Nicole Fusaro

Nicole Amanda Fusaro was last seen in the Kensington section of Philadelphia on July 19, 2018, at 27. In September 2026 the Philadelphia Police Department identified her as the woman in a video recovered from the house of the pornographer R.C. Horsch on West Chew Avenue, in which, police say, Horsch appears to strangle her. Her body has not been found, and the medical examiner has not ruled her death a homicide.¹²

Life

She was raised in Northeast Philadelphia and attended George Washington High School. Her cousin, Jonathan Halloran-Koren, said she was lighthearted and loved animals. She began using drugs in her late teens and drifted into the streets of Kensington in her twenties. After she disappeared her mother, Diane, searched Kensington for her, handing out fliers attached to sandwiches, and died in January 2020 without learning what had happened; her father, Thomas, had died in 2009.¹³

The Search

When Halloran-Koren tried to reconnect with the family in 2020 and learned she was missing, women in Kensington told him she was last seen getting into a car near Kensington and Allegheny Avenues, and mentioned among the men they feared a "creepy" man named Horsch who picked up women on the Avenue. He filed a report with the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System in 2024.¹⁴

Identification

At a news conference on September 16, 2026, Deputy Commissioner Frank Vanore described a video in which Horsch, naked and holding a camera with another mounted in the room, gives a woman drugs and money, handcuffs her to a bed, and tightens a zip tie around her neck with pliers; in Vanore's words, "she becomes unconscious and appears to be lifeless." The family had been told of her death privately that morning. Halloran-Koren wrote to Mayor Cherelle Parker and the City Council that he was "appalled" to hear the details disclosed in public: "Our family deserved better. Nicole deserved better." Police spokesman Sgt. Eric Gripp said the department was pursuing every lead and would give families verified information "as responsibly and compassionately as possible."²³⁴