Childhood friend of man connected to so-called Philadelphia house of horrors speaks on family's past
Jeremy Perry said he was never suspicious of Raymond Horsch
PHILADELPHI -- There's new insight into the men at the center of a major criminal investigation in Philadelphia who are linked to the disappearance of multiple women.
A childhood friend spoke with ABC Philadelphia affiliate WPVI about his friendship with Eugene Horsch while growing up in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, years before Horsch was arrested for drug charges.
Jeremy Perry grew up with Horsch in the Chalfont neighborhood of Philadelphia. He recalled seeing barrels at the home.
"I can remember blue 55-gallon drums in the garage. Now it looks like they got rid of the garage where the driveway is," he said. "There were a lot of them. There were more in the shed in the back corner of the property, probably 20-30 barrels in there too."
He said they were friends from elementary school through high school.
"We'd go out to his dad's pizza restaurant once in a while. A couple of times we went up in his plane," Perry mentioned.
According to Perry, Horsch's father, Raymond "R.C." Horsch, owned a pizza shop just outside of Doylestown, another Philadelphia neighborhood, which is where he says he kept his plane.
Horsch and Perry also went on a trip together; a photo from their childhood captured them on a log flume.
"I guess we went camping and went to Knoebles; crazy enough we had a picture together," Perry recalled.
Perry said he was never suspicious of Raymond Horsch. He says they hung out at the Horsch house every day; then it burnt down.
The house burnt down before the 2009 marijuana growing operation arrest.
"When they were rebuilding the house, we'd run through the foundation. They put that and a big steel door down there," Perry said.
Perry said Raymond Horsch rebuilt most of the interior, including all the framing work.
Eventually, he said he and Eugene Horsch lost touch because Horsch fell into the wrong crowd.
Years later, Horsch went to jail. He pleaded guilty after nearly $2 million worth of marijuana was confiscated from a drug raid on Chew Avenue in 2013.
Detectives found 95,000 grams of marijuana, 190 marijuana plants and 20 pounds of pre-packaged bags of drugs.
Following Horsch's latest arrest in June, investigators found a 55-gallon drum at his Chew Avenue home. Substances were sent to a lab in Chicago for further testing.
At the most recent press conference, authorities said they have not yet been to the former home in Chalfont.
