A Philadelphia woman who narrowly escaped alleged “house of horrors killer” Raymond “RC” Horsch as a child has described the terrifying encounter that stayed with her for years.
Ashley Rivera, now 26, later discovered that the man who tried to take her from the street in 2009 was a prolific pornographer linked to several missing women.
Rivera recalled walking into a 7-Eleven across from her Kensington home on a Friday night, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer.
She was still wearing pajamas and remained within sight of her stepfather, who was sitting on the front porch smoking cigarettes with his crutches beside him.
As Rivera left the store, she noticed a man in his 60s with long, greasy hair slowly circling the block in a green Jeep.
She initially tried to ignore him, but could feel him watching her before he pulled up alongside her.
The man lowered his window, called her “sexy” and asked her to get into the vehicle.
Rivera moved away, but the man suddenly got out and seized her arm. As he dragged her toward the Jeep, she screamed for help.
Raymond “RC” Horsch, who died last year at 82, has been linked to at least seven cases involving missing women
Investigators searched through more than a million digital images and videos found at a Philadelphia home, many depicting women in various poses
Ashley Rivera, now 26, has spoken publicly about her frightening escape from Horsch
Seventeen years later, Rivera still remembers his expression. “He looked very evil,” she said.
Rivera said she escaped only because her stepfather heard her cries and rushed to intervene, in a moment that seemed to come straight from a horror film.
He reportedly hobbled from the porch and struck the rear window of Horsch’s Jeep with one of his crutches. Horsch released Ashley and sped away.
Rivera ran into the house in tears and told her mother, Sasha, who called 911.
Sasha Rivera told the Inquirer that she went outside and saw Horsch continuing to circle the block.
“I chased him with a baseball bat,” she said, swinging it at the Jeep as it drove past.
“I thought he was going to kill her. If he had taken her, I may never have found my daughter.”
Police arrived and arrested Horsch. Inside his Jeep, officers found high-powered binoculars, a digital camera, a telephoto lens, an eye patch and a condom.
When officers asked Ashley and her mother whether Horsch was the man who had tried to lure her into the vehicle, Rivera said she “couldn’t forget that face.”
Horsch was charged with luring a child into a motor vehicle and corrupting the morals of a minor, the Inquirer reported.
Rivera was stunned to learn this week that this man was Horsch, the creepy pervert linked to at least seven missing women.
Horsch’s Olney home and its disturbing past have been at the center of extensive investigations since June which uncovered a trove of disturbing digital evidence suggesting he may have killed women he lured off the streets of Kensington.
Ashley’s mother, Sasha Rivera, 46, said she chased Horsch in his Jeep with a baseball batas he drove by
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In August, investigators announced that video evidence collected from a hard drive in Horsch’s home led police to believe Gabrielle Amarando (left), who disappeared in 2021 at age 22, and Maribel Fresses (right), who vanished in 2018 at age 27, are dead
Other footage collected from the house reportedly showed Horsch strangling Nicole Fusaro, who disappeared in 2018 at the age of 27
Horsch died in 2025 at 82.
Rivera’s account is the first known instance of the sex pest laying his dirty hands on a child. It also offers new insight into how Horsch evaded consequences.
‘I really do feel like I escaped something big,’ Rivera said. ‘He could have kidnapped me. He could have done the same thing to me that he did to those women. He could have raped me, killed me.
‘I was a 9-year-old girl. I was just a kid.’
Months later, in January 2010, Rivera testified against Horsch in court.
Rivera was shaking as she walked to the stand to testify, Horsch and his lawyers sat just feet away. She remembered him glaring at her, with one eye looking straight ahead and the other bulging out.
‘I was so scared, and he just kept staring at me. I just broke down crying,’ she said. ‘I felt like I was looking at a killer.’
Rivera said her testimony had to be cut short. ‘They made me get off the stand because I was crying so much,’ she told the Inquirer.
Common Pleas Court Judge Roger Gordon convicted Horsch of both counts and sentenced him to two and a half to five years in prison.
The conviction meant Horsch would have been required to register as a sex offender under Megan’s Law, but he requested a ‘trial de novo’ in Common Pleas Court.
Unlike a typical appeal – in which a higher court reads the transcript of the lower -court proceedings to check for any legal or procedural errors – a trial de novo wipes the slate blank and would have required Rivera to testify again.
She begged her mother not to make her go back to court. Sasha Rivera, 46, did not want her daughter to relive this trauma.
‘I thought he and his family would do something to us,’ the mother said.
Law enforcement officers and utility crews excavating at the home in July
Investigators are awaiting the results of testing on chemicals discovered in the basement of the property
A new prosecutor took over the case. But without Rivera’s testimony, the District Attorney’s Office dropped the charges against Horsch. The original conviction was vacated and Horsch successfully petitioned for the case to be erased in 2015.
The prosecutor on the case, Jill Fertel, said Rivera’s experience was ‘horrible.’
‘The system was not designed for children,’ Fertel said. ‘There is a difference between being able to confront your accuser and being able to intimidate a victim.’
The state upgraded the crime of luring a child under the age of 13 to a felony in 2013. Fertel also explained courts now tend to allow children to testify on camera to avoid their abuser.
Ashley Rivera said the terrifying moment left her scared to play outside and that she continues to struggle with anxiety until today: ‘When men stare at me, I’m instantly scared.’
Her son is now the same age she was when Horsch tried to grab her. She said she is afraid of letting him go anywhere on his own, also not to play in a park down the block from her house.
‘I tried to get that memory out of my head,’ she said. ‘But I can’t. It stays with me.’