Catch the Devil: A True Story of Murder and Deception in the American South

by Pamela Colloff

Pamela Colloff demonstrates again why she is one of the best reporters and writers. This story is astonishing and deeply important.' David Grann, Sunday Times and New York Times bestselling author

'Amazing journalism by Pamela Colloff. Read it and weep.' Jeffrey Tobin

Paul Skalnik was a prolific and ruthless conman and abuser. For more than three decades, he passed himself off as a Vietnam veteran, a college football star, a high-rolling oilman, a criminal defence attorney, an undercover FBI agent and a terminally ill cancer patient. From 1977 to 2015 he was incarcerated many times over and repeatedly used as a jailhouse informant. His bogus witness testimonies of cell confessions have sent at least four men to Death Row.

During a year-long investigation for the New York Times Magazine, Pamela Colloff determined that Skalnik was one of the most prolific, and most effective, jailhouse informants in American history. For decades he was considered the state prosecution's 'closer' witness who could smooth over a case's inconsistencies, nudging jurors past reasonable doubt.

Whenever he was released from prison he would continue his crime spree in which women were usually the collateral damage. Over four decades he was charged with 32 felonies including larceny, fraud, grand theft, the unauthorised practice of law, bail jumping, bigamy and lewd conduct. He married at least nine different women, some at the same time, and was a serial abuser of young girls.

The narrative is framed by the botched investigation of James Dailey - tried with the murder of 14 year-old Shelley Boggio. Skalnik's witness testimony helped put Dailey on Death Row.

By recounting Skalnik's lurid life, Pamela Colloff tells a larger story of injustice and the trail of broken lives he has left behind.

Kindle Edition

Expected publication July 16, 2026

About the author

Pamela Colloff (B.A., English Literature, Brown University) is a senior reporter at ProPublica and a writer-at-large at The New York Times Magazine. Previously she was an executive editor and staff writer at Texas Monthly; her work has also appeared in the New Yorker and has been anthologized in Best American Magazine Writing, Best American Crime Reporting, Best American Non-Required Reading, and Next Wave: America’s New Generation of Great Literary Journalists.

Colloff has been nominated for six National Magazine Awards—more than any other female writer in the award’s history—and won for feature writing in 2013. The following year, the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University awarded her the Louis M. Lyons Award for Conscience and Integrity in Journalism.