Philadelphia ‘House of Horrors’ Search Focuses on 7 Missing Women

An ongoing, large-scale investigation into a Philadelphia home authorities say is connected to at least seven missing women began with a routine traffic stop in June 2026.

On June 19 on Independence Mall, a park ranger reportedly noticed something suspicious involving a man, later identified as Eugene Horsch, and a publicly unidentified woman while they were in a diagonally parked BMW near 6th and Market Streets.

The park ranger told police that he heard the woman, who turned out to be Eugene’s girlfriend, saying “You’re going to hurt me.” Eugene and the woman were suspected of doing drugs, so police searched his car and found crack cocaine and two guns, a .40 caliber pistol and .38 Special revolver, according to an arrest affidavit.

Eugene, according to police, also had fake Drug Enforcement Administration credentials in the trunk of his car. The woman then gave police identification for Blair Tonzelli, who was reported missing in 2023 at the age of 27. That woman, who was not Tonzelli, told police later that Eugene gave her the ID. Court documents identify the woman as A.T.

The stop triggered police to request and obtain multiple search warrants for the home Eugene used to share with his father, Raymond "R.C." Horsch, who died in May 2025, at 417 West Chew Ave. in the Olney neighborhood. When police got to the house, they noted boarded-up windows and multiple security cameras outside.

During the initial search, they found several hidden spaces containing chemicals, a 55-gallon drum connected to hoses and other piping, a small marijuana operation and 120 pieces of ballistic evidence, authorities said. They also found a fake FBI badge and five urns containing cremated remains: One urn held R.C.’s remains, another held a relative’s and a third held a friend’s. The remains in the other two urns remain unidentified.

Police from Philadelphia’s homicide division and the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives searched the house a second time on June 25, 2026, and found what they believe is a home lab with various containers of an unknown oily substance that is still being tested. On June 27, police asked the FBI Evidence Recovery Team to process the lab, containers and other digital evidence, Philadelphia Police Commissioner Kevin Bethel told reporters.

Since then, more than 95 search warrants have been issued on the home. Police have had K9 teams search the property and have removed sewer lines. A computer forensic lab also reviewed the digital evidence from the house, with investigators there viewing at least 600,000 images, 70,000 videos and more than 10,000 pages of drawings and writings, though authorities say these represented only 5% of the total digital evidence. Police were able to identify multiple missing women within the photos and videos.

A.T. has not been charged with any crimes. Eugene faces federal charges for possession of a firearm by a felon and possession of an unlawfully produced document and authentication feature.

Eugene has not been charged in connection to any of the missing women, but investigators believe his father, R.C., may have been a serial killer, multiple law enforcement sources told CBS News Philadelphia. At least seven missing women have been linked to the house, and at least five of them are feared dead. Police also said they watched a video where R.C. allegedly strangled a woman with a zip tie.

R.C. was an erotic filmmaker whose movies featured violence against women, and he often recruited women who struggled with addiction to appear in the films, according to reporting by The Philadelphia Inquirer. R.C. also sold erotic novels, which have since been scrubbed from Amazon’s website.

According to the Inquirer’s investigation, R.C. had access to a funeral home that was closed from 2005 to 2007 after the former operators pleaded guilty to selling more than 240 corpses to a biomedical tissue company. R.C. was not named in the investigation, but sources told the newspaper that he visited the crematorium to film and photograph bodies.

Within the thousands of pieces of digital evidence, police found videos depicting two women inside the home, with some videos showing them alive and others showing them appearing to be unconscious.

The women were identified as Gabrielle Amarando and Maribel Fresses. Fresses was 27 when she disappeared in February 2018, and Amarando has been missing since September 2012, when she was 22. Neither of them has been found.

Philadelphia Police Inspector Raymond Evers said there are some people seen in the videos and digital evidence who are alive, but others who are still missing, such as Fresses and Amarando. Police said they have identified at least 58 people from these images and have interviewed some of them.

Another woman they identified and believe is deceased is Nicole Fusaro, who disappeared in 2018 at 27. They think she is the woman R.C. was seen strangling in a video.

Amy McHale has also been connected to the house; she disappeared in 2016 at age 44 and was previously married to R.C. Blair Tonzelli, whose ID was found on the woman arrested with Eugene, has also not been found.

Additionally, police have identified a 25-year-old woman from the video evidence; they spoke with her family but have not publicly released her name. There is also another woman they have not been able to identify.

Police excavated the backyard of the Olney home using heavy equipment, finding numerous animal bones but, apart from what was found in the urns, no human remains anywhere on the property.

They also sprayed a chemical called luminol, which is used to find small traces of blood that have been cleaned up, throughout the home and confirmed they found DNA, which is being tested.

Eugene’s trial has been postponed until March 2027.