A Philadelphia man whose property is being searched for clues in the disappearances of at least four women once bragged on a podcast that he was a ‘natural’ at playing a ‘perverted serial killer.’
Raymond ‘R.C.’ Horsch made the disturbing comments in a 2013 podcast interview, more than a decade before police descended on the home he shared with his son in the city’s Olney neighborhood.
Investigators are now examining hundreds of thousands of photographs and videos recovered from the property as they try to determine what happened to women who disappeared after having personal ties to Horsch.
Two of those women are now believed to be dead after investigators allegedly discovered images and videos appearing to show them alive inside the property and later deceased.
Their bodies have not been recovered and authorities have not said how they died.
Another missing woman, Blair Tonzelli, 35, was allegedly featured nude on Horsch’s pornographic website with what appeared to be a black eye and blood running from her lip.
Horsch, who died last year at the age of 82 and was never charged in connection with any of the disappearances, had spent decades producing adult films, photographs and books containing disturbing and violent themes.
But it is his own words from a December 2013 episode of The Rialto Report that have now taken on a chilling new significance.
Raymond ‘R.C.’ Horsch once said he was a ‘natural’ at playing a ‘perverted serial killer’ during a 2013 podcast interview. Horsch lived at the Philadelphia home now being investigated in connection with at least four missing women who had personal ties to him
Eugene Albert Horsch, Horsch’s 44-year-old son, remains in federal custody on a firearms charge but has not been charged with harming any of the missing women
‘I, of course, was kind of a natural as a perverted serial killer, wasn’t much of a stretch at all,’ Horsch said while discussing his roles in adult movies.
‘I tend to play the part, or play up the part of being a villain, yeah,’ he continued.
‘I mean, I tend to try to get some mileage out of it. I figure why not – I’m not getting any mileage out of anything else.’
The comments have resurfaced as Philadelphia police undertake the task of examining material seized from Horsch’s home at on West Chew Avenue.
Authorities have stressed that no human remains have been recovered from the property and nobody has been charged with killing any of the missing women.
The disturbing investigation encompasses a vast archive of Horsch’s photographs, videos and writings along with extraordinary claims he made in books about strangling a woman and chemically breaking down her body in the basement of a home.
Investigators are now combing through an enormous trove of material associated with him as they attempt to distinguish fantasy and staged pornography from potential evidence about what happened to real women who vanished.
The case has taken on an even more disturbing dimension because one of those women, Tonzelli, was pictured nude and apparently injured on Horsch’s erotic website.
Workers and police removed pipes and debris while searching Eugene Horsch’s Philadelphia home on July 22
Blair Tonzelli was reported missing in February 2023 after friends said she was last seen at Raymond Horsch’s Philadelphia home the previous summer
Tonzelli, 35, was reported missing in February 2023 after friends said she had last been seen the previous summer at Horsch’s Olney home.
Yet a photograph of Tonzelli remained prominently displayed on his website for months after she was reported missing, according to archived records reviewed by the Philadelphia Inquirer.
The image allegedly showed the naked woman looking toward the camera with what appeared to be a black eye and blood running from her lower lip.
It is not known when the photograph was taken, how Tonzelli sustained the apparent injuries or whether the injuries were genuine or staged for Horsch’s work.
An archived version of the website allegedly showed the picture still being displayed in September 2023 – seven months after Tonzelli was reported missing.
The Inquirer reported that Horsch had uploaded the image around 2020 after meeting Tonzelli in Philadelphia’s Kensington neighborhood and continued to use it as one of his site’s main images for years.
The website has since been taken offline.
Police are now examining Horsch’s sprawling archive for clues about Tonzelli and other missing women connected to him.
Philadelphia Police Inspector Raymond Evers said during an August 12 briefing that investigators recovered approximately 600,000 images, 70,000 videos and more than 10,000 pages of writings, manuscripts and drawings from digital devices found at the property, according to CBS News Philadelphia.
Police and FBI investigators excavated Eugene Horsch’s Philadelphia home for a second time on July 23
Amy McHale, Horsch’s former wife and film collaborator, was last seen at the Olney property in 2016 and remains missing
At that point, detectives had managed to examine only around five to seven percent of the staggering amount of material.
Evers described what they were finding as ‘graphic and dark.’
And investigators say some of the material appears to have revealed the fate of two women who vanished years ago.
While examining the first hard drive, police found photographs and videos that appeared to show two missing women alive inside the property — and later dead.
Police identified them as Gabrielle Amarando, who disappeared in September 2012 at age 22, and Maribel Fresses, who was last seen in February 2018 at age 27.
Investigators now believe both women are dead, although their bodies have not been recovered.
Without remains, the medical examiner has been unable to determine precisely when, where or how either woman died.
Authorities have not established publicly whether the women were killed, suffered fatal overdoses or died through some other means.
No one has been charged in connection with their disappearances or suspected deaths.
Investigators are also taking another look at the disappearance of Horsch’s former wife and onetime film collaborator Amy McHale.
Gabrielle Amarando, who disappeared in 2012 aged 22, allegedly appeared alive and later seemingly dead in footage recovered from the home, police said
Maribel Fresses, who vanished in 2018 aged 27, was also allegedly shown alive and later seemingly dead in material recovered by investigators
McHale, who appeared in Horsch’s films, photographs and music videos, was last seen at the Olney property in 2016.
That means the house is now connected in varying ways to at least four missing women – Tonzelli, McHale, Amarando and Fresses.
Tonzelli remains missing, and police have not publicly said whether she appears in the material so far recovered from Horsch’s hard drives.
Against that backdrop, Horsch’s words from more than a decade ago are now receiving fresh scrutiny.
During The Rialto Report interview, the host raised Horsch’s own description of himself as a sociopath.
‘You mentioned earlier that you consider yourself a sociopath in some ways. What do you mean by that?’ the host asked.
Horsch replied: ‘It goes back as long as I can remember, I do not like society. I do not like civilization.’
Horsch also spoke extensively during the interview about his life, his work in adult films and allegations that he had bought and sold millions of dollars’ worth of narcotics, according to CBS News.
His creative output often ventured into extremely dark territory.
Horsch published adult films, novels and more than a dozen photo books, with his work frequently depicting women in horrific and graphic scenarios.
He maintained that the scenes were staged and consensual.
But Horsch also openly acknowledged recruiting women struggling with drug addiction, offering them drugs or money to participate in his work.
Tonzelli had battled addiction for years before meeting Horsch in Philadelphia’s Kensington neighborhood while she was living at a known drug house, friends told the Inquirer.
An extensive investigation by the newspaper found that Horsch frequently blurred the lines between fact and fiction in his writing, including material about a largely autobiographical serial killer who murdered people suffering from addictions.
Whether such passages were entirely fictional or contained any connection to real events is among the disturbing questions hanging over the investigation.
Police have conducted an extensive search of the property with investigators and FBI personnel excavating portions of the site in July and removing part of a pipe for forensic examination, according to the Inquirer.
Police also tore up sewer lines and removed around 50 containers containing an oily substance for laboratory testing, CBS News Philadelphia reported.
Investigators have also recovered containers holding unidentified substances and chemicals, along with five urns believed to contain cremated remains, illegal weapons and fake federal law-enforcement credentials, according to police.
Authorities have not announced that any of those items have been connected to the missing women.
The sprawling investigation was triggered not by Horsch himself, but by the arrest of his son, Eugene Albert Horsch, 44.
Police encountered Eugene near Independence Hall on June 19 while he was inside a black BMW with a woman who allegedly presented officers with a fake identification card bearing missing woman Blair Tonzelli’s name, according to police records seen by the Inquirer.
The woman later allegedly told investigators that Eugene had created the identification and instructed her to use it if she found herself in trouble.
Police said they also recovered two illegal handguns, knives, drugs and a fraudulent Drug Enforcement Administration badge bearing Eugene’s photograph during the encounter.
The discoveries led investigators back to the Horsch family home.
There, authorities reportedly found additional fake identification bearing Tonzelli’s name as well as one of her bank cards.
Eugene was arrested and remains in federal custody on a firearms charge. CBS reported that he also faces an offense related to false federal credentials.
Philadelphia prosecutors withdrew their local case in August so federal authorities could take over the prosecution, according to the Inquirer.
Eugene has not been charged with harming Tonzelli or any of the other missing women.
