I Received a Call from the Dollmaker

Part 1 of 4: The confession of a journalist who became a serial killer's confidant

The voicemail came at three-seventeen in the morning.

I was passed out on my couch, half a bottle of bourbon soaking into the cushion where the glass had tipped over. My phone buzzed on the coffee table. I ignored it. When I finally listened to the message six hours later, hungover and disoriented, I heard five words that changed everything.

“I did something for you.”

The voice was calm. Measured. Almost pleasant. Like someone leaving a reminder about a dentist appointment.

I didn’t understand what it meant. Not then.

To understand that voicemail—to understand how I became the only journalist in Philadelphia with direct access to a serial killer—you need to know about the call that came before it.

The First Contact

Three in the afternoon, October nineteenth. I’d been suspended from the Philadelphia Observer for exactly six hours when my phone rang. I was sitting in my apartment, staring at the wreckage of my career spread across the floor—printouts of articles, notes, photographs, all of it suddenly worthless.

I answered without checking the caller ID.

“What?”

“Mr. Ryland?” A man’s voice. Unfamiliar.

“Who’s this?”

“I read the article about you this morning. The poker game in Atlantic City.”

I sat up. “What about it?”

“I’ve been following your work for weeks,” he said. “All those articles connecting the Dollmaker murders to organized crime. The Marcuccio family. The PhilWaste strike. You’ve been working hard to expose them, make them look dirty. So why would you sit at their poker table?”

I told him to fuck off. Hung up.

The phone rang again immediately.

This time, I listened.

“Answer the question,” he said. “Why would you sit at a mob poker table while writing articles about how dangerous they are?”

“I wasn’t at any poker game.”

“The article says otherwise.”

“The writer is full of shit.”

That’s when the conversation shifted. He started talking about the Dollmaker—not as a subject, but as someone he knew intimately. Someone he understood.

“You’ve been covering the Dollmaker,” he said. “Connecting him to the mob. Making him sound like some enforcer. Some hired killer. And now you’re connected to the mob yourself. It’s... interesting.”

Something in his tone made my skin crawl.

“Who the fuck is this?”

“Someone who understands what it’s like to be mischaracterized.”

The Details Only He Would Know

He talked about Patricia Moreno, the journalist who’d written the poker story that destroyed me. He analyzed her article with surgical precision—how she’d buried my name in paragraph six, made it look credible rather than like a hit piece. He was right about everything.

Then he started talking about his work.

Sofia Cavallari, back in March. Coffee shop in Old City. Dark hair, blue dress, reading a script. He’d watched her for twenty minutes before approaching. Posed her near the Schuylkill but wasn’t ready yet, hadn’t perfected his process. Had to put her in the river before he could finish.

“That’s haunted me ever since,” he said.

Rebecca Chen. PhilWaste VP. Got away. Hit him hard enough to bruise a rib.

“Still hurts,” he said. “But I learned from that.”

Maria Santos. Community organizer. The chalk application around her eyes. The positioning of her hands.

“You didn’t write about those details,” he said. “No one did.”

I was writing everything down. Every word. My hands were shaking but I couldn’t stop taking notes.

None of these details had been in any articles. The police had held them back. This was information only the killer would know.

I was talking to the Dollmaker.

The Road Map

“Your editor suspended you today, didn’t he?” he asked. “Because of Patricia’s article.”

“How do you know that?”

“I’m guessing. But I’m right, aren’t I?”

He was. My editor had called me in that morning. Told me he had no choice. Couldn’t have me writing about organized crime if there was any hint I was compromised. Suspended pending investigation.

“Patricia Moreno writes one article and your career is over,” he said. “That stain doesn’t wash off, Mr. Ryland.”

Then he told me why he’d really called.

“I have a new target,” he said. “Sofia’s mother. Lina Cavallaro. She came all this way looking for answers about her daughter. Maybe she deserves to understand what her daughter helped create.”

My stomach dropped.

“You gave me the road map, Mr. Ryland. Your article yesterday morning. Before the poker story broke. Center City. The investigation. Working with Donatello. All I had to do was pay attention to your work.”

He was right. I’d written about Lina Cavallaro’s presence in Philadelphia. Her investigation into her daughter’s murder. Her meetings with Michael Donatello. I’d included details about where she was staying, what she was doing, who she was talking to.

I’d given him everything he needed.

The Article I Should Never Have Written

Here’s what I published the day before my suspension:

“Crime Boss Lina Cavallaro Arrives in Philadelphia Seeking Answers About Daughter’s Murder”

The mother of Sofia Cavallaro, the first confirmed Dollmaker victim, has arrived in Philadelphia to conduct her own investigation into her daughter’s death. Lina Cavallaro, reported to be a high-ranking figure in organized crime operations based in Dallas, was photographed yesterday outside the Roadside Motel in Center City, where sources confirm she is currently staying.

Cavallaro has been meeting with Philadelphia associates, including Michael Donatello of the Marcuccio family, as she pursues leads into the September seventeenth murder that police have connected to the serial killer known as the Dollmaker...

The article continued for another six hundred words. Location details. Meeting schedules. Patterns of movement.

I’d written it thinking I was being thorough. Thinking I was doing my job.

What I’d actually done was paint a target.

What I Didn’t Understand

When I hung up with the Dollmaker that afternoon, I was drunk within the hour. I tried calling people. Warning them. Nobody listened to a suspended journalist claiming he’d received a call from a serial killer.

The voicemail came twelve hours later.

“I did something for you.”

I still didn’t understand. Not until the news broke the next morning.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

First, you need to understand how I got here. How a Philadelphia Observer staff journalist ended up suspended, discredited, and launching an independent publication from his apartment. How Patricia Moreno destroyed my career with one carefully crafted article. And how the Dollmaker’s words that afternoon—”We’re both victims of bad journalism”—turned out to be more true than I could have imagined.

Because what he did for me wasn’t a favor.

It was a curse.

Next: “How I Built My Career on a Lie”