The Philadelphia House of Horrors

An investigation in Philadelphia has recovered over 1 million digital items from a property linked to Eugene Horsch, including evidence connected to missing women, along with guns, drugs, and other evidence. The investigation led to the excavation of the property and the discovery of urns containing cremated remains.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:13Derrick Levasseur?

  Hey everyone. Welcome back to Crime Weekly News. I'm Derrick Levasseur.

• 0:16Stephanie Harlowe?

  And I'm Stephanie Harlow.

• 0:18Derrick Levasseur?

  And real quickly, before we jump into this week's episode, just want to let everyone know, CrimeCon UK is right around the corner now. Unfortunately, Stephanie will not be joining us. She doesn't love flying overseas, and so she's sending me over there to represent.

• 0:36Stephanie Harlowe?

  Well, it's also more that Halloween is next month.

• 0:39Derrick Levasseur?

  Yes, you got a lot going on.

• 0:41Stephanie Harlowe?

  There's a lot going on in October.

• 0:42Derrick Levasseur?

  But you're stuck with me, guys. I'll be there. CrimeCon UK in London, October 3rd and 4th. Right now, if you want to go to crimecon.co.uk, you can get your tickets. And if you use our code CRIMEWEEKLY, you'll get 10% off those tickets. I've already had some of you who have signed up ask if there's going to be a meetup. Yeah, we're going to do something. Last time I was there with Stephanie, we did a meetup at night. Everything's kind of centralized on that location. So more than likely, we'll get an idea of how many Crime Weekly people are there and we'll meet up at night at one of the bars or one of the restaurants and hang out. Last time we did it, we actually had a lot of people there and we got kicked out of the-

• 1:22Stephanie Harlowe?

  We rolled deep. Yeah, we rolled deep.

• 1:23Derrick Levasseur?

  We got kicked out of the hotel bar, but I'm hoping to see you guys there. It's going to be a lot of fun. If for some reason you're interested in the Platinum level membership, I know they just sent me something where we're going to have like a private event too. But even if you don't want that, just get the general ticket, show up, come hang out, come by the booth, say hi. I'll be sitting there alone by myself with no one to talk to. So I would love to see you guys.

• 1:45Stephanie Harlowe?

  Plenty of people to talk to.

• 1:46Derrick Levasseur?

  I hope so. I'm looking forward to seeing you guys. crimecon.co.uk. Hope to see you there. Check it out. Go to the website. Use code CRIMEWEEKLY. Save yourself 10%. Okay, now to get into this week's Crime Weekly News, because this is a crazy story, straight out of a horror movie. I had actually texted Stephanie last week when this broke and she's like, yep, already heard about it. It was all over our feeds and we knew that we wanted to cover it this week. So just for anybody who's not familiar with what we're talking about, on June 19th, 2026, what started as a routine encounter with a park ranger near Independence Mall in Philadelphia, ended up leading police to a house on West Chu Avenue. And once investigators started searching that house, the case quickly became something much bigger.

• 2:28Derrick Levasseur?

  They found weapons, drugs, fake law enforcement credentials, strange chemicals, hidden areas, and more than 1 million digital photos and videos. Now, multiple missing women have been connected to the property. Several women seen in the recovered footage are believed to be dead, and the police are still working through the majority of the evidence. They just got started. So today, we're going to break down what was found inside that house, who the women are, and why investigators are still trying to figure out just how far this case goes.

• 3:00Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah, so it's weird because this case actually, like you said, it's, it kind of broke in like a very major way.

• 3:07Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, it felt like it was out of nowhere.

• 3:09Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah, it did feel like that, but there was like some sort of kind of investigation going on since June. But what happens is they basically pull over. They didn't really pull over. So a park ranger, for anybody who doesn't know, Independence Mall is by the Liberty Bell in Philly, and that whole kind of area is like considered an urban park. So there was a park ranger, and he sees this black BMW parked in like a restricted area. It's not supposed to be there. So he approaches the vehicle, and it kind of got weird at that point because he sees a man like leaning into the backseat. And then as he's walking towards the vehicle, the man rolled the window down, and the park ranger heard a woman in the car say something like, "You're going to hurt me."

• 3:51Stephanie Harlowe?

  So now it becomes not this guy, this park ranger, trying to like get this car to move out of an area it shouldn't be parked in. Now he's trying to make sure that the woman inside the car is okay. And so obviously, at this point, he said he kind of looked inside and he saw something in the car that that might suggest there was some drug use happening. So he asked both the man and the woman inside the car for identification. Now, apparently, the man, who is Eugene Horsch, he gives him identification and it's like some fake DEA identification. And if you, you're going to see a picture of Eugene Horsch if you're looking at the video. And it's funny because Eugene Horsch looks like a person who would be using drugs, who would be running away from DEA agents.

• 4:36Derrick Levasseur?

  Deep undercover.

• 4:37Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah, he was deep undercover. Exactly. So his identification is fake. And then they, the, the park ranger asked the woman for identification. She gives him identification and it's her picture on the, the ID, but the name was not her name. The name on the ID was Blair Tonzelli. So he runs identification, finds out that Blair Tonzelli was a 35-year-old woman who was reported missing in 2023.

• 5:07Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, so more than likely that was entered into NCIC. We talk about NCIC all the time. And, and more than likely, that's what happened. He ran the name and date of birth and it popped as a missing person.

• 5:17Stephanie Harlowe?

  It popped as a missing person. And then eventually, this woman, who's not Blair Tonzelli, she tells the police, "Oh yeah, Eugene made this fake ID for me, and he made it for me in the event that I was ever like pulled over by police," which is weird because Blair is missing. And she said, "I never knew Blair Tonzelli, but based on statements Eugene had made to her, she was afraid that something bad had happened to Blair because allegedly Eugene had said something like, 'Oh, Blair was never going to be seen again,' right? So now suddenly, police have a man sitting in a vehicle with a woman carrying identification belonging to a missing person. And things continue escalating. So Eugene's asked to get out of the vehicle.

• 5:59Stephanie Harlowe?

  Authorities allegedly found scissors, a glass drug pipe, and then a switchblade on his person. And then a further search of the BMW reportedly turned up more stuff, loaded firearms with serial numbers obliterated, cocaine fentanyl, marijuana. And, and then they, this kind of brings them to the house at 1417 West Chu Avenue. And it's a very, it's a creepy looking house. Like you said, it's out of a movie. The house looks kind of like it would be out of a movie.

• 6:33Derrick Levasseur?

  They're literally calling it the House of Horrors.

• 6:34Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah, so police go in and search it, and inside they find, surprise, surprise, more illegal drugs. They find evidence of a potential grow operation. And that's all kind of to be expected, right? From someone like Eugene. They arrest Eugene. He's got weapons charges, narcotics charges. But then they start searching the house. They go in the basement and they find like bottles and stuff of all these weird oily chemicals. And they're like, "We don't even know what the hell these chemicals are." So then they have to bring in other, the DEA gets in, into that. Then the FBI gets involved and-

• 7:08Derrick Levasseur?

  They'll bring in lab techs, forensic analysts.

• 7:10Stephanie Harlowe?

  They're bringing lab techs because they don't know. This could be like bomb making stuff. They don't know.

• 7:13Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, it could be stuff used to make drugs, which some of those chemicals, if you open that bottle, it'll immediately burn out your lungs.

• 7:18Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah, so Eugene's lawyer was like, "No, these chemicals belonged to Eugene's father," right? Who we're going to talk about. Eugene's father died in 2025. That was his house. They were like, "They belong to his father, those chemicals. They're not dangerous." But according to the police, when they did the press conference, they were like, "Actually, some of these chemicals can be flammable if they're combined." So that's not necessarily true. That's kind of happening in June. Then in July, they're searching the house more, and this is when they find other stuff. This is when they seize computers, hard drives, electronic devices. Okay? And this is when they start to kind of realize something else is happening here

• 8:00Stephanie Harlowe?

  because they found like over a million images and videos and things like that on these hard drives and computers. And here's the thing, they have only gotten through about 30%. So there was just a press conference on, I think, September 16th. And at that point, police were like, "We've only gotten through like 30% of this material." So we're going to talk about what they found in the electronics material, but they also found other weird things. So they found a 55-gallon drum in the basement. They refer to this as kind of like a basement lab, and the drum was connected to water lines. So I want to be very careful because they have searched this house pretty thoroughly. As of now, law enforcement has said they have not found any human remains. They did find five urns containing what appeared to be cremated remains.

• 8:43Stephanie Harlowe?

  This sounds, again, kind of horrifying in the context of everything else, but investigators believe at least some of these urns have legitimate explanations. So like one urn is believed to contain the remains of Eugene's father, R.C. Hirsch, Raymond Charles Hirsch. One, I think, contains the remains. So it looks like maybe family members, friends of the family. But still, then they also found weird manuscripts involving violent subject matter and serial killers. One unsigned item reportedly referencing Ted Bundy, zip ties, references of like disposing of trash, which they don't believe is actually trash. So this is where we start talking about the digital evidence

• 9:25Stephanie Harlowe?

  because this is absolutely insane. And I'm going to do a deep dive on this eventually, but I have been going down the rabbit hole and it is a rabbit hole I didn't expect. So like I said, more than 1 million photographs and videos depicting women. Okay? So we are going to talk about that. Let's take a quick break. We'll be right back.

• 9:47Stephanie Harlowe?

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• 10:00Derrick Levasseur?

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• 10:07Stephanie Harlowe?

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• 10:41Stephanie Harlowe?

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• 11:19Stephanie Harlowe?

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• 11:58Stephanie Harlowe?

  Okay, so we're back. Now, remember I said, they collected more than 1 million photographs and videos. They've only been through 30% of that material. They're not even halfway through yet. And so far, investigators say they have identified 58 individuals appearing in that material. Some of them are alive and don't want to talk to the police. Some have since been identified as passing away from overdoses at locations unrelated to the Chu Avenue House. Some investigators have located and identified, but they haven't interviewed them yet. But there are some people who are alive, are seen in these pictures

• 12:40Stephanie Harlowe?

  and videos, and they, they have been described as being uncooperative and not wanting to talk about what happened inside of that home. However, there's another category. It's scary. There's women who appear in the photographs or videos, unconscious, visibly injured, and in some cases, lifeless. Investigators currently say at least seven missing women have been connected in some way to this investigation. And five women appeared in the recovered material, and they are believed to be dead. Now, again, this does not mean police have recovered five bodies. They have not. They haven't found any bodies.

• 13:18Derrick Levasseur?

  Just based on what they're seeing in the photos and the videos.

• 13:21Stephanie Harlowe?

  Now, one of these women is Blair Tonzelli. And remember, hers is the name that appeared on that fake identification that kind of started this whole house of cards falling down. Another is a woman named Amy McHale. She was 44 when she disappeared in 2016. And Amy had previously been married to Eugene's father, R.C. Horsch. Okay, her family says she was last known to be at the Chu Avenue House. Her daughter said that Amy left her a voicemail on the day she disappeared, telling her that she was there. And according to Amy's daughter, R.C. Horsch, who's Eugene's father, later told Amy's family and detectives essentially, like, yeah, she was there, and they went to bed, and then he woke up the following

• 14:02Stephanie Harlowe?

  morning and she was gone. And that was it. Okay? That was it, as far as what kind of investigation they did. This happened in 2016.

• 14:09Derrick Levasseur?

  Okay, there's a lot, and we have a lot more to go, but I think it's important to kind of break it down as we go, because I'm not going to remember all of it. But right here, this goes back to what we talk about all the time. You have reports from witnesses, from family members of a missing person, and that family member or friend is telling you, hey, this missing person, the last time we spoke to them, they told us that they were at the specific location. So, as an investigator, you should go over there, speak to the people living there, but more importantly, don't take their word on everything they say. Get a search warrant or a consent to search if they're willing to give you one, and search that property. If they had done that, more than likely, a

• 14:54Derrick Levasseur?

  large, a large majority of what, I'm sorry, my Rhode Island accent came out there, a large majority of what you saw, or you're describing now to us, would have been located then.

• 15:03Stephanie Harlowe?

  If they'd gotten a search warrant for the electronics, maybe. I mean, who knows if in 2016, there was some sort of basement lab at that point?

• 15:12Derrick Levasseur?

  I'm sure there would have been something there that if the police officer, this didn't just start, right? So I'm sure there would have been something if the investigator was worth their weight, they would have found something that would have said, hmm, this looks suspicious, especially considering what we're here for, a missing woman. But...

• 15:28Stephanie Harlowe?

  Well, here's the thing, and here's, here's why they didn't, Derek, because these women that I'm going to talk about, what was the one thing they had in common?

• 15:35Derrick Levasseur?

  I'm assuming they were all people who had criminal history involving drugs, or they were sex workers.

• 15:41Stephanie Harlowe?

  So kind of overlapping things, right? We have women who, most of them are young, most of them have issues with drug addiction, most of them had been known to sort of drop off the map for days, not be in touch, be staying with different people all over the place, right? So that's what they had in common. And that's why people, like I believe, are a sea horse, they target these kinds of women because they know that no real investigation is going to be done because she's a drug addict. She's all over the place, right? She's here, she's there. And apparently, even after they got divorced, Amy and R.C. had remained close, and she'd go over to his house sometimes. But now this time in 2016, she goes over to his house, she's never seen again. And here's another thing about R.C. Horsch. He's

• 16:25Stephanie Harlowe?

  got a decades-long career of being an adult filmmaker. But what kind of adult films does he make? Well, films that include violence towards women. And usually, the women in his films are drug-addicted women, right? And I don't just mean like, in real life they are. I mean, that's how he's portraying them in the films. He seems to have some weird, like, fetish with having control and being violent towards women who have issues with addiction.

• 16:55Derrick Levasseur?

  Does he happen to know, well, Sonya didn't have an addiction to...

• 16:58Stephanie Harlowe?

  Sonya Exelbe.

• 16:59Derrick Levasseur?

  But I was gonna say, does he know Dwayne by any chance?

• 17:01Stephanie Harlowe?

  Exactly. And this is very much, I think, very similar.

• 17:05Derrick Levasseur?

  Two peas in a pod. And I wouldn't be surprised if he was on motherlist.com as well.

• 17:09Stephanie Harlowe?

  Oh, yeah. And he had his own website, okay?

• 17:12Derrick Levasseur?

  So even, I was joking, but he decided to take it a step further.

• 17:16Stephanie Harlowe?

  He had his own porn website, yeah.

• 17:18Derrick Levasseur?

  Oh, my god.

• 17:19Stephanie Harlowe?

  And some of these women who we're talking about today have appeared in, on, or on that website, in images and things like that on the website. And the next girl we're going to talk about, Gabrielle Armerondo, she was in one of his films. And I don't, I haven't really seen the connection made yet. It's just because I was looking up his filmography, and I saw one of the actresses had her name. But anyways, listen, Amy's never been found. Then we have Gabrielle Armerondo. She was only 22 years old when she disappeared in 2012. And police say she appears in material recovered during this investigation, not the website stuff, the stuff they found on the hard drives. And that's images that investigators believe may show her to be deceased. And this case

• 18:02Stephanie Harlowe?

  gets particularly complicated because metadata associated with some of the recovered files reportedly indicates photographs of Gabrielle were taken years after she'd originally disappeared. Now, we have another woman, Maribel Frieses, who was 27 when she disappeared. Investigators also reportedly recovered images they believe show Maribel deceased inside the home. There's also Nicole Fusaro, who was 27 when she disappeared in 2018. And Nicole's case brings us perhaps the most disturbing piece of evidence police have publicly described. Deputy Commissioner Vanor has confirmed that investigators recovered video that appears to show R.C. Horsch strangling a woman with zip ties. And this woman is Nicole. And according to the police description,

• 18:45Stephanie Harlowe?

  there were apparently two cameras recording at the same time. One camera was mounted somewhere in the room. The second was allegedly being operated by Horsch himself. Police say that the woman in the video appears to use drugs, and then R.C. Horsch gives her money, and she's handcuffed to a bed, and then Horsch tightens a zip tie around her neck until she appears to become unconscious. And then there's also another woman who police have identified, but they're not publicly naming because her family requested privacy. She appears to be in her mid-20s, and apparently, she's never been reported missing. I wonder if her family doesn't want her name said because it makes them look bad that she's been missing and they didn't report her missing?

• 19:27Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah.

• 19:28Stephanie Harlowe?

  And then there's at least one Jane Doe, so police have not been able to identify her. She also appears to be somewhere in her mid-20s and reportedly is depicted in these videos as lifeless and visibly injured. Now, here's where we have a problem. Because the people connected with this house, R.C. Horsch, had been involved for decades, I mean, since like the 70s, in involving these erotic films with these kinds of themes of violence against women. When you find videos and pictures in his house showing these acts, the police have to say like, well, is this a real act of violence? Or is it a simulated act of violence? Right?

• 20:12Derrick Levasseur?

  Uh, just for making it for the video itself.

• 20:15Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah. Are they make, is he making it because he's a filmmaker that makes this kind of stuff?

• 20:19Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 20:20Stephanie Harlowe?

  Now, we know R.C. Horsch had a tendency of going down to a specific area where a lot of these women would be, they would be participating in sex work, and he'd kind of like recruit them and pay them to be in his videos.

• 20:32Derrick Levasseur?

  Yep.

• 20:33Stephanie Harlowe?

  Okay, so, but some of these women went missing and have never been found.

• 20:36Derrick Levasseur?

  Right. By the way, I remember as a patrolman, I had a similar circumstance where we found that there was a similar type of deal where they were soliciting sex workers to make erotic videos. And it was kind of like this loophole because they weren't soliciting them for sex. They were solic, but there was permit issues and all this stuff. So we were still able to shut it down, but there were technicalities that we had to go through in order to do it. But they were preying on these women who were in really desperate times, needed money in many cases for drugs, and they knew that. And so they were not only taking advantage of a situation where these women were not thinking clearly, but in some cases, they were providing the drugs for them. So there was, there was, there was where areas that we could exploit as far as investigators to get it shut down.

• 21:20Stephanie Harlowe?

  And that's the thing, a lot of these women, when they were reported missing, their friends and family were like, oh, we think they've been living at this house on Chu Avenue. And then the police would go over and R.C. Horsch would be like, oh yeah, she was here as like a caregiver, but then she left and I've never seen her again.

• 21:37Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, so this house was on the radar.

• 21:38Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah, but, but apparently-

• 21:39Derrick Levasseur?

  Should have been on the radar.

• 21:40Stephanie Harlowe?

  On the radar, and people said, like, it was weird, like, even his neighbors, they were like, we'd see him going in with different women, like, we stayed away from him, he was a creep. The police were aware of it, but like, nothing ever seems to have happened.

• 21:51Derrick Levasseur?

  Nothing materialized.

• 21:52Stephanie Harlowe?

  No, because once again, these women were known to have an issue with addiction, known to be in a kind of dangerous line of work sometimes. And just, I mean, being, you know, having an addiction and being on the streets and not having like any stable home life or anything, that's already going to be dangerous because there's the, the, you know, you could overdose or, you know, somebody could hurt you or, you know, you don't, you never know. But this is giving like very H.H. Holmes kind of vibes now with this one house being so central to all this stuff happening. And then Eugene also has a criminal record. And some of the women who have encountered R.C. Horsch, they say like, yeah, his son's a creep too.

• 22:34Stephanie Harlowe?

  So is this a father-son kind of enterprise here? What's, what's going on? Because Eugene's mother was R.C.'s second wife, I believe. And R.C. Horsch went to prison for basically having like fake passports and traveling around and basically making fake counterfeit money. Like, this guy's had a life, okay? He's making counterfeit money, he gets caught. He has like a psychological evaluation in the 80s. And during the psychological evaluation, the psychiatrist was like, yeah, he's like super wicked, smart, high IQ, but there's a bunch of red flags in the psychological evaluation. And an FBI agent from the behavioral analysis unit

• 23:17Stephanie Harlowe?

  has recently read the profile and said like, hey, if I'm reading this profile and I know nothing about this person and nothing about this case, this is a psychopath, this is a psychopath that I'm reading about. Right? So this was in the 80s when the psychological evaluation was done. And then R.C. Horsch gets out of prison and then his wife, Eugene's mother, dies of a drug overdose when Eugene was like seven. And so basically, R.C. Horsch raised Eugene alone. And this is right around the time he starts making like his pornographic films. And apparently, he didn't really hide Eugene from that part of his life. So there's a lot happening here.

• 23:49Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, and it sounds like Chu Avenue may have been perceived by law enforcement as a trap house. And, you know, for anybody who's not familiar with, with a trap, it's a slang term, but essentially, it's a place where people can go and buy and sell and use drugs. And, and frequently, I've, I've also encountered scenarios where not only are they buying and selling and using drugs, but there will also be other rooms, depending on the size of the apartment or the house, where sex workers are going there and also having sex with Johns in, in that same location. And that may have been the perception by local law enforcement at the time.

• 24:28Stephanie Harlowe?

  If that's the perception, why wouldn't it have been like, if it's like-

• 24:30Derrick Levasseur?

  Shut down.

• 24:31Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah, why wouldn't it have been shut down or raided? It's like, oh yeah, this is where people go to use illegal drugs and to take part in, you know, sex work. Like, why wouldn't it have been?

• 24:38Derrick Levasseur?

  This is such a great question. Number one, there are ways around it, let me just say that. There are ways around it where we have had cases come in where the way it normally works with a drug investigation is what you will, you'll cultivate a confidential informant or an undercover. Most of the time, it's a confidential informant, someone who's already purchasing from that home. You'll have them come out, and I'm going to make this a short version, but you have them come out, you end up pinching them with something, you end up turning them over and making them a confidential informant. They'll go in with drug money that's provided by you, they'll buy drugs. You do two to three purchases where you observe the person the entire time. You search them before and after the transaction. And you basically create a narrative where you can show a judge that they had no drugs on them before they went in,

• 25:22Derrick Levasseur?

  they used the cash provided for them, and they came out with the drugs and handed them directly to you. You articulate that in an affidavit, you get a search warrant, you hit the house. Here's the wrinkle with trap houses, and I ran into this, it's a headache. A lot of the times, they're not purchasing the drugs there. They're just going there and using them. So it does create a little bit of a harder hurdle to get over.

• 25:46Stephanie Harlowe?

  Sort of, yeah.

• 25:46Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, it's like this weird gray area where you know what's going on in there, but unless you are able to send an undercover in, you can't have someone report their observations. Like, because a confidential informant's observations will normally not be enough for a judge, because anybody can say it, we have no proof of it. So what we would do is often, I, I, me and my, my sergeant at the time, Dorian, shout out to Dorian, we bought a button cam and we sewed it into a purse. And so we would have the confidential informant go in there with this purse. We taught him how to hold it, and they would record what they were seeing around them. So it was a little bit more work, but by no means am I saying it would be impossible to answer your question directly, they should have hit it. And, and, and so we considered it a nuisance house.

• 26:30Derrick Levasseur?

  It was a house that the chief or the captain or the lieutenant was like, hey, listen, there's drugs going in and out of there, it's, it's, it's, it's having other nefarious people come to that area.

• 26:39Stephanie Harlowe?

  The neighbors are complaining, yeah.

• 26:41Derrick Levasseur?

  You got Johns walking around there, driving around there, you got kids leaving school seeing this. We need this shutdown, get it done. And we would get it done legally, of course. Um, or there were times, just now I'm not in the field anymore, I can talk to you guys directly, nothing was illegal about what we did, but there were times where if they were very careful and they were searching people or they were only allowing select people in there, I would go knock on the door with my team and we would go, hey, guess what? We know what you're doing. I'm going to park a, a marked patrol cruiser right outside your house for the next two weeks because we're allowed to do that. And we're going to basically serve as a deterrent for any Johns or drug dealers who want to come here because this place is now hot, it's on our radar,

• 27:25Derrick Levasseur?

  and you're going to have to find somewhere else to go, sorry. So there would be ways around this, no doubt about it.

• 27:31Stephanie Harlowe?

  I mean, in this situation, it kind of seems like they just didn't care.

• 27:34Derrick Levasseur?

  They didn't do anything. No, no, I'm, I'm not defending them. I think there's, there's definitely more that could have been done. And I can tell you right now, there's going to be some internal conversations. When, the number one thing is to identify all the women that have, that have been affected by this. That's the number one priority.

• 27:48Stephanie Harlowe?

  They've only gone 30% of the way.

• 27:50Derrick Levasseur?

  They're just scratching the surface.

• 27:51Stephanie Harlowe?

  Who knows what we're going to find, yeah.

• 27:52Derrick Levasseur?

  But from a law enforcement side, from inside those walls, there's a much deeper conversation that needs to be had. And there's some accountability that needs to be taken as well, where, go back, once the investigation is done and you got these guys pinned down and you've hopefully identified all the victims involved, then you ask the question, how did we get here? How did we get here? You pull up all the reports and now, instead of the investigation being about the crimes that occurred inside the house, you go back and look how many times this house was put on the radar and what was done.

• 28:23Stephanie Harlowe?

  How many reports? Yeah, how many people called in and said things? Or were there any women that went there and said, hey, this happened to me there? And because of who they were, police were like, ah, you know, this is Philadelphia. Let's not mince words here, Philadelphia is not a crime-free city, okay?

• 28:39Derrick Levasseur?

  Right, nowhere is.

• 28:40Stephanie Harlowe?

  It's a pretty, yeah, but I mean, Philadelphia's got a pretty high crime rate. There's a lot of stuff happening there. It's like Gotham City, you know? And when you've got police who are, who are dealing, probably dealing with a lot of things all the time, and they have some woman coming in who's known to be using drugs and known to be participating in certain sex work, they may be like, ah, whatever, like, you're not important. And once again, men like R.C. Horsch understood that, which is why they went to these women, because they knew, I'm going to offer her money to be in a film, quote unquote, because these aren't films, this is smut, this is garbage, it's trash. And, and she's going to take it because she's desperate.

• 29:20Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, absolutely. We have a lot more to talk about, more questions to kind of discuss here. And we're going to do that right after the break.

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• 32:13Stephanie Harlowe?

  Okay, we're back. So yeah, I guess at this point, we have to wait for police to go through more of the digital evidence they have. There's some really good places out there doing really good reporting on this, like tracking down people that R.C. Horsh knew, digging up stuff from his past, his son Eugene's past. The Philadelphia Inquirer is one of those sources where there's a lot of information coming out, like an unbelievable amount of information. And you have to look at this guy, R.C. Horsh, and be like, where did you come from? Like, he's, he's, he's like a fake person. There's a podcast interview of him on The Rialto Report, which apparently is a podcast that covers the golden age of the porn industry.

• 32:55Stephanie Harlowe?

  And this guy who runs the podcast interviewed R.C. Horsch a bunch. He's like known him for decades. And now that guy, the Rialto Report guy, is making a podcast about like how he's known this R.C. Horsch for decades, and he's not the person he knew. And it's like unknowing Raymond Horsch. And so there's a lot of stuff coming out. But what we have to figure out now is the women who are seen in at least the material that's been gone through so far, who appear to be unconscious, who appear to be injured and bloody,

• 33:29Stephanie Harlowe?

  was that just for the films? Because some of these women have been missing. And the weirdest thing is one of the women specifically was missing years before she's depicted in these videos and images.

• 33:46Derrick Levasseur?

  Right.

• 33:46Stephanie Harlowe?

  According to the metadata. So it's like, what's going on here? And so many-

• 33:51Derrick Levasseur?

  I think we can, I think we can take a good guess, right? I mean, the people who are watching these videos, not only the offenders that you're describing, the ones that are filming it, but they're obviously, there's a sexual gratification with it. And so you can start with these smut videos that you're just kind of acting, air quotes here, right? You're acting at first. But at some point, what happens? You know what's better than the acting?

• 34:14Stephanie Harlowe?

  According to R.C. Horsch, he doesn't even care about the real thing. It's the exhibition. It's the exhibitionist in him that likes filming it and being a part of it that way. Like, he said, women are anticlimactic. The mechanical act of sex is anticlimactic. That's not what gets him going.

• 34:31Derrick Levasseur?

  Again, it sounds a lot like our boy Dwayne.

• 34:32Stephanie Harlowe?

  Right, yes.

• 34:33Derrick Levasseur?

  So I mean, of course, he's going to say that.

• 34:35Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah.

• 34:35Derrick Levasseur?

  Of course, he's going to say that. Yeah, just like, and Dwayne was just trying to help Sonia and didn't actually want to hurt her. He was trying to stop her from doing it.

• 34:43Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah, so-

• 34:44Derrick Levasseur?

  I mean, listen, yeah, sure, buddy.

• 34:46Stephanie Harlowe?

  I mean, that's, that's where we are now with it. But I have a strong feeling that because this did just break in this big way-

• 34:55Derrick Levasseur?

  Oh, my God. So many layers to peel back.

• 34:57Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah, we're going to see so much come out. Like I said, only 30% of the digital evidence has been gone through, and they've already identified almost 60 people in there. And several of them are missing and have never been seen and are presumed to be dead.

• 35:11Derrick Levasseur?

  Right, and it's going to be, it's going to be like this tree, right? Where you have these 60 initial leads that are going to lead to five other branches off of that. So this is going to be a multiple year investigation, and it's going to take an entire team to do it. There's a lot of research that needs to be done in order to try to identify every single person if possible. That's the number one goal is to give these people, you know, if you can find them, if they're still alive, great. But if not, at minimum, give the people connected to them, their family and friends, the answers that they've been probably searching for, for years.

• 35:45Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah, there's a lot of family members of these missing women coming out and being like, I'm so glad somebody's finally paying attention because we've been trying to get people to care about this for years, and they haven't. But I guess, and I was going to say, law enforcement's clearly going to have their work cut out for them as far as this goes. But as far as the people who have been identified in those videos, and apparently they're being uncooperative with police, my question to you is, is this an, I'm being uncooperative? Because maybe it's like another man who took part in this? Or is this, I'm being uncooperative? Because, yeah, I made it out of that place alive, but I don't want anybody to know what happened in there.

• 36:24Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, I could see that being a problem, right? There's going to be probably a lot of men who were participating in these activities or at minimum, watching these videos. And they don't want their family and friends knowing what they're into. So that would make sense as they're starting to connect the dots and they're going through all the digital correspondence and communications. They're going to locate a lot of men who were involved in this and involved in this ring and were probably purchasing this material. And yeah, you think they're going to help you out? Probably not, even if it's just because they don't want to be connected to it. They may have nothing to do with the actual murderers or missing people in these cases. But yeah, it's not a good look for them. And this won't be a shocker to anybody.

• 37:08Derrick Levasseur?

  It's not all going to be just like your low tier people who are, you know, have substance abuse issues. There's probably high profile figures, politicians, CEOs of companies. It's not going to-

• 37:19Stephanie Harlowe?

  Which might make sense of why this house was kind of allowed to operate. I was almost wondering, yeah.

• 37:25Derrick Levasseur?

  That's a whole, you're stealing right there. You have to also ask the question, why wasn't this house put on the radar much sooner? Or at least not put on the radar, but actually something being done? Are we going to find that there's law enforcement connected to this? Like, there's so many, this is an onion that needs to be peeled layer by layer. The one other thing I want to mention, and this isn't a story where it's like, wow, great police work, because the overall theme is that it wasn't great police work. But I do want to give a quick shout out because I know there's a lot of men and women that are in law enforcement that watch this channel and listen to it. And I do want to point out that this, this whole ball started to snow,

• 38:06Derrick Levasseur?

  you know, snowball up because of a vehicle parked next to a fire hydrant. A park ranger who saw something that I think a lot of us would consider minimal, but did their job, right? Enforced the law, and it led to something much bigger. And I try to preach this all the time because there's a lot of patrol people out there who feel like what they're doing isn't important, whether it's a speeding ticket or an illegally parked vehicle. And so many times, we hear about cases where you go, you stop this car because something stands out, and it may just be an infraction, but it turns out that someone's in need of help or there's a missing person in there. So when you see things like this, don't just pass it by. Don't just drive by the location.

• 38:49Derrick Levasseur?

  Do your job because you never know what you're going to uncover. That's the one thing I would say, because we may not be here right now if it wasn't for that park ranger.

• 38:58Stephanie Harlowe?

  I agree. We probably wouldn't be. And so he obviously took his job very seriously, which I can't say for everybody involved here.

• 39:04Derrick Levasseur?

  Of course.

• 39:05Stephanie Harlowe?

  But there are a lot of questions being asked, like-

• 39:07Derrick Levasseur?

  It's kind of ironic that it would be a park ranger to get this ball rolling, because I will tell you, a lot of cops would look down upon park rangers.

• 39:14Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah, the police are like, god damn it, park ranger. Why'd you do your job, man?

• 39:17Derrick Levasseur?

  Not a good look.

• 39:17Stephanie Harlowe?

  Now we look bad.

• 39:18Derrick Levasseur?

  Not a good look for them.

• 39:19Stephanie Harlowe?

  So that's the thing, there's a lot of people kind of like, as more is coming out, and it's like, oh, yeah, we knew about this house. Oh, yeah, it was creepy. There was weird stuff happening. Everybody knew, everybody knew, everybody knew. And so people are like, if everyone knew, what the hell? How was it allowed to go on for so many years? And that's where you start to wonder, whenever you have something like this, right? Where it's like the sex industry and, and then you get into like Epstein files and kind of what powerful men will do to live out their fantasies without anybody ever finding out, right? And, and then that's when you start to wonder, and I, and I have to wonder, are there some politicians, some people who are high up in the community right now in Philadelphia or otherwhere?

• 40:02Stephanie Harlowe?

  Realizing, hey, law enforcement's only gotten through 30% of the digital evidence and they're shaking in their boots right now because they don't know for sure, but they think maybe I might be on there or I might be connected to this somehow. And if that's the case, will we ever know about it is the question, right?

• 40:18Derrick Levasseur?

  Big question. There's, there's so much to talk about here. And if there's an update in this case, we'll absolutely let you know. And spoiler alert, there probably will be. One other thing before we go, because I want to make sure that you guys know that you're being heard. We had a lot of our South African listeners and viewers reach out in our messages and our DMs. And we wanted to let you know that we are monitoring the situation over there in Johannesburg. I know that there were nine dead women located. And from what I've understood as of today, when we're recording this, which is on Monday, the 21st, currently there are four people in custody for those nine women. And there may be more to the story, but I'm glad to hear that we do have people in custody.

• 41:00Derrick Levasseur?

  There was one arrested in July and three more arrested as of like yesterday, where it was two men and one woman. So I know from what you guys were telling us, you were very concerned. At the time when you were messaging us, you were unsure if this was a serial killer, if there was more to the story and you were rightfully concerned and you wanted us to cover it. And we were starting to put it together and then we had these arrests. So we're waiting to see how that story develops. Yes, we normally cover cases in the United States, but something like this, we would absolutely cover, depending on how, you know, how it all plays out. So we are aware of it. We are monitoring it. And once everything kind of unpacks and unfolds, we will have an update on that. So thank you for everyone messaging us. I read all of your emails and your messages as far as your concerns.

• 41:44Derrick Levasseur?

  Some of them were very heartfelt and your concerns were genuine. So we want to let you know that we're thinking of everybody over in South Africa. And we hope that the people who have been arrested are actually connected to these crimes. And it can put people a little bit more at ease that there's not currently someone out there.

• 41:59Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah, I was gonna say, I hope it's everyone that's connected. And there's not still some sort of like network that's, that's operating. Yeah.

• 42:06Derrick Levasseur?

  We will see how that, how that all unfolds. But um, that's gonna do it for us, guys. As always, we appreciate you being here. Again, if you're in the London area and you want to come out to CrimeCon UK on October 3rd and the 4th, I will be out there. Head on over to crimecon.co.uk. I hope to see you there. That's gonna do it for us, guys. Everyone stay safe out there. We'll be back later this week with the Jade Benning, part three. Is this our third and final part or we have one more after this?

• 42:30Stephanie Harlowe?

  There's one more after this.

• 42:31Derrick Levasseur?

  There's one more after this, but we're just getting into the details now that everything's kind of been put on the table. As far as the investigation and I'm looking forward to getting into it. So we hope to see you there. Until then, everyone stay safe out there. We'll see you soon.

• 42:44Stephanie Harlowe?

  Bye.