A 70-year-old man was shot and killed in East Germantown on Friday morning, authorities said.
The shooting took place around 8:30 a.m. on the 5900 block of Ogontz Avenue, according to police.
Responding officers took the victim ― whom police did not identify ― to Jefferson Einstein Hospital, where he was pronounced dead shortly after arrival.
A man is in custody and is being questioned by investigators with the homicide unit, police said.
Anyone with information is urged to call the Philadelphia police tip line at 215-686-TIPS (8477).
The gunfire that killed a North Philadelphia woman and wounded her husband as the couple sat on their porch Sunday night may have been an act of retaliation for an earlier homicide, law enforcement sources said.
Shariff Perry, who police say killed Michelle Wilson, 61, and shot her 67-year-old husband, is the brother of a man authorities say was killed by the couple’s son, Evans, in 2022, according to the sources.
Authorities have not publicly disclosed a motive for the crime, but sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation, said retribution was the likely cause.
Surveillance video obtained from a business near Wilson’s home showed a man wearing a surgical mask and a hat approach the couple’s front porch, pull out a handgun, and open fire just before midnight. Wilson was pronounced dead moments later. Her husband survived.
On Wednesday, police identified Perry, 35, as the suspected shooter. He remained at large Thursday.
Reached by phone, Wilson’s husband tearfully declined to be interviewed, as did his daughter.
The Wilsons’ son, Evans, is one of three people charged in the death of James Dunbar, 20, who was shot in the head on the 2800 block of North Taylor Street, less than a mile from where the Wilsons were shot, sources said.
Another man was also shot, but survived, police said.
Witnesses told detectives at the time that they heard a barrage of gunshots, then saw two armed men fleeing in a Hyundai Sonata. Detectives recovered 17 bullet casings from the scene, authorities said.
Wilson and two teenagers were charged with murder and related crimes, court records show. Wilson has pleaded not guilty and is awaiting trial.
Wilson’s attorney, David Mischak, did not return a phone call on Thursday.
Dunbar’s death came during a wave of crime in the city following the pandemic.
Michelle Wilson’s killing was one of six homicides in Philadelphia between Friday morning and Sunday night, a burst of bloodshed in what has otherwise been one of the city’s least violent years in decades.
Hours before her death, Wilson’s family had gathered for a Sunday afternoon barbecue, with children and relatives on the porch, a neighbor said. The neighbor — who asked not to be identified for fear of retaliation — said the couple were “quiet” and “friendly.”
Police have offered a $20,000 reward for information leading to Perry’s arrest and conviction and have asked anyone with information to contact the department’s homicide unit at 215-686-3334 or its tip line at 215-686-TIPS (8477).
Staff writer Ellie Rushing contributed to this article.
A Holmesburg man who killed his wife after he said she disrespected him was sentenced to 25 to 50 years in state prison by a Montgomery County judge.
Jose Luna, 59, pleaded guilty to third-degree murder late Wednesday before Judge Wendy Rothstein. The plea, negotiated with prosecutors, spared him from a trial scheduled to begin next month on first-degree murder and related charges.
Luna shot Alisett Schubert, his wife of seven years, five times on Feb. 21 as she drove them home from a family party in Rockledge, according to prosecutors. The murder weapon was Schubert’s .38-caliber revolver, which Luna had grabbed from his wife’s purse as they began to argue.
Luna’s attorneys, Scott Frame and Joe Schultz, said he pleaded guilty to spare his wife’s family the pain of sitting through a trial.
“This was his wife, he loved his wife, and he has to live with this rest of his life,” Schultz said. “He feels the weight of what he’s done.”
The sentence handed down by Rothstein effectively puts Luna behind bars for the rest of his life, something Frame said Luna has acknowledged and accepted, remorseful for his actions on the day of the shooting.
Jose Luna shot Alisett Schubert, his wife of seven years, five times in February, according to prosecutors.Vinny Vella / Staff
In Schubert’s obituary, her family described her as “a spirited soul whose love for life was unparalleled.”
“The circumstances surrounding her passing are a heartbreaking reminder of the fragility of life,” her family said. “Suddenly and tragically taken from us, Alisett’s absence leaves an unfillable void in the lives of those who knew her.”
In a statement read in court, Brinda Millican, one of Schubert’s best friends, said her death “has left an emptiness that cannot be repaired.”
“She should have been able to continue living her life and making new memories with the people who loved her,” Millican said. “Instead, her life was violently taken from her by the person who should never have been the one to cause her harm.”
From the outset of the case, Luna admitted he killed Schubert, 48, prosecutors said.
During an interview with detectives hours after the shooting, Luna said he slapped Schubert during a family party after she disrespected him, according to the affidavit of probable cause for his arrest. He told her, after hitting her, that he didn’t care if her family saw the dispute.
The couple continued to argue on the drive home from Rockledge. During the dispute, Schubert stopped the car and told Luna to get out and walk home.
Luna saw that his wife was holding her purse, and he knew her gun was inside it. The two began to fight over the bag, the affidavit said. Luna grabbed it, pulled out the gun, and shot his wife once.
As Schubert turned to get out of the car, Luna shot her four more times, according to prosecutors. He then fled, pausing to throw away his hat and jewelry to avoid being recognized.
Officers in Rockledge found Schubert on the ground, unresponsive. She was later pronounced dead at Jefferson Abington Hospital.
Luna was arrested about a mile away from the crime scene, still holding the gun. He raised the revolver to his head, telling responding officers that he had lost everything, and pulled the trigger.
Bristol Borough police and Bucks County detectives are investigating a homicide that took place early Thursday.
Officers were called to a residence on Wood Street around 6:30 a.m. for what law enforcement sources described as a domestic incident.
A woman inside was reported dead at the scene, and one person was in custody, said the sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation.
Philadelphia police now believe at least two women were killed inside the decrepit Olney home at the center of a sprawling missing persons investigation, officials said Wednesday — a stunning breakthrough in a probe that began nearly two months ago after a chance encounter near Independence Mall.
Inspector Raymond Evers said homicide detectives had recovered photos and videos on hard drives inside the home that appeared to show the deaths of two women who had been reported missing — neither of whom had been previously linked to the case.
Evers identified the women as Maribel Fresses, who was 27 when she was reported missing in February 2018, and Gabrielle Amarando, who went missing in September 2012 at the age of 22.
The announcement at a Wednesday news conference was the latest and most striking development in a case that has drawn national attention since police launched an investigation in June into the disappearances of two other women last seen at the home of Eugene Albert Horsch, 44, and his late father, Raymond “R.C.” Horsch.
Eugene Albert Horsch, 44, of Philadelphia.Courtesy of Philadelphia police
Evers said the two-month search of the home, on the 400 block of West Chew Avenue, involved over 95 search warrants and surfaced an “astonishing” array of evidence: five urns of cremated remains, more than 20 containers full of unknown chemicals and oily substances, and 50 hard drives and other electronic devices holding more than 600,000 images, 70,000 videos, and 10,000 pages of writings and drawings.
Inside one of those hard drives, Evers said, detectives found images and videos that appeared to show Fresses and Amarando alive inside the house — followed by “graphic and dark” depictions of what appeared to be their dead bodies.
But the investigation is complicated, he said, because police have not recovered any human remains inside the home. And forensic tests of the substances in the basement, and of what initially appeared to be blood inside the house, did not test positive for human blood or DNA, law enforcement sources have said.
Without the bodies, he said, the Philadelphia Office of the Medical Examiner cannot officially declare the women dead. He said the case would likely have to go through Orphans’ Court.
Philadelphia Police Inspector Raymond Evers gives an update on the investigation into the house on Chew Avenue.Jessica Griffin / Staff Photographer
Still, he said, the medical examiner’s office said that “if the images and the video are real and not altered in any way,” the women are dead.
Police are still working to determine when the women died.
Eugene Horsch has not been charged with any crimes connected to the women’s deaths or disappearances. Evers declined to say whether investigators believed he — or his father, a creator of erotic and pornographic art — may have been involved.
“Eugene lived there. He lived there for a long time. His dad lived there for a long time,” Evers said when asked about their possible connection to the deaths.
He said investigators had reviewed only about 5% of the digital materials so far and had hundreds of thousands more to go through.
A lawyer for Eugene Horsch did not immediately respond to a request for comment Wednesday.
The missing women
Police said they notified the families of Fresses and Amarando on Wednesday morning.
Ricardo Fresses, 61, said that, in his gut, he had known his daughter, Maribel, or “Bella,” was dead.
“She called me every day. Absolutely every day she called me, and one day she stopped calling me,” he said. “And as the years went by I knew she was gone.“
His daughter grew up in Holland, Bucks County, he said, and started using drugs in high school.
“She was a beautiful girl, a loving girl, always daddy’s girl,” he said, even as she slipped into opioid addiction.
He last saw her on June 19, 2018. They met for a slice of pizza in Kensington, and he gave her $50. He never heard from her again. He reported her missing shortly after.
“It’s a horrible situation that my family has to go through,” he said about what police found inside the hard drive.
Amarando’s family said the news followed 14 years of hope that she might finally turn up.
”I’m just so devastated. This brings some closure, but it still hurts,” said Lora Timmons, Amarando’s stepmother. “She was a sweet little girl. She was always just such fun to be with. She and her father were best friends.”
Timmons said Amarando, who grew up in Doylestown, had been interested in modeling from a young age but “always found the wrong crowd.” She had struggled with addiction since she was a teen, her stepmother said.
Amarando would often come to visit Timmons, who lives in North Carolina, and her sisters, but they lost contact in September 2012.
”She just went away,“ she said. “We searched here and there but we never found her. … We always thought she was just off doing her drug thing, living her life.”
Timmons had not heard of the Horsches until Wednesday.
”I always hoped I’d see her again,” she said. “I didn’t want to think the worst.”
Police declined to say how the women might have known Raymond or Eugene Horsch.
For decades before his death, Raymond Horsch offered drugs, cash, and shelter to women struggling with addiction, in exchange for nude photo and video shoots. Horsch’s visual works featured graphic violence — and sometimes death scenes. He also penned semi-autobiographical novels featuring serial killers who preyed on women in addiction.
Raymond “R.C.” Horsch in character for a film role, 2014.S. E. Stokowski / Wikimedia
How the case began
Wednesday’s developments came nearly two months after police began combing through the Horsch home in connection with at least two other missing women, following a chance encounter near Independence Mall.
On June 19, a U.S. park ranger saw Eugene Horsch and a woman acting suspiciously inside his parked BMW. After searching the car, the officer found drugs, guns, and various other weapons, along with a counterfeit U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration badge.
The woman with Horsch was also found with a fake ID in the name of Blair Tonzelli, a woman who was reported missing in 2023 and last seen at Horsch’s Olney home.
That also renewed suspicions about Horsch’s father, who died in May 2025. Raymond Horsch’s ex-wife, Amy McHale, was reported missing in 2016 and last heard from at the Chew Avenue house.
A witness later told police that Tonzelli was a home healthcare aide who had worked for Horsch’s father, and that she believed Tonzelli and Eugene Horsch had a disagreement over money, according to law enforcement sources.
Investigators interviewed people who knew Horsch and were told that, in the past, he had bragged about killing people and melting their bodies with chemicals in his basement, said the sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation. Horsch, they said, said he could make a body so small it “could be flushed down a toilet.”
Workers and police investigators remove pipes and debris at the entrance to the home of Eugene Albert Horsch on West Chew Avenue in the Olney section of Philadelphia as investigators search for possible evidence on July 22.Jose F. Moreno / Staff Photographer
Since the June arrest, Horsch has remained in federal custody on charges related to illegal gun possession. Police continued to search the Olney home in hopes of learning the whereabouts of Tonzelli and McHale.
They went so far as to excavate the home’s yard and remove a pipe to test for DNA.
FBI agents, meanwhile, continued examining hundreds of pages of text messages, handwritten and typed documents, CDs, and videos — including many of Raymond Horsch’s artistic works.
It was in there, police said, that there was evidence of Fresses’ and Amarando’s deaths.
Fresses’ father said the discovery confirmed his worst fears. For months, years even, he said, he would wake up in the middle of the night and drive through Kensington. He would look into the faces of the women on the streets, hoping he would see his Bella.
“But I was just hurting myself because I knew she was gone,” he said. “I knew in my heart that my daughter was not around anymore.“
Philadelphia police are searching for a man they say walked up to a couple sitting on a porch and opened fire late Sunday night, killing the woman and injuring the man before fleeing.
Shariff Perry, 35, is charged in an arrest warrant with murder, possession of an illegal firearm, and related crimes in the killing of Michelle Wilson, 61, and the shooting of her 67-year-old husband.
Surveillance video from a business on Sunday captured a man wearing a hat and surgical mask — who police now say is Perry — walking to Wilson’s home in the 2800 block of North 24th Street in North Philadelphia. There, the video showed, the man pulled out a gun and fired repeatedly.
Wilson was pronounced dead at Temple University Hospital shortly after the 11:49 p.m. shooting. Her husband was also taken to the hospital, where, police said, he was stable.
Police described Perry as a male, 5 feet, 8 inches tall, and weighing 170 pounds. Anyone with information about Perry or the killing is asked to contact the department’s homicide unit at 215-686-3334 or its tip line at 215-686-TIPS (8477). A $20,000 reward is being offered for information that leads to Perry’s arrest and conviction, police said.
Staff writer Ellie Rushing contributed to this article.
Two people charged with participating in an international scheme to rig basketball games for professional gamblers pleaded guilty in Philadelphia’s federal court Wednesday — the latest development in a scandal that shook the sports world when prosecutors unveiled a sprawling set of indictments earlier this year.
The pleas entered by Bradley Ezewiro and Alberto Laureano mean that half the 26 people charged with participating in the scheme have admitted their crimes in court or have signaled in paperwork that they intend to do so before trial.
None of the defendants has been sentenced, and cases remain pending against some of those charged with taking more active roles in the conspiracy — including Shane Hennen, a former Philadelphia resident and prolific sports bettor whom prosecutors have described as a key organizer.
Still, Wednesday’s guilty pleas — which proceeded with little fanfare — served as a notable moment in a case that has attracted widespread attention as federal authorities across the country in recent years have increasingly been unveiling charges in sports gambling-related prosecutions.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office announced the charges in January, saying it had arrested 26 people, including 20 basketball players, for participating in a multiyear scheme to fix games in the NCAA and the Chinese professional league.
The scam was relatively straightforward, prosecutors said: Professional gamblers and some basketball trainers bribed players to underperform in games, and bettors then wagered against the players’ teams at various sportsbooks. The conspiracy involved dozens of games and millions of dollars in fraudulent bets, prosecutors said.
Some of the bets were placed by Hennen or others in Philadelphia, prosecutors said, including a six-figure wager on a Chinese basketball game at Rivers Casino’s sportsbook in Fishtown.
And some of the NCAA players charged with participating in the scheme spent time in the Philadelphia area, although none was accused of accepting bribes while playing for a local university.
Ezewiro and Laureano each pleaded guilty Wednesday to bribery-related charges. Both were accused in court documents of playing supporting roles in the scheme.
Laureano served as a “fixer” who recruited players into the conspiracy and sometimes delivered them bribe money, prosecutors said.
Ezewiro joined the operation in 2024 while playing for St. Louis University, and also worked with another fixer to identify other players to bribe, prosecutors said.
Their pleas came several days after other accused coconspirators also pleaded guilty.
Over the last week, two former players at the University of New Orleans — Cedquavious Hunter and Dyquavion “Jah” Short — admitted accepting bribes while they played on that team.
And last week, Shawn Fulcher pleaded guilty to taking bribes while playing at two schools, prosecutors said: the State University of New York at Buffalo and Alabama State University.
U.S. District Judge Nitza I. Quiñones Alejandro has scheduled sentencing hearings in the coming months for the people who have pleaded guilty.
A trial for the remaining defendants, meanwhile, is currently scheduled to take place early next year.
Gina LaPlaca, the former mayor of Lumberton Township who pleaded guilty earlier this year to driving drunk with her toddler in the car, has been charged with faking signatures on a nominating petition to run for township committee, the Burlington County Prosecutor’s Office said.
LaPlaca, 47, and her husband, Jason Carty, 49, were both charged by summons with third-degree knowingly filing a false petition, two counts of third-degree tampering with public records or information, and fourth-degree falsifying or tampering with records.
LaPlaca also was charged with fourth-degree making a false statement under oath.
According to the prosecutor’s office, multiple people whose names and purported signatures appeared on LaPlaca’s nominating petition indicated that they had neither signed the petition nor authorized anyone to do so on their behalf.
The petition was submitted by Carty to the Lumberton Township municipal clerk and contained an affidavit signed by LaPlaca that she “personally circulated the petition [and] that such petition was signed by each of the signers thereof in his/her own handwriting,” the prosecutor’s office said.
Carty also allegedly collected signatures for the petition.
Without the allegedly fake signatures, the prosecutor’s office said, LaPlaca’s petition would have lacked the needed number of signatures required to qualify for the primary.
Both LaPlaca and Carty are scheduled to appear in Superior Court in Mount Holly on Sept. 21.
In March, LaPlaca, who served as mayor until December and is still a member of the township committee, pleaded guilty before Burlington County Superior Court Judge Craig Ambrose to driving under the influence and child endangerment.
Under a deal with prosecutors, LaPlaca entered a three-year diversionary program for first-time offenders. She also agreed to attend regular Alcoholics Anonymous meetings and install an ignition interlock device in her vehicle. LaPlaca told the judge she had installed an interlock device last October. And she had already completed inpatient and outpatient treatment, prosecutors said.
Prosecutors said cell-phone video showed LaPlaca driving a blue 2019 BMW erratically on Route 38, swerving across the center line and nearly striking a utility pole. After the motorist who recorded the video alerted police, officers located LaPlaca and found an open container of alcohol in her vehicle, authorities said.
LaPlaca told police she had been drinking before picking up her 2-year-old son from daycare, prosecutors said. At the time, her blood-alcohol concentration measured 0.30% — more than three times New Jersey’s legal threshold for intoxication.
Despite calls from state lawmakers to step down, she declined to resign as mayor and remained in office until her term ended in December.
In a text message Tuesday, LaPlaca said: “I’m still in process of retaining counsel so there’s not much I can say other than these charges are absolutely baseless.”
Carty could not be reached for comment Tuesday. A lawyer for Carty also could not be reached.
In a separate case, Carty was arrested in late May and charged with aggravated assault and harassment, court records show.
The New Jersey Globe news outlet reported last month that LaPlaca had alleged that Carty tried to strangle her. But then she allegedly wrote a letter to the Burlington County Prosecutor’s Office saying that her husband did not assault her and that she wished for the charges to be dropped, the New Jersey Globe reported.
A spokesperson for the Burlington County Prosecutor’s Office declined to comment on the alleged letter, but did say that the case had been transferred to the Mercer County Prosecutor’s Office.
A spokesperson for the Mercer County’s Prosecutor’s Office could not be reached for comment.
A teen sought in connection with the killing of a Pennsylvania State University student in South Philadelphia surrendered to police on Tuesday, the U.S. Marshals Service said.
Kadafi Fleming, 19, is also a suspect in the theft of a Philadelphia police officer’s car during a Monday morning robbery that ended in a shootout, according to the U.S. Marshals Service.
Fleming surrendered around 6 p.m. Tuesday at the Philadelphia Police Department’s headquarters at 400 N. Broad St., the U.S. Marshals Service said.
Authorities previously charged Azzubair Outen-Fleming, 16, and Kaiseem Smith, 16, with murder, robbery, and related crimes in the killing of 22-year-old William “Billy” Schmidt, who was robbed of his cell phone and shot on June 6 on the 1900 block of Durfor Street. This week, the marshals announced that they were seeking Fleming on a robbery charge in connection with the killing.
Fleming is Outen-Fleming’s older brother, authorities said.
The announcement of the marshals’ manhunt for Fleming came after another crime in South Philadelphia: About 3:15 a.m. Monday on the 6900 block of Grosbeak Place, authorities said, thieves stole a green Dodge Charger belonging to an off-duty police officer.
Supervisory Deputy U.S. Marshal Robert Clark said the officer found the thieves a few blocks from where his car had been stolen and exchanged gunfire with them before they fled.
Fleming has been named a person of interest in that theft, Clark said.
It was unclear Tuesday whether anyone had been injured in the shootout. Philadelphia police did not respond to requests for information about the incident.
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Clark added that he did not expect the search to last long, noting that marshals had captured Fleming’s brother in June more than 1,700 miles away at a home in Colorado Springs, Colo.
Smith, who is accused of being the triggerman in Schmidt’s killing, turned himself in to authorities shortly after Outen-Fleming’s arrest. Outen-Fleming’s stepfather, Donte Abdulmalik, 35, has also been arrested and charged with helping his stepson evade the authorities.
The 56-year-old was arrested in 2022 and accused of using his position for years to lure girls, often targeting victims who had run away, been arrested, or struggled with addiction.
The women’s lawsuit accused the city of “reckless disregard for the safety of the public” by allowing a “morally corrupt sexual predator” to remain on the force and victimize at least 48 women and girls,despite years of sustained complaints of misconduct against him starting shortly after he joined the department in 1995.
The department even began the process to terminate Heron in 2008, the complaint says, following sustained allegations that included “associating with known criminals,” “little to no regard for his position as a police officer,” and having been detained by police officers for soliciting a sex worker in Kensington.
But Heron maintained his badge and went on to assault the two girls, among other victims.
“Instead of just firing him, they were moving him around different districts,” said Joshua Van Naarden of VSCP Law, the firm representing the two plaintiffs.
Heron eventually resigned in 2019 following an internal affairs investigation into an allegation that a uniformed Heron was caught by a CVS surveillance camera attempting to steal a phone charger.
Heron assaulted one of the two women in 2016 when she was 9 years old. He held her captive in his bedroom, took 22 illicit photographs while she was unconscious, and sexually assaulted her, according to the complaint.
The former officer sent her a Facebook message in 2021, when the victim was 15, and solicited photos from her as well as sex for money, the suit says.
And when the teen accused him of acting inappropriately, Heron threatened to have her arrested.
Heron assaulted the second women in 2016 while on duty. He picked her up from Temple University Hospital’s emergency department when she was 11 years old,after responding to a report that she had run away from home.
After she was discharged from the hospital to Heron while he was on duty, with instructions to take her home, Heron gave her a laced drink and took photos of the unconscious child.
Two days later, Heron picked up the 11-year-old from her house and again took illicit photographs of her.
Both women were involved in Heron’s prosecution, the complaint says, and he pleaded guilty to counts resulting from his crimes against them.
The woman who was victimized as an 11-year-old did not know about the abuse, which took place while she was unconscious, until law enforcement found photos of her on Heron’s devices, Van Naarden said.
“There are tons of other victims out there that may not even be aware that they were victimized by him,” Van Naarden said.
The city deserves credit for settling the lawsuit, which was filed in December 2024, relatively quickly to prevent the women from having to relive their trauma through depositions, testimony, and court hearings, the attorney said.
The lawsuit was settled in April and the city paid $1.3 million on July 31 to the woman Heron assaulted when she was 9 and $1 million to the woman assaulted when she was 11, a spokesperson for the city’s law department said. There were no other conditions as part of the agreement.
The city declined to comment further on the settlement or on the ongoing lawsuit.
A second lawsuit from an alleged victim of Heron was filed in April in the Philadelphia court and tells of similarly harrowing abuse.
The victim was a 16-year-old mother of a newborn when she met Heron in a courthouse in 2014, the suit says.
“She was, by every measure, among the most vulnerable individuals Defendant Heron could have encountered in his capacity as a uniformed Philadelphia Police Officer,” the complaint says.
Heron groomed her, the suit says, and starting in 2015 assaulted at least once a month for a period of four years, often drugging her “to prevent her from accurately recounting or reporting what had been done to her.” The assault included rape, according to the complaint.
The lawsuit says Heron threatened the girl to secure her silence.
“He repeatedly reminded her of his status as a police officer and his ability to weaponize that status against her, her child, and her incarcerated family member,” the lawsuit says.
Ashley Garland, an Anapol Weiss attorney representing the unnamed victim, said her client deserves the same accountability as the two victims who received payment.
“We are continuing to pursue justice on her behalf,” Garland said in a statement, “and we hope the city changes how it handles officers with sustained misconduct records, preventing them from harming the residents they are supposed to protect and serve.”
