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The self-styled “sociopath” at the heart of a horrifying investigation into several dead and missing women in Philadelphia was once convicted of trying to snatch a 9-year-old girl — who this week said she feels “really lucky” she was not raped or killed.
Vile pornographer Raymond “R.C.” Horsch — who wrote a creepy book called the “Memoir of an Empathetic Serial Killer” — was sentenced in 2010 to 2½ to 5 years in prison for grabbing Ashley Rivera, who was saved by her mom and stepfather, according to an investigation by the Philadelphia Inquirer.
Horsch called the 9-year-old girl sexy, then violently grabbed her by the arm and tried to drag her into his Jeep, where cops ominously found binoculars and camera gear, an eye patch — and a condom.
“He looked very evil … I couldn’t forget that face,” Rivera, now a 26-year-old mom, told the Inquirer of her abductor, the now-deceased pervert being investigated over a million files, including snuff movies, found in his Philly home.
“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.”
Rivera said her injured stepfather heard her screams and hobbled over to bang on Horsch’s car window, scaring him off. But the creep soon circled back, according to Rivera’s mom, Sasha Rivera.
“I chased him with a baseball bat,” the mom recalled. “I thought he was going to kill her. If he had taken her, I may never have found my daughter.”
Horsch was arrested and charged with luring a child into a motor vehicle and corrupting the morals of a minor.
Rivera said she is still terrified by the memory of him glaring at her in court.
“I was so scared, and he just kept staring at me. I just broke down crying,” she told the Philly paper, saying they eventually “made me get off the stand because I was crying so much.”
“I felt like I was looking at a killer,” she stated.
Horsch was sentenced to 2½ to 5 years in prison and ordered to register as a sex offender. But he requested a new trial, which was granted — and this time Sasha Rivera refused to put her child through the horror of tesifying and being stared down by the man they feared would kill her.
“I thought he and his family would do something to us,” the mom said of Horsch, whose conviction was vacated in 2015 when prosecutors realized they could not proceed without the key witness.
Even though she was just 9, Rivera can’t escape being haunted by the irrational thought she could have done something to save the woman feared to have met their end in Horsch’s house of horrors.
“Maybe it’s my fault that he was free,” she said. “I thank God every day my stepdad was there to save me because I could be missing or dead. I feel really lucky.
“But I feel so bad for all the victims and their families. I didn’t have to go through what they went through.”
It also leaves her terrified for her own child, a son who is 9 — the age she was when grabbed in the street — and “instantly scared” whenever “men stare at me.”
“I tried to get that memory out of my head,” she said. “But I can’t. It stays with me.”
The home that Horsch lived in with his son, Eugene Horsch, remains at the heart of a huge investigation, with cops going through a million photos and videos — including snuff movies.
Last month, investigators uncovered harrowing video footage from 2017 that they say appears to show Horsch strangling a woman in a bedroom.
The woman, who has not been publicly identified, was seen using drugs before being given money by the elder Horsch and then was handcuffed to the bed, Philadelphia police said.
Horsch then appeared to put a zip tie around her neck before she lost consciousness.
Cops revealed they found images and video of two women — Maribel Frieses, who was last seen in 2018, and Gabrielle Amarando, last seen in 2012 — that appeared to show them deceased.
Blair Tonzelli, who vanished in 2023, and Amy McHale, Horsch’s ex-wife who was last seen in 2016, have also been named by the authorities.
McHale’s family said her last known location was the home that Horsch and his son lived.
“Something happened to her in that house,” McHale’s mom, Gloria, said.
Authorities have also uncovered multiple alleged snuff movies featuring R.C. and several missing women, along with vats of mysterious chemicals, and writings referencing serial killers.
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