Myroslawa Ferkuniak

Myroslawa "Anna" Ferkuniak (October 7, 1949, to July 28, 1989), known after her marriage as Anna M. Horsch, was the second wife of the Philadelphia pornographer and counterfeiter R.C. Horsch and the mother of Eugene Horsch. She married Horsch in Reno on September 12, 1980, while he was a fugitive using the stolen identity of a California chemist, Dr. Stanley Eugene Stokowski, and lived with him in New Zealand until he fled the country in 1984.¹²

Family

She was born in Nantymoel, Wales, a daughter of Michael and Maria (Perwiczko) Ferkuniak, and her parents later lived on a rural route outside Lehighton in Carbon County. She had one sister. Her birth was registered in the Bridgend district of Glamorgan in the last quarter of 1949, and she arrived in New York on March 2, 1961, at 11. Her Social Security record also carries the names Myroslawa Anna Hoersch and M Horsch.²³⁴

With Horsch

According to the Philadelphia Inquirer, she met Horsch at some point after her arrest in an LSD raid on a house near Temple University. After Horsch was arrested by the Drug Enforcement Administration for manufacturing methamphetamine in February 1977 and jumped bail, she went with him to the West Coast, where he took the identity of Stokowski, a chemist with a doctorate from Stanford University. They married in Reno on September 12, 1980, before a religious celebrant, he as Stanley E. Stokowski; the marriage was recorded on September 16, and both gave their residence as Florida. It was the opening day of the 1980 Reno Air Races, where Horsch later claimed to have flown a jet. Horsch said in 2013 that they had been together five or six years and married "specifically because we needed a marriage license to get into New Zealand."¹⁵⁶ The New Zealand Minister of Immigration said in 1984 that her husband had entered the country in 1980.⁷ The Press of Christchurch reported in June 1984 that "Stokowski" had come to New Zealand "with his wife, Anna, and 18-month-old son," and in April 1985 that he had fled "with his wife and 18-month-old son"; the Inquirer gives her son Eugene's birth as 1981, in New Zealand.¹⁸⁹¹⁰ The family lived at Hadlow, near Timaru, until March 1984.¹¹ The family lived near Timaru, where Horsch worked with Chemical Technology Limited at Clandeboye on a whey-to-ethanol plant, and the company's founder, John Rutherford, described Horsch to The Press as "an excellent family man."¹⁸ When Horsch left New Zealand on March 17, 1984, on a passport that police believed had been stolen in a burglary at Temuka, he left his wife and son behind, and they returned to the United States later. Detective Superintendent R.N. MacDonald told The Press that the family had left "soon after," and in mid-June police said they were looking for the wife and child, having searched properties at Clandeboye and Hadlow. Horsch said in 2013 that he got his wife and son out first, on their own passports, before leaving himself.¹⁶⁸⁹¹²

The psychologist Don Seraydarian, who examined Horsch in 1985 before his federal sentencing, recorded that his only real support at the time was his wife, who had a "therapeutic and rehabilitative effect" on him. Horsch was released from federal prison in 1987.¹³

Death

She died at the family's house at 1101 Devereaux Avenue in Philadelphia on Friday, July 28, 1989, at 39. Her obituary in The Morning Call of Allentown said that she died "after a lengthy illness"; the Inquirer reported in 2026 that she died of an accidental overdose of glutethimide and codeine while sitting in the living room. Her funeral was held from the Andrew P. Ovsak Funeral Home in Lehighton, with a Divine Liturgy at St. Vladimir's Ukrainian Catholic Church. The following month Horsch bought a house in New Britain Township, where their son grew up.¹²¹⁴