Save Our Streets: House of Horrors

When the story first broke, few, if any, knew what would follow. For years, neighbors say this home on Chew Avenue in Olney appeared to be just another house on a quiet street. Police say this investigation revolves around this man, 44-year-old Eugene Horsch. A man arrested last week for weapons and guns charges, stemming from a fight in a car with a woman on 6th and Market. That then led them to the house on the 400 block of West Chew Avenue. The further search of this property produced some other things that we have a lot of questions about. But it didn't take long for what appeared to be a fairly routine police stop to prove to be anything but routine. There were in the basement area of this property chemicals, various chemicals in bottles. In addition to more guns and ammunition, investigators say they found a lot of chemicals they believe most likely to make drugs and a 55-gallon drum. We're going to be careful what we have and use caution. But it's definitely a strange setup. There's hoses coming from barrels and things like that. So enough to pique our interest, enough to move back and let our experts come in and help. It's still upsetting to people who live nearby, though, because they're still not sure exactly what was going on inside this house it's just a bad look it makes you worry as a neighbor yourself like damn what's going on around here it was june when the investigation into the so-called house of horrors began to gain momentum right now Eugene Horsch is being held on federal charges for illegally possessing a weapon and an unlawfully produced document today philadelphia police announcing they've launched a death investigation. We all came together just to make sure that neighbors understood that this is an ongoing investigation. The home connected to Eugene Horsch and his late father, Raymond R.C. Horsch, is at the center of an investigation. And it's been a nearly constant presence in the news since. Law enforcement sources tell me investigators will be looking at everything inside the home. The backyard shed, furniture, flooring, drywall. Investigators will remove anything that may have forensic evidence. So let's take a look at how the Horsch investigation began, where it currently stands, and where it may be headed. Constant movement filling the 400 block of West Chew Avenue in Olney, the center of a major police investigation. It's kind of shocking, you know what I mean? You never know what's next door around the corner. Around this corner is the home of 44-year-old Eugene Horsch. police can be seen back in the area today excavating the property SkyFox over the scene showing crews digging underground we were there as officials were pulling out various items including what appears to be piping in Eugene Horsch was arrested by police on weapons and gun charges stemming from a fight and a car with a woman on 6th and Market in Center City there police say they found inside the vehicle drugs two loaded guns and a fake DEA badge the investigation has since expanded to possibly involve at least two missing persons cases. At this time, police have not found any bodies in the home, but all these discoveries have been disturbing for the neighborhood. I've got grandkids that live around here. I walk around here every day and I would never know that I'm walking past something that's dangerous. What can you expect from the people around you? You never know what they're capable of. As police continue with their investigation, many in the area are just waiting for the day It will end, and they'll get answers. I'm really anxious to know or curious to find out what the end result is of all this, what the investigators are gonna find. You know, it's just, we're just all in limbo here, just waiting for a result. So at this point in time, we still do not know exactly what they were doing or what they were searching for. We live in a movie scene. Like, this is the type of stuff you see in movies, the drugs, the money, the all that. I've seen him multiple times. I come out this way to go up Fifth Street. obviously. He'll look at me, probably wave or something, but I don't got good vision. So I'll probably look at him and like, you know, go about my day. But he come outside, water his plants. I just, I thought he was a normal guy. Over the last two days, investigators and water department crews have been on scene excavating pipes connected to the home and using cameras searching for possible evidence. But after five weeks, authorities say they're wrapping up their investigation. A hopeful sign for people in the neighborhood who are anxious for more information to come out. I'm very interested. That's why I was standing over here being nosy because I want to know what is going on on this block that I grew up on. We never know what people are doing in their homes. I don't put nothing past people. He did look a little creepy. Police say a passenger in Horsh's car provided a fake ID with the name of Blair Tanzeli, a local woman who remains missing. During the debriefing process, the name Blair Tanzeli came up again. We learned through that debriefing process that we may never see her again. Criminal defense attorney Shaka Johnson giving us insight into where investigators might go from here based on newly discovered evidence. They're looking in some other places with hopes of finding microscopic bone, with hopes of finding dental matter, with hopes of finding human tissue. Nicholas Nagel was five years old the last time he saw his biological mother, Blair Tanzeli. Blair was reported missing in 2023 when Nicholas was 17. Since then, he's been trying to piece together what happened to his mother. I already knew that something probably crazy happened. And I've told people this before, but this is way crazier than I expected. Nicholas says he started to realize his mom could be connected to the Horsch family after seeing a news report about Eugene Horsch. Blair had also worked as a caretaker for Raymond Horsch. They've served over 95 search warrants on his house and evidence in it. The amount of information and digital evidence that we got was astonishing. So far, investigators say they have not found any digital evidence in the home showing Tanzelli, or Amy McHale, who was previously married to Horsch's late father and has been missing since 2016. But there is still a lot of work to do. A major development in the investigation of 44-year-old Eugene Horsch. Police announced a search of the first hard drive recovered from the home, found images and videos depicting the bodies of two women. Police say that video evidence shows the two women alive and then deceased, but not how they died. This is new territory for the homicide unit. Philadelphia. Usually when we have a homicide investigation, we have a body, we have body parts. This time we do not. Sources say their injuries were visible, but police have not found their bodies. And as a result, the medical examiner's office cannot provide a death certificate or official cause of death. They've identified the women as 27-year-old Maribel Fresches, who was last seen in 2018. She's pictured here on NamUs, the National Missing an unidentified person system, and 22-year-old Gabrielle Amarando. From the small portion of videos that we saw, we know some people are alive and they've been interviewed. Some people are still missing. The investigators in that investigative group, we have to look over 600,000 images, 70,000 videos, and over 10,000 pages of writings, manuscripts, and drawings. We have to review and organize those. Why do I say this? This investigation will take time. Investigators are now shedding more light on Raymond Horsh's past. According to the Philadelphia Inquirer, he allegedly gave Kensington crematorium employees drugs and money in exchange for access to film and photograph human remains. For Nicholas, that only deepens the questions about his mother's disappearance. I just think you should be focused and asking yourself who else was involved with this and why was he So easily able to continue to get away with it It's been referred to as the house of horrors. And as you just saw the story continues to evolve I'm Bill Anderson And although our entire team has been following this day to day week to week month to month There are a lot of behind the scenes questions, concerns, issues that we just didn't have the time or ability to share with you. Until now, we asked some of our team to sit down, share their experiences, the things that impacted them, the things that they just wish they had more time to share. When you're covering it in the market that you work in and in your community, I think it hits different. but we know that they also made their way to the basement. This isn't just, you know, a podcast where it seems far away and almost outlandish in a way. We got to see some of what investigators were bringing outside the home. This is real. This is in our community. It's impacting real people. There are real families and real women that are missing, and a lot of families that are struggling with that. They've seen him. They've walked by him. They got a weird feeling. They would tell their kids not to go near there. Sometimes they'd hear things, and I think they still thought, Oh, it's just, you know, they never, ever, ever imagine, ever in a million years, imagine what's actually happening. While this has been a disruption, obviously, and there's a lot of tension and they're seeing us out there a lot. And I'm sure that that can be irritating. I think they also want to, you know, hear what actually happened there. They want to get to the bottom of it. They will be bringing heavy machinery to the property to excavate. That means police out there more often than they were. I think they're OK with it in some way just because they too want to get to the bottom of what happened. Joseph Giacalone is a retired NYPD sergeant and commanding officer of the Bronx Cold Case Unit. Not even in New York City have I seen a case or encountered anything like this where you could have somebody who was possibly dissolving bodies and all the other things that go along with it. I think just hearing about what they found and what the house was like, we hear about these searches and these investigations so often. I just never heard about investigators uncovering the amount of what they did. 58 people were identified in these images that we've seen. The way they were describing what they were seeing in these pictures and videos is not a conversation that I've ever had with law enforcement before. I think it was uncharted territory even for them. Make you think before you walk anywhere and all that, that the crime can be right close, like so close to you. I'm just, it's hard to put the words together. The nature of what they were viewing, how dark it was. To hear people that have been homicide investigators and I've seen things that none of us can imagine for years and years and years and to still be able to say that this is some of the darkest stuff they've seen, I think that says something. We have a duty to go through the million videos. People want more information, and I think sometimes it's hard knowing that you can answer certain questions, but there's also some details that are just too graphic to put out there. There were, in the basement area of this property, chemicals. I just initially thought, I mean, these poor women and their families, and I know some of their families have heard some of these details from investigators. I think closure is important in some of the families. We, from the small portion of videos that we saw, we know some people are alive. These are human beings and their families are watching and there are a lot of families that just want to close this chapter and move on. What is being viewed in these videos and pictures is what R.C. Horsch, that's what he dedicated his life to. It was art for him. And police have outwardly said, we're still trying to determine what is art and what is real. There is a possibility none of it was real. I mean, there is a possibility police won't find anything. And I keep thinking, too, about what will be next for this house and the neighborhood after. I mean, there's no way that that property can stand the way, I feel like it has to come down. If it rebuilds, like, what does that look like? Would anyone want to move there? I just think it's going to be a mark in the neighborhood forever. Welcome back to our House of Horrors special. Now, as you heard from Kelly Rule, representing what most of our team felt, this has been an unbelievable and challenging investigation. And some of that goes even beyond the reporters and the team on the street. Some of those decisions come back to the newsroom, our legal team, our editorial team. And so we asked our managing editor to sit down and explain just what goes in into covering a story of this death. So I'm sitting at home. It was a Thursday, 10 p.m., and my Citizen app goes off and says, nine bodies and a house in Chew Avenue. And I look at it, and I said to myself, no way, if true. And I couldn't find anything that was corroborating it. Breaking tonight. And so we put a reporter on it then. The FBI now involved in investigation in Albany. And then trying to confirm all the things that you'd heard. Now, what started with an arrest last Friday at 6 at Market after a man and woman were fighting in a car ended here on Chew Avenue. Nine bodies in a house in Philadelphia. If that was actually happening, if these remains were discovered, that would be a huge scene. You know, thousands of flashing lights, a million cop cars. It wasn't adding up. There was something about it that was like, what, and, like, where are you getting this? search of this property, produce some other things. When Philadelphia police called a press conference, Philadelphia police don't call a press conference anymore unless they know they're giving us information for public safety or they're telling us about an arrest that they made along with the DA. Like, for those of us who've been doing this for a little while, police information has changed. While searching the first hard drive. Police don't really need us anymore the way that they used to. We're here in the interest of the public and cases of public interest, et cetera. But where we come into play is in the criminal indictment. A big wake-up call in this story for me was that I was scrolling through TikTok and a pretty popular true crime TikToker was posting about it and talking about what she'd uncovered in her investigation. Chandling, Philadelphia. I had been to the courthouse three times trying to get documents in this case. Like I had been there myself for whatever reason was thwarted and then got what I could get. And it was really not that substantive. And to hear like a TikToker who doesn't live here, really just regurgitating something that like, you know, our colleagues, our competition, who've done like a great job in this story or have, you know, done a lot of digging. But then it's up to the viewer or the consumer to try to figure out like, is this true? Or try to get to the bottom of that information. really unfortunately a challenge for those of us who do this for a living because you know we need two sources. We have to attribute it. What can we verify? Do we have a good source? Do we have another good source who can verify it? What have we observed? What's in the court documents? What's in the L&I about the home? It's an art as part of our vocation as journalists. You develop over time different techniques you have to get information and then try to verify it. Law enforcement sources tell me another like really challenging thing about this story is you know there's also an aspect of it that touches on Kensington. It touches on this big issue that we've had in Philadelphia. This community that you know has like some very real challenges that there are people who spend time in Kensington who are in, you know, it's famously by the New York Times been called the Walmart of drugs. And so like people who are struggling with addiction or struggling with their own personal issues and lose contact with family, you know, that is like not unheard of. That's a big aspect of the story also is that it deals with this community that has like some sort of secrecy around it and some like real challenging issues societal issues she was such a kind-hearted spirit that's like another layer of on this story that makes it challenging to cover challenging for police to get to the bottom of challenging for law enforcement and also kind of compelling because there are so many families out there who are like looking for answers on family members they've lost touch with. I am really curious. This man, Raymond Horsch, who I wouldn't call him a public figure, but certainly had a public persona. He had this porn website, you know, did interviews with podcasters with other outlets in town. And yet he also had a drug bust at his home in Bucks County. Police also came into his house on Chew Avenue. Police said at the last big press conference they had to this date that they questioned him about one of the missing women. I understand it's not the same law enforcement who is talking to him in any one time, but at what point are you like, we keep running into this guy? Maybe that is a sad reality of our city and that we don't understand because we are not in law enforcement and they would never tell us that, that we do end up talking to a lot of the same people and it doesn't necessarily, it's not linear that because we're talking to somebody five times that they're guilty of any one thing. But I'm really curious about that. I'm really curious about what is the process when someone's reported missing in Kensington? How many missing people are reported last seen in Kensington? What's the process for a missing person? And then also if the first word was like nine bodies found in a house, where'd that come from? There are clearly things that they saw in that digital evidence that they thought maybe if we took a piece of this drywall or a piece of this flooring or this furniture that there could be forensic evidence on it. So they are taking everything from what I'm told and the house may be a shell of what it is now and by the time they're done with it. Because as they're strategically getting things, they also may see something that requires a second look. I cannot think of another story we've done that has tentacles into the suburbs, in the city. Again, this community that has been at the center of a lot of our conversations about needing to fix this community that has a lot of social problems or societal problems, Kensington. I've never covered anything like this and I almost hope to not cover anything like this again because it's scary and it's upsetting and I think too you know there's such a desire for true crime I'm a true crime junkie there's a lot of people that are you know the feds are involved local law enforcement is involved there is this really like bizarre character I don't think that I'm misrepresenting Raymond Horse is saying he's a bizarre character, look at the pictures, the self-portraits that he put in Wikipedia. This is real life for everybody, so that's different. And I do think, I've heard from people and friends that watch what I do, you know, here and there, but they are interested and want to know what's going on more than they have ever been in any other stories that I've covered. I can't think of anything that has had tentacles in so many different aspects of Philadelphia. It's going to be some time. This is not over.