Latest / The Epstein Chronicles / The House on Chew Avenue: Raymond Horsch And The Missing Women (Part 1) (10/5/26)

Transcript

The House on Chew Avenue: Raymond Horsch And The Missing Women (Part 1) (10/5/26) · The Epstein Chronicles

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: What's up everyone and welcome back to the program. There
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: are some houses that become part of a neighborhood. And
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: then there are houses that seem to absorb the stories
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: of everyone who passes through them. From the outside they
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: look ordinary enough. Brick, windows, a front door, cars parked
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: along the street. Nothing that would make you stop and stare.
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: Nothing that would tell you that behind those walls, pieces
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: of different lives exist. may have been intersecting for years
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: without anyone on the outside understanding how or why. This
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: story begins with one of those houses. It also begins
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: with a family whose history stretches across decades of arrests,
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: false identities, disappearances, prison sentences, strange accusations, and questions that
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: never seemed to have complete answers. For years, those questions
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: existed separately. A woman disappears, Then another name surfaces. An
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: old criminal case is forgotten. A strange photograph sits somewhere unseen.
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: A story is told that sounds too bizarre to be true.
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: And then years later, something happens that causes investigators to
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: start looking backward. Not at one incident, not at one person,
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: but at everything. And that's when the old names begin
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: appearing again. Dates that once seemed unrelated suddenly matter. people
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: who had passed through the same orbit begin to take
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: on a different significance. And a place that may have
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: seemed unremarkable for years becomes something entirely different once investigators
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: begin examining what was left behind. There is also another problem.
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: At the center of this story is a man who
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: seemed almost determined to make it difficult for anyone to
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: know when he was telling the truth. He created stories,
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: he created images, he created different versions of himself. He
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: crossed lines between fantasy and reality so often that years later,
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: investigators would be forced to ask one of the most
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: uncomfortable questions imaginable. What if some of the things everyone
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: assumed were fiction were not fiction at all? That question
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: now hangs over a sprawling investigation involving missing people, old
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: criminal records, digital evidence... and a house in Philadelphia that
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: authorities are examining piece by piece. And the deeper investigators
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: have gone, the more complicated the story has become. Because
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: what began as one encounter would eventually lead them back
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: through years of unanswered questions. Questions about who had been
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: inside the house. Questions about who left. Questions about who
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: never came home. And questions about what may have been
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: hiding in plain sight for a very long time. In
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: this episode, we're going inside the story of Raymond R.C. Horsch,
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: Eugene Horsch, and the house on Chew Avenue. And once
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: you understand how all these pieces came together, you may
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: find yourself asking the same questions investigators are asking now.
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: How much of this story was hiding there all along?
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: On West Chew Avenue in Philadelphia, there's a house that
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: investigators now believe is may hold the answers to questions
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: that have haunted several families for years. From the sidewalk,
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: 417 West 2 Avenue does not announce what police say
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: they found inside. There are no warning signs explaining the
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: missing women, the violent photographs, the weapons, the false identification,
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: or the sprawling digital archive hidden within the property. But
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: beginning in June of 2026, investigators started peeling back layers
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: of a story that stretched far beyond one arrest. What
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: began with Eugene Horsch sitting inside a BMW near Independence
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: Mall eventually led federal agents and Philadelphia detectives to his
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: family home in Olney. Waiting for them, there was the
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: residue of another man's life, Eugene's father, Raymond R.C. Horsch.
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: Raymond had been dead for more than a year, but
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: the world he left behind was anything but silent. His
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: computers and storage devices contained more than one million files,
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: many depicting women he had photographed and filmed over decades.
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: Some of those women were missing, some appeared terribly injured,
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: and some investigators believe were photographed after they had died. Suddenly,
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: a house belonging to one Philadelphia family had become the
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: center of an investigation stretching across decades of disappearances, crime, addiction,
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: false identities, and death. The chain reaction began on June 19, 2026,
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: during what initially appeared to be an unusual encounter near
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: Independence Mall. A U.S. Park Police Ranger approached Eugene Horsh's
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: BMW and encountered a woman who reportedly indicated that she
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: was afraid Eugene was going to hurt her. What happened
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: next changed the direction of the entire case. Eugene allegedly
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: presented fraudulent federal law enforcement credentials bearing his photograph and name,
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: Eugene Horsh. Frederick Steiner. Officers searched deeper and allegedly recovered firearms, drugs,
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: weapons with obliterated serial numbers, and additional fraudulent federal material.
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: But one of the most extraordinary discoveries involved the woman
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: sitting with him. She possessed identification bearing the name Blair Tonzelli,
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: yet investigators quickly determined she was not Blair Tonzelli at all.
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: The actual Blair Tonzelli had been missing for years and
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: had once stayed at the Chew Avenue residence. The woman
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: reportedly told investigators that Eugene had given her the identification
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: and that she was frightened of entering the basement of
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: the house. With that revelation, a federal firearms investigation suddenly
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: collided with a missing persons case that had been sitting
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: quietly in Philadelphia for years. The woman's account gave detectives
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: even more reason to look closely at the Chew Avenue property.
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: According to reporting describing her police interview, She alleged that
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: Eugene had spoken about hurting people at the house and
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: had discussed chemicals capable of reducing a human body. Investigators
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: had no way to dismiss statements like that once they
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: knew the identity she carried belonged to a missing woman
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: connected to the property. Search warrants followed, and agents began
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: moving through the house room by room. Eugene himself was
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: ultimately charged federally with being a convicted felon in possession
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: of firearms and and possessing fraudulent federal identification material. Those
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: charges remained separate from the disappearances and apparent deaths that
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: would soon consume the investigation. Police have not accused Eugene
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: of murdering the women whose images were later discovered, but
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: his arrest was the doorway through which authorities finally entered
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: Raymond Horsch's hidden world. The guns, fake credentials, and Tonzelli
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: identification provided investigators with the first thread. And when they
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: pulled it, the history of the house began unraveling. And
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: at the other end of the thread was a man
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: whose criminal record already stretched back more than 50 years.
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: Raymond Horsch had spent much of his adult life moving
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: between crime, prison, deception, reinvention, and aliases. In the early 1970s,
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: his name surfaced in criminal cases involving bad checks and counterfeiting.
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: Federal authorities dismantled a Doylestown counterfeiting operation linked to him
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: in 1974, and Raymond served time in federal prison. Only
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: a few years later, he became involved in a Philadelphia
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: methamphetamine laboratory case and allegedly skipped bail rather than face prosecution.
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: What followed was an extraordinary period in which Raymond disappeared
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: behind the identity of a real California chemist named Stanley
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: Eugene Stokowski. Using that identity, he reportedly obtained employment, claimed
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: academic credentials that were not his, married, and moved internationally.
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: Authorities say that he used multiple fraudulent passports and eventually
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: traveled to New Zealand under the stolen identity. When officials
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: there caught him with false passports in 1984, Raymond fled
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: again before the proceedings could be completed. The FBI finally
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: arrested him in Orlando in 1985 and returned him to Pennsylvania.
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: Long before anyone was searching his Philadelphia house for evidence
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: connected to missing women, Raymond Horsch had already spent years
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: demonstrating how easily he could construct a false life and
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: disappear behind it. His criminal history did not end with
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: his return to the United States. In 2009, police responding
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: to an unrelated call at Raymond's property in Chalfont discovered
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: a large marijuana growing operation. Investigators found approximately 455 marijuana plants,
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: along with two shotguns, and the discovery resulted in another
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: federal prosecution, and Raymond eventually pleaded guilty to three felonies.
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: He received a 54-month federal prison sentence and lost property
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: through forfeiture. Around that same period, another disturbing episode entered
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: the public record through the account of Ashley Rivera. Rivera
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: has said that when she was nine years old, Raymond
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: grabbed her and attempted to pull her toward his vehicle.
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: Reporting indicates that Raymond was initially convicted, received a new trial,
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: and later saw the prosecution dismissed when Rivera's family decided
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: not to subject her to another round of testimony. Whatever
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: the final procedural outcome, Rivera has carried the memory of
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: that encounter into adulthood. It's one more episode in a
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: long history showing that Raymond Horsch was already attracting law
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: enforcement attention decades before detectives ever opened the digital files.
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: But Raymond's criminal record tells only part of the story
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: investigators are now trying to understand. For years, he also
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: built a strange artistic world populated by bondage, drugs, strangulation,
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: apparent corpses, murder fantasies, and women living on society's margins.
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: Raymond photographed and filmed women from Philadelphia, including women struggling
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: with severe addiction and women engaged in survival sex work.
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: He created scenes involving simulated death, drowning, restraint, strangulation, and
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: body disposal. He wrote fiction that wandered deliberately into the
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: territory of serial murder and chemical destruction of human remains.
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: In interviews, he appeared to enjoy presenting himself as dangerous, antisocial,
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: and difficult to separate from the characters he created. That
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: blending of performance and reality is now one of the
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: most important features of the investigation. Detectives know Raymond staged
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: violent scenes for the camera, but they now possess images
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: they believe may show real violence occurring alongside the fantasy.
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: The difference between those two categories could determine whether investigators
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: are examining grotesque theater or the visual record of multiple killings.
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: And for some families, police believe the answer may already
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: be emerging from the faces appearing inside Raymond's archive. All right, folks,
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: we're going to wrap this one up right here. And
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: in the next episode, we'll pick up where we left off.
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: All the information that goes with this episode can be
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: found in the description box.