The BMW came back registered to Eugene Horsch. But when the ranger ran the name that was given by the woman in the

2:48Speaker 1:back seat, something unexpected happened. The name on the ID was Blair Tonzelli, who had been reported missing in Philadelphia years earlier. But the woman sitting in Eugene Horsch's BMW... was not Blair Tonzelli. Meanwhile, Ranger Schultz had noticed several pairs of scissors around the front seat of the BMW, so he ordered Eugene to get out of the car so that he could search him. When the Ranger opened the driver's door, Eugene reached under the seat, and a second Ranger, Sean Carey, put Eugene in handcuffs. While the Rangers were trying to figure out what was going on here, they searched Eugene. They found a switchblade knife and glass drug pipe in Eugene's pockets. And when Ranger Carey reached underneath the driver's seat, the place Eugene had just reached toward, he pulled out two loaded guns. One was a Taurus G2S.

3:46Speaker 1:40 caliber semi-automatic pistol. The other was a. 38 special revolver with the serial number filed off. The Rangers got the woman out of the backseat of the car and put her in handcuffs. And then, according to the affidavit, Eugene Horsch said something without being asked. His comment was, quote, they're not hers. She's a good girl, end quote. After being advised of his Miranda rights, Eugene said again that the drugs and guns didn't belong to the woman. He told the Rangers that there was crack cocaine in a compartment beside the steering wheel. The ranger asked Eugene Horsch whether he was a convicted felon, and Eugene said yes, that he was. So the federal rangers searched the BMW further.

4:35Speaker 1:They found white powder and what appeared to be crack cocaine. And they also found some other things, a cattle prod, a collapsible baton, police handcuffs and handcuff keys in the front console, plus a second switchblade. And then in the trunk, they found a canvas bag. containing something particularly strange. Inside were two DEA badges and identification cards with Eugene Horsch's photograph on them, identifying him as a DEA agent named Eugene Frederick Steiner. But Eugene Frederick Steiner does not exist.

5:15Speaker 1:So what had started with a park ranger noticing an illegally parked BMW had now produced drugs, two loaded guns, weapons, restraints, fake federal credentials, and a connection to a woman who'd been missing for years. The woman in the BMW told investigators that Eugene had made that false Blair Tonzelli ID for her and instructed her to use it if she got into trouble. The real Blair Tonzelli had been missing since February of 2023. She was 35 years old, and according to police records reported by the Philadelphia Inquirer, Blair's friends said they had actually stopped hearing from her months earlier, sometime around August of 2022. One of Blair's friends had told police something particularly important when Blair was reported missing.

6:06Speaker 1:Blair had last been seen at a house located at 417 West Chew Avenue in Philadelphia's only neighborhood. That house belonged to the Horsch family. Eugene, who had prior felony convictions and so was not allowed to own firearms, was arrested and he was taken into custody. Little did the ranger know that day that this routine encounter was about to open the door to an investigation involving multiple missing women, a deteriorating house in North Philadelphia that has been described by the media as a house of horrors, tens of thousands of videos that depicted at least two dead women, hundreds of thousands of images, vats of chemicals, fake federal credentials, and questions police are still nowhere close to answering. I'm Katherine Townsend. Over the past eight years of making my true crime podcast, Hell and Gone, I've learned that there's no such thing as a small town where murder never happens.

7:06Speaker 1:I have received hundreds of messages from people all around the country asking for help with an unsolved murder that's affected them, their families, and their communities. If you have a case you'd like me and my team to look into, you can reach out to us at our Hell and Gone murder line at 678-744-6145. That's 678-744-6145. Or you can send us a message on Instagram at hellandgonepod. This is Hell and Gone Murder Line. After arresting Eugene Horsch, investigators started taking a fresh look at Blair's disappearance. According to later reporting, they discovered that Blair had spent significant periods at the Chew Avenue property, where Eugene's father, Raymond Charles Horsch, known as R.C., had said she worked as his home health aide. Friends described Blair as someone who had struggled with drugs and had become estranged from her family, but also as a person who was intensely loyal. One friend remembered her as the kind of person who would give somebody her last couple of dollars. According to law enforcement sources cited by the inquirer, one witness told investigators that Blair and Eugene apparently had a disagreement involving money. This

9:10Speaker 1:information does seem to be significant, but it's important to note this is an ongoing investigation, and that is not proof that Eugene harmed Blair in any way. As of August of 2026, Eugene Horsch has not been charged with any crime connected to Blair's disappearance or with harming anyone else. What happened after that encounter at Independence Hall escalated really quickly. Investigators obtained a warrant for the Chew Avenue property. The initial federal investigation concerned fraudulent government identification. But when authorities entered the house, they found a lot more than fake credentials.

9:49Speaker 1:There was another firearm, marijuana-growing equipment, and what police described as a complicated collection of chemicals and equipment in the basement. Investigators reported finding a 55-gallon drum connected to hoses or pipes, as well as numerous containers holding unknown chemicals and oily substances. There were also five urns containing what appeared to be cremated human remains. Again, we don't know who those remains belonged to, or how the people whose remains were reportedly in the urns died. Investigators later excavated portions of the property looking for human remains and biological evidence, but no bodies belonging to any missing women have been recovered. There were more strange discoveries. Investigators found supplies that could be used to manufacture counterfeit identification and they found Blair Tonzelli's bank card. And, according to an affidavit, they discovered a multi-page handwritten document that described harming people and referred to serial killer Ted Bundy. The more police learned about 417 West Chew Avenue, the more complicated its history became because

11:05Speaker 1:Blair Tonzelli was not the first woman to disappear after being linked to that address. Ten years earlier, another woman had apparently vanished from the same house. Her name was Amy Teresa McHale. Amy was 44 years old when she disappeared in June of 2016. She was a mother and a grandmother, and her family knew that she had problems and had struggled with addiction and mental health issues. There had been occasions when Amy would disappear for a short period of time before resurfacing. But Amy's family said there was a fundamental difference between disappearing for a couple of days and simply walking out of their lives. Amy adored her daughter and her grandchildren. Amy's daughter Amanda was preparing to get married that September, and Amy was supposed to be there. Amy also had a long and complicated connection to that house on Chew Avenue. She had once been married to Eugene Horsch's father, Raymond Charles Horsch. After going missing, Amy was never found, and almost a decade after she disappeared, Raymond Horsch died in May of 2025. The Chew Avenue house had a long history of police involvement. In 2016,

12:23Speaker 1:authorities did a drug raid there But it took that extraordinary chance encounter near Independence Hall in June of 2026 to finally cause authorities to start examining whether these disappearances and this house might be connected. By late June of 2026, 417 West Chew Avenue was surrounded by investigators. They went down to the basement, they went into the yard, and eventually they dug up the plumbing beneath the property. This is a developing story and there has been a lot of conflicting information coming out. At first, reports suggested that investigators might have found a significant amount of blood inside the house. But subsequent forensic testing produced a very different result.

13:20Speaker 1:The substance that was initially believed to be blood was apparently not real blood. Other reports said it might have been fake blood. And testing did not identify DNA belonging to the missing women. In July, crews removed sections of pipe And while they were tearing out that plumbing, local law enforcement sources told CBS Philadelphia that detectives were looking for evidence of alkaline hydrolysis, sometimes called water cremation, a process in which chemicals are used to break down human remains.

13:54Speaker 1:Police were doing that because they had reportedly received information that Eugene Horsch claimed to know how chemicals could be used to dissolve bodies. And investigators were confronted with a basement containing a large drum, piping, and an unusual collection of chemicals. But then investigators started going through the electronic evidence seized from the house. And there was a massive amount of data. Approximately 600,000 images, around 70,000 videos, and 10,000 pages of writings and data. There was so much material that as of August of 2026, police say they have only reviewed about 5-7% of the material at this point.

14:38Speaker 1:But with what they have seen so far, police have said they were able to identify two women, not Amy McHale or Blair Tonzelli, but two other women who have been missing for years on some of those images. Their names were Gabrielle Amarando and Maribel Fresas. Gabrielle had been missing since 2012 and Maribel had been missing since 2018. And police now say the material recovered from the house appears to show both women alive inside 417 West Chew Avenue and later apparently dead. After 14 years of unanswered questions in one case and eight years in another, two missing women had apparently resurfaced in the same place. Gabrielle Amarando had been missing since September of 2012. She was 22 years old and grew up in Philadelphia. Her childhood friend, Ashley Levin, later remembered meeting her in the third grade.

15:39Speaker 1:Gabrielle was described as artistic, interested in fashion, and constantly experimenting with her appearance. She changed her hair frequently and had what her friend remembered as an enormous personality. She was described as funny and creative. And like a lot of women whose lives would eventually intersect with the Chew Avenue investigation, Gabrielle also struggled with addiction. For almost 14 years, Gabrielle's disappearance remained unsolved. And there's a lot of mystery still because there still is no body. There's no autopsy, which means there's no medical examiner's determination explaining how Gabrielle died.

16:20Speaker 1:Investigators are reportedly still working to authenticate the photos and the videos. They're looking through all of those digital materials and they're trying to figure out precisely when they were created and whether any of them were altered. But Philadelphia Police Deputy Commissioner James Evers was unusually direct when he described what detectives had seen. He said, if the things that detectives have seen are genuine, police believe Gabrielle is dead.

16:50Speaker 1:Maribel Yvette Freses was born in 1990, the same year as Gabrielle. She was 27 years old when she disappeared. She grew up in Bucks County and attended Council Rock High School South before eventually spending time in Philadelphia. Like Gabrielle, Maribel struggled with drugs. By 2018, members of her family had lost contact with her and were trying to find her. There is some confusion in the public record about the exact chronology of her disappearance, but police in Philadelphia now describe Maribel as having been reported missing in February of 2018.

17:27Speaker 1:Other missing persons information has placed her last known contact later that year. Either way, for eight years, her friends and family have had no answer. Until 2026, when police contacted them and told her family... they had seen Maribel in the images from the digital archive from the house on Shoe Avenue. As with Gabrielle, police told her family the material appears to depict Maribel alive inside that property and later apparently dead. And as with Gabrielle, no body has been recovered. Police have said they may ultimately have to pursue the unusual legal process of having the women declared dead without their remains ever having been found. So what happened to these two women and where are their remains?

18:18Speaker 1:Maribel's mother, Patricia Fresas, has publicly said even after hearing what police believe the videos show, she still wants the physical certainty of knowing where her daughter is. Without Maribel's body, there's still a gap between what investigators believe happened and the finality her family has been waiting for since 2018. So police have now said, They believe they have evidence showing two missing women dead inside the same house. But that doesn't mean police have publicly established who killed them, when they died, how they died, or that Eugene Horsch had something to do with it. It's possible that someone else in the house killed them. The Chew Avenue house, as we've said before, did not always belong solely to Eugene.

19:03Speaker 1:For decades, it was associated with his father, Raymond Charles Horsch, and Raymond Horsch had a complicated history of his own. Raymond was a photographer and filmmaker whose work frequently involved erotic and sadomasochistic imagery. Raymond was born in 1943 in East Stroudburg. Raymond described himself in his self-published book as, quote, an artist, filmmaker, composer, writer, and porn performer, but also a drug smuggler, art forger, counterfeiter, fugitive, sociopath, ex-convict, and all-out villain. Raymond also had a long criminal history, including convictions for passing bad checks, manufacturing drugs, and forgery. In 1977, federal agents raided his home laboratory and seized equipment that they claimed was for making meth. Then he fled the country to New Zealand. Later, he came back to California, but by then he was living under the name Richard Harris.

20:03Speaker 1:the FBI arrested him in Orlando and they extradited him back to California. In 1985, according to media reports, Raymond was psychologically evaluated and the court-ordered psychologist determined that Raymond was very intelligent, that he had an IQ of 140, but that Raymond was, quote, severely emotionally disturbed. Raymond was married, according to media reports, at least three times. The first time was to his high school sweetheart at age 19. and then later to Anna, Furcuniak, Eugene's mother. She married him while he was living under the name Richard Harris, and in 1981, they had Eugene. Anna passed away in 1989 at the age of 39, after what was described in her obituary as a long illness. But according to the Philadelphia Inquirer, what really happened... was that Anna accidentally took an overdose in the living room when Eugene was seven years old. So Raymond got custody of Eugene after that and raised him as a single father, which meant that while Eugene was growing up, he watched his father take in these women who were addicted to drugs and make pornographic films and photo shoots with them. Eugene seemed

21:17Speaker 1:to be the guy with the creepy dad who made his female friends nervous. According to the Philadelphia Inquirer, Eugene was very intelligent and he did well in high school, making A's. After graduation, he enrolled in college. But he also started stealing things in high school and forging documents, according to sources who spoke to the newspaper. One person even claimed that Eugene forged his own diploma. While Eugene was at college in 2003, he was drinking and left a bar in Philadelphia. He had a car accident and that resulted in the other driver going into a coma and eventually dying. After that, Eugene left school. Eugene pleaded guilty to DUI and was sentenced to two to four years in prison. After Eugene got out of prison, he moved in with his father, Raymond, who was still shooting porn and growing a massive amount of drugs. In 2009, federal agents raided the property. They seized 455 marijuana plants.

22:22Speaker 1:This time, Raymond went to prison, but after his release, he went back to the home in Olney, and father and son were once again reunited. Raymond continued his pornography career even as he got older. In his later years, he was weaker and sick and wore an eye patch. But interesting factoid, no one, according to the Inquirer, seemed sure whether Raymond was wearing that eye patch due to an actual eye condition or whether he wore it because he wanted to look more like an outlaw. In 2000, Raymond's art appeared at an expo in Reno. Some of it also appeared in an anthology of erotic art in New York City with a preface written by Camille Paglia.

23:03Speaker 1:In 2014, Raymond did a show in Kensington, the neighborhood in Philadelphia that was known for drug activity. The same neighborhood where he picked up a lot of women over the years. This show reportedly featured a lot of different women shown with needles sticking out of them. And as a finale, Raymond had an image of a naked woman who he claimed had died of a drug overdose in front of him. Then there was a video that showed this woman's body being cremated. a lot of people were apparently horrified by this art show. In his autobiographical work, which Raymond claimed was semi-fictional, Raymond portrayed himself as being a killer who humanely acted as a protector to women who were addicted to drugs. Someone who spoke to the Inquirer claimed that the truth was far more sinister and that actually what Raymond was doing was preying on women who were already vulnerable and desperate in order to satisfy his own sexual compulsions. No one knew what was really going on behind closed doors at that house for all those years, and much of that is still a mystery.

24:10Speaker 1:There were multiple women living at the Horsch residence over the years, and it was believed that Raymond would give them drugs in exchange for posing nude for his photos or films. According to reporting by the Philadelphia Inquirer, one of the women who lived in Raymond's house was Krista Marie Killen. She was described in court papers as Raymond's caregiver, but she reportedly died in 2025, three months after he passed away. Raymond was considerably older than a lot of the women who lived in this house, and people familiar with the property described a regular stream of women coming and going from the home. Raymond was creating sexually explicit photography and films. So I wonder, how are police figuring out which of the photos and videos are real and which ones could be fictional or staged? Because Raymond wrote these semi-fictional autobiographies, it must have been hard because police couldn't just attribute every disturbing document to Eugene or even assume it represented an actual crime. This case is complicated.

25:31Speaker 1:CBS News Philadelphia reported that police had looked through hundreds of pages of R.C. Horsh's books and described the content as, quote, graphic, disturbing, sexually explicit, and violent, end quote. I read one of his books called Empathy, a badly written, self-published book that purports to be an autobiographical memoir of a caring, empathetic serial killer. Raymond published it in 2014. he marketed Empathy as a semi-autobiographical memoir. He seemed to be kind of trying to play with his audience by giving real details, like using a reference to Chu, his address on West Chu Street. He would give real details, and then he would claim that the horrific detailed confessions of murdering women and dissolving him in his basement were also real. In one early chapter, Raymond describes killing a pigeon with a broken wing and humanely euthanizing it. He later portrays himself as this protector of women who are abusing drugs. In many of the passages, Raymond implies that these women were harming themselves and that they wanted to die and he was just helping them along. In one instance, he claimed

26:43Speaker 1:that he strangled a woman and then destroyed her body by dissolving her in a bathtub full of sodium hydroxide. He wrote, quote, So now a lot of people are wondering if some of the writings in his book could be based on real events rather than just fiction. The digital evidence involving Gabrielle and Maribel... appears to have given investigators their first real indication that at least some of the material associated with this house might document real deaths rather than just imagined violence. And Raymond Horsch already had one very direct connection to a missing woman, Amy McHale, who had once been his wife. Amy met Raymond in the 1990s. She was in her 20s. He was approximately 30 years older. Amy's daughter, Amanda Stouffer, has said her mother was sick and had pneumonia around the time she met Raymond. She said her mother started to see Raymond as someone who had rescued her, in a sense. Raymond and Amy got married in September of 2004. They divorced in 2008. But even after that, Amy and Raymond stayed in touch, and she would sometimes stay at his house on Chew Avenue. Amy's family has been open about the

28:08Speaker 1:fact that Amy was also struggling. Even though she went to school and became a paralegal, over the years they believed Raymond was continuing to enable her drug habit by supplying her with drugs, and that that was the draw for her continuing to stay at his house. On June 13, 2016, Amy argued with her mother, Gloria, and went over to Raymond's house. That night, Amy called her mother. Gloria later said she thought Amy sounded like she was drunk. So Gloria told her she could not take the subway in that condition to stay where she was. Amy also left her daughter, Amanda, a voicemail. She told her daughter that she was okay and that she was at Ray's house.

28:52Speaker 1:After that, no one heard from Amy McHale again. When Amy's family asked Raymond what happened... Raymond reportedly said that he and Amy had been drinking vodka. He said he eventually went to bed, and when he woke up, Amy was gone. Amy's family did not believe she would voluntarily abandon them. Amy's mother also later said that the family was suspicious because in the past, when Amy would leave Raymond's house, he would later call them looking for her.

29:20Speaker 1:This time, they say he didn't. Amy's family reported her missing. Amy's family says detectives were suspicious of Raymond at the time, but they lacked probable cause to search his property. Nothing proved that Raymond had harmed Amy or that Amy died inside that house. But Amy's last known communication placed her at the same address that would eventually become the center of one of Philadelphia's strangest missing person investigations. Both Eugene and Raymond at various points had connections with some of these missing women. But during certain periods, they were also demonstrably elsewhere. Eugene Horsch had spent periods of his adult life in prison. In fact, when Amy McHale disappeared from the Chew Avenue house in 2016, Eugene was incarcerated. No one has been charged in connection with Amy's disappearance. And Raymond died in 2025. There was also a connection between Raymond and Blair Tonzelli. According to people interviewed by the Enquirer, Raymond frequented a house in Kensington where drugs were common and where several vulnerable women spent time. This person said sometimes Raymond would come there looking for women to participate

30:37Speaker 1:in photo and video shoots, and that one of those women was Blair Tonzelli. Blair had become estranged from much of her family and had cycled through addiction and incarceration. Blair spent extended periods at the Horshouse, where Raymond reportedly described her at one point as his home health aide. By this point, Raymond would have been in his late 70s. The last activity on Blair's Facebook account was in August of 2022. A friend of hers, David McCarty, said he stopped hearing from her at around the same time. In February of 2023, two friends finally reported Blair missing. One told police she had last been seen at the Chew Avenue house, but there was no evidence at that time of foul play. Then Raymond died in May 2025 at age 82 from a lung condition. Eugene remained in the house, and a year after Raymond's death came the strange encounter near Independence Hall that we started this episode with. Eugene was in the BMW, carrying illegal weapons and apparent fake federal credentials. And beside him, there was a woman carrying identification in the name of Blair Tonzelli. This discovery finally

31:50Speaker 1:brought investigators back to Chew Avenue. This is a developing story, and there are more and more reports every day about what investigators are finding inside this house. They found the photos and videos and digital material, but they also reportedly have statements that Eugene allegedly made about reducing a body sufficiently enough so that remains could be flushed through the toilet. And investigators are taking a serious look at this because they have found what they've described as unusual plumbing in the basement of that home. Again, they have no proof that Eugene or Raymond actually killed or disposed of anyone.

32:28Speaker 1:And again, they still haven't found any bodies. At an August 12th news conference, Philadelphia Police Inspector Raymond Evers attempted to explain the scale of what police are facing. He said more than 95 search warrants had been executed. He said they had reviewed only around 5% of the evidence, but he wouldn't publicly describe in detail what they watched. He said it was extremely dark and that there were gaps in the footage that police had located so far.

32:59Speaker 1:Now investigators are trying to figure out if these videos and photos are real, if some of them are staged and made with fake blood. They're trying to figure out who recorded these things. Are they looking at fiction or are they looking at snuff films? They're also reportedly trying to figure out who the other women in the photos and videos are. They need to find out if they're alive or dead. Police have not publicly announced either a cause or manner of death for either Gabrielle or Maribel.

33:30Speaker 1:And as of August 20th, 2026, no remains belonging to any of the four missing women have been recovered from that property. Police also haven't announced what they believe happened to Blair, the missing woman whose ID led them to this house of horrors in the first place. Blair is still missing and so is Amy. If investigators want to figure out what happened to these women, they're going to have to find surviving witnesses, and they may have to locate a lot of people who would be very afraid to talk to the police for one reason or another.

34:06Speaker 1:This investigation also raises a difficult question about how many women passed through that house without anyone outside that world knowing that they had been there. Identifying all those women could take a long time. Meanwhile, Eugene Horsch remains in federal custody. His jury trial on the charges related to the false DEA credentials is set to begin on September 28th. Again, he has not been charged in connection with any deaths of Gabrielle Amarando, Maribel Fresas, Amy McHale, or Blair Tonzelli, or any violent crime against them. And this is what has me obsessed with this case. We're dealing with a situation where by early 2023, Philadelphia police had received missing persons information connecting two different missing women to the same address, Amy in 2016 and Blair in February of 2023. At that point, Blair's friends told police that she had last been seen at the Chew Avenue house. Why didn't police connect the dots and figure out that two different women had disappeared inside the same house? Police have barely started investigating what happened inside that house with boarded-up windows. And

35:21Speaker 1:until they finish, nobody can say with certainty how many answers are hidden inside 417 West Chew Avenue or what other secrets could be buried there. The Philadelphia Police Department is asking that anyone who has visited the West Chew Avenue home or who had contact with Eugene Horsch or Raymond Horsch to call the tip line at 215-686-TIPS, or the Homicide Division on 215-686-3334. I'm Katherine Townsend. This is Hell and Gone Murder Line. Hell and Gone Murder Line is a production of School of Humans and iHeart Podcasts.

36:03Speaker 1:It's written and narrated by me, Katherine Townsend, and produced by Edelise Perez. Special thanks to Amy Tubbs for her research assistance and James Wheaton for legal review. Noah Kammer mixed and scored this episode. Our theme song is by Ben Salit. Executive producers are Virginia Prescott, Brandon Barr, and L.C. Crowley. Listen to Hell and Gone ad-free by subscribing to the iHeart True Crime Plus channel on Apple Podcasts. If you are interested in seeing documents and materials from the case, you can follow the show on Instagram at hellandgonepod. If you have a case you'd like me and my team to look into... you can reach out to us at our Hell and Gone Murder Line at 678-744-6145. That's 678-744-6145.