The investigation into a dilapidated duplex in North Philadelphia has uncovered evidence involving 58 women who authorities say appear to have been sexually exploited, while investigators examine more than a million photographs and videos for evidence of possible killings. The case, first reported in detail by The Washington Post, centres on 417 West Chew Ave., the longtime home of pornographer Raymond Charles Horsch, who died of natural causes in May 2025 aged 82.
Since midsummer, homicide detectives, FBI agents, cadaver dogs and evidence technicians have searched the three-storey brick property in the working-class Olney neighbourhood. Police said 10 of the 58 identified women later died of drug overdoses away from the house. Forty-four surviving women have been in contact with investigators. Another 25 women have been located but not yet interviewed, while 19 have spoken to detectives but declined to co-operate. Authorities believe four other women may have been killed inside the property, alongside a fifth possible homicide victim whose identity remains unknown.
The investigation is continuing because only about 30 per cent of the seized digital material had been reviewed by mid-September. Police said the collection now exceeds one million photographs and videos, along with thousands of pages of documents. Inspector Ray Evers said investigators initially faced more than 600,000 images, 70,000 videos and more than 10,000 pages of writings, manuscripts and drawings. “The amount of information and digital evidence we got is astonishing,” Evers said at a July news conference.
Horsch was a prolific producer of sexually explicit films and photographs, frequently depicting drug use, degradation and violence. Police and The Philadelphia Inquirer reported that his subjects were vulnerable women drawn from local drug corridors. Horsch had described his work as avant-garde visual provocation. In a 2006 interview published by a fetish website, he said his purpose was to communicate and create “some sort of thought-provoking correspondence between the image and the viewer”. He described his subjects as women “first seduced and then quite literally enslaved, degraded and abused by an insidious drug”.
Horsch also said his subjects were not professional models or actors and that drugs were their primary motivation for participating. “Provide that, and they will do anything,” he was quoted as saying. “That is the horror. There is no limit.” His work began commercially in 1973 with a pornographic film titled “The Erotic Memoirs of a Male Chauvinist Pig”, and later included self-published novels, video shorts and extensive photographic material.
Authorities discovered the collection during searches of the property this summer, roughly a year after Horsch’s death. Police had entered the house in connection with the arrest of his son, Eugene Horsch, 44, on drug and gun charges. Eugene Horsch, who also lived at the property, is being held in federal pretrial detention. His lawyer did not respond to requests for comment. Police have said he has not been implicated in his father’s activities.
The evidence has intensified the search for five women whose apparent deaths are recorded in material recovered from the house. The Philadelphia Medical Examiner’s Office reviewed images of the women and said they “appear to be deceased”. Police have not recovered definitive remains of any of them. Deputy Police Commissioner Frank Vanore cautioned that Horsch produced films and that some scenes may have been staged. “Some of this is playacting and some of it we believe could be real,” he said.
In one video, investigators believe a woman who remains missing was restrained after taking drugs. Vanore said metadata indicated that the recording was made in 2017. According to his description, the woman and Horsch were filmed by two cameras, one controlled by Horsch and another fixed inside the bedroom. Horsch allegedly gave the woman money, handcuffed her to a bed and tightened a zip tie around her neck until she “appeared to be lifeless”. Vanore stressed that investigators had not recovered a body.
Police have publicly identified two women believed to be among the possible homicide victims: Maribel Fresses, who was 27 when her father reported her missing in 2018, and Gabrielle Amarando, who was 22 when she was last seen in 2012. Families of both women described years of drug addiction and disappearance in interviews with The Philadelphia Inquirer. Authorities know the identities of two of the three other women but said their families requested privacy.
Investigators have also found a significant quantity of an undisclosed chemical, what Vanore called a “homemade laboratory of some kind” in the basement, and five urns containing ashes. Police believe one urn contains Horsch’s ashes and another those of his sister or a friend, while the remaining two have not been identified.
The investigation has also revived police interest in the disappearance of Horsch’s former wife, Anna McHale. The couple married in 2004 and McHale disappeared in 2016. According to published reports, she told her family by telephone on 13 June that year that she was at Horsch’s home. Authorities have obtained numerous search warrants for the property and electronic devices, including “computers, hard drives, flash drives, DVRs, cameras, phones”, Vanore said.
“They don’t really want to talk about what occurred in that house,” Vanore said of the women who have survived. With hundreds of thousands of images still awaiting examination, police Inspector Evers said the case represented unfamiliar territory for Philadelphia’s homicide investigators: “This is new territory for the homicide unit in Philadelphia.”
