The Long Island Serial Killer’s Last Phonecalls to a Victim
Mary Altaffer/AP
Amber Lynn Costello's life ended at the hands of a serial killer. Christine Pelisek talks exclusively to her roommate about the phone calls she received the night she disappeared.
In the 10 years she'd been working in prostitution, 27-year-old Amber Lynn Costello had developed a system to minimize the danger. She arranged dates through her roommate Dave Schaller's cellphone, and sometimes had him wait in the next room to fend off violent clients, or watch as she was picked up outside their apartment.
Now for the first time Schaller speaks about the calls Costello received on September 2, 2010, the night she disappeared, another victim of the suspected serial killer terrorizing Long Island.
In Costello and Schaller's system, an "incall" was preferable to an "outcall," but after the stranger called several times that evening, Schaller tells Christine Pelisek, Amber "felt comfortable with him." So after the the final call at 10:30—and the settlement on the unusually high price of $1,500—Amber left the modest gray-shingled house she shared with Schaller in West Babylon, New York, wearing a pink hoodie and jeans.