Expunged 2009 child-luring conviction of Raymond Horsch faces possible record destruction
Court files from Raymond Horsch’s 2009 conviction for luring a 9-year-old girl are slated for destruction under state law, prompting calls to preserve them for ongoing investigations.
Raymond Horsch was arrested in March 2009 after attempting to coax a 9-year-old girl into his green Jeep in Kensington, prompting a conviction on two misdemeanor luring charges and a corrupt-minor count at Municipal Court in 2010. He served part of a 2½-to-5-year sentence and would have been placed on the sex-offender registry, but he denied wrongdoing and secured a new trial, after which the victim and her mother refused to testify and the case collapsed.
In 2015 a Common Pleas judge granted Horsch’s petition to expunge the conviction, erasing the official record. Now a clerk at the Criminal Justice Center claims state law requires the files to be destroyed, while the original prosecutor, Jill Fertel, warns that the expunged docket likely contains testimony, psychological assessments, and defense letters crucial to understanding Horsch’s pattern of exploiting women and possible involvement in the deaths of several missing women.
Police continue to examine hard-drive evidence from Horsch’s Olney home, which includes footage of women believed to be dead. Fertel has asked judges in Philadelphia’s First Judicial District to preserve and unseal the records for public and investigative use.
