A routine parking violation in Philadelphia has turned into a sprawling investigation involving more than a million digital files, a homemade basement laboratory, suspected human ashes and at least five women who are missing or believed dead.
The case began in June when police found Eugene Horsch, 44, parked illegally in a spot reserved for police, with a woman in the back seat of his vehicle. Officers searching the car found guns, drugs and a fake DEA identification card bearing Horsch’s photo, according to a criminal complaint cited by WPVI.
Follow-up searches of Horsch’s home turned up more weapons and drugs, along with what deputy commissioner of investigations Frank Vanore described as a serious discovery in the basement.
“There was a homemade laboratory of some kind in the basement area. There were five urns believed to be containing human ashes, a large amount of digital evidence,” Vanore said.
Investigators recovered more than 1 million digital images and thousands of videos. Police say they have identified 58 people in that material so far, including at least five women who are missing or believed to be dead, Newsweek reported Wednesday.
Two of those women are Gabrielle Amarando, who was 22 when she disappeared in 2012, and Maribel Fresses, who was 27 when she disappeared in 2018. Vanore said images pulled from a computer hard drive, with metadata dating to 2017, show both women inside the home, appearing unconscious and with what looked like injuries. Their families were notified at the time, but neither woman has been found. Vanore said police have not recovered bodies, DNA or other physical evidence tying either woman to the house.
Some of the material, investigators say, likely belonged to Horsch’s late father, who reportedly manufactured drugs and produced violent erotic films before his death in 2025. That has fueled online speculation over whether the footage depicts staged violence or real killings.
Among the images are photos of at least five women who appear unconscious or possibly dead, including one showing an apparent strangulation by zip tie.
“At the center of the investigation are the victims and the families and they deserve answers,” said Wayne Jacobs, FBI special agent in charge.
Horsch’s attorney, Jerome Brown, has pushed back hard against claims from a former FBI agent labeling his client a serial killer. Brown told Newsweek in an interview published Thursday:
“We categorically deny that Eugene Horsch is a serial killer. Secondly, he was incarcerated from some point in 2013 through 2017, during which period we know at least one person, Amy McHale, went missing. Further, in 2018, he was virtually paralyzed from the waist down and was hospitalized for several weeks and was in a rehab facility for three months, with six to nine months of rehab thereafter. As far as whether anyone living at that house was a serial killer, there’s zero evidence right now that anyone was killed at that location except for videos which might show merely staged killings.”
Mary Ellen O’Toole, a former senior FBI profiler, told CNN investigators are likely focused more on Horsch’s father than on Horsch himself.
“That’s a lot less threatening. It would be very rare, not impossible, that father and son both have the same criminal type of behavior, and for the father, it looks like he has indications of being a sexual sadist,” O’Toole said.
Police have said the case is not currently being investigated as a serial killer inquiry, despite the speculation it has generated online. Horsch remains in federal custody on gun charges, and his attorney says he intends to plead not guilty.
