Inside Philly's "House of Horrors"

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0:48This is like such an aha moment. And just to improve your life. I think talking about this is so incredibly important. Healthful, a new CBS News podcast wherever you get your podcasts. The following episode includes discussions of drug addiction as well as references to violent crime and sexually explicit content. Viewer discretion is advised. We'll have resources at the end of the episode. She really was a great, great grandmother to my children. She was extremely close with my kids. I trusted her with them 100%. They were with her a lot. My mom was really, really smart. And she was really passionate about like the things that she loved. I would have to say I just think that she was full of life, but also full of sadness. Ray, he was a predator.

1:49He ran into her and he took her to the hospital and he stayed with her and he picked her up and brought her home with him. He saw somebody who was really in need and he threw it in. That was Amanda Stouffer and Gloria McHale, the daughter and mother of Amy McHale. I sat down with Amanda and Gloria earlier this year to hear how they've been dealing with Amy's disappearance. She disappeared back in 2016. The family has just started to get some answers on how Amy's disappearance may be tied to the home of her ex-husband, a man named Raymond C. Horsch. According to Amanda, Amy was last heard from in Raymond Horsch's home in the Alney neighborhood of North Philadelphia on West 2 Avenue. Investigators have since learned that this house was linked to the disappearance of seven women, including Amy.

2:48Also, Gabrielle Armando, Maribel Freises, Nicole Fusaro, Blair Tanzelli and two unidentified women. Investigators say they have uncovered some truly disturbing details about the horse home, including five urns that they believe contain human remains, over a million graphic photos and videos, and a letter referencing serial killer Ted Bundy. The house has since been infamously dubbed by neighbors as the Philadelphia House of Horrors. And Philadelphia police are wondering now if they are investigating a possible serial killer. I'm 48 Hours correspondent Anne-Marie Green, and this is Case by Case. And joining me today to break down this chilling evidence surrounding this case is Herman Weisberg.

3:41Herman is a private investigator, a former NYPD detective, and the managing director of Sage Intelligence Group, where he oversees investigations. We've talked before, Herman, so it's really good to have you back here again. Thank you for having me back. I appreciate it. and bring people back around to how we even learned about this so-called house of horrors in Philadelphia. It actually started with a routine traffic stop in June of this year. A National Park ranger approached a black BMW found stopped in a restricted area near the Independence Mall in Philly. And people might know that I live in Philly and this sort of Independence Mall area, it's where the Liberty Bell is located. It is a national park.

4:28You cannot stop at all. I mean, you can stop long enough to let somebody out of a car and that's it. If you linger a very short period of time, chances are a park ranger is going to approach you and tell you to keep it moving. They take the area very seriously in terms of security. The man behind the wheel was Eugene Horsch. That is Raymond's son. Herman, what can you tell us about what the ranger found in the vehicle and what would you look for in this kind of situation? That's one of the things I love so much about my former career as a police officer. Some of the most mundane routine functions can lead to some crazy discoveries if you keep your eyes open. In this case, Eugene and a woman were arguing

5:12that probably upped the spidey senses on that park ranger. The ranger overheard the woman saying, you're going to hurt me or something to that effect. And that compelled him to pull the people out of the car apparently and search the car. They found two handguns under there, around $8,000 worth of illegal drugs. And big, the woman was carrying ID belonging to Blair Tanzelli, who was a missing person. Exactly. So Blair Tanzelli had been missing since 2023. She was one of those women that we just talked about linked to that house in Alney. Bank cards in Tanzeli's name were also found in the West Chiu Avenue house. The police confirmed that the woman who used Blair's I.D. had it as an alias to dodge.

5:59She had open warrants, so she was trying to use somebody else's I.D. so she could move along. The traffic stop eventually led investigators back to the house on West 2 Avenue. And Eugene inherited this from his late father, R.C. Horsch, who we now know is Amy McHale's ex-husband. Exactly. So I'm going to slow down for everyone, right? Eugene is the son. Eugene is not facing any charges in connection with these missing women or in connection with anything R.C. Horsch, his father, has done. But he was living in the house and he had been living there for a number of years. When I spoke to Amy's family about Raymond Horsch, they said that they definitely had reservations about him. He was significantly older than Amy.

6:48And when Amy met Horsch, she was in her 20s. He's in his 50s. I want to play some of the sound, some of what they said about how they felt about the relationship. And I was young, but it was jarring. Just the age gap in itself is jarring. Yeah. I thought he was very strange. He would go. She said he had narcolepsy. So we would be in the kid, you know, finish dinner because he came for dinner. And he would go into the living room, sit down and fall asleep. And all the kids are playing around them and he would be sound asleep. I was like, oh, there's something really weird with this guy, you know. But she said it was narcolepsy. I don't know whether he was faking or just to get away from the social

7:37situation. So, Herman, I want to sort of stress this, that they thought he was odd, but not in the creepy way that we've been seeing in the papers. Not to that degree. I want to get into his background a bit, though, when we talk about the art and how he even sort of became involved with some of these alleged victims. Raymond Horsch called himself an artist and he had several self-published books. But, you know, art is in the eye of the beholder. Raymond's art was a little bit different. So let me read you the bio that he used when he was promoting his books, because it's worth hearing the way he depicts himself. It's interesting to me. Here's a quote. alternately an artist, filmmaker, composer, writer, porn performer, drug smuggler,

8:27sometime political activist, art forger, counterfeiter, pot grower, air show pilot, army deserter, fugitive, sociopath, ex-convict, and all-out villain, R end quote. This is a renaissance man gone wrong, is the way I look at this. I mean, he's obviously sensationalizing some things. But listen, I hate giving any credit to people like this because I do find him to be a creepy man. But I can tell you, he is a character. To your point, it's hard to know what is true about that bio because he can be so over the top. And he was kind of like very open about a lot of his past, what he says his past is and a lot of his art. So it's easy to go down a rabbit hole. What we do know, though, is, I mean, he does have a criminal history.

9:22This guy is an ex-convict. Oh, yeah. He was 82 when he died last May. And according to the Philadelphia Inquirer, Horsch was arrested even back in the 1970s for printing counterfeit money, operating a meth lab. He then skipped bail. This guy. He fled to New Zealand, which is interesting on its own. And he was able to use a forged diploma from Stanford so he can get himself a job as a chemist. Eventually, he was extradited back to the US, and then in 2009, you know, very varied and all over the place. Investigators found over 200 marijuana plants, firearms. And to me, the most really interesting part, the IDs of several women. He then served 54 months in federal prison. Like millions of others, Black Friday is when I do most of my holiday shopping.

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11:20Peak season doesn't wait, and neither should you. Get ahead of it today with ShipStation, and get 60 days free at ShipStation.com with code CASEBYCASE. That's ShipStation.com, code CASEBYCASE. Taxes and fees apply. It was a gruesome discovery off a dirt road in Georgia. Hunters had found a body. Was it immediately clear to you that this woman had been murdered? Yes. But who was this mystery woman in the woods? That looks like Mindy. I'm Erin Moriarty, and from 48 Hours, this is The Woman in the Woods. I have never wanted to be wrong like this in my whole entire life. Binge the full series of Woman in the Woods wherever you get your podcasts. So, you know, yeah, we know clearly he has an extensive criminal past.

12:14It's mostly in drugs. But then when you look at his writing, his art, that's when, you know, things become even more troubling. He wrote a few books that seem to line up with some of the allegations against him. It's one of those like if it looks like a duck and it walks like a duck. I mean, is it? CBS News reported that an overview of one of his books called Empathy stated it was a quote, an autobiographical memoir of a caring, empathetic serial killer. Herman, how do you think investigators viewed this sort of writing? This, you know, they definitely, it's just pointed investigators in the right direction. In this case, the books were graphic, his films were graphic. If I, I used to be an investigator, I still am. If I'm looking at

13:10this guy, I like to know things about him. I like to know the way he portrays himself to the public. All of these things come into play here. And, and you have to look at everything very carefully because again, you just don't know what he's putting out there to make himself seem like a bad guy. I had read that he always gravitated towards villains, things like that. It's really tricky to discern when he is telling the truth or trying to sensationalize his life. He's one of those guys that wanted people to be scared of him. In one of his books, he claimed to have strangled a woman and then in his basement, he broke down her body using chemicals. So I know that's not a smoking gun, but again, back to that walks like a duck reference you made before it from an

13:57investigative standpoint that definitely raises eyebrows. We also know that Blair Tanzeli once told a friend that a man in the West Choo home was, she said, quote unquote, a sociopath who talked about melting down bodies using chemicals. A number of substances have been recovered from the Horsch house basement, and it's not confirmed whether these substances were actually being used to hide bodies, but that's considered liquid cremation. Liquid cremation is a chemical breakdown. There's substances found in the basement. You know, you're starting to really walk like a duck here. So much of this case seems to be about trying to separate fact from fiction here. The bio that Raymond writes for himself, he calls himself a porn performer. Investigators found a lot of

14:48pornographic violent material made by Raymond, videos, tons of images, a lot of digital evidence. You know, what will investigators do? What did they make of this? Well, it does appear that Raymond Horsch recruited women to be subjects of many explicit photos and videos where he would depict violence against them. This is a guy who fancied himself a filmmaker and did produce, direct, and even act in some, like, these are really low budget stuff that even back then, I don't even think the stuff would have made 42nd Street back in its heyday. I think this would have been probably fizzled out or mostly stayed in Mr. Horsch's basement. These women tended to have histories of drug use. They struggled with addiction.

15:35And of course, he would reportedly offer drugs or money in exchange for their appearance. The Inquirer reported that at least five of these women died of what were ruled as accidental overdoses. He targeted vulnerable women with criminal backgrounds. If somebody is preying on people that won't be checked on, this is the type of person, unfortunately, that is a victim in these situations. Yeah. And, you know, often he would meet these women in the Kensington section of Philadelphia. I mean, there've been a lot of stories done on the national stories done on the Kensington section of Philadelphia, you know, it's sort of like an open-air drug market in some sections. But I think if anyone has ever seen the videos out of

16:19Kensington, I mean, what you feel is just incredible heartbreak for these people. This is rock bottom where many of them have landed. And yeah, they are not in contact with their family. They are, you know, they are buckling under drug addiction. It's a hard, hard life. And just to kind of like blur the lines a little bit more, you know, what is art? What is reality? One of the characters that Raymond writes about is a serial killer who has a particular fascination with women who are struggling with drug addiction. And he sort of justifies his killing. This is the character now. He justifies his killing by saying he's putting these women out of their misery. Right. So, I mean, what is Raymond writing about?

17:06Is this all fantasy or did his fantasy crossover into reality? We don't know. You know, what we do know is that Amanda and Gloria, when I spoke to them, they talked about Amy's struggles with drug addiction and, you know, also how her mental health was affected. Amy had used heroin at some point and was being treated at a methadone clinic. Here's what else her family had to say. She started in the drug life very early. She was young. And like I said, she had mental health issues. So, and I went to Tough Love. I went to Norinon. And I tried to follow their ideals, the ideals that they set up. And I was just not strong enough. And, like, I couldn't just put her out. You know, I will say this, that a lot of people might wonder, you know, why would Amy go back there? She married him, they divorced, and she continued to go back to

18:08that house. Gloria said the night she went missing, she was calling from his house. She had been drinking and she called her mother to say she was heading home. And her mom really, really regrets this because her mother said, you're too intoxicated. You should just stay. And then they never heard from her again. But part of the reason, not just Amy, but other women went back to this house is because he did offer, you know, a bed to sleep in, a roof over their head, you know, food to eat. We don't know. He may have also offered drugs. But for them, this was an alternative to being on the. And then we have these, you know, six other women who are missing. They may be deceased. We don't know. These families are probably

19:14searching for answers and investigators are trying to get them that. I want to talk about the efforts investigators have been taking to get some of these answers. I understand. I mean, the measures have been quite extreme. The way they're going through this house, it's really with a fine tooth comb. Yeah, there's no other way to describe that. The discovery of this house just blew this case open, obviously. And so far, more than 95 search warrants have been executed. And that's telling because that means that the investigators are hoping that whatever they find sticks and it's not going to get excluded from from court. Most of the time during a crime scene investigation, you're looking at a location and it's all about one incident from one specific moment in time, whether it's a day, an hour, or a minute. In this case, we're looking at an unknown amount of incidents over an unknown amount of time,

20:08perhaps a decade or more, and the digital evidence. I mean, personally, I would love to have worked on this case. When you're that investigator and you're pouring through that much evidence, you're really taking one thing at a time and you're not sure if this was made to be a movie or a photograph that R.C. Horsch decided to create or if this was real life. So this is a really deep dive. Yeah, it is. It is. Remember being a kid around the holidays when you beg for that shiny new present and your mom would just say, wait until the holidays? Well, with Mint Mobile, you don't have to wait a second longer. Right now, all of their plans are down to just $15 a month. Mint Mobile took what isn't working with traditional phone companies

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23:26A source who knew Eugene in high school said that Raymond was very strict with Eugene and that he was embarrassed by his dad. He knew, Eugene knew about the adult films and the fact that people had called his father creepy. The same source says that she cut off contact with the Horses after she said Raymond asked her to star in one of his films when she was 20 years old. Eugene has not been charged. Just remind everyone, he has not been charged with anything related to this case, this house of horrors, these missing women. He is currently serving time in federal prison for unrelated charges. What did you notice about this house, Herman? I find it interesting that, you know, the Amityville Horror House, this house,

24:13there's no way to look at this and not look at it as like a sinister place. It's weird because it's just like every other house on the block. But when you really step back, same as that picture of R.C. Horsch, you know, if you put these things together, this is you really step back, same as that picture of R.C. Horsch, if you put these things together, this is something right out of a horror movie. They've been searching that home since Eugene's traffic stop led them there in June. They paid special attention to the basement of the home, of course. And a source close to the investigation told CBS News that it resembled a high school science lab. They found a 55-gallon drum and a number of containers filled with like a sludge-like material.

24:50And anybody with a 55-gallon drum in their basement better have a good reason for it. Outside the home, they've used drones. They've searched through trash. They even tore up the sewer lines beneath the house in August. What were they looking for in the sewer lines? Why sewer lines beneath the house in August. What were they looking for in the sewer lines? Why sewer lines? Considering Horsch's references to these chemicals being used to break down bodies in his book, I could see investigators searching the sewers to see if they could find evidence that remains were flushed. You know, you're looking for the stuff that wouldn't be disintegrated by liquid cremation. There were two clogged sewer laterals that police

25:28removed and sent to a lab for extensive testing. And if you don't know what a lateral is, I had to look it up myself. I'm not that handy as a plumber, but it's the pipe that connects your private plumbing to the main public sewer in the street. So if those things are clogged, you don't know what can be trapped inside of a sewer line. I wouldn't want the job of looking through that, but there could be a wealth of evidence in there. So these are great investigative steps they're taking. This is really, they are going all out here to try to get closure for these families and the people, and to make sure that they can find out who's responsible, if anyone's responsible for their death. Right. Very thorough. It was also reported that bones were discovered outside the house.

26:16Investigators actually excavated parts of the yard to search for evidence. What can you tell us about this process? Oh, it's extremely tedious. I've been involved with this and I've seen them work. They work the soil like they're mining or panning for gold. You put it over a screen and you let anything that's larger remain on the top and then examine it. And then if you think it's something, then you bag it and tag it. And it's a lot of work. The bones that were recovered were determined to be animal bones, which is pretty common. So no human bones were recovered there. Investigators wrapped up their search for any possible human DNA on the property last week. Earlier this month, they did a luminol treatment in the basement of the home.

27:01And luminol's ability to react with iron in hemoglobin, it, it luminesces, it produces like a blue light and it allows investigators to visualize patterns, spatters on surface. It's a bunch of different, um, organic, uh, findings that you can get from, uh, from luminol the uh it would reveal blood semen of saliva a bunch of other situations there so i've seen it used to reveal evidence of crime scenes uh even when the crime scenes were cleaned if it's used improperly it can dilute the evidence so that's the real fear of that and the fbi foremost experts of this and most police departments that have a good crime scene unit. They're still awaiting results there to see if any of the DNA matches any of the missing women. So we mentioned that Amy was married to Raymond for a period of time.

27:56Amy's daughter, Amanda, actually lived with Raymond and Amy. And so here's what she had to say. Nobody was allowed down the basement, but there was a key to it and it was locked. And I was's what she had to say. Nobody was allowed down the basement, but there was a key to it and it was locked and I was 18. I'm curious. So I went down the basement to see and I did see there was just like rows and rows of the lights, like the greenhouse lights and just marijuana plants everywhere. And even the police have asked me like, well, what did you do then? And I was like, I could tell. Like, they were like, well, you probably, you know, smoked. You were a kid. And I was like, I could tell it was big enough that I needed to shut my mouth

28:31and get out of that basement and not talk about it. She kind of hinted things were going on in that house that she didn't want to be involved in. So I don't know what was going on, but she didn't want to be involved in it and she wanted to get out. We know the missing women are linked to this home in some way, right? And part of the reason that investigators know this is because they have digital evidence. They have images of these women in the house. Investigators are still sifting through mountains of digital evidence. Herman, this is bound to make the case just so much more complicated. It's not just like it's already complicated because we're talking about, you know, years that have gone by, women that have gone missing over, you know, a couple of decades almost.

29:21And and now we have all this digital stuff. FBI special agent in charge, Wayne Jacobs, spoke on this and we have a clip of that. It makes it incredibly difficult to make determinations with full confidence. And that's why, as we represented here, we're going to take our time and go through all the evidence and make sure that we understand what's happened here in its entirety. One of the central themes of this case will be determining what's art and what's evidence of violent crime. The videos and photos have revealed at least 58 people that are connected to this case. I would think that there could be more victims possibly, but additional suspects. And I'm sure the investigators are hoping that this uncovers

30:07additional witnesses. So if somebody is in that picture and they can ask somebody else who that guy was that's holding the microphone or anything like that, that's another person that may be waiting for that knock on his door. You said it right there. I mean, he wasn't producing these videos on his own rights. Other people were participating. There are other women who their images were found in some of the videos and some of the digital evidence. Philadelphia police have talked about reaching out to people and they've been able to identify some people. They've been able to track them down and they know they're alive or they know because we are dealing with, you know, drug abuse that maybe they passed away.

30:50Maybe it was a drug overdose. They not only have to sort of focus on these seven women, but any anybody else they find in those images, they've got to wrap up that story. They've got to find out where they are and if they're alive or if they're deceased. When I sat down with Amy's family, they were also concerned about all of these countless women who could have been involved. I want to play some of what they told me. These are women who have a name that had a family that somebody loved. And it just feels important that they're more human Yeah. So obviously I want it for my mother. I want her story to be told for that. But I also want to help these other women, too, because they were preyed upon.

31:37I certainly hope those families are able to find closure. I mean, I wouldn't be surprised if there are people calling up Philadelphia, you know, PD saying, listen, I haven't heard from my sister in four years or my mother in seven years. I don't know if she ever had contact with that house in Alney, but, you know, here's a picture of her. Can you can you look for me? You know, it's a lot. Oh, definitely. Nobody wants their their loved one associated with this so-called house of horrors. We may never even know the full extent of the violence that these women endured or the depravity of a man like R.C. Horsch. That's going to leave the families to grieve without knowing the complete truth. And, you know, Halloween's approaching.

32:27It's easy to watch horror movies and consume serial killer stories as entertainment. But cases like this remind us that horror is a real thing. And that's why I'm glad you're looking into this, Anne-Marie. It's, these women are sisters and mothers and grandparents. The poor families that don't, that just the unknown and just never getting closure. That's the sad part about this. Yeah, absolutely. As one of the producers put it here, we don't know if this is a house of mirrors or house of horrors. Either way, it is very disturbing. And the truth of it is, Herman, we may never know what went on in that house. But of course, Herman, once again, I want to thank you for joining us today for this conversation.

33:09Appreciate it. If you or someone you love is struggling with addiction, you can call the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration National Helpline. That number is 1-800-662-HELP. That's 1-800-662-4357. We's 1-800-662-4357. We will be back next week with another episode of Case by Case. For our continuing coverage, you can check the Case by Case feed wherever you find your podcast. You can also watch episodes of Case by Case on the 48 Hours YouTube channel or by searching Case by Case on Paramount+. Be sure to rate and review and let us know which cases you're following and which cases you'd like us to follow. Need a break? Forget it, I quit. Escape to Pluto TV. This is objectively fantastic.

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