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Now, part of my research was showing what a horrible life models can lead up to the point they achieve success. They could have learned bad habits, like ingesting orange juice-soaked cotton balls or eating only one apple as their food intake for the entire day. They could have frustrations like when an agent insisted one of them lose twenty pounds and then she gets to the shoot and the photographer and director agree she looks too emaciated. They could have bad experiences like sexual harassment, long hours, or body shaming, then get paid basically nothing but a designer purse for their trip down the catwalk. They could also fall into substances like alcohol, cocaine, or heroin to speed up their metabolism.
But after searching through their autopsy reports, none of those things were present. There was no sign of cotton balls in the stomach contents. There was no sign of substance abuse—drugs or alcohol. There was no thyroid medication or uppers to keep them thin. But the models were thin. Very thin. That they did have in common.
From a purely practical standpoint it meant anything they ingested had to be processed quickly. So, any poison they took, any naturally occurring substance they breathed in, anything they experienced hit them harder than people who have some meat on their bones. But did that tell me anything? Not really.
It ruled things out, though.
No one gave the models cotton balls soaked in arsenic. No one tried to kill them with cyanide or forced alcohol down their throats. There was no struggle because there were no bruises. There were no track marks, so they probably weren’t cocaine or heroin addicts. They were women who somehow broke through the modeling industry, whether by good genetics or finding the right agent, and burst through the barriers.
Most people thought you had to be unique or flashy to be a supermodel. Thing was, though, designers didn’t want the person who stood out. They wanted a sort of glorified hanger to showcase their clothes. But they forced women into these horrible living situations, telling aspiring models to look thin without looking thin and not to look too different to be in a lineup with others who looked just like them.
So, how did these particular women manage to get through? I taped all their pictures to the window in the guest room. True, they did look alike. They had the same body type, the same basic hairstyle, and ultimately looked rather unforgettable. As I looked from one to the next, they weren’t carbon copies exactly, but other than hair color I couldn’t have distinguished one from another without knowing them. But they did all look like Jerika, the model in the magazines that anonymous source gave me.
When I got ready to write the first draft of my article, I felt something bubble up in me. It wasn’t excitement exactly, but it felt like the story was bursting to come out. Pushing up the lid of my laptop, I typed in a frenzy. And then the Shadow Reaper profile came to light. Someone who played a role in the death of these girls because surely having all these women kill themselves just as their careers were finally taking off couldn’t be a coincidence. Surely, a model who had sacrificed so much, who finally made it in her career wouldn’t off herself before she got a chance to enjoy that success. To succumb to the pressure just as she was about to make it? Never. If there was one other thing these women had in common it was determination.
With the words finally out, the narrative finally laid in a structure and evidence supporting every point, I called Regina Clarke. “I have another one.”
She tapped at her computer in the background. “A follow-up to Molly?”
“Well, yes, I have that too, but no, that’s not what I’m calling about. Are you familiar with Justine Bowman, Reagan Main, and Tatianna Urlensky?”
She snickered. “Is this like a game show? They’re models, right?”
I held my breath. “Were models. They’re all dead.”
She gasped. “I mean, I maybe remember something about Reagan now that I think about it, but all three of them?”
I tapped my pen cap on my notepad. “There are actually over ten. Different apartments in different parts of New York City, different cops involved, all over the last two years, but they’ve all been deemed suicides. Despite a lack of a note, no substance abuse problems, and their stars finally on the rise. Their lives were finally starting to come together. And for some reason, the world doesn’t care to look into it.”
She paused. “What do you think?”
My heart thundered. “I think there’s a serial killer in New York City called Shadow Reaper and he’s coming for up-and-coming models. He has a type. He sticks to it. And no one gives a shit because models are easily replaceable there. They’re so eager they starve themselves. They’re so hungry for fame they’ll take drugs or ingest anything to be thin. They’re so naïve about what they’re getting into, they’d fall for anything. Only now? They’re falling to their death.”
She blew out a breath. “Jesus, Phoebe. Are you for real?”
I squeezed my pen in a death grip. “I have to edit, double check everything, but then do you want it?”
Her excitement was palpable. “Hell, yeah. Send it to me the moment it’s done. And all your research. We need to fact-check everything before we can run this. If you’re wrong—”
I shook my head. “I’m not wrong. And yes, I’ll send you everything. It’s time for someone to care that these women are dying.”
When I disconnected, I felt nerves grip me. I wasn’t wrong, but this was a hell of a story. It was splashy and big. This could be huge for me, especially in the wake of Molly’s story. So, I sent Molly’s follow-up article and spent the rest of the afternoon going over everything on Shadow Reaper. Then I made phone calls to every police department in New York where one of these women were found. Just to see if anyone would give me a comment. All the answers sounded pretty similar:
“No comment, bitch.”
“That’s impossible. Go crawl back under the garbage you crawled out from.”
“Shut the fuck up. It was a goddamn suicide.”
But then, a deep voice asked a question. “What makes you say that it wasn’t a suicide?”
I gasped. “Wait, you’re talking to me?”
“This is Lieutenant Anthony Trattoria of the eighty-sixth. What makes you believe it wasn’t a suicide?”
I was about to hyperventilate. This was the guy who signed off on Tatianna’s death as a suicide. “No suicide note, first of all.”
He cleared his throat. “Suicide victims don’t always leave notes, especially if it wasn’t planned.”
