On June 19, 2026, a federal park ranger stopped a BMW on the 600 block of Market Street in Philadelphia's Old City. The driver was Eugene Albert Horsch, forty-four. He was carrying credentials identifying him as a federal law enforcement officer and a DEA agent, and a woman in the car, whom police have not named, handed over identification belonging to a woman who had been missing since 2023. The stop led police to his home at 417 West Chew Avenue, in the Olney section of the city, and to one of the largest missing-persons investigations in Philadelphia's recent history.
The house had belonged to his father, Raymond "R.C." Horsch, a self-described pornographer and convicted felon, who transferred it to Eugene in 2006, went on living there, and died in May 2025. Three days after the father's death a fire broke out in a second-floor bedroom, and the police who responded found firearms and a marijuana-growing operation; Eugene was jailed again. His own record already included a conviction for possession with intent to distribute a controlled substance, with a prison term of two to four years, and a negotiated guilty plea in a 2025 Philadelphia drug case for which Judge Zachary C. Shaffer sentenced him to three years of probation. He was arrested again in March 2026, accused of stabbing a man in the stomach during a dispute over a woman at Eighth and Market Streets.
The searches of the Chew Avenue house after the June stop turned up drugs, chemicals, guns, fake FBI and DEA credentials, and five urns believed to contain human remains. Hard drives held about 600,000 images and 70,000 videos, and the FBI took on more than a million files from father and son. In August police said the material appeared to show two missing women, Maribel Fresses and Gabrielle Amarando, alive and later dead. In September they said a video appeared to show Raymond Horsch strangling a woman with a zip tie, and her family identified her as Nicole Fusaro, who disappeared in 2018. Police have said they believe five women connected to the father are dead. No body has been found, and they have not confirmed that anyone died in the house.
Police have said some of the videos appear to involve Raymond Horsch rather than his son, and they have declined to say whether they believe either man was involved in the women's presumed deaths. Eugene Horsch has not been charged with any offense related to any of the missing women or any death.
What he was charged with came from the stop. Pennsylvania filed five state charges and withdrew them on August 6, 2026, as federal prosecutors took over, and a federal grand jury indicted him on counts of possessing a firearm as a felon and possessing an unlawfully produced document and authentication feature. After his arrest his lawyer, Jerome Brown, said he had no knowledge of what was in the basement of the house, and that writings found there referring to Ted Bundy belonged to his father. His federal trial, set for March 22, was postponed to at least March 2027, and he was held in federal custody in the meantime.