Nicole Amanda Fusaro, a 27-year-old White woman known to her loved ones as Nikki, was an outgoing person with striking, light-colored eyes who enjoyed being with friends and family. Raised in Northeast Philadelphia, she attended George Washington High School. In the years leading up to her disappearance, Nicole struggled with drug addiction and was living in Philadelphia's Kensington neighborhood, an area known for its prevalent drug problems.
Her life took a tragic and horrifying turn in 2018, connecting her to a man now suspected of being a serial killer.
Nicole was last seen around 9:00 p.m. on July 19, 2018, near the intersection of Kensington and Allegheny Avenues. After she vanished without a trace, her mother, Diane Fusaro, began a desperate search. Diane tirelessly walked the streets of Kensington, handing out sandwiches with flyers bearing her daughter's photo, hoping someone would have information. "Please help me find my daughter she has been missing for over 8 days with no one seeing or hearing from her," she wrote on Facebook on July 26, 2018. Tragically, Diane passed away in January 2020, never knowing what happened to her only child. Nicole's father had died years earlier in 2009. Her cousin, Jonathan Halloran-Koren, and her friends continued to hold out hope and keep her memory alive.
For eight years, Nicole's case remained cold. The break came in June 2026, through a seemingly unrelated arrest. Police took Eugene Horsch into custody after a traffic stop near Independence Mall. The woman with him had a fake ID in the name of Blair Tonzelli, a woman who had been missing since 2023 and was last seen at the home Eugene shared with his father, Raymond Charles Horsch. This led investigators to the Horsch home on West Chew Avenue in the Olney section of Philadelphia, which would soon be labeled a "house of horrors."
Inside the decrepit property, authorities uncovered a massive and disturbing collection of digital media, including over a million images and 70,000 videos. The investigation shifted focus to Eugene's father, Raymond "R.C." Horsch, a pornographer and writer with a long criminal history who had died of lung disease at age 82 in 2025. Horsch had a history of luring women, often those struggling with addiction, into his home with drugs and money to star in his violent and graphic productions. He even authored a book in which he described himself as an "empathetic serial killer" and detailed strangling a woman and disposing of her body with chemicals.
In September 2026, after sifting through the mountain of evidence, investigators made a sickening discovery. They found a video that showed Raymond Horsch strangling a woman. The footage depicted a naked woman handcuffed to a bed; Horsch then used a zip-tie and a tool to tighten it around her neck until she lost consciousness. Law enforcement and family members soon identified the woman in the video as Nicole Fusaro. Police informed her extended family of the discovery, and her cousin Jonathan later spoke publicly, wanting to ensure Nicole's name and story were not forgotten. "I came to grips with that,” he said of her likely death after so many years. “How it happened is something that is going to take me a little while.”
Raymond Charles Horsch is now the primary suspect in Nicole's murder and is considered a suspected serial killer, linked to as many as seven missing or deceased women. Besides Nicole, images found in the home showed Gabrielle Amarando and Maribel Fresses, who also disappeared in 2012 and 2018 respectively, as deceased. Two other women, Blair Tonzelli and Horsch's ex-wife Amy McHale, remain missing. Because Horsch died before the investigation began, he was never charged with Nicole's murder or the deaths and disappearances of the other women. His son, Eugene, has faced federal weapons and document charges but has not been linked to the disappearances. No human remains have been found on the Horsch property, and without a body, the medical examiner has not officially ruled on Nicole's death. The investigation brought a horrifying answer to her family's long search, confirming their worst fears and revealing a predator who operated in the city for years.
