Alleged serial killer Raymond Horsch fled to New Zealand in 1981 after being implicated in a major drug bust. Horsch stated in a 2013 interview he sold narcotics to MC biker Gangs on behalf of the Philly Mob led by little Nicky who financed at least one of his porno movies. Raymond Horsch’s 1973 directorial debut, The Erotic Memoirs of a Male Chauvinist Pig, was financed by Sam “The Barber” LaRussa. LaRussa was a well-known South Philadelphia nightclub owner and a close criminal associate of Nicodemo “Little Nicky” Scarfo (who went on to become the brutal boss of the Philadelphia crime family under the Angelo Bruno era and its bloody aftermath).

Following his time making adult films, Raymond Horsch shifted into other illicit industries.

In the late 1970s, he was busted for counterfeiting, and by the early 1980s, he was caught running a methamphetamine lab. During the Bruno/Scarfo era, the Philadelphia mafia tightly controlled or taxed the local meth trade, which fits his history of operating drug labs before he skipped bail and temporarily fled the country. During his December 2013 appearance on The Rialto Report podcast, Raymond Horsch recounted attending traditional Italian family dinners with Philadelphia mobsters and their relatives. Following these meals, family members would casually hand him shopping bags filled with stacks of cash to finance his adult film ventures. You can explore the archives at The Rialto Report. Horsch also says in the 2013 interview he made and delivered meth across the country in a plane to MC Biker Gangs the Pagan and Warlock MC.

During the late 1970s and 1980s, the Philadelphia meth trade relied on a highly profitable, symbiotic relationship between the Bruno/Scarfo crime family and local biker clubs: While Angelo Bruno historically tried to keep the mafia out of the drug trade, younger factions under Nicodemo “Little Nicky” Scarfo jumped right in taxing the trade heavily. During which the Pagans and the Warlocks MC Biker gangs controlled the actual distribution network, street sales, and regional trafficking of methamphetamine across the Delaware Valley and Jersey Shore where the Bruno Scarfo also controlled the longshore teamsters and bribed local government officials,

A pattern matched in Australia in the late 70s 80s, where Pulitzer winning journalist Johnathan Kwitney states the Italian Calabrian Mafia clans’ Australian clans did the same thing. In addition to using small white-collar banks and rural finance houses to launder drugs sales from the MC Biker gangs who distributed them in Australia and New Zealand. The key Australian bank being the Nugan Hand bank which was also linked to the CIA owned airlines Air America. In Melbourne Italian family-controlled port access and trucking firms tied to the shipment of fruit and vegetables from the Griffith region where Marijuana was grown in wholescale quantities and the Nugan Hand banks dabbled in real-estate mining and aviation investment.

After living as an international fugitive, Horsch was captured in Florida in 1985. He was sentenced to three years in prison for his prior criminal charges, which included methamphetamine manufacturing, counterfeiting, and passing bad checks. His time in Florida was the final stop of a multi-year stint on the run. After a 1977 Pennsylvania police raid uncovered his methamphetamine lab, he fled (following a tip off) to the West Coast and stole the identity of a real scientist. Using that stolen name, he lived in Timaru, New Zealand from 1980 to 1984 When New Zealand authorities caught him using fake passports in 1984, he fled back to the United States, briefly stayed in California under a different alias, and eventually moved to Florida, where he hid until his capture in 1985.

Meanwhile his pal Little Nicky (of the Bruno Scarfo mob family – also a Calabrian mob clan) after taking over the Philadelphia mob in 1981, used his massive criminal earnings to enjoy a luxury lifestyle. He spent a significant amount of his time in the 1980s at a waterfront vacation home nicknamed “Casablanca South”, located on Northeast 47th Street in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. He even kept a custom Rolls Royce, and his luxury speedboat named The Usual Suspects, down there. Nicky’s fun in the sun came to a permanent end on January 8, 1987. Scarfo boarded a flight from Fort Lauderdale to New Jersey; the moment his plane touched down at Newark Airport, FBI agents arrested him the tarmac to arrest him. He remained in jail for the rest of his life.

The investigation into Raymond “R.C.” Horsch’s Philadelphia “house of horrors” has expanded rapidly, revealing deeply unsettling ties to a notorious crematorium body parts scandal and the bizarre intersection of his dark adult film career, his writings, and real-life victims. A massive breakthrough in the investigation revealed that Horsch had illicit access to the Garzone Funeral Home in Kensington, Philadelphia. Between 2005 and 2007, the operators of the Garzone Funeral Home were caught in a notorious scandal where they illegally stripped and sold tissue, bones, and body parts from over 240 corpses to a biomedical company without family consent. Investigators discovered that Horsch allegedly gave a crematorium employee cash and drugs in exchange for after-hours access. He went inside the facility to photograph and film human remains. At a 2014 art exhibition, Horsch publicly displayed an image of a body being loaded into a crematorium incinerator. Brothers Louis and Gerald Garzone had run the funeral home and were paid $1,000 per body by a corrupt New Jersey medical tissue company. They permitted “cutting crews” to secretly steal bones, skin, and organs from over 240 corpses prior to cremation without family consent.

Additionally, court documents from the current investigation note that his son, Eugene Horsch, left a digital review for an active facility, Philadelphia Cremations, Inc., located on the 2900 block of Wilder Street, Philadelphia, PA 19146

And it was the wasn’t the only funeral in Philly with ties to organised crime or the Carto Funeral Home, located on South Broad Street in South Philadelphia, would be run by other associates of the Philadelphia Bruno-Scarfo family. Though to be clear as far as it known while the funeral home frequently handled arrangements for members of the Philadelphia mob family, the Carto family themselves were not members of the Mafia. They were licensed morticians operating a generational business in a heavily Italian American neighborhood where local crime figures happened to be prominent community members. This however did not stop Natalie Guercio who grew up in the Carto funeral home joining the cast of the VH1 reality series Mob Wives: New Blood during its fourth season on the base of the home mob ties. (credits for relevant new agencies sourced for this below)

And then let see whose shoulder his New Zealand partner John Rutheford ran shoulders with.

The American Airline Horsch New Zealand partner John Rutherford names as a would be client for his proposed New Zealand airline Southern Skies was in fact Evergreen Aviation. This is the same airline which used to be owned by Air America the CIA own airlines used for clandestine operations e.g. see FIRM THAT FLEW SHAH TO EGYPT HAD CIA LINKS from the CIAs own archives. Southern Skies never happened. Instead, it got sunk by its rivals Southern World Airlines which then became Pacific Express and had the same clients including Evergreen and another CIA front Southern Air Transport who feature large in my two books State Secrets and State Secrets 2. eg see how HOW THE SECRET CONTRA-SUPPLY MISSION CAME UNGLUED also from the CIA’s own archives.

Southern World was also run by a wanted US Fugitive and Cartel Pilot Harvey Misbin, who like Horsch entered the country backed by New Zealand politicians and likewise circumnavigated the usual immigration steps. Publicly available records indicate that Harvey Misbin was a Vietnam veteran pilot who eluded a grand jury following a $45 million border drug seizure in 1987.Source ‘Colombian Organised Crime and Cocaine Trafficking ‘ Narcotic Bureau Police Department Glendale California USA — page 14).

“Aircraft are normally purchased or leased in the United States by Cartel members based in the United States and outfitted with additional fuel containers (bladders) for nonstop flying.….One Glendale based pilot, Harvey Misbin~ was paid $200,000 per load to pilot a Leer jet. His Cartel connection was through his Colombian wife, daughter of a Colombian military officer“.

Misbin partner Louis Patrick McElwee was New Zealand honoree consulate to Columbia, and his immigration consultant was Aussie Malcom an immigration minister in Muldoon Government at the time Horsch entered New Zealand. Misbin Immigration consultant was the man who had helped sink Rutherford Southern Sky Aussie Malcolm, a very bad man with several Asian business associates linked to Asian Triad gangs. Eg see Former National Party MP Anthony ‘Aussie’ Malcolm likely sexually abused children – police review | RNZ

Aside from looping the Pacific Rim the freight firms’ manifestos confirm it carried from cargo ranging from bloodstock horse to America Cup yachts and Eastern European weapons. It also did work for Southern Air Transport and Evergreen Aviation at Rickenbach airport Ohio. where it shifted large amounts of cash and aid to Russia in the 1990s and before that was training Royal NZ Air Force Hercules pilots.

I write in page 118-119 of State Secrets “In 1991, Southern Air Transport would again surface into the public eye, in a place called New Zealand in connection with the training of New Zealand Airforce pilots. At that time Pacific Express could be found dropping Eastern European weapons into Angola (and other impoverished African nations)... On January 21, 1991 a Hugh Barlow article appeared in both the New Zealand Times and the Dominion (provided to me courtesy of Barlow). The article revealed how Southern Air had been selected to train RNZAF C130 Hercules pilots at Southern Air training center’s in Marietta, Georgia, under an arrangement made in the late 1980s, “well before the change of government”, at the height of Reagan’s fiasco in South America…. CIA tracker Louis Wolf added: “It is quite amazing that of all the people to choose, they (the RNZAF) chose Southern Air.”

Yet by examining Southern Air’s clients, which included the air forces of Israel, Colombia and Pakistan (which was documented as providing military escorts to drug traffickers connected to the BCCI network, whose clients included former CIA asset Noriega (one of Southern Air Transport’s major customers)…In 1991 the probability that Louis Wolf was correct when he described the airline’s New Zealand air force connections as “fishy” increased in that the “training” coincided with the arrival of Bob Mills (whose presence was also uncovered by Hugh Barlow), the First Secretary at the US Embassy in Wellington.

Mills has been documented by peace activists, open information activists and former CIA agents as a CIA officer for more than 15 years. He was first tagged as CIA while stationed in Thailand during the height of the Indochina conflict, then again in Indonesia as the West backed the rise of Suharto on a pedestal of blood. Mills then transferred to the US embassy in Russia at the height of the Cold War, prior to a posting in Afghanistan (allegedly as the CIA station chief) when the country was in the midst of a violent civil war (Afghanistan’s resistance force was being armed by the CIA, operating out of Pakistan in what has been documented as the largest CIA station outside America). Mills then moved to New Zealand”.

Sources:

1. PeaceLink, June 1994.
2. January 21, 1991 a Hugh Barlow article appeared in both the New Zealand Times & the Dominion (provided to me courtesy of Barlow).
3. Ernest K. Gann – Aviator and Author | Wings Over New Zealand (NZ Crop dusters and bush pilots ties to ties to the CIA)

When the Iran Contra Operation got exposed in the 1980s, it shifted operations from Miami (where Horsch was ever in jail or just getting out) operation moved from Georgia and Miami to Ohio Rickenbacker in an operation overseen later by one Jeffrey Epstein, money launderer and human traffickers. eg See How Jeffrey Epstein Used the Billionaire Behind Victoria’s Secret for Wealth and Women – The New York Times.

And guess whose aircraft and pilots you keep finding using the same Timaru airport that Horsch kept his amphibious sea plane at the very same time? All at a time, when no less than the CIA’s head of South-East clandestine operation Theodore Shackley head of operations for Southeast Asia Clandestine Operations was also reported as flying “crop dusters” in Timaru. As alleged by my former publisher journalist Ian Wishart. Shackley was also deeply involved in the Nugan Hand Bank.

While Timaru accountant Alan Hubbard, the man who audited the book for the South Canterbury Saving Bank (whose board of directors also included the key decision maker for the South Canterbury Development Board) before his own firm South Canterbury Finance imploded to the tune of $NZ1.6 billion, could be found buying and selling aircraft used to traffic arms in Syndey, from an American aviation pioneer Elanor Rudnick. Following her clandestine operations in Israel, Rudnick expanded her commercial ventures and founded Rudnick Helicopters Ltd in New Zealand. Her company operated using the official Helicopters New Zealand license (the company backed and later owned by Allan Hubbard), linking her historic aviation footprint directly to Hubbard’s business empire in Timaru. A role is heavily detailed in Virginia Green’s biography, Allan Hubbard: A Man Out of Time. As Helicopter New Zealand it employed many former RNZAF and American pilot and conducted operation from Asia to Antarctica.

Canterbury Aviation scene had a long association with these kinds of airlines that existed long before Horsch appearance. A prime example is ZK-BYD. This aircraft previously used in Australia departed New Zealand on 11 July 1967 and was sent straight into Laos, where it officially transitioned into the fleet of Air America, the CIA affiliate, flying covert routes under the registration XW-PFA. The Royal Air Lao Shell Fleet: Several other New Zealand workhorse planes, such as ZK-AZN, ZK-AYL, and ZK-AQS, followed a similar pipeline. And the pipeline flew both ways. When Air America bases began shutting down in the early 1970s, several high-profile Air America pilots relocated to Australia rugged out back or became New Zealand bush pilots. Taking jobs flying local tourist routes, forestry patrols, and cargo runs, bringing their specialized knowledge of flying in rugged environment directly into the New Zealand aviation scene.

The rugged, mountainous terrain of the Canterbury High Country and Southern Alps required the exact specialized skill set these pilots possessed: executing extreme, short-takeoff-and-landing (STOL) maneuvers on unpaved alpine ridges. This environment mirrored the conditions they experienced flying into clandestine mountainside “Lima Sites” during the Secret War in Laos. During the late 1970s, New Zealand’s infamous “Mr. Asia” (Marty Johnstone / Terry Clark) syndicate was at the height of its international heroin smuggling operations again involving the Australian Nugan Had bank as several large syndicates used the South Island as a transit point. While an Australian and New Zealand parliamentary inquiry heard of the Mr Asia drugs being loaded on to boats like the Brigadoon to ferry drugs and repatriate illicit wealth across the Tasman Sea between Australia and New Zealand. With NZ Journalist like Pat Boot noted had involved US soldiers’ station in in Udan Thailand where a U.S. Air Force base was built during the Vietnam War, making it a major hub for military logistics and clandestine operations in Southeast Asia. While Papers Past archives from the mid-1980s capture several distinct trials involving the interception of imported drugs and other valuable goods smuggled in Christchurch Airport on US military planes. With “Deep Freeze” first drawing attention to how global transport networks could be manipulated by organized crime as early as the 1960s for narco-trafficking.

“During the late 1960s and early 1970s, the U.S. military supply chain for its Antarctic research missions ironically became a known pipeline for smuggling high-quality illicit narcotics—including marijuana and LSD—into New Zealand’s local counterculture market. Troops or personnel attached to the base bypassed mainstream border controls via military transit, before Customs implemented more sophisticated screening technique Ironically, “The Man” became a significant source of drugs for the counterculture. In 1967, 13kg of marijuana was seized in a bust at the headquarters of the US Operation Deep Freeze base at
Christchurch Airport.” History never repeats: New Zealand’s history of drugs and the laws to control them

Come the late 70’s early 1980s, New Zealand Customs was acting with extreme diligence to intercept illegal drug smuggling suspected of entering the country via United States military mail transiting through Christchurch to Antarctica believing it has been used as part of larger operation.

However, this strict enforcement sparked a major geopolitical clash, as the US military and Embassy fiercely resisted any actions that threatened to undermine their global immunity from host-government oversight. Faced with intense pressure at the highest political levels in Wellington, New Zealand authorities ultimately capitulated. Consequently, Customs’ anti-drug zeal sharply declined: physical mail searches dwindled, requests to board aircraft ceased, and by 1985, local enforcement had been reduced to a mere three requests for cargo manifests over a four-year period.

By the early 1990s, Customs officials such as JohnNeville Anserson (one of my sources in State Secrets 1) openly admitted they were officially barred from searching US military aircraft, leaving vast quantities of palleted cargo and secure diplomatic bags entirely unpoliced for contraband. Peace activist would note such packages were guarded extremely carefully. Regardless drugs were found on personnel but not in the quantities. Customs also came to believe someone had tipped off the American suspect just before the Custom operation occurred that got them banned from searching US military planes from1983 onwards.

Papers Past | Newspapers | Press | 31 August 1978 | Businessman denies smuggling
Papers Past | Newspapers | Press | 4 December 1980 | ‘Customs acted in required manner’
Papers Past | Newspapers | Press | 2 December 1981 | Drugs in Americans’ mail
Papers Past | Newspapers | Press | 19 November 1981 | Searches anger U.S. Ice staff
Papers Past | Newspapers | Press | 11 February 1982 | American ‘wanted herb tea, but drug sent…

In my 2006 book State Secrets II, I would also interview Patrick O’Brien a former undercover police intelligence officer. Obrien in the late 1970s and early 1980s was involved in investigating the industrial shipping activity of the South Island, including Lyttleton in Church, Timaru and Bluff port (which serviced Tiwai Point aluminum smelter) area serviced by TNL shipping. TNL is owned by Sir Peter Ables known as the white Knight because his ties to cocaine traffickers and his business interests with notorious US West Coast Mafia boss Jimmy “The Weasel” Fratianno. When Fratianno, of Neapolitan descent, became a government witness in late 1977, he broke open decades of underworld secrets. His disclosures to federal investigators and Congress include the mafia ties to the CIA anti Fidel Castro operations.

He was investigating international smuggling rings who were using the South Island’s port cities to transport drugs and guns. O’Brien alleged that while working undercover, he stumbled upon “container loads” of weapons being exported and illegal narcotics being imported through the area. He claimed these operations involved foreign intelligence assets, specifically pointing to the CIA, who according to Obrien were utilizing localized transportation networks during the Vietnam War era to trade arms for drugs.

In short Horsch was drug dealer who acted as a bridge between biker MC distributors and Italian brokers much in a manner we saw in both New Zealand and Australia where not just the same MC bikers were used to distribute illegal narcotic involving Italian mobs that answered to the same Calabrian Mafia hand. In Australia that network had its money washed by the US Intelligence connected to Nugan Hand bank and New Zealand white collar criminals. In New Zealand Horsch partner John Rutherford would turn out to have contact with the same CIA Nugan Hand affiliated airlines. Connection which exists to this day and involves all the Usual Suspects.