Rome, Capoccia
That time I met an American serial killer in Rome
In 2005, Raymond ‘R C’ Horsch staged an exhibition of erotic photographs in Rome. Twenty years later, his crimes were discovered by chance, a year after his death.
Photo: ANSA
The eyes. Those eyes. Black, unblinking, utterly devoid of life. And of humanity. They fix themselves upon you, but they do not simply scrutinise you. No. Rather, they strip you bare, strip you to the bone, grind your bones and soul to dust, and cast you naked into a rubbish tip where every emotion is banished.
Rome, October 2005. Mondo Bizzarro Gallery, in Via Reggio Emilia. An exhibition of erotic photographs by the American artist Raymond ‘R C’ Horsch is opening. The gallery opened just a few years ago, following its relocation from Bologna. A little gem capable of offering discerning connoisseurs – not just Romans – that niche, gothic, dark, erotic art which was taking the world by storm at the time. Trevor Brown, Takato Yamamoto, Mark Ryden, Miguel Angel Martin. Photographers, painters, cartoonists. The gallery itself became a thoroughly entertaining hubbub of intellectuals, artists, musicians and television executives. Among the guests were the late Francesco Coniglio, editor of Blue, and Giampiero Mughini, a connoisseur of the atmosphere and the art displayed with such care by the two owners, Gloria Bazzocchi and Alessandro Papa.
Horsch is a name that is hardly known. However, his photographs deliver a powerful impact. His style exudes a deviant charisma that becomes apparent the moment one encounters him, mere centimetres away. He resembles a small, bearded goblin, his head perpetually tilted back as he scrutinizes you. With those eyes. Horsch has been many things: a Vietnam War veteran, a drug dealer, an unrepentant sadomasochist, a videomaker, a photographer. And twenty years later, I would also discover he was a potential serial killer.
The photographs on display come from two books, one in black and one in white, the Eroto series – a sort of Yin/Yang concept crudely applied to sadomasochism. A via crucis of poses and domination expressed through the camera’s glassy gaze. In Rome, Horsch is accompanied by his wife, Amy. She is pretty, younger than him, clad in a striking fetish outfit. Throughout the evening, while speaking with her under his glassy, malevolent gaze, I sensed the chill of a manipulative game. It was one of the few occasions in my life when I felt genuinely uneasy under the weight of that dead stare; those eyes had seen death—the real thing. I initially attributed this impression to the fact that he had returned from the slaughterhouse of Vietnam, although I was incorrect about that specific detail, if not about the rest. Twenty years later, in 2025, Horsch died of pneumonia, having passed his eightieth birthday. I subsequently learned that police raided his home in Philadelphia in August 2026 after stopping his son, Eugene, for a minor traffic offence. They found a small amount of soft drugs on him. They searched the house and found much larger quantities of harder drugs there. But during the search, according to reports by CBS and the New York Post, they stumbled upon a massive archive of photos and videos taken by his father. Lots of porn. Plenty of sadomasochistic material. But even more disturbing things emerge. In one video, two women who had long been missing appear: Maribel Fresses and Gabrielle Amarando. They are shown first alive and then as corpses. The case becomes a federal matter.
In 2014, Horsch published a novel, “Empathy”, in which he identifies with a serial killer and analytically describes the murders. Tools identical to those described in the text were seized. The FBI and the DEA also recovered the identity document of a woman who went missing in 2023, Blair Tonzelli. The collection of material is vast and obsessive: 600,000 photos, 70,000 videos and over 10,000 pages of drawings and written notes. It brings to mind the brutal documentary he made years earlier, Slaves. Is it possible that some of the women portrayed in it were not truly consenting and that they became his victims?
His ex-wife, Amy McHale – the couple divorced in 2008 – has been missing since 2016. The family has stated that on the evening before her disappearance, she had gone to her ex-husband’s house, and he was the last person to see her alive.