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In the Headlines: The Horsch House of Horrors · Deadly Divas True Crime Podcast

• 0:11
  SPEAKER_00: Hello, True Crime Divas and Dudes.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_00: I'm Tina, and welcome back to your favorite True Crime podcast, Deadly Divas.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_00: We've got another in the headlines episode for you today, so it's just me.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_00: But don't worry, Sarah is gonna be back with us soon for our usual episodes.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_00: She's actually a Dragon Con in Atlanta this week, so if you happen to be there, go find her for a ribbon and some other Deadly Divas merch before it's all gone.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_00: Now let's get into today's case.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_00: The Horsch House of Horrors.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_00: Try saying that three times fast.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_00: Anyway, I am not sure if y'all have been following this case, but it has one extremely disturbing layer after another.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_00: This could possibly be a serial killer situation, and so much worse.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_00: Somehow, it may also be a father and son story.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm definitely not talking about a wholesome one either, because that sounds kind of nice, right?
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_00: Like, oh, a nice father and son story.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_00: No, this is not that.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_00: What started with a routine parking violation has turned into an investigation that took police down a rabbit hole they could never have imagined.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_00: Get ready for this list, y'all, because it is a mile long.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_00: I'm talking multiple missing women, fake identities, illegal firearms, fake DEA and FBI badges, suspicious chemicals, fifty-five gallon drums, hidden compartments, hundreds of thousands of photographs, tens of thousands of videos, disturbing writings about serial killers, and now video that police believe may show an actual murder.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_00: All of this leads back to one house in Philadelphia and two men who lived inside it: Raymond Charles Horsch and his son Eugene Horsh.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_00: And investigators are now trying to figure out exactly what happened inside that house and which Horsch may have been responsible for what.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_00: As a quick note, this investigation is very much ongoing.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_00: Eugene Horsch has not been charged with murdering or harming any of the missing women that we're talking about today.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_00: His father, Raymond, died in 2025 and obviously can't answer any of the questions investigators now have about him.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_00: There are also still missing people, unidentified materials, and an absolutely enormous amount of digital evidence police haven't even finished reviewing yet.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_00: So we are going over what investigators do know right now.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_00: And before we get into it, a quick warning.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_00: This case involves extremely disturbing allegations of violence against women, sexualized violence, murder, and possible disposal of human remains.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_00: Some of these details are incredibly graphic and upsetting, so please listen with caution.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_00: On the morning of June 19th, 2026, a U.S.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_00: park ranger was patrolling near Independence Hall in Philadelphia when he noticed a black BMW stopped in a restricted area.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_00: The ranger approached the vehicle and almost immediately something felt off.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_00: There was a woman inside the car with 44-year-old Eugene Albert Horsch.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_00: According to police records, the ranger heard the woman say something along the lines of, You're going to hurt me.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_00: The ranger also noticed what appeared to be drug paraphernalia inside the vehicle.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_00: So he asked both of them for identification.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_00: And this is where the story goes from routine to something much, much bigger.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_00: The woman handed him her ID.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_00: The photograph was hers, but the identity, the name on that ID, was not hers.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_00: The name on that ID was Blair Tanzelli, and Blair Tanzelli was a missing woman.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_00: She had reportedly last been seen in 2022 and was reported missing in February 2023.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_00: The woman sitting in Eugene Horsch's car was not Blair.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_00: She would later tell investigators that she didn't even know Blair and hadn't known that Blair was missing.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_00: She said Eugene had made the fake ID for her and told her to use it if she was ever stopped by the police.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_00: She reportedly had outstanding warrants and did not want to use her real ID.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_00: But investigators now had a very obvious question.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_00: How the hell did Eugene Horsch have enough of a missing woman's personal information to create a very convincing fake ID in her name?
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_00: And it was about to get even stranger.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_00: When Eugene was asked to get out of the car, the ranger found scissors, a switchblade, and a glass drug pipe on his person.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_00: Officers searched the car.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_00: Underneath the floorboards, they found two loaded firearms.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_00: Eugene was a convicted felon.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_00: He was not legally allowed to possess any firearms.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_00: Police also reported finding cocaine, fentanyl, marijuana, additional knives, a collapsible baton, and get this a cattle prod.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_00: Like, what the fuck, y'all?
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_00: And then they found another fake identity.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_00: Except this one was Eugene's.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_00: Investigators recovered fraudulent federal law enforcement credentials identifying Eugene as a DEA agent under another name.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_00: Later, authorities would also recover fraudulent credentials purporting Eugene to be an agent from the FBI.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_00: So now we have a convicted felon sitting in a BMW with drugs, loaded guns, other weapons, fake federal credentials, and a woman using the identity of another woman who had disappeared years earlier.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I don't know if I've ever seen this many red flags at once in my life.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_00: And at this point, investigators understandably wanted to know what the hell was happening at Eugene Horsch's house.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_00: The woman with Eugene began talking to investigators, and what she told them gave police even more reason to be concerned.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_00: She told investigators she had spent time at Eugene's home on West Shoe Avenue in Philadelphia, and there was one part of that house she was particularly afraid of, the basement.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_00: She told investigators that Eugene had made disturbing comments about hurting people, and those comments left her terrified.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_00: She also said Eugene claimed to know what chemicals could be used to break down a human body until the remains were small enough to be, and I wish I were making this up, flushed down a toilet.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_00: So of course, with all this, investigators obtained a search warrant, quick, fast, and in a hurry.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_00: And once they started searching the house, this investigation exploded.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_00: Inside, authorities found more illegal firearms and ammunition.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_00: They found evidence of a large marijuana growing operation.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_00: They found chemicals, bottles of unidentified liquids, hidden compartments.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_00: One was reportedly concealed inside a hollowed-out staircase, and I just shudder to think about why somebody would need something like that.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_00: They also found a 55-gallon drum connected to water lines leading toward a hole in the ground.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_00: They found more than 20 containers holding unknown chemicals or oily substances that required additional testing.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_00: They found bank cards belonging to missing woman, Blair Tanzelli.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_00: They found additional fake IDs in Blair's name.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_00: They found a woman's death certificate.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_00: They found five urns containing what appeared to be cremated remains.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_00: At least one was believed to contain the remains of a member of the Horses family, but the others are still unknown.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_00: They also found a handwritten letter, and that letter referenced serial killer Ted Bundy and described acts of extreme violence.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_00: The author wrote about preparing in advance for someone to arrive, having a large zip tie ready, and having a drum set up.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_00: And whoever wrote it described enjoying what happened.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_00: Police have not publicly established who wrote that letter or whether it described a real event rather than fiction.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_00: And that distinction becomes very important once you learn exactly who Eugene's father was.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_00: His father was Raymond Charles Horsch, better known as R.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_00: C.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_00: And Raymond's background is freaking bizarre.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_00: He was a filmmaker, photographer, and writer who spent decades working in pornography and erotic art.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_00: He also had an extensive criminal history.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_00: Over the years, Raymond had been involved in counterfeiting, illegal drug manufacturing, and identity fraud.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_00: At one point, he even fled the United States to evade police and assumed the identity of Dr.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_00: Stanley Eugene Stokowski, a real California chemist with a Stanford doctorate.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_00: He then moved to New Zealand, produced a fake academic transcript in that doctor's name, and actually managed to land a legitimate job as a chemist with an alternative fuels company.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_00: And somehow he kept that whole charade going for years.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_00: It did finally start unraveling in 1984 when Raymond was caught re-entering New Zealand with five fake passports.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_00: Authorities discovered that their supposed Stanford educated chemist was actually an American fugitive using another man's identity.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_00: But Raymond did not stick around to answer any questions about it.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_00: He stole another passport and fled back to the United States.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_00: And the FBI eventually did catch up with him in Florida in 1985.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_00: But I mean, that sounds like a literal movie, y'all.
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_00: Like it doesn't even sound believable.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_00: But the part of Raymond's life that has become extremely important to this particular investigation is his obsession with violent sexual imagery and serial killers.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_00: He frequently recruited women struggling with substance abuse issues from Kensington, an area of Philadelphia notorious for its open-air drug market and severe addiction crisis, to appear in his photography and films.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_00: He offered women money, drugs, or shelter in exchange for posing or performing.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_00: And this makes me so upset how he exploited these vulnerable women.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_00: Like I cannot put into words how much I hate this guy.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_00: And to make matters worse, his work frequently depicted violence against women.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_00: Strangulation, hanging, drowning, bondage, and even death.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, he's the worst.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_00: And Raymond created this persona of himself and his art as an empathetic serial killer.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_00: Someone who killed women battling addiction, supposedly to end their suffering.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_00: So in this disgusting fantasy he created, the man exploiting, abusing, and killing vulnerable women was somehow the hero.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I can't.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_00: I just cannot.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_00: He also wrote novels involving serial killers, and at least some of those writings were presented as semi-autobiographical, which creates a huge problem for investigators now because Raymond intentionally blurred the line between reality and fiction.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_00: He wrote about killing women, he wrote about disposing of bodies.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_00: In one book, he described strangling a woman and then obtaining sodium hydroxide, better known as Lye, to chemically destroy her body in a bathtub.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_00: Remember what investigators found inside the actual house.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_00: Vats and containers of suspicious chemicals, a 55-gallon drum connected to waterline, and a basement so unsettling that the woman found with Eugene had already told investigators she was afraid to even go down there.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_00: And remember what Eugene told this woman, that he knew how certain chemicals could be used to essentially make a body disappear.
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_00: Suddenly, investigators had to ask a horrifying question.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_00: How much of Raymond Horsch's fiction was actually fiction?
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_00: And then police learned about Amy McHale.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_00: Amy had once been married to Raymond.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_00: She was approximately 30 years younger than he was and had struggled with addiction.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_00: Raymond had met her in Kensington.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_00: She eventually appeared in one of his films, and the two married in 2004.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_00: They later divorced.
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_00: Then, in June 2016, Amy disappeared, and according to her family, one of the last places she was known to have been was the Horsh House on West Chu Avenue.
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_00: Her mother said that before Amy even married Raymond, she had made a very ominous statement.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_00: She told her mom that if anything ever happened to her, Raymond was undoubtedly the one responsible.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_00: Raymond was questioned about Amy's disappearance, but no charges were ever filed.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_00: And one important point here, Eugene was incarcerated when Amy disappeared, so there's no way he could have been involved.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_00: So Amy's disappearance brought the focus directly onto Raymond.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_00: But Raymond died in May 2025 at the age of 82.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_00: For years, Amy remained missing.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_00: Then came that bizarre traffic stop in June 2026, and suddenly investigators were looking at Amy's disappearance again after all these years.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_00: Then there was Blair.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_00: Blair Tonzelli worked as a home health care aide for Raymond.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_00: She was last known to have been at the Horse Property in 2022.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_00: Friends reported her missing in February 2023.
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_00: And police have reported that a witness believed Blair and Eugene may have had some kind of disagreement involving money before she disappeared.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_00: And there's something else investigators have now discovered.
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_00: Raymond had photographed Blair.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_00: One photograph of her reportedly appeared on his website.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_00: And in that image, Blair appeared to have a black eye and blood on her lip.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_00: Police have not established when that photograph was taken or what happened to cause those injuries.
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_00: But now think about how this investigation started.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_00: Three years after Blair was last seen at the Horsh house, another woman was sitting inside Eugene Horsch's car using Blair's identity.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_00: And Blair's actual bank card and additional fake IDs bearing her name were allegedly sitting inside the Horsh house.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_00: Blair is still missing.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_00: So is Amy.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_00: And then investigators started going through the computers.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_00: Police recovered approximately 50 hard drives and other electronic devices from the property.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_00: And what was found on them is staggering.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_00: More than 600,000 images, around 70,000 videos, and more than 10,000 pages of writings, manuscripts, and drawings.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_00: Investigators have said reviewing all of this could take months.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_00: And in August, while going through just a fraction of that material, investigators made a horrifying discovery.
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_00: They found images of two additional missing women, Maribelle Friss and Gabrielle Amarando.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_00: Mirabel was 27 when she disappeared in 2018.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_00: Gabrielle was 22 when she disappeared in 2012.
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_00: Neither woman had previously been publicly connected to the Horsch investigation.
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_00: Police say the recovered materials appeared to show both women alive inside the Chew Avenue home.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_00: And then there are later images of the women appearing to be deceased.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_00: Police described the material as graphic and dark.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_00: Their bodies have never been recovered.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_00: Investigators have not publicly established exactly how either woman died or what happened to their remains.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_00: But officials said that if the images are authentic and unaltered, the medical examiner believes the women depicted in them are deceased.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_00: And here's the part that makes this investigation even more overwhelming.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_00: At the time police announced this discovery, they estimated that they had only reviewed about 5% of the digital material.
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_00: Five percent.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_00: Then on August 28th, another major development was reported.
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_00: According to law enforcement sources speaking to the Philadelphia Inquirer, investigators found video footage that they believe shows Raymond Horsch killing a woman.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_00: Not staged violence, not one of his written fantasies.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_00: Investigators reportedly believe the footage shows Raymond strangling a woman inside the Chew Avenue home.
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_00: Police have not publicly identified her.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_00: Sources said a relative has been notified.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_00: Her body has not been found.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_00: And investigators are still working with forensic experts to authenticate the enormous amount of material recovered from the house.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_00: But if that video is what investigators believe it is, this case changes dramatically.
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_00: Because now we're no longer simply talking about a bizarre man whose art centered around fantasies of murdering women.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_00: Police may have actually recovered evidence of Raymond Horsch committing a murder on camera.
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_00: And investigators believe there could be even more women connected to this house.
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_00: So as of right now, here is where the investigation stands.
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_00: Amy McHale and Blair Tanzelli are still missing.
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_00: Police have recovered images that they believe show missing women, Maribel Fress and Gabrielle Amarando, deceased inside the home.
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_00: And investigators have reportedly recovered video they believe shows Raymond Horse strangling another currently unidentified woman.
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_00: No bodies connected to those suspected deaths have been recovered from the property.
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_00: Authorities even excavated portions of the yard and removed part of a pipe for forensic testing.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_00: Early in the investigation, police believe they may have discovered a significant amount of blood inside the house.
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_00: Subsequent testing determined that material was not blood, and testing reported so far has not found Blair Tonzelli or Amy McHale's DNA in the samples investigators have examined.
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_00: The urns were also investigated, but authorities have not announced that they contain any murder victims.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_00: And again, Eugene Horsh has not been charged with murder.
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_00: He remains in federal custody on charges involving illegal firearms and fraudulent federal law enforcement credentials.
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_00: He has not been charged in connection with the deaths or disappearances of any of these women.
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_00: Raymond Horsh is dead, and police are now left with hundreds of thousands of photographs, tens of thousands of videos, thousands of pages of writing, and decades of Raymond's work to examine.
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_00: They essentially have to determine piece by piece what was pornography, what was fantasy, what was staged, and what may have documented something horrifyingly real.
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_00: And considering how little of this evidence investigators have actually been able to review so far, I don't think we're anywhere close to knowing the full story of what happened inside 417 West Chu Avenue.
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_00: And I just can't stop thinking about the women at the center of this case and their families and their loved ones.
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_00: I can't imagine getting the news that your daughter or your sister or your friend may have been the victim of something like this.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_00: And there's still so much that we just don't know.
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_00: Some of these families have already been waiting years for answers, and now they're left waiting again, hoping investigators can finally give them some clarity and hopefully some kind of closure.
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_00: So I will continue following this case and I'm sure we'll do a deep dive eventually.
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_00: If y'all want one, just let us know.
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_00: And I know this was a really grim one, you guys.
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_00: So thank you for hanging in there with me.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_00: Hopefully, next time I pop into your feed for an In the Headlines episode, it won't be for something so horrifying.
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_00: Until then, take care of yourselves, take care of each other, and remember be divas, not deadly.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_00: Bye.