Eugene Horsch

Eugene Albert Horsch (born 1981) is the son of the Philadelphia pornographic filmmaker R.C. Horsch and the owner since 2007 of the house at 417 West Chew Avenue in Olney that is the subject of the Olney House Investigation. He has been in custody since June 19, 2026, and faces two federal counts, possession of a firearm by a felon and possession of a fraudulent federal identification document. He has not been charged with any offense against the women whose disappearances the police connect to the house.¹²

Timaru and Bucks County

Horsch was born in Timaru, New Zealand, where his father, a fugitive from a Philadelphia methamphetamine charge, worked as a chemist under the stolen identity of Dr. Stanley Edward Stokowski. His mother was Myroslawa "Anna" Ferkuniak, whom his father had married in Nevada under the same name. The Press of Christchurch reported in 1984 that the family had arrived in Canterbury in 1980 with an 18-month-old son, which does not agree with his 1981 New Zealand birth reported by the Inquirer. His father left New Zealand in March 1984 on a stolen passport, leaving his wife and son behind, and was arrested by the FBI in Florida later that year; he was sentenced in April 1985 and imprisoned until 1987.³⁴ His mother died at the family's house on Devereaux Avenue in Philadelphia on July 28, 1989; her obituary gave the cause as a lengthy illness, and the Inquirer reported in 2026 that it was an accidental overdose.¹⁵ He grew up in his father's house in New Britain Township, Pennsylvania. The Central Bucks School District has no record that he graduated.¹⁶ The house on West Chew Avenue had been the home of his great-grandparents, Albert and Helen E. Hoersch, by 1968, and of their daughter Helen M. Hoersch until her death in 2004.⁷⁸⁹ The city's deed index records its transfer to him by a deed executed on October 1, 2007, with Helen M. Hoersch named as grantor; the Inquirer reported that his father used a power of attorney to make the transfer, for one dollar.¹⁰¹¹

Convictions

In 2003, while a student at Drexel University, Horsch caused a drunk-driving crash that left the other driver in a vegetative state; the man died sixteen years later. Horsch pleaded guilty in 2004 to driving under the influence and aggravated assault and was sentenced to two to four years. He was released in 2006. In 2013 police found about 1.9 million dollars' worth of marijuana in the house, and he was sentenced to four to eight years. He was in prison from 2013 to 2017. His father's former wife Amy McHale was last seen at the house in 2016. After a fire at the house in May 2025 he was charged with possession of marijuana and amphetamine and received three years of probation.¹⁶¹² Firefighters had answered a small fire on the second floor on May 18, 2025, and a fire marshal and a patrolman found a marijuana grow, an AR-15 pattern rifle modified to fire automatically, a sawed-off 12-gauge shotgun, and a 9mm pistol, all with destroyed serial numbers, and more than a hundred rounds of ammunition. According to a spokesperson for District Attorney Larry Krasner, Jerome Brown told the court that the guns had belonged to his father, who had died three days before the raid, and that he had planned to dispose of them properly. The Inquirer reported that he pleaded guilty to manufacturing drugs and that prosecutors withdrew the gun charges.¹³

Krista Killen, who lived in the house and appeared in his father's films, told friends that Horsch broke down her bedroom door and threatened to kill her. She died of drug intoxication some months after his father's death in May 2025.¹⁴

Arrest and Federal Case

On the morning of June 19, 2026, a federal park ranger approached Horsch's BMW at a fire hydrant beside Independence National Historical Park. His passenger said he was going to hurt her. She carried an identification card in the name of Blair Tonzelli, missing since 2023. In the car were two handguns with obliterated serial numbers, a switchblade, a baton, a cattle prod, crack cocaine, and Drug Enforcement Administration credentials with his photograph in the name Eugene Frederick Steiner. The search of his house produced forged FBI credentials and the computer used to make them.²¹⁴

A federal grand jury indicted him on July 9, 2026. On August 6 Assistant District Attorney Alyssa Amoroso of the Philadelphia District Attorney's Office withdrew the five state counts of illegal gun and drug possession, telling a city judge that the United States Attorney's Office would handle the case; neither Horsch nor Brown attended the hearing.¹⁵ United States v. Horsch, No. 2:26-cr-00296, is before Judge John Milton Younge in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. A January trial date had been reported; on the defense's request the trial was postponed in September 2026 to begin no earlier than March 22.¹⁶ He is represented by Jerome Brown, who had also defended his father in the federal case of 2009; the government's attorneys of record are Maureen McCartney and Justin Ashenfelter, who appear for the United States Attorney's Office in the district's grand jury and warrant matters.¹⁷ Brown said: "We categorically deny that Eugene Horsch is a serial killer," "there's zero evidence right now that anyone was killed at that location," and "I'd be shocked if they found any harm related to those missing persons at that location."^2121819