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Catch the Devil: A True Story of Murder, Deception, and Injustice on the Gulf Coast
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The gripping true story of a serial con man whose lies condemned a man to death row, by award-winning New York Times Magazine writer Pamela Colloff
For more than three decades, Paul Skalnik roamed the Gulf Coast lying about who he was. He passed himself off as a fighter pilot, a high-rolling oilman, a criminal defense attorney, an undercover agent, and a terminal cancer patient. In these guises he married nine women—some at the same time.
When Skalnik got caught, as he invariably did, he would run a different con. Locked up with other men awaiting trial, he claimed they confessed their crimes to him. Then he peddled those stories to prosecutors. In Pinellas County, Florida, he became a frequent witness for the state, thinking nothing of exaggerating men’s wrongdoing or implicating the innocent to help prosecutors win convictions. In return, the state rewarded him with his freedom, fueling his growing sense of invincibility. Soon he was not just committing fraud; he was preying on girls in their teens or barely into adolescence.
In 1985, Jim Dailey, a down-on-his-luck Vietnam veteran, was implicated in the murder of a fourteen-year-old girl and landed in the Pinellas County Jail with Skalnik. No forensic evidence or motive linked Dailey to the killing, but Skalnik’s account of his "confession" helped put Dailey on death row. Skalnik, meanwhile, walked free. More than three decades later, after another man took responsibility for the killing, Pamela Colloff, reporting for the New York Times Magazine and ProPublica, visited Skalnik and asked him if he would recant his testimony. He refused.
By then, Skalnik had caused untold to the women and girls he exploited, to the dozens of men he helped imprison, and to Jim Dailey, who went on to receive an execution date. In this mesmerizing debut, Pamela Colloff spins a dark tale of a remorseless and brilliant liar made lethal by a system more concerned with winning convictions than finding the truth.
For more than three decades, Paul Skalnik roamed the Gulf Coast lying about who he was. He passed himself off as a fighter pilot, a high-rolling oilman, a criminal defense attorney, an undercover agent, and a terminal cancer patient. In these guises he married nine women—some at the same time.
When Skalnik got caught, as he invariably did, he would run a different con. Locked up with other men awaiting trial, he claimed they confessed their crimes to him. Then he peddled those stories to prosecutors. In Pinellas County, Florida, he became a frequent witness for the state, thinking nothing of exaggerating men’s wrongdoing or implicating the innocent to help prosecutors win convictions. In return, the state rewarded him with his freedom, fueling his growing sense of invincibility. Soon he was not just committing fraud; he was preying on girls in their teens or barely into adolescence.
In 1985, Jim Dailey, a down-on-his-luck Vietnam veteran, was implicated in the murder of a fourteen-year-old girl and landed in the Pinellas County Jail with Skalnik. No forensic evidence or motive linked Dailey to the killing, but Skalnik’s account of his "confession" helped put Dailey on death row. Skalnik, meanwhile, walked free. More than three decades later, after another man took responsibility for the killing, Pamela Colloff, reporting for the New York Times Magazine and ProPublica, visited Skalnik and asked him if he would recant his testimony. He refused.
By then, Skalnik had caused untold to the women and girls he exploited, to the dozens of men he helped imprison, and to Jim Dailey, who went on to receive an execution date. In this mesmerizing debut, Pamela Colloff spins a dark tale of a remorseless and brilliant liar made lethal by a system more concerned with winning convictions than finding the truth.
320 pages, Hardcover
Expected publication July 14, 2026
About the author
Pamela Colloff
13 books39 followersPAMELA COLLOFF is a reporter at ProPublica and a staff writer at The New York Times Magazine. She was the recipient of a National Magazine Award for Reporting in 2020 and for Feature Writing in 2013. Her work has been anthologized in The Best American Magazine Writing, The Best American Crime Reporting, and Next Wave: America’s New Generation of Great Literary Journalists. Colloff holds a bachelor’s degree in English from Brown University. She lives in Austin, Texas, with her husband and their two children.
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
March 30, 2026
This was an incredible true crime book about the murder of a young girl in Florida in the 1980s and the abhorrent reliance on a conman turned jailhouse informant.
The structure of the book is perfect: first introducing you to Paul Skalnik, the so-called informant who claimed that James Dailey confessed the murder to him in prison. The problem? Skalnik was a conman and pedophile who quickly realized he could get sweetheart deals from prosecutors by snitching on fellow inmates. The author then dives into Dailey’s background, the murder of Shelly Boggio, and the actual evidence in the case - spoiler, there’s very little evidence tying Dailey to the murder without Skalnik’s testimony.
The book is an indictment on the inherent systemic problems with capital punishment. It challenges the way prosecutors and law enforcement treat jailhouse informants and general investigations.
Unfortunately, this story doesn’t have a happy ending. Dailey is still on death row for a crime he likely did not commit. It’s an absolute tragedy but I wonder if this book will help get more publicity to the case.
The structure of the book is perfect: first introducing you to Paul Skalnik, the so-called informant who claimed that James Dailey confessed the murder to him in prison. The problem? Skalnik was a conman and pedophile who quickly realized he could get sweetheart deals from prosecutors by snitching on fellow inmates. The author then dives into Dailey’s background, the murder of Shelly Boggio, and the actual evidence in the case - spoiler, there’s very little evidence tying Dailey to the murder without Skalnik’s testimony.
The book is an indictment on the inherent systemic problems with capital punishment. It challenges the way prosecutors and law enforcement treat jailhouse informants and general investigations.
Unfortunately, this story doesn’t have a happy ending. Dailey is still on death row for a crime he likely did not commit. It’s an absolute tragedy but I wonder if this book will help get more publicity to the case.
Review of advance copy
A masterful narrative of a con man so charismatic; law enforcement officials always believed whatever he said. The events that unfolded when Jim Dailey meets Paul makes for one of the most intriguing and astonishing true-crime debuts I’ve ever read and had me on the edge of my seat the entire read.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
Thank you to Knopf and NetGalley for the ARC.
Five stars for the extraordinary reporting and not for the enjoyability of the story because woof, this is a rough one. You want an investigation into a miscarriage of justice? This is your book for this year.
Part 1 traces the rise of Paul Skalnik as a conman who constantly got out of jail by serving as a jailhouse snitch for prosecutors--and then promptly running off, getting arrested again, and repeating the process. And he conned and robbed a bunch of people along the way, and sexually assaulted multiple children, too. He got off totally free for most of it because of the confessions he "heard" from his fellow inmates, which in reality were dubious at best.
Part 2 goes into the crime that is the center of this story: the murder of a 14-year-old girl in Florida. One man was definitely involved in killing her...but he's not the one who ended up on Death Row. No, that was another guy entirely, and it would be ASTOUNDING if he was ACTUALLY INVOLVED in this, because he was convicted on absolutely zero physical evidence, with multiple witnesses who said he wasn't there, and entirely based on the "evidence" of jailhouse snitches, chief of whom was Paul Skalnik. The rest of the book follows the legal saga surrounding this case and highlights how prosecutors are often determined to get a conviction of literally anyone, regardless of their guilt, as long as it helps their statistics.
A vast amount of research went into this book, and it shows. It is a horrifying account, showing how the justice system failed both victims of the original crimes and those who were made into victims by Skalnick himself, again and again and again. And it's a saga that isn't even over.
Five stars for the extraordinary reporting and not for the enjoyability of the story because woof, this is a rough one. You want an investigation into a miscarriage of justice? This is your book for this year.
Part 1 traces the rise of Paul Skalnik as a conman who constantly got out of jail by serving as a jailhouse snitch for prosecutors--and then promptly running off, getting arrested again, and repeating the process. And he conned and robbed a bunch of people along the way, and sexually assaulted multiple children, too. He got off totally free for most of it because of the confessions he "heard" from his fellow inmates, which in reality were dubious at best.
Part 2 goes into the crime that is the center of this story: the murder of a 14-year-old girl in Florida. One man was definitely involved in killing her...but he's not the one who ended up on Death Row. No, that was another guy entirely, and it would be ASTOUNDING if he was ACTUALLY INVOLVED in this, because he was convicted on absolutely zero physical evidence, with multiple witnesses who said he wasn't there, and entirely based on the "evidence" of jailhouse snitches, chief of whom was Paul Skalnik. The rest of the book follows the legal saga surrounding this case and highlights how prosecutors are often determined to get a conviction of literally anyone, regardless of their guilt, as long as it helps their statistics.
A vast amount of research went into this book, and it shows. It is a horrifying account, showing how the justice system failed both victims of the original crimes and those who were made into victims by Skalnick himself, again and again and again. And it's a saga that isn't even over.
Review of advance copy received from Publisher
I tore through this book. I read it on the train to work, on the train back from work, on the platform waiting for the train, during my lunch breaks. When I was not with the book I spent all my time thinking about it.
Narrative nonfiction authors can generally be judged by two metrics: one, the story they choose to tell (esoteric or ubiquitous) and two, the way they tell it (dry or with a flourish). A victory in one can absolve a failure in the other.
Pamela Colloff has both a winning story and a winning style. Every page was a surprise, a delight, an elegy. The book testifies to Colloff’s empathy and to her refusal to concede to the easy explanations for the failures of our justice system. The structure of the book is so unbelievably elegant it’s hard to enumerate exactly how; it grounds itself in rigorous considerations of time and place, tethering the story to reality and making clarity a top consideration. This isn’t a swashbuckling story of a roguish con man. Colloff knows better than to entertain that possibility. This is a book confronting the destruction Skalnik has wreaked and continues to wreak, from beyond the grave.
I am at a loss for what to read after this.
Narrative nonfiction authors can generally be judged by two metrics: one, the story they choose to tell (esoteric or ubiquitous) and two, the way they tell it (dry or with a flourish). A victory in one can absolve a failure in the other.
Pamela Colloff has both a winning story and a winning style. Every page was a surprise, a delight, an elegy. The book testifies to Colloff’s empathy and to her refusal to concede to the easy explanations for the failures of our justice system. The structure of the book is so unbelievably elegant it’s hard to enumerate exactly how; it grounds itself in rigorous considerations of time and place, tethering the story to reality and making clarity a top consideration. This isn’t a swashbuckling story of a roguish con man. Colloff knows better than to entertain that possibility. This is a book confronting the destruction Skalnik has wreaked and continues to wreak, from beyond the grave.
I am at a loss for what to read after this.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
WOW! I was hooked from the first chapter. I kept wanting Paul Skalnik to get any kind of consequences for the destruction that he had caused in so many lives.
I was so angry that he was able to keep telling lies, no matter how outrageous. But he was a con man.
The anger is more at the lawyers and law enforcement that allowed Paul to keep conning people, to hurt people.
So many lives were destroyed over this one man and the power he held over Pinellas county.
The author is a very good storyteller. She investigates all the leads and does not let go. I appreciated the efforts that she expanded to try to get Jim a new trial, a new outcome. I felt the repulsiveness of her time with Paul.
This is the perfect true crime book and I will recommend it to everyone. 6 out of 5 stars for me!
Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for this ARC in exchange for this honest review .
I was so angry that he was able to keep telling lies, no matter how outrageous. But he was a con man.
The anger is more at the lawyers and law enforcement that allowed Paul to keep conning people, to hurt people.
So many lives were destroyed over this one man and the power he held over Pinellas county.
The author is a very good storyteller. She investigates all the leads and does not let go. I appreciated the efforts that she expanded to try to get Jim a new trial, a new outcome. I felt the repulsiveness of her time with Paul.
This is the perfect true crime book and I will recommend it to everyone. 6 out of 5 stars for me!
Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for this ARC in exchange for this honest review .
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
How did Paul Skalnik, a conman with a history of fraud, grand theft, and sexual abuse, become a trusted go-to jailhouse informant for prosecutors in Pinellas County, Florida? That’s the question Pam Colloff sought to answer as she reported the 2019 ProPublica & New York Times feature that she’s now expanded into this masterful debut.
“You’ve got to make a deal with a sinner to catch the devil,” said one prosecutor, explaining why he and others relied on Skalnik’s testimony to secure dozens of convictions and send 4 people to death row. If you’re sitting the fence on whether it’s a necessary evil to permit criminal cases to hinge on the word of liars and grifters, let this extraordinary book disabuse you.
Colloff paints a vivid picture of Skalnik and the destroyed lives he left in his wake: bilked exes, bankrupted “friends,” abused girls and women, and accused men he claimed had confessed their crimes to him. Colloff introduces several victims in each category, then zooms in on James Dailey, a Vietnam veteran with PTSD and a broken life, convicted of murder and sent to death row almost entirely on the strength of Skalnik’s sworn testimony.
Sometimes, the whole truth can never be known. But Colloff unspools the facts of Skalnik’s lies and Dailey’s case in her signature way, honed over decades of top-tier criminal justice reporting: She doesn’t tell you how to feel. She just lays out mountains of evidence, exhaustively and dispassionately, painting a clear, infuriating picture of the perverse political incentives that reward prosecutors for securing convictions — and not necessarily for getting justice.
Does karma (or the law) finally catch up with Skalnik? Does the truth come to light for James Dailey? Do prosecutors learn any lessons about using shady jailhouse snitches to bolster paper-thin criminal cases? Read and find out.
Then seek out Colloff’s incredible archive of magazine stories. I’ve loved her work since I discovered “The Innocent Man,” her groundbreaking 2012 series in Texas Monthly about a wrongful conviction. Her work shines a Klieg light on the many ways our criminal justice system falls short, including debunked forensic science and prosecutorial misconduct. If you’ve never read her writing before, this book is a powerful entry point — a page-turner fueled by years of intensive reporting and buoyed by moral urgency.
“You’ve got to make a deal with a sinner to catch the devil,” said one prosecutor, explaining why he and others relied on Skalnik’s testimony to secure dozens of convictions and send 4 people to death row. If you’re sitting the fence on whether it’s a necessary evil to permit criminal cases to hinge on the word of liars and grifters, let this extraordinary book disabuse you.
Colloff paints a vivid picture of Skalnik and the destroyed lives he left in his wake: bilked exes, bankrupted “friends,” abused girls and women, and accused men he claimed had confessed their crimes to him. Colloff introduces several victims in each category, then zooms in on James Dailey, a Vietnam veteran with PTSD and a broken life, convicted of murder and sent to death row almost entirely on the strength of Skalnik’s sworn testimony.
Sometimes, the whole truth can never be known. But Colloff unspools the facts of Skalnik’s lies and Dailey’s case in her signature way, honed over decades of top-tier criminal justice reporting: She doesn’t tell you how to feel. She just lays out mountains of evidence, exhaustively and dispassionately, painting a clear, infuriating picture of the perverse political incentives that reward prosecutors for securing convictions — and not necessarily for getting justice.
Does karma (or the law) finally catch up with Skalnik? Does the truth come to light for James Dailey? Do prosecutors learn any lessons about using shady jailhouse snitches to bolster paper-thin criminal cases? Read and find out.
Then seek out Colloff’s incredible archive of magazine stories. I’ve loved her work since I discovered “The Innocent Man,” her groundbreaking 2012 series in Texas Monthly about a wrongful conviction. Her work shines a Klieg light on the many ways our criminal justice system falls short, including debunked forensic science and prosecutorial misconduct. If you’ve never read her writing before, this book is a powerful entry point — a page-turner fueled by years of intensive reporting and buoyed by moral urgency.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
Wow! If ever a book is going to make you lose all faith and hope in the justice system it is going to be this one. But also, it will renew your faith in the defenders who are working so hard to advocate for those wronged by the system.
This book blew my mind, every time that I thought it couldn't get any worse it did. The havoc that was wreaked by Paul Skalnik was horrifying. And the number of people who refused to step up to set the record straight with a man's life on the line was appalling.
Thank you to the publisher and Netgalley for the ARC of this book.
This book blew my mind, every time that I thought it couldn't get any worse it did. The havoc that was wreaked by Paul Skalnik was horrifying. And the number of people who refused to step up to set the record straight with a man's life on the line was appalling.
Thank you to the publisher and Netgalley for the ARC of this book.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
I received a free copy of, Catch the Devil, by Pamela Colloff, from the publisher and Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. Paul Skalnik is a depraved individual. Preying on women, lying about innocent people, and being believed by people who should not of believed him. This monster got away with way more then he should of. This was an interesting read on a horrible man.
Review of advance copy received from Publisher
This book is deeply disturbing and a well fashioned true crime narrative. Two overlapping narratives one a con man turned prison snitch and another of a man imprisoned largely based on the former’s testimony. I don’t want to say too much about this and hope it finds a wide readership. This is excellently written and throughly researched. I would highly recommend.
Review of advance copy received from Netgalley
Powerful true crime tale of justice deflected in Florida. Well written and fluid, the book examines the role of one jailhouse snitch and how he shattered the life of a presumably innocent man.thanks to the author,publisher and NetGalley for the ARC.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the advanced copy of Catch the Devil. For fans of London Falling, a meticulously researched and reported true crime story comes to life. This is the story of a pretty despicable human and con man, Paul Skalnik. His story alone could make the whole book, but then we meet the interweaving of the true crime portion introducing Jim Dailey and a zero evidence case that changes the course of his life. Putting the two together makes for a masterful and fast-paced read that is hard to put down. I finished it in just a few hours.
Review of advance copy received from Publisher
I don't know, but maybe someone is already in jail we need to use a bit more discretion in how much we trust them. This is basically the crux of Pamela Colloff's excellent Catch the Devil. Paul Skalnik is a fraud, thief, sexual predator, pedophile, and serial bigamist. He was also the favorite pet of Florida detectives and prosecutors who were trying to kill as many alleged murderers as possible. I don't know if it's the heat or the humidity, but Florida's justice system sure likes killing folk.
After Colloff does a thorough job of showing just how disgusting Skalnik is, she tells the story of how he was at least one nail in the theoretical but maybe literal coffin of Jim Dailey. For the sake of avoiding spoilers, I won't give you any more details. However, you can probably guess how the story is going to go.
Colloff makes this story a lean page turner. A journalist by trade, Colloff expertly makes this read like a novel while giving you exactly what you need without any fluff. There are no extraneous threads, no ill-placed characters, and no diatribes. I especially appreciated the last aspect. While there are some quick asides and rhetorical questions, Colloff trusts her readers to see what is happening and why it is bad for all of us. When you tell the story of how the least trustworthy man on earth can be called upon in a court of law and be believed, well, we have problems.
You don't have to be a true crime or non-fiction lover. This one is for everybody.
(This book was provided as an advanced reader copy by Knopf.)
After Colloff does a thorough job of showing just how disgusting Skalnik is, she tells the story of how he was at least one nail in the theoretical but maybe literal coffin of Jim Dailey. For the sake of avoiding spoilers, I won't give you any more details. However, you can probably guess how the story is going to go.
Colloff makes this story a lean page turner. A journalist by trade, Colloff expertly makes this read like a novel while giving you exactly what you need without any fluff. There are no extraneous threads, no ill-placed characters, and no diatribes. I especially appreciated the last aspect. While there are some quick asides and rhetorical questions, Colloff trusts her readers to see what is happening and why it is bad for all of us. When you tell the story of how the least trustworthy man on earth can be called upon in a court of law and be believed, well, we have problems.
You don't have to be a true crime or non-fiction lover. This one is for everybody.
(This book was provided as an advanced reader copy by Knopf.)
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews