What started with a poorly parked BMW has ended up becoming an investigation into seven missing women in Philadelphia who may have been murdered. The police have linked their cases to a house where they found more than a million photographs and videos, as well as weapons, drugs, fake police credentials, and five urns with cremated remains. But investigators have warned that they have not yet found any physical evidence to confirm that a homicide was committed in the house, the BBC reported Thursday night.
Read more Ayuso disowns the penthouse file: “I don’t want to know anything about that story”
The investigation began on June 19, when a security guard found Eugene Horsch, 44, in a car parked in an area reserved for law enforcement. Weapons, drugs, and fake DEA and FBI credentials with Horsch’s photo were also found in the vehicle. The woman accompanying him carried an ID with her own photo but under another person’s name: Blair Tonzelli, missing since 2023.
Following that discovery, officers searched the house Horsch inherited from his father, Raymond R. C. Horsch, who died last year at age 82 in a nursing home. There they found the digital archive, a basement with chemicals and a 208-liter drum connected to the pipes, as well as the urns. In the images, officers identified 58 people, almost all women. So far, they have interviewed 16, have 25 more pending, and know that at least ten later died of overdoses under circumstances unrelated to the house. But the most worrying fact is that there are seven women who have not been heard from. Among them are Raymond Horsch’s ex-wife, Amy McHale, missing since 2016; Gabrielle Amarando, missing since 2012; Maribel Fresses and Nicole Fusaro, missing since 2018; and Tonzelli herself, according to the count by the TV channel 6ABC.
Horsch’s father was a porn film director and shot gore-themed movies in that same house, as well as publishing sadomasochistic books, CNN reports. For example, one of the videos, dated 2017, shows Raymond Horsch immobilizing a 27-year-old woman and placing a gag on her neck until she loses consciousness.
Officers do not yet know how many scenes in the found files are fiction and how many are real crimes. The FBI is helping to examine the digital material, but only about 30% has been completed.
The Medical Examiner’s Office has reviewed the images and concluded that the women appearing in them are dead, “provided it is proven that the recordings are authentic,” according to local media NBC10.
So far, the son, who remains in federal custody for weapons and false documentation-related crimes, has not been charged with anything related to the disappearance of these women and does not appear in any of the videos reviewed so far, according to CBS.
Read more Germany and the frugals flatly reject the Spanish proposal for the European budget
