Kriti Mehrotra
It was September 2, 2010, when sex worker Amber Lynn Costello stepped out of her West Babylon, New York home to meet an insistent client, only to never be seen or heard from alive again. That’s because, as carefully chronicled in ABC’s ‘Truth and Lies: The Hunted,’ she’d been heinously slaughtered at the hands of Long Island Serial Killer — suspected to be Rex Heuermann. And if we’re being honest, arguably the sole witness in this infamous Gilgo Beach murders case is Amber’s roommate, Dave Schaller.
Who is Dave Schaller?
Although it’s unclear precisely when local native Dave first came across North Carolina-turned-New York resident Amber, they clicked almost instantaneously and were soon even living together. That’s when they actually came up with a safety hoax for the former, wherein he’d barge into the place pretending to be her angry boyfriend if she was with a paid client she didn’t want to service. Though little did they know this would soon backfire in the worst way — with the client demanding credit before offering her an additional $1,500 for the night and eventually allegedly killing her.
According to Dave’s narrative, it was in August that he’d received a distress call from Amber asking him to return home as quickly as possible because her lap dance customer was trying to rape her. She’s reportedly locked herself in the bathroom, but it wasn’t nearly enough to keep this giant of a man at bay — standing at nearly 6’5,” he was threatening her by the time the former came rushing in. Dave then asked this stranger to leave, only for him to refuse until they eventually came to blows, and the hulking figure decided to drive away in his dark green or black first-generation Chevrolet Avalanche.
That’s when the phone buzzes began — as per this roommate, Amber was getting many texts or calls a day from the same man for credit or another meeting until she finally said yes a month later. The reason she actually agreed was because he’d offered an astounding $1,500, which made Dave uneasy yet he didn’t say anything out loud; instead, he simply walked her out. “It was too much money…,” he once conceded in an A&E special. “It was like quarter to 10. The guy called. I walked to the edge of the property. She gave me a hug. And she bounced. She was off.”
Dave had no idea no one would ever see Amber again, but the second he found out she was formally classified as missing, the first person that came to his head was this tall man with empty eyes. It thus comes as no surprise he told the authorities every single detail he remembered once her body was found along Ocean Parkway in Long Island (with three others) in December of the same year. He even went as far as to follow up with officials a couple of times as the years passed by, yet it wasn’t until peak summer 2023 that they were able to identify Rex Heuermann as her alleged perpetrator.
Where is Dave Schaller Now?
Dave was honestly relieved upon hearing the news of Rex’s July 2023 arrest, but it was soon eclipsed by anger as well as confusion since he’d given investigators a lot of what they needed years prior. He’d really described Rex to a tee in his statements, whose dark Avalance was routinely parked in his driveway, only for it to later come to light his witness account had gotten lost in a sea of paperwork. This was obviously an absolute blunder, yet it was done. So now, from what we can tell, Dave is hoping for justice to soon be served while also leading a quiet life well away from the limelight in New York, meaning we unfortunately don’t know much regarding anything he’s been up to these days.
