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Catch the Devil: A True Story of Murder, Deception, and Injustice on the Gulf Coast
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER The riveting, true story of an audacious con man who helped send another man to death row for a murder he did not commit
“Incendiary, emotionally devastating. [This] is a feat of dogged reporting, bravura storytelling, and clear-eyed moral conscience."
—Patrick Radden Keefe, author of Say Nothing and London Falling
“Unfolding in cinematic detail, Catch the Devil offers a riveting and disturbing account of the potentially fatal consequences of a criminal legal system that is more concerned with securing convictions than determining the truth and delivering justice.” —NPR
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.
“Incendiary, emotionally devastating. [This] is a feat of dogged reporting, bravura storytelling, and clear-eyed moral conscience."
—Patrick Radden Keefe, author of Say Nothing and London Falling
“Unfolding in cinematic detail, Catch the Devil offers a riveting and disturbing account of the potentially fatal consequences of a criminal legal system that is more concerned with securing convictions than determining the truth and delivering justice.” —NPR
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.
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First published July 14, 2026
About the author
Pamela Colloff
13 books74 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 - 30 of 76 reviews
July 16, 2026
DISCLAIMER: This will probably be the most biased bookreview I have ever written, because I am actually in this book. And I have known and loved one of its main characters, Jim Dailey, for over 28 years.
So yes I think it is a real good book and you should all read it, because it is an in incredible important insight in the way the American Criminal Justice System doesn't really do the Justice part justice.
I can also tell you how deeply Pamela Colloff has researched this story and how much the portrait of me but most importantly Jim is really us. I have therefor a lot of faith in the reporting of the parts I didn't know beforehand.
Also she wrote it in a way that I -who knew the whole thing firsthand- still wanted to rush through it because the story grabbed me.
I however want everyone who reads it to understand that it is real. My beloved friend at 80 years old is right now sitting in his non airconditioned cell being very anxious about this book being out. And he has been behind bars for 40 years and if you read this book you will understand how that makes no sense at all!
So yes I think it is a real good book and you should all read it, because it is an in incredible important insight in the way the American Criminal Justice System doesn't really do the Justice part justice.
I can also tell you how deeply Pamela Colloff has researched this story and how much the portrait of me but most importantly Jim is really us. I have therefor a lot of faith in the reporting of the parts I didn't know beforehand.
Also she wrote it in a way that I -who knew the whole thing firsthand- still wanted to rush through it because the story grabbed me.
I however want everyone who reads it to understand that it is real. My beloved friend at 80 years old is right now sitting in his non airconditioned cell being very anxious about this book being out. And he has been behind bars for 40 years and if you read this book you will understand how that makes no sense at all!
July 1, 2026
This is a good one. Smart to frame one con man through the death row inmate he wrongfully convicted — and put the criminal legal system on blast. Engaging prose. Sharp storytelling. It gets a bit slow on the third quarter but the end pulls it off.
July 23, 2026
Omg, I am speechless!
There are truly evil people roaming the earth and Paul Skalnik was assuredly one of them. This man was the ultimate con artist who swindled, cheated, lied incessantly , abused, and when caught would immediately start another con. He was married nine times some concurrently with other wives, and assumed many identities, a lawyer, an undercover agent, a fighter pilot, a successful oilman, and even a cancer patient who was terminal. If that wasn't bad enough, when sent to prison on numerous occasions, he claimed to have cozied up to accused murderers and then snitched on them for his own gains, clemency. <<
He would embellish confessions, often lying about the men who "confessed" to him, and been the deciding factor in trials and punishments. Then Jim Dailey came along accused of the heinous murder of a fourteen year old girl. Jim was a product of the Vietnam War, having served three tours of duty, and diving into a world of alcohol drugs, and rough living. He hung around with two other men, devious as well, and one night in a somewhat convoluted telling, a girl Shelley Boggio, is murdered, and Jim is accused and convicted thanks in part by a jailhouse conviction acquired by Paul Skalnik (of course) and one of his so called friends, Jack Pearcy, who initially swore that Jim did it. Much later Jack recanted his accusation, but refused to testify under oath in court.
Meanwhile, Jim, now in his eighties has been sitting on death row for over forty years, with his lawyers trying to secure his freedom.
This true story might just change your views on a court system that seemed to favor a liar against a man who never committed the crime. For me, it had my blood boiling and the pressure rising as I read more into this story.....talk about the miscarriage of justice!
Pamela Colloff did an excellent job of telling Paul Skalnik, Pearcy Dailey snd Jim Dailey's stories. If there is a hell both Jack and Paul Skalnik have places reserved in its very pit.
Be on the lookout for Jan's review. We were both left with sadness at the unfairness of this case. Made us wonder how many more convicted people were in prison due to the compensated snitch who would put them there in prison.
There are truly evil people roaming the earth and Paul Skalnik was assuredly one of them. This man was the ultimate con artist who swindled, cheated, lied incessantly , abused, and when caught would immediately start another con. He was married nine times some concurrently with other wives, and assumed many identities, a lawyer, an undercover agent, a fighter pilot, a successful oilman, and even a cancer patient who was terminal. If that wasn't bad enough, when sent to prison on numerous occasions, he claimed to have cozied up to accused murderers and then snitched on them for his own gains, clemency. <<
He would embellish confessions, often lying about the men who "confessed" to him, and been the deciding factor in trials and punishments. Then Jim Dailey came along accused of the heinous murder of a fourteen year old girl. Jim was a product of the Vietnam War, having served three tours of duty, and diving into a world of alcohol drugs, and rough living. He hung around with two other men, devious as well, and one night in a somewhat convoluted telling, a girl Shelley Boggio, is murdered, and Jim is accused and convicted thanks in part by a jailhouse conviction acquired by Paul Skalnik (of course) and one of his so called friends, Jack Pearcy, who initially swore that Jim did it. Much later Jack recanted his accusation, but refused to testify under oath in court.
Meanwhile, Jim, now in his eighties has been sitting on death row for over forty years, with his lawyers trying to secure his freedom.
This true story might just change your views on a court system that seemed to favor a liar against a man who never committed the crime. For me, it had my blood boiling and the pressure rising as I read more into this story.....talk about the miscarriage of justice!
Pamela Colloff did an excellent job of telling Paul Skalnik, Pearcy Dailey snd Jim Dailey's stories. If there is a hell both Jack and Paul Skalnik have places reserved in its very pit.
Be on the lookout for Jan's review. We were both left with sadness at the unfairness of this case. Made us wonder how many more convicted people were in prison due to the compensated snitch who would put them there in prison.
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.
July 24, 2026
Sometimes I come across a non-fiction book that were it fiction I’d dismiss it as requiring too much suspension of disbelief.
This is one of those books.
Paul Skalnik, a notorious con man, pathological liar, and pedophile was finally caught and sent to prison. Once there he continued his ways by becoming a jailhouse snitch in Florida for 35 cases, thereby sending multiple people to prison, and 3 to death row. In return he received leniency and special favors. Prosecutors found Skalnik so valuable in helping them secure convictions that they turned a blind eye to his crimes, including crimes against children.
But the biggest problem is Skalnik’s claims were all fabrications. There were no confessions.
One of those convicted and sentenced to death was Vietnam veteran, James Dailey, for the 1985 murder of a 14 year old girl. Skalnik’s testimony led to his conviction despite zero evidence implicating Dailey in the crime .
What follows is a harrowing tale of a completely broken justice system and the dangers of using jailhouse snitches. A jury verdict is next to impossible to overturn even when the true perpetrator admits his guilt and confesses that he acted alone. Even when new evidence is presented that would exonerate someone convicted.
I did not look up the case online and I’m glad I let the story play out as the author wrote it. So I won’t go into the details except to say, at least in the 80s, we had a system less determined to discover the truth than with winning convictions.
I was left speechless, sure that there is more to this story and this was simply a case of a murderer claiming innocence. I was wrong.
How is it possible that an innocent man remains on death row for 40 years for a crime he did not commit? His mistake was falling into the orbit of truly evil men.
My reading buddy, Marialyce, and I were completely stunned and disheartened on reading this travesty of justice, and our hearts broke for the man whose life was ruined. It makes me wonder how many other Jim Dailys exist?
* I received a digital review copy via NetGalley. All opinions are my own
This is one of those books.
Paul Skalnik, a notorious con man, pathological liar, and pedophile was finally caught and sent to prison. Once there he continued his ways by becoming a jailhouse snitch in Florida for 35 cases, thereby sending multiple people to prison, and 3 to death row. In return he received leniency and special favors. Prosecutors found Skalnik so valuable in helping them secure convictions that they turned a blind eye to his crimes, including crimes against children.
But the biggest problem is Skalnik’s claims were all fabrications. There were no confessions.
One of those convicted and sentenced to death was Vietnam veteran, James Dailey, for the 1985 murder of a 14 year old girl. Skalnik’s testimony led to his conviction despite zero evidence implicating Dailey in the crime .
What follows is a harrowing tale of a completely broken justice system and the dangers of using jailhouse snitches. A jury verdict is next to impossible to overturn even when the true perpetrator admits his guilt and confesses that he acted alone. Even when new evidence is presented that would exonerate someone convicted.
I did not look up the case online and I’m glad I let the story play out as the author wrote it. So I won’t go into the details except to say, at least in the 80s, we had a system less determined to discover the truth than with winning convictions.
I was left speechless, sure that there is more to this story and this was simply a case of a murderer claiming innocence. I was wrong.
How is it possible that an innocent man remains on death row for 40 years for a crime he did not commit? His mistake was falling into the orbit of truly evil men.
My reading buddy, Marialyce, and I were completely stunned and disheartened on reading this travesty of justice, and our hearts broke for the man whose life was ruined. It makes me wonder how many other Jim Dailys exist?
* I received a digital review copy via NetGalley. All opinions are my own
July 24, 2026
Rounding up from 4.8
Wow. Just wow. I don’t know about words to describe this read. Definitely a LOT of emotions.. and quite a bit of rage at what this guys victims were put through.
PHENOMENAL writing. Astronomically insane crazy good research. I swear to all that is holy and good, reporters make THE BEST non fiction writers. I swear I felt I was going through some of this with the victims, witnessing it like I was a proverbial fly on the wall as it were.
Thank you to the author and publisher for the ARC.
Wow. Just wow. I don’t know about words to describe this read. Definitely a LOT of emotions.. and quite a bit of rage at what this guys victims were put through.
PHENOMENAL writing. Astronomically insane crazy good research. I swear to all that is holy and good, reporters make THE BEST non fiction writers. I swear I felt I was going through some of this with the victims, witnessing it like I was a proverbial fly on the wall as it were.
Thank you to the author and publisher for the ARC.
July 21, 2026
I dare you to read this book and not Google the names of the criminals before you finish.
Seriously. If you have the self-control to wait until the final page, you’re a much more patient person than I am.
I don’t read a ton of true crime, but Catch the Devil completely pulled me in. It reads less like a traditional crime book and more like one of those gripping Netflix documentaries where every new revelation makes you question everything that came before. Fans of Making a Murderer, The Innocence Files, or The Thin Blue Line should absolutely put this on their list.
At the center of the story is Paul Skalnik, a career con artist whose crimes extended far beyond passing bad checks. He was also a convicted child predator and serial manipulator who repeatedly avoided accountability by reinventing himself as a jailhouse informant. Over the years, he claimed that dozens of fellow inmates had confessed murders to him, eventually testifying in 37 different cases.
The unsettling part isn’t just Skalnik himself—it’s why so many people believed him.
Pamela Colloff makes a compelling case that prosecutors and law enforcement repeatedly relied on testimony they had every reason to question because it helped secure convictions. In at least one case, Skalnik’s testimony helped send a man to death row. The result is a fascinating examination of how ambition, confirmation bias, and a broken incentive system can intersect inside the criminal justice system.
What fascinated me most wasn’t the mystery of the crimes—it was the psychology. Skalnik isn’t presented as a charming rogue in the vein of Frank Abagnale. He’s a deeply manipulative, narcissistic figure who understands exactly what people want to hear and uses that knowledge to survive. The book also explores why intelligent people continue to trust someone who lies so effortlessly, and that question lingered with me long after I finished reading.
Although the book maintains a journalist’s distance from its subjects, it’s remarkably engaging. I flew through it because every chapter uncovered another layer of deception. It also reinforced my own belief that the death penalty is far more complicated than many of us want to admit. You can support accountability for violent crime while still recognizing that a justice system capable of this level of error and manipulation deserves serious scrutiny.
This wasn’t quite a personal five-star obsession for me, largely because its journalistic approach keeps the reader at a slight emotional distance. But as a meticulously researched, thought-provoking, and surprisingly compulsive work of true crime, it’s outstanding.
Thank you to Knopf for the gifted finished copy. Published July 14.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️✨ (4.5/5)
Seriously. If you have the self-control to wait until the final page, you’re a much more patient person than I am.
I don’t read a ton of true crime, but Catch the Devil completely pulled me in. It reads less like a traditional crime book and more like one of those gripping Netflix documentaries where every new revelation makes you question everything that came before. Fans of Making a Murderer, The Innocence Files, or The Thin Blue Line should absolutely put this on their list.
At the center of the story is Paul Skalnik, a career con artist whose crimes extended far beyond passing bad checks. He was also a convicted child predator and serial manipulator who repeatedly avoided accountability by reinventing himself as a jailhouse informant. Over the years, he claimed that dozens of fellow inmates had confessed murders to him, eventually testifying in 37 different cases.
The unsettling part isn’t just Skalnik himself—it’s why so many people believed him.
Pamela Colloff makes a compelling case that prosecutors and law enforcement repeatedly relied on testimony they had every reason to question because it helped secure convictions. In at least one case, Skalnik’s testimony helped send a man to death row. The result is a fascinating examination of how ambition, confirmation bias, and a broken incentive system can intersect inside the criminal justice system.
What fascinated me most wasn’t the mystery of the crimes—it was the psychology. Skalnik isn’t presented as a charming rogue in the vein of Frank Abagnale. He’s a deeply manipulative, narcissistic figure who understands exactly what people want to hear and uses that knowledge to survive. The book also explores why intelligent people continue to trust someone who lies so effortlessly, and that question lingered with me long after I finished reading.
Although the book maintains a journalist’s distance from its subjects, it’s remarkably engaging. I flew through it because every chapter uncovered another layer of deception. It also reinforced my own belief that the death penalty is far more complicated than many of us want to admit. You can support accountability for violent crime while still recognizing that a justice system capable of this level of error and manipulation deserves serious scrutiny.
This wasn’t quite a personal five-star obsession for me, largely because its journalistic approach keeps the reader at a slight emotional distance. But as a meticulously researched, thought-provoking, and surprisingly compulsive work of true crime, it’s outstanding.
Thank you to Knopf for the gifted finished copy. Published July 14.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️✨ (4.5/5)
July 18, 2026
“What made him so dangerous was not his intelligence or cunning, but rather how readily the institutions that were supposed to uphold the law and protect the most vulnerable had amplified his lies. These institutions indulged his pathologies, granting him power and influence he could never have achieved on his own, effectively giving him license to commit greater crimes. Without them, Skalnik would have been nothing more than a small-time con man.”
A terrific piece of investigative reporting, this book is more than the story of a con man, sex offender, and prolific jailhouse snitch Paul Skalnik, who testified against, or gave information about at least twenty-seven defendants in the Pinellas County Jail, most of which were convicted or took plea deals, with three of them facing execution. This book is also a scorching indictment of the justice system, specifically in Pinellas County, Florida in the 1980’s.
I highly recommend this book to anyone who is interested in reading true crime and the justice system.
How easy it is to make people believe a lie, and how hard it is to undo.—Mark Twain
A terrific piece of investigative reporting, this book is more than the story of a con man, sex offender, and prolific jailhouse snitch Paul Skalnik, who testified against, or gave information about at least twenty-seven defendants in the Pinellas County Jail, most of which were convicted or took plea deals, with three of them facing execution. This book is also a scorching indictment of the justice system, specifically in Pinellas County, Florida in the 1980’s.
I highly recommend this book to anyone who is interested in reading true crime and the justice system.
How easy it is to make people believe a lie, and how hard it is to undo.—Mark Twain
July 18, 2026
Paul Skalnik is the name of the Devil of the title of this book. A con man of epic proportions would be an understatement. Frank Abagnale of Catch me if you Can fame was a rank amateur in comparison. Using various names and schemes he was able to separate his prey and their money with remarkable success.
In order to shorten his prison stays, Skalnik became a jailhouse snitch. Prosecutors used his testimony in dozens of cases and here is where we encounter James Dailey, a troubled veteran with substance abuse issues most likely caused by horrific events that he experienced while serving in Vietnam.
A teenage girl was murdered and a man named Jack Pearcy was sentenced to life in prison. Dailey was a drinking buddy of his and Jack gave differing accounts of the night of the murder. He eventually placed Dailey at the scene but witnesses said otherwise.
Enter Paul Skalnik and his convenient testimony of Dailey admitting to the murder while housed at the same prison. Deals were made and death row was the result.
The "justice" system has dealt with this death penalty case for over forty years and Catch the Devil is a very good read.
In order to shorten his prison stays, Skalnik became a jailhouse snitch. Prosecutors used his testimony in dozens of cases and here is where we encounter James Dailey, a troubled veteran with substance abuse issues most likely caused by horrific events that he experienced while serving in Vietnam.
A teenage girl was murdered and a man named Jack Pearcy was sentenced to life in prison. Dailey was a drinking buddy of his and Jack gave differing accounts of the night of the murder. He eventually placed Dailey at the scene but witnesses said otherwise.
Enter Paul Skalnik and his convenient testimony of Dailey admitting to the murder while housed at the same prison. Deals were made and death row was the result.
The "justice" system has dealt with this death penalty case for over forty years and Catch the Devil is a very good read.
July 21, 2026
3.75 stars. I was instantly sold on this book from the premise. The story of a wrongfully incarcerated man told through the story of the conman who helped put him there. I’m always drawn to stories of wrongful incarceration, how it happened and the journey to find justice. Per usual, we see just how “just” the justice system really is🙃
It was hard not to compare this one to lots of other books I’ve read in this vein and I think this story could have been told just as well in an article. There wasn’t enough story to really fill a whole book to me.
Thank you Knopf for the gifted book!!
It was hard not to compare this one to lots of other books I’ve read in this vein and I think this story could have been told just as well in an article. There wasn’t enough story to really fill a whole book to me.
Thank you Knopf for the gifted book!!
July 18, 2026
An absolute masterclass in longform narrative journalism.
July 18, 2026
In which I become further radicalized against capital punishment (and also the government of Florida)
July 19, 2026
This book was so good, but boy, was it infuriating. I really do wish Colloff had pushed in more on the fact that Skalnik was white, because that’s the biggest reason why he got away with so much, and left behind so much destruction in his awful life.
This is going to sound weird, but one of my favorite parts of the book was how she handled Karen Parker’s story with grace and horror. The fact that she wasn’t believed for so long, and the fact that she wasn’t the only abused victim speaks volumes about what the courts, lawyers, and judges actually favor.
SPEAKING OF WHICH—When I say that the courts are unserious and nothing matters, this is how I mean it. Governors and judges and prosecutors etc etc who want to juice up their careers by how many convictions they get in order to be perceived as tough on crime NEED people like Skalnik (who don’t care about anyone other than themselves) to lie and convict people !! This is why the state shouldn’t be allowed to kill people, it’s a failed way to deliver justice.
Anyway, it was a fantastic book, but I’ll be haunted by it for a while.
This is going to sound weird, but one of my favorite parts of the book was how she handled Karen Parker’s story with grace and horror. The fact that she wasn’t believed for so long, and the fact that she wasn’t the only abused victim speaks volumes about what the courts, lawyers, and judges actually favor.
SPEAKING OF WHICH—When I say that the courts are unserious and nothing matters, this is how I mean it. Governors and judges and prosecutors etc etc who want to juice up their careers by how many convictions they get in order to be perceived as tough on crime NEED people like Skalnik (who don’t care about anyone other than themselves) to lie and convict people !! This is why the state shouldn’t be allowed to kill people, it’s a failed way to deliver justice.
Anyway, it was a fantastic book, but I’ll be haunted by it for a while.
July 23, 2026
An unbelievable, yet tragically true story. I loved this debut work from Pam Colloff. The scenes and characters jump off the pages and will live in your mind long after you finish reading. Highly recommended reading for true crime fans.
July 19, 2026
(4.5)
Wretched state, wretched country.
Wretched state, wretched country.
July 20, 2026
Incredibly well researched and also incredibly sad story. One of those books that really makes you lose faith in our criminal justice system 🙃
July 23, 2026
JUSTICE FOR JIM! Pamela Colloff, you’re one hell of a reporter. This book is immaculately researched and written.
There are too many Skalniks in this world. May karma get them all.
There are too many Skalniks in this world. May karma get them all.
July 23, 2026
3 1/2. Incredibly well researched. This is such a hard story. I hope the publication of this book can make a difference.
July 18, 2026
An indictment of the whole criminal legal system tbh…
July 19, 2026
The Devil Had a Witness List
Pamela Colloff’s “Catch the Devil” follows Paul Skalnik from fake glamour to courtroom usefulness
By Demetris Papadimitropoulos | July 19th, 2026
An empty Gulf Coast room, a loosened case file, and a small dying sun translate Pamela Colloff’s “Catch the Devil” into its central visual pressure: not the spectacle of a liar, but the silence of institutions after they have made his story useful.
Dangerous liars are not always the ones with the cleanest disguises. Sometimes they are the ones who arrive carrying the missing piece: motive where the record is thin, premeditation where the evidence hesitates, closure where doubt has become embarrassing. In “Catch the Devil,” Pamela Colloff writes about Paul Skalnik, a serial fraudster, abuser, fantasist, jailhouse informant, and courtroom opportunist. She does not linger before him as spectacle. She watches what happens when his stories leave his mouth and enter a file. A man like Skalnik can ruin a marriage, empty a bank account, frighten a child, or talk his way out of a cell. What makes him lethal is the moment someone with a badge, a docket, or a witness list decides that his inventions can be put to work.
Everyone in this book, at one point or another, is asked to accept an account with consequences. Wives are asked to believe in wealth, law degrees, business deals, conversion, romance, remorse. Prosecutors are asked to believe in overheard confessions. Jurors are asked to believe that a jailhouse witness has somehow become the keeper of another man’s soul. A condemned man is asked, year after year, to trust that the same courts that ratified the account against him might one day admit what they missed. “Catch the Devil” is true crime, but it keeps returning to words that sound older than procedure: witness, confession, judgment, belief.
Much of the book turns on Skalnik’s testimony against Jim Dailey, a Vietnam veteran sentenced to death for the murder of fourteen-year-old Shelly Boggio in Florida. The case against Dailey is weak where one would want it immovable: no material evidence tying him to the killing, a co-defendant protecting himself, shifting witness accounts, and a prosecution that needs the sentence no file can produce. Skalnik supplies it. He says Dailey confessed to him in jail, and the alleged confession does what confessions so often do in courtrooms: it makes uncertainty look disciplined, almost well dressed.
Even so, Colloff does not begin with Jim. She begins with Skalnik in federal prison in 2018, where he stages frailty, charm, secrecy, grievance, and importance in the space of a single visit. He apologizes for the setting as if hosting in prison were merely an eccentric choice of venue. He cries. He suggests he may be dying. He implies access to hidden knowledge. He promises more than he gives. It is not simply an overture; it is a manual for reading him. Skalnik’s talent is not fabrication alone. His gift is control of the room’s weather. He can make suspicion feel rude.
The early chapters are bright with borrowed uniforms of authority. Skalnik appears as executive, officer, law student, husband, investigator, Christian convert, oilman, lawyer, patient, insider. He marries, swindles, vanishes, returns, boasts, flatters, threatens. He offers counterfeit glamour with a magician’s hands and a salesman’s smile, though one sometimes suspects the rabbit has been dead in the hat for years. Colloff catches the cheap radiance of him without polishing it into glamour. The glitter keeps turning into paperwork: bad checks, police reports, plea deals, testimony, parole.
In an emptied hotel room, the suit, briefcase, telephone, and watch remain like props after a performance, suggesting how charm hardens into paperwork before the law learns to use it.
Rather than treating Skalnik as a single bad man who somehow fooled the room, “Catch the Devil” keeps pulling the camera back. His domestic frauds lead to bad checks; bad checks lead to jail; jailhouse tips become leverage; leverage becomes reward. In Houston, around the Moody Park case, he learns that an inmate who claims to have heard something useful can suddenly become valuable. In Pinellas County, the pattern hardens. Again and again, he produces alleged confessions from men facing serious charges. Again and again, prosecutors and investigators find in him the missing piece their cases need: intent, sequence, inside knowledge, a phrase ugly enough to cling. The fraudster’s old trade – giving people the account that meets their need – finds its most protected market.
In a lazier book, this might become a museum of red flags: look how shameless he was, look how many people he fooled, look how brightly the warnings flashed. Colloff is more patient and more damning. She shows that the state was not merely fooled. It was served. Skalnik’s value did not depend on credibility in any ordinary human sense; it depended on practical usefulness. He could provide motive, premeditation, a damning phrase, a lurid detail, a sense of inside access. He did not have to be pure. He only had to be usable. The chill is not that he lied. The chill is that his lies fit.
Part of Colloff’s command lies in where she makes the reader look next. “Catch the Devil” begins as a con-man chronicle, becomes a capital-case investigation, and ends as the story of a man waiting under sentence of death. The opening lets Skalnik dominate attention because domination is his method. Then the book slowly relocates consequence toward the people pushed out of his glare: Lisa Rogers, Penny, Suzanne, Karen Parker, the men whose cases he touched, Shelly Boggio, Jim Dailey, Mary Kay, Marieke Jansen, and the lawyers who spend years trying to undo what one claimed confession helped accomplish.
Absurdity, reduced to plot, becomes frightening once one notices how routine it was. A serial swindler repeatedly claims that incarcerated men confessed to him. Prosecutors use him. He receives leniency. He reoffends. He resurfaces. He is used again. Dailey is tried for Boggio’s murder, and the testimony of jailhouse witnesses, especially Skalnik, helps the prosecution supply what the evidence cannot. Dailey is convicted and sentenced to death. Later lawyers uncover inconsistencies, rewards, missed evidence, shifting accounts, and declarations from Jack Pearcy suggesting Dailey was not present when Shelly was killed. Yet correction proves far slower and less responsive than conviction. A bad story travels light; undoing it requires trunks of paper.
Prose, here, is another way of arranging proof. Colloff writes in patient, cumulative sentences that often begin in setting and end in pressure: a cellblock, a bridge, a courtroom, a letter, a visitation room, a file. Her language has the virtue of clean hands: it touches ugly material without smearing it for effect. She can describe Gulf Coast heat, prison architecture, cheap luxury, motel light, and death-row confinement with the same steady attention. The sentences do not announce outrage. They assemble it. The book never has to shout that something is rotten. It lets the reader smell the humidity.
Atmosphere, in “Catch the Devil,” is not background. Water, heat, confinement, paperwork, and performance recur until they start assigning pressure. Florida is not merely beaches and courtrooms, but a place where bodies surface, accounts sink, and verdict-ready certainty hardens in the damp. The cells count. The visitation rooms count. The bridges, payphones, transcripts, files, and witness lists count. This is one of Colloff’s gifts: she makes procedure tangible. A motion has a temperature. A transcript has a smell. A delay has weight.
Delay enters the book first as fact, then as rhythm. The first movement has speed: schemes, aliases, arrests, testimony, paroles, another con, another wound. The later movement slows into death-row time: appeals, affidavits, clemency, hearings, stays, denials, another reprieve, another threat. That shift can be tiring, and it is meant to be. Skalnik gets movement; Jim gets process. Skalnik reinvents himself; Jim is fixed in place by a version he cannot dislodge. The structure does more than file the evidence. It makes delay itself audible.
It helps to compare “Catch the Devil” only at an angle. Like “The Cadaver King and the Country Dentist” by Radley Balko and Tucker Carrington, Colloff’s book is interested in how courts convert bad evidence into authority. But where that book centers forensic failure, “Catch the Devil” centers the confession at one remove: the catastrophic power of a story that arrives wearing another man’s voice. And where “The Journalist and the Murderer” by Janet Malcolm examines the reporter’s bargain with a subject, Colloff is after a colder transaction: not the writer’s bargain with the source, but the prosecutor’s bargain with the witness.
Most true crime invites us to stare at transgression. “Catch the Devil” knows this and treats staring as a trap. Skalnik is, undeniably, a great horrible character: vulgar, grandiose, nimble, self-pitying, ridiculous, predatory, occasionally almost funny in the way only the truly shameless can be funny. But the book keeps yanking the reader away from the performance toward the invoice. Who paid for this account? Who lost money, safety, credibility, years, appeals, a daughter, a life? The con man occupies the stage; Colloff keeps pointing toward the clerks, handlers, witness lists, deals, and doors that let the act go on.
Its hardest accomplishment is making ratification feel dramatic. Colloff is not content to say that Skalnik lied. Many people lie; fewer have their lies transcribed, sworn, repeated, cited, defended, preserved, and used to justify a death sentence. The alleged confession in Dailey’s case becomes a kind of legal currency. It purchases certainty for the prosecution, punishment for Jim, and advantage for Skalnik. Its value lies not in truth alone, but in circulation. Once accepted, it moves through the courts with a bureaucratic confidence that outlives the man who uttered it.
Across glass and telephone wire, speech becomes estranged from the body that first produced it, an image of testimony traveling farther than truth should be able to go.
The price of that clarity is that the pattern can begin to feel as fixed as a stencil. Skalnik is jailed, produces an alleged confession, helps the state, receives benefit, causes more harm, and is later treated as both indispensable and embarrassing. The recurrence is necessary as evidence, but it can dull surprise. The final third, especially, is crowded with motions, affidavits, evidentiary hearings, procedural bars, judicial refusals, and last-minute urgency. Colloff makes that density meaningful, but she cannot always make it feel alive. The machinery grinds because the machinery is the point. Still, a grind is a grind, even when brilliantly lit.
Readers may also feel the camera tilt too often toward Skalnik’s grotesque brightness. He is hard not to watch. He seems designed by a satirist who lost patience halfway through and decided to become a prosecutor. The women and girls he harmed, and the people who remain bound to Jim’s case, sometimes have to fight for space against his lurid force. Colloff largely understands the danger and works against it, especially by returning to Jim’s long confinement and Shelly’s stolen life. But the imbalance is built into the case’s optics. The book knows that attention can behave like evidence: whatever fills the room starts to look important.
One of the book’s most humane refusals is that it will not turn Jim Dailey into a poster saint of innocence. His drinking, failures, drift, and damaged postwar life remain part of the portrait. That choice matters because the book has no interest in making him spotless before it makes him worthy of doubt. Jim does not have to be the cleanest man in the room to deserve a case not built on sand. Colloff’s restraint here gives the book credibility; she resists the sentimental shortcut, which is among the more tempting frauds available to writers of injustice.
Perhaps the coldest lesson in “Catch the Devil” is that a legal system can be very bad at uncertainty while speaking constantly in the language of finality. The death penalty intensifies this contradiction until it becomes nearly unbearable. If a conviction is later revealed to be compromised, a prison sentence can be reconsidered, at least in theory. An execution cannot apologize. Dailey’s long post-conviction ordeal turns the book from investigation into endurance test. The state’s power is not only to kill; it is to make a man rehearse dying, then keep him waiting, then ask him to rehearse again.
Outside the book, its concerns already have a case number. Jailhouse witnesses, prosecutorial disclosure, wrongful convictions, and capital punishment remain fights in courtrooms, legislatures, and execution calendars, but Colloff does not need to bolt relevance onto the narrative. The relevance hums like bad fluorescent light over a courthouse hallway – steady, institutional, impossible to romanticize. Every time a witness’s incentive is minimized, every time a record is overlooked, every time a court values lateness over truth, the book speaks to the present. Its politics are in the files.
Using my review scale, “Catch the Devil” earns 91/100, which corresponds to a Goodreads-compatible 5/5 stars. That number reflects admiration with reservations, not a claim of perfection. The book is too crowded with late-stage legal procedure to feel effortless, and not formally strange enough to reshape the shelf it sits on. But the rating rests on what the book does exceptionally well: reporting, structure, proportion, emotional pressure, and the disciplined making of a case the reader can feel being built.
Late in the book, the genre’s promised pleasures begin to fail. Skalnik can be exposed, diminished, cornered, even dead, and still the testimony he helped install keeps working in court records. This is what makes the ending so bitterly strong. A lesser book might have mistaken survival for vindication. Colloff knows better. Jim remains alive, but not free; spared from one date, but not released from the shadow of another. The opposite of execution is not necessarily justice. Sometimes it is only the continuation of waiting.
On the final pages, what stays is not Skalnik’s voice, though his voice has done terrible work. It is Jim painting landscapes from confinement: water, trees, mountains, skies, a swimming hole, places rendered by a man who has been made into an absence inside his own life. After so much testimony, so many transcripts, so many official accounts polished into verdicts, the image feels quietly defiant. The book has spent hundreds of pages showing what can happen when language is captured by power. Here, at last, is an image that refuses to testify.
After files, rooms, corridors, and cells, this quiet water opens the visual field without offering release, holding memory as something beautiful, distant, and still unreachable.
Still, the final reversal is not that art redeems what law has broken. Colloff is too exacting for that, and Jim’s paintings are not asked to perform a miracle. Their force is smaller and sadder: they keep a relation to the world alive. A liar once gave the state a sentence it could use, and that sentence kept a man inside walls for decades. Jim answers with water he cannot step into, trees he cannot walk beneath, a sky he can make but not inhabit. The devil, Colloff suggests, was never only the liar. It was the bargain that made his words enough.
These small graphite-and-wash trials show the visual argument taking shape: file first, chair second, horizon last, with emptiness doing as much narrative work as any object in the room.
More than a palette sample, this study translates the cover’s color hierarchy into the watercolor system: darks and mauves held as atmosphere, pale tones reserved for evidence and breath, and hot accents kept rare.
Before the washes enter, the room appears as a fragile architecture of perspective lines, file edges, window frame, and pulled-back chair, revealing how the final image is built from restraint.
The first wash shows the cover palette beginning to govern the image proportionally, with charcoal, mauve, taupe, and ivory carrying the room before any warmer accent is allowed to speak.
This process sheet shows how the cover’s dark atmosphere, pale paper tones, cool lower band, and rare warm pulse become a watercolor language rather than a simple color match.
These faint studies of posture, hand, shoulder, and chair reveal that the final painting’s emptiness was chosen, not avoided; the body is considered, then withdrawn.
A miniature planning strip traces the larger visual arc of the review program, moving from record to performance, procedure, mediated testimony, confinement, and finally unreachable water.
Holding the file close and standing inside the book’s dusk-colored atmosphere, this author portrait places Pamela Colloff not as a spectacle beside “Catch the Devil,” but as the steady witness to how testimony, paperwork, and power become a story the state can use.
All watercolor illustrations by Demetris Papadimitropoulos.
Watercolors are done on 140lb vellum and then scanned into the computer using an Epson scanner. From there, they are finalized in Procreate. All art and opinions are my own.
Pamela Colloff’s “Catch the Devil” follows Paul Skalnik from fake glamour to courtroom usefulness
By Demetris Papadimitropoulos | July 19th, 2026
An empty Gulf Coast room, a loosened case file, and a small dying sun translate Pamela Colloff’s “Catch the Devil” into its central visual pressure: not the spectacle of a liar, but the silence of institutions after they have made his story useful.
Dangerous liars are not always the ones with the cleanest disguises. Sometimes they are the ones who arrive carrying the missing piece: motive where the record is thin, premeditation where the evidence hesitates, closure where doubt has become embarrassing. In “Catch the Devil,” Pamela Colloff writes about Paul Skalnik, a serial fraudster, abuser, fantasist, jailhouse informant, and courtroom opportunist. She does not linger before him as spectacle. She watches what happens when his stories leave his mouth and enter a file. A man like Skalnik can ruin a marriage, empty a bank account, frighten a child, or talk his way out of a cell. What makes him lethal is the moment someone with a badge, a docket, or a witness list decides that his inventions can be put to work.
Everyone in this book, at one point or another, is asked to accept an account with consequences. Wives are asked to believe in wealth, law degrees, business deals, conversion, romance, remorse. Prosecutors are asked to believe in overheard confessions. Jurors are asked to believe that a jailhouse witness has somehow become the keeper of another man’s soul. A condemned man is asked, year after year, to trust that the same courts that ratified the account against him might one day admit what they missed. “Catch the Devil” is true crime, but it keeps returning to words that sound older than procedure: witness, confession, judgment, belief.
Much of the book turns on Skalnik’s testimony against Jim Dailey, a Vietnam veteran sentenced to death for the murder of fourteen-year-old Shelly Boggio in Florida. The case against Dailey is weak where one would want it immovable: no material evidence tying him to the killing, a co-defendant protecting himself, shifting witness accounts, and a prosecution that needs the sentence no file can produce. Skalnik supplies it. He says Dailey confessed to him in jail, and the alleged confession does what confessions so often do in courtrooms: it makes uncertainty look disciplined, almost well dressed.
Even so, Colloff does not begin with Jim. She begins with Skalnik in federal prison in 2018, where he stages frailty, charm, secrecy, grievance, and importance in the space of a single visit. He apologizes for the setting as if hosting in prison were merely an eccentric choice of venue. He cries. He suggests he may be dying. He implies access to hidden knowledge. He promises more than he gives. It is not simply an overture; it is a manual for reading him. Skalnik’s talent is not fabrication alone. His gift is control of the room’s weather. He can make suspicion feel rude.
The early chapters are bright with borrowed uniforms of authority. Skalnik appears as executive, officer, law student, husband, investigator, Christian convert, oilman, lawyer, patient, insider. He marries, swindles, vanishes, returns, boasts, flatters, threatens. He offers counterfeit glamour with a magician’s hands and a salesman’s smile, though one sometimes suspects the rabbit has been dead in the hat for years. Colloff catches the cheap radiance of him without polishing it into glamour. The glitter keeps turning into paperwork: bad checks, police reports, plea deals, testimony, parole.
In an emptied hotel room, the suit, briefcase, telephone, and watch remain like props after a performance, suggesting how charm hardens into paperwork before the law learns to use it.
Rather than treating Skalnik as a single bad man who somehow fooled the room, “Catch the Devil” keeps pulling the camera back. His domestic frauds lead to bad checks; bad checks lead to jail; jailhouse tips become leverage; leverage becomes reward. In Houston, around the Moody Park case, he learns that an inmate who claims to have heard something useful can suddenly become valuable. In Pinellas County, the pattern hardens. Again and again, he produces alleged confessions from men facing serious charges. Again and again, prosecutors and investigators find in him the missing piece their cases need: intent, sequence, inside knowledge, a phrase ugly enough to cling. The fraudster’s old trade – giving people the account that meets their need – finds its most protected market.
In a lazier book, this might become a museum of red flags: look how shameless he was, look how many people he fooled, look how brightly the warnings flashed. Colloff is more patient and more damning. She shows that the state was not merely fooled. It was served. Skalnik’s value did not depend on credibility in any ordinary human sense; it depended on practical usefulness. He could provide motive, premeditation, a damning phrase, a lurid detail, a sense of inside access. He did not have to be pure. He only had to be usable. The chill is not that he lied. The chill is that his lies fit.
Part of Colloff’s command lies in where she makes the reader look next. “Catch the Devil” begins as a con-man chronicle, becomes a capital-case investigation, and ends as the story of a man waiting under sentence of death. The opening lets Skalnik dominate attention because domination is his method. Then the book slowly relocates consequence toward the people pushed out of his glare: Lisa Rogers, Penny, Suzanne, Karen Parker, the men whose cases he touched, Shelly Boggio, Jim Dailey, Mary Kay, Marieke Jansen, and the lawyers who spend years trying to undo what one claimed confession helped accomplish.
Absurdity, reduced to plot, becomes frightening once one notices how routine it was. A serial swindler repeatedly claims that incarcerated men confessed to him. Prosecutors use him. He receives leniency. He reoffends. He resurfaces. He is used again. Dailey is tried for Boggio’s murder, and the testimony of jailhouse witnesses, especially Skalnik, helps the prosecution supply what the evidence cannot. Dailey is convicted and sentenced to death. Later lawyers uncover inconsistencies, rewards, missed evidence, shifting accounts, and declarations from Jack Pearcy suggesting Dailey was not present when Shelly was killed. Yet correction proves far slower and less responsive than conviction. A bad story travels light; undoing it requires trunks of paper.
Prose, here, is another way of arranging proof. Colloff writes in patient, cumulative sentences that often begin in setting and end in pressure: a cellblock, a bridge, a courtroom, a letter, a visitation room, a file. Her language has the virtue of clean hands: it touches ugly material without smearing it for effect. She can describe Gulf Coast heat, prison architecture, cheap luxury, motel light, and death-row confinement with the same steady attention. The sentences do not announce outrage. They assemble it. The book never has to shout that something is rotten. It lets the reader smell the humidity.
Atmosphere, in “Catch the Devil,” is not background. Water, heat, confinement, paperwork, and performance recur until they start assigning pressure. Florida is not merely beaches and courtrooms, but a place where bodies surface, accounts sink, and verdict-ready certainty hardens in the damp. The cells count. The visitation rooms count. The bridges, payphones, transcripts, files, and witness lists count. This is one of Colloff’s gifts: she makes procedure tangible. A motion has a temperature. A transcript has a smell. A delay has weight.
Delay enters the book first as fact, then as rhythm. The first movement has speed: schemes, aliases, arrests, testimony, paroles, another con, another wound. The later movement slows into death-row time: appeals, affidavits, clemency, hearings, stays, denials, another reprieve, another threat. That shift can be tiring, and it is meant to be. Skalnik gets movement; Jim gets process. Skalnik reinvents himself; Jim is fixed in place by a version he cannot dislodge. The structure does more than file the evidence. It makes delay itself audible.
It helps to compare “Catch the Devil” only at an angle. Like “The Cadaver King and the Country Dentist” by Radley Balko and Tucker Carrington, Colloff’s book is interested in how courts convert bad evidence into authority. But where that book centers forensic failure, “Catch the Devil” centers the confession at one remove: the catastrophic power of a story that arrives wearing another man’s voice. And where “The Journalist and the Murderer” by Janet Malcolm examines the reporter’s bargain with a subject, Colloff is after a colder transaction: not the writer’s bargain with the source, but the prosecutor’s bargain with the witness.
Most true crime invites us to stare at transgression. “Catch the Devil” knows this and treats staring as a trap. Skalnik is, undeniably, a great horrible character: vulgar, grandiose, nimble, self-pitying, ridiculous, predatory, occasionally almost funny in the way only the truly shameless can be funny. But the book keeps yanking the reader away from the performance toward the invoice. Who paid for this account? Who lost money, safety, credibility, years, appeals, a daughter, a life? The con man occupies the stage; Colloff keeps pointing toward the clerks, handlers, witness lists, deals, and doors that let the act go on.
Its hardest accomplishment is making ratification feel dramatic. Colloff is not content to say that Skalnik lied. Many people lie; fewer have their lies transcribed, sworn, repeated, cited, defended, preserved, and used to justify a death sentence. The alleged confession in Dailey’s case becomes a kind of legal currency. It purchases certainty for the prosecution, punishment for Jim, and advantage for Skalnik. Its value lies not in truth alone, but in circulation. Once accepted, it moves through the courts with a bureaucratic confidence that outlives the man who uttered it.
Across glass and telephone wire, speech becomes estranged from the body that first produced it, an image of testimony traveling farther than truth should be able to go.
The price of that clarity is that the pattern can begin to feel as fixed as a stencil. Skalnik is jailed, produces an alleged confession, helps the state, receives benefit, causes more harm, and is later treated as both indispensable and embarrassing. The recurrence is necessary as evidence, but it can dull surprise. The final third, especially, is crowded with motions, affidavits, evidentiary hearings, procedural bars, judicial refusals, and last-minute urgency. Colloff makes that density meaningful, but she cannot always make it feel alive. The machinery grinds because the machinery is the point. Still, a grind is a grind, even when brilliantly lit.
Readers may also feel the camera tilt too often toward Skalnik’s grotesque brightness. He is hard not to watch. He seems designed by a satirist who lost patience halfway through and decided to become a prosecutor. The women and girls he harmed, and the people who remain bound to Jim’s case, sometimes have to fight for space against his lurid force. Colloff largely understands the danger and works against it, especially by returning to Jim’s long confinement and Shelly’s stolen life. But the imbalance is built into the case’s optics. The book knows that attention can behave like evidence: whatever fills the room starts to look important.
One of the book’s most humane refusals is that it will not turn Jim Dailey into a poster saint of innocence. His drinking, failures, drift, and damaged postwar life remain part of the portrait. That choice matters because the book has no interest in making him spotless before it makes him worthy of doubt. Jim does not have to be the cleanest man in the room to deserve a case not built on sand. Colloff’s restraint here gives the book credibility; she resists the sentimental shortcut, which is among the more tempting frauds available to writers of injustice.
Perhaps the coldest lesson in “Catch the Devil” is that a legal system can be very bad at uncertainty while speaking constantly in the language of finality. The death penalty intensifies this contradiction until it becomes nearly unbearable. If a conviction is later revealed to be compromised, a prison sentence can be reconsidered, at least in theory. An execution cannot apologize. Dailey’s long post-conviction ordeal turns the book from investigation into endurance test. The state’s power is not only to kill; it is to make a man rehearse dying, then keep him waiting, then ask him to rehearse again.
Outside the book, its concerns already have a case number. Jailhouse witnesses, prosecutorial disclosure, wrongful convictions, and capital punishment remain fights in courtrooms, legislatures, and execution calendars, but Colloff does not need to bolt relevance onto the narrative. The relevance hums like bad fluorescent light over a courthouse hallway – steady, institutional, impossible to romanticize. Every time a witness’s incentive is minimized, every time a record is overlooked, every time a court values lateness over truth, the book speaks to the present. Its politics are in the files.
Using my review scale, “Catch the Devil” earns 91/100, which corresponds to a Goodreads-compatible 5/5 stars. That number reflects admiration with reservations, not a claim of perfection. The book is too crowded with late-stage legal procedure to feel effortless, and not formally strange enough to reshape the shelf it sits on. But the rating rests on what the book does exceptionally well: reporting, structure, proportion, emotional pressure, and the disciplined making of a case the reader can feel being built.
Late in the book, the genre’s promised pleasures begin to fail. Skalnik can be exposed, diminished, cornered, even dead, and still the testimony he helped install keeps working in court records. This is what makes the ending so bitterly strong. A lesser book might have mistaken survival for vindication. Colloff knows better. Jim remains alive, but not free; spared from one date, but not released from the shadow of another. The opposite of execution is not necessarily justice. Sometimes it is only the continuation of waiting.
On the final pages, what stays is not Skalnik’s voice, though his voice has done terrible work. It is Jim painting landscapes from confinement: water, trees, mountains, skies, a swimming hole, places rendered by a man who has been made into an absence inside his own life. After so much testimony, so many transcripts, so many official accounts polished into verdicts, the image feels quietly defiant. The book has spent hundreds of pages showing what can happen when language is captured by power. Here, at last, is an image that refuses to testify.
After files, rooms, corridors, and cells, this quiet water opens the visual field without offering release, holding memory as something beautiful, distant, and still unreachable.
Still, the final reversal is not that art redeems what law has broken. Colloff is too exacting for that, and Jim’s paintings are not asked to perform a miracle. Their force is smaller and sadder: they keep a relation to the world alive. A liar once gave the state a sentence it could use, and that sentence kept a man inside walls for decades. Jim answers with water he cannot step into, trees he cannot walk beneath, a sky he can make but not inhabit. The devil, Colloff suggests, was never only the liar. It was the bargain that made his words enough.
These small graphite-and-wash trials show the visual argument taking shape: file first, chair second, horizon last, with emptiness doing as much narrative work as any object in the room.
More than a palette sample, this study translates the cover’s color hierarchy into the watercolor system: darks and mauves held as atmosphere, pale tones reserved for evidence and breath, and hot accents kept rare.
Before the washes enter, the room appears as a fragile architecture of perspective lines, file edges, window frame, and pulled-back chair, revealing how the final image is built from restraint.
The first wash shows the cover palette beginning to govern the image proportionally, with charcoal, mauve, taupe, and ivory carrying the room before any warmer accent is allowed to speak.
This process sheet shows how the cover’s dark atmosphere, pale paper tones, cool lower band, and rare warm pulse become a watercolor language rather than a simple color match.
These faint studies of posture, hand, shoulder, and chair reveal that the final painting’s emptiness was chosen, not avoided; the body is considered, then withdrawn.
A miniature planning strip traces the larger visual arc of the review program, moving from record to performance, procedure, mediated testimony, confinement, and finally unreachable water.
Holding the file close and standing inside the book’s dusk-colored atmosphere, this author portrait places Pamela Colloff not as a spectacle beside “Catch the Devil,” but as the steady witness to how testimony, paperwork, and power become a story the state can use.
All watercolor illustrations by Demetris Papadimitropoulos.
Watercolors are done on 140lb vellum and then scanned into the computer using an Epson scanner. From there, they are finalized in Procreate. All art and opinions are my own.
July 19, 2026
Excellent book! I read this via Whispersync and the narration was great. If you enjoy this book, check out Gilbert King.
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.
July 18, 2026
Catch the Devil: A True Story of Murder, Deception, and Injustice on the Gulf Coast by Pamela Colloff is a gripping, meticulously researched, and profoundly unsettling work of investigative journalism that examines how one manipulative con man exploited weaknesses within the criminal justice system, leaving a devastating trail of wrongful convictions, shattered lives, and institutional failure. Combining the narrative intensity of true crime with the rigor of investigative reporting, Colloff delivers a compelling account that raises urgent questions about justice, prosecutorial ethics, eyewitness testimony, and the consequences of prioritizing convictions over truth.
One of the book's greatest strengths is its extraordinary investigative depth. Drawing on years of reporting, court records, interviews, and extensive documentation, Colloff reconstructs the astonishing life of Paul Skalnik—a serial fraudster whose relentless deception extended far beyond personal scams and into the heart of the American legal system. Her careful reporting transforms an already remarkable story into a comprehensive examination of how systemic failures can amplify the damage caused by a single individual.
Particularly compelling is the book's exploration of wrongful conviction through the case of Jim Dailey. Colloff methodically traces how unreliable jailhouse informant testimony, unsupported by forensic evidence or clear motive, contributed to a death sentence that would haunt the justice system for decades. Rather than focusing solely on courtroom drama, she demonstrates the profound human cost that accompanies investigative mistakes, flawed incentives, and institutional blind spots.
Another notable strength is the nuanced portrayal of Paul Skalnik himself. Rather than reducing him to a one-dimensional villain, Colloff examines the extraordinary breadth of his deception, revealing how his fabricated identities and calculated manipulation repeatedly enabled him to evade accountability. His story becomes a powerful case study in how charisma, confidence, and institutional trust can be exploited when adequate safeguards fail to exist.
The book also excels in exposing broader structural issues within the criminal justice system. Through careful analysis of prosecutorial decision-making, the use of jailhouse informants, evidentiary standards, and accountability mechanisms, Colloff encourages readers to consider how systemic incentives can sometimes undermine the pursuit of justice. Her reporting highlights the importance of rigorous investigation, transparency, and procedural fairness in protecting both victims and the accused.
Despite the complexity of its legal and investigative material, the writing remains highly engaging and accessible. Colloff skillfully balances suspense with careful factual reporting, maintaining the pace of a compelling true-crime narrative while preserving the precision and integrity expected of exceptional investigative journalism. The result is a book that educates as effectively as it captivates.
Perhaps the book's most significant achievement is its reminder that justice depends not only on identifying the guilty but also on protecting the innocent. By documenting the lasting consequences of false testimony, institutional complacency, and investigative oversight, Colloff demonstrates why integrity, evidence, and accountability remain essential foundations of any fair legal system. Her work serves as both a cautionary tale and a powerful call for continued vigilance in the pursuit of justice.
Meticulously researched, emotionally compelling, and exceptionally well-written, Catch the Devil: A True Story of Murder, Deception, and Injustice on the Gulf Coast is a remarkable contribution to true crime, investigative journalism, and criminal justice literature. Pamela Colloff has produced an essential work that will captivate readers interested in wrongful convictions, legal reform, investigative reporting, courtroom history, and the enduring importance of truth within the justice system.
One of the book's greatest strengths is its extraordinary investigative depth. Drawing on years of reporting, court records, interviews, and extensive documentation, Colloff reconstructs the astonishing life of Paul Skalnik—a serial fraudster whose relentless deception extended far beyond personal scams and into the heart of the American legal system. Her careful reporting transforms an already remarkable story into a comprehensive examination of how systemic failures can amplify the damage caused by a single individual.
Particularly compelling is the book's exploration of wrongful conviction through the case of Jim Dailey. Colloff methodically traces how unreliable jailhouse informant testimony, unsupported by forensic evidence or clear motive, contributed to a death sentence that would haunt the justice system for decades. Rather than focusing solely on courtroom drama, she demonstrates the profound human cost that accompanies investigative mistakes, flawed incentives, and institutional blind spots.
Another notable strength is the nuanced portrayal of Paul Skalnik himself. Rather than reducing him to a one-dimensional villain, Colloff examines the extraordinary breadth of his deception, revealing how his fabricated identities and calculated manipulation repeatedly enabled him to evade accountability. His story becomes a powerful case study in how charisma, confidence, and institutional trust can be exploited when adequate safeguards fail to exist.
The book also excels in exposing broader structural issues within the criminal justice system. Through careful analysis of prosecutorial decision-making, the use of jailhouse informants, evidentiary standards, and accountability mechanisms, Colloff encourages readers to consider how systemic incentives can sometimes undermine the pursuit of justice. Her reporting highlights the importance of rigorous investigation, transparency, and procedural fairness in protecting both victims and the accused.
Despite the complexity of its legal and investigative material, the writing remains highly engaging and accessible. Colloff skillfully balances suspense with careful factual reporting, maintaining the pace of a compelling true-crime narrative while preserving the precision and integrity expected of exceptional investigative journalism. The result is a book that educates as effectively as it captivates.
Perhaps the book's most significant achievement is its reminder that justice depends not only on identifying the guilty but also on protecting the innocent. By documenting the lasting consequences of false testimony, institutional complacency, and investigative oversight, Colloff demonstrates why integrity, evidence, and accountability remain essential foundations of any fair legal system. Her work serves as both a cautionary tale and a powerful call for continued vigilance in the pursuit of justice.
Meticulously researched, emotionally compelling, and exceptionally well-written, Catch the Devil: A True Story of Murder, Deception, and Injustice on the Gulf Coast is a remarkable contribution to true crime, investigative journalism, and criminal justice literature. Pamela Colloff has produced an essential work that will captivate readers interested in wrongful convictions, legal reform, investigative reporting, courtroom history, and the enduring importance of truth within the justice system.
July 20, 2026
Paul Skalnik never met a predicament he couldn’t sweet talk his way out of. He would use his guile to persuade law enforcement of his usefulness in the same way that he charmed helpless victims out of their savings. He was a confidence man from a throwback era, yet his deceptions dated back to at least the 1970s and have had lasting ramifications.
In 1977, Skalnik moved into Penny Rogers’ life with bravado and swagger aplenty. While flashing a seductive smile and spending money with reckless abandon on her family and friends, his wealth was built on credit. When creditors came calling, Skalnik made himself scarce. The life of a grifter necessitates expeditious exits.
The value of a criminal informant lies in the information they can offer the authorities. As long as Skalnik possessed valuable intel, police and prosecutors would be willing to cut a deal with the scammer. There was an assumption of trust that existed in the relationship between him and law enforcement in Texas and Florida, but in reality it was simply blind faith. When Skalnik was busted in Texas in 1978 for larcenous crimes, he offered his services to a former acquaintance who worked in the Harris County D.A.’s office. He provided testimony on a politically sensitive case involving a riot that arose from the lenient sentencing of three cops for the wrongful death of a Mexican American citizen. His damaging statements convicted the “Moody Park 3” of felony riot charges.
Jim Dailey’s life changed when he went to Vietnam, and certainly not for the better. The married father of two from Kansas had been in the Air Force, but the anguish he experienced while serving in the bloody fray had left him sputtering, and only alcohol could provide relief. Dailey’s drinking cost him his position in the Air Force and ultimately his marriage. By 1985, he was still in the grip of his demons and living in Florida with Jack Pearcy, an old drinking buddy. While Dailey had been in some minor trouble with the law in the past, Pearcy was about to bring far more serious problems into Dailey’s life. Her name was Shelly Boggio, and her brutal murder shocked Pinellas County.
Pearcy confessed to his role in Boggio’s death, while Dailey’s involvement was debatable. Pearcy’s testimony was shaky, if not contradictory, and the only other testimony implicating Dailey came from Pearcy’s girlfriend. The police needed something concrete from Dailey, preferably a confession. Fortunately for them, Skalnik was in Pinellas County Jail, and he had the habit of being a lay confessor to many loose-lipped defendants. Once Dailey’s trial started in 1987, Skalnik was ready to be the prosecution’s star witness and send another hapless convict to “Old Sparky.” If the defense team had been more competent, Skalnik’s testimony would have been eviscerated along with his credibility. Unfortunately for Dailey and for justice, that didn’t happen.
CATCH THE DEVIL is as much riveting investigative journalism as it is a true-crime exposé. When the criminal justice system fails, there is legitimate anger. However, when it comes to Paul Skalnik, the rage is directed at the law-and-order aspects of the system, as police were all too willing to believe the stories about the confessions to which Skalnik was privy, and prosecutors were just as desirous to put him on the stand to secure a conviction. The state’s use of informants has been controversial for decades, especially as their testimony is often predicated on a quid pro quo. In many of the cases in which Skalnik testified, jurors were swayed, and innocent men may have suffered.
Pamela Colloff is meticulous in cataloguing a lifetime of crimes and swindles involving a litany of victims and committed by an inveterate liar who kept spinning stories until he took his last breath in March 2020. This fascinating book offers significant insights into the corrupt partnership between informers and the authorities, as well as the inherent imperfections of capital punishment.
Reviewed by Philip Zozzaro
In 1977, Skalnik moved into Penny Rogers’ life with bravado and swagger aplenty. While flashing a seductive smile and spending money with reckless abandon on her family and friends, his wealth was built on credit. When creditors came calling, Skalnik made himself scarce. The life of a grifter necessitates expeditious exits.
The value of a criminal informant lies in the information they can offer the authorities. As long as Skalnik possessed valuable intel, police and prosecutors would be willing to cut a deal with the scammer. There was an assumption of trust that existed in the relationship between him and law enforcement in Texas and Florida, but in reality it was simply blind faith. When Skalnik was busted in Texas in 1978 for larcenous crimes, he offered his services to a former acquaintance who worked in the Harris County D.A.’s office. He provided testimony on a politically sensitive case involving a riot that arose from the lenient sentencing of three cops for the wrongful death of a Mexican American citizen. His damaging statements convicted the “Moody Park 3” of felony riot charges.
Jim Dailey’s life changed when he went to Vietnam, and certainly not for the better. The married father of two from Kansas had been in the Air Force, but the anguish he experienced while serving in the bloody fray had left him sputtering, and only alcohol could provide relief. Dailey’s drinking cost him his position in the Air Force and ultimately his marriage. By 1985, he was still in the grip of his demons and living in Florida with Jack Pearcy, an old drinking buddy. While Dailey had been in some minor trouble with the law in the past, Pearcy was about to bring far more serious problems into Dailey’s life. Her name was Shelly Boggio, and her brutal murder shocked Pinellas County.
Pearcy confessed to his role in Boggio’s death, while Dailey’s involvement was debatable. Pearcy’s testimony was shaky, if not contradictory, and the only other testimony implicating Dailey came from Pearcy’s girlfriend. The police needed something concrete from Dailey, preferably a confession. Fortunately for them, Skalnik was in Pinellas County Jail, and he had the habit of being a lay confessor to many loose-lipped defendants. Once Dailey’s trial started in 1987, Skalnik was ready to be the prosecution’s star witness and send another hapless convict to “Old Sparky.” If the defense team had been more competent, Skalnik’s testimony would have been eviscerated along with his credibility. Unfortunately for Dailey and for justice, that didn’t happen.
CATCH THE DEVIL is as much riveting investigative journalism as it is a true-crime exposé. When the criminal justice system fails, there is legitimate anger. However, when it comes to Paul Skalnik, the rage is directed at the law-and-order aspects of the system, as police were all too willing to believe the stories about the confessions to which Skalnik was privy, and prosecutors were just as desirous to put him on the stand to secure a conviction. The state’s use of informants has been controversial for decades, especially as their testimony is often predicated on a quid pro quo. In many of the cases in which Skalnik testified, jurors were swayed, and innocent men may have suffered.
Pamela Colloff is meticulous in cataloguing a lifetime of crimes and swindles involving a litany of victims and committed by an inveterate liar who kept spinning stories until he took his last breath in March 2020. This fascinating book offers significant insights into the corrupt partnership between informers and the authorities, as well as the inherent imperfections of capital punishment.
Reviewed by Philip Zozzaro
July 15, 2026
What a wild book! If it were fiction, you'd say it wasn't believable. But it's all true.
The story investigative reporter Pamela Colloff tells focuses primarily on two men. The first is con man Paul Skalnick, who over the years passed himself off as a fighter pilot, a high-rolling oilman, a criminal defense attorney, an undercover agent, and a terminal cancer patient. Along the way he got married to nine different women, sometimes without bothering to get divorced first. And more than once he molested teen girls.
Whenever Skalnick got caught, he shifted into his other persona: Jailhouse informant. The native Texan found fertile ground for his snitching in Florida, sending multiple Pinellas County defendants to prison and four men to Death Row with his made-up stories of their "confessions."
The other focus of the book is one of those men, down-and-out Vietnam vet Jim Dailey. One of his pals implicated him in the murder of a teenage girl, even though he was nowhere near the scene of the crime. Dailey had no prior criminal record, but win-at-all-costs prosecutors were determined to nail him for the crime his co-defendant contended he'd helped commit.
The physical evidence tying him to the murder was shaky at best, so the Pinellas County sheriff's detective on the case went to the jail and made it know that he was looking for snitches. Skalnick and two others signed up, eventually testifying that Dailey told them things he'd never said.
Dailey got a sloppy defense at trial and wound up on death Row. Over and over, other attorneys tried to help him, often unearthing new evidence, some of which the prosecution had hidden or kept obscure. Over and over, judges ruled that, legally, Dailey didn't have a leg to stand on. Repeated efforts to impeach Skanick failed, even after he claimed in a legal motion that the prosecuors had sold HIM a bill of goods.
The story is structured in an unusual way. We meet Skalnick in the opening chapters, seeing how he buffaloed everyone he came into contact with, including cops. Often Colloff has astonishing quotes, such as when one of Skalnick's police handlers in Texas discovers he's become a victim of Skalnick's thieving ways and has him locked up. The cop walks into the jail and sees Skalnick wearing HIS clothes, and Skalnick turns a wounded expression on him and says, "Why the handcuffs?"
Next we meet Dailey and get the details of the murder he was supposedly involved with, although it's clear he was not. This part slows the book way down, but it's necessary for the rest of the narrative to know how Dailey wound up where he did.
Then the book kicks into a higher gear as Skalnick frames Dailey and repeatedly refuses to admit that he lied. There are others who failed the cause of justice, too, including the prosecutors who handled the case and the judges who didn't want to overturn the jury's conclusion even when presented with new evidence. What was particularly outrageous is when the Florida Supreme Court finds that some of the evidence SHOULD have been raised earlier and blamed Dailey's attorneys for that, even though they didn't know about the evidence before.
I don't want to give too much away (unlike the NYT review, darn it) but trust me when I say that Colloff finds a way to wind the story up with some grace and mercy, although not the justice that we as Americans would hope for.
The story investigative reporter Pamela Colloff tells focuses primarily on two men. The first is con man Paul Skalnick, who over the years passed himself off as a fighter pilot, a high-rolling oilman, a criminal defense attorney, an undercover agent, and a terminal cancer patient. Along the way he got married to nine different women, sometimes without bothering to get divorced first. And more than once he molested teen girls.
Whenever Skalnick got caught, he shifted into his other persona: Jailhouse informant. The native Texan found fertile ground for his snitching in Florida, sending multiple Pinellas County defendants to prison and four men to Death Row with his made-up stories of their "confessions."
The other focus of the book is one of those men, down-and-out Vietnam vet Jim Dailey. One of his pals implicated him in the murder of a teenage girl, even though he was nowhere near the scene of the crime. Dailey had no prior criminal record, but win-at-all-costs prosecutors were determined to nail him for the crime his co-defendant contended he'd helped commit.
The physical evidence tying him to the murder was shaky at best, so the Pinellas County sheriff's detective on the case went to the jail and made it know that he was looking for snitches. Skalnick and two others signed up, eventually testifying that Dailey told them things he'd never said.
Dailey got a sloppy defense at trial and wound up on death Row. Over and over, other attorneys tried to help him, often unearthing new evidence, some of which the prosecution had hidden or kept obscure. Over and over, judges ruled that, legally, Dailey didn't have a leg to stand on. Repeated efforts to impeach Skanick failed, even after he claimed in a legal motion that the prosecuors had sold HIM a bill of goods.
The story is structured in an unusual way. We meet Skalnick in the opening chapters, seeing how he buffaloed everyone he came into contact with, including cops. Often Colloff has astonishing quotes, such as when one of Skalnick's police handlers in Texas discovers he's become a victim of Skalnick's thieving ways and has him locked up. The cop walks into the jail and sees Skalnick wearing HIS clothes, and Skalnick turns a wounded expression on him and says, "Why the handcuffs?"
Next we meet Dailey and get the details of the murder he was supposedly involved with, although it's clear he was not. This part slows the book way down, but it's necessary for the rest of the narrative to know how Dailey wound up where he did.
Then the book kicks into a higher gear as Skalnick frames Dailey and repeatedly refuses to admit that he lied. There are others who failed the cause of justice, too, including the prosecutors who handled the case and the judges who didn't want to overturn the jury's conclusion even when presented with new evidence. What was particularly outrageous is when the Florida Supreme Court finds that some of the evidence SHOULD have been raised earlier and blamed Dailey's attorneys for that, even though they didn't know about the evidence before.
I don't want to give too much away (unlike the NYT review, darn it) but trust me when I say that Colloff finds a way to wind the story up with some grace and mercy, although not the justice that we as Americans would hope for.
July 20, 2026
A mesmerizing true crime account of a serial con man who sent an innocent man to death row.
The villain in this book is one of the most “prolific and most effective jailhouse informant in American history.” Paul Skalnik repeatedly testified at trial after trial giving supposed confessions he heard while locked up. According to Skalnik he put 34 men in prison and four on death row. When but not in prison he married nine times - sometimes when married to someone else. He bilked his wives and others out of money, cars, real estate, and jewelry, all the while representing himself as a Marine veteran, ace flier, wealthy lawyer, University of Texas football star among other guises he assumed. But most heinous of all, he was a pedophile.
In the 1980s, Skalnik ever in trouble with law and always looking for “deal” offered a confession from a down-on-his-luck Vietnam veteran, Jim Daley, who was being prosecuted for participating in the murder of a teenager along with another man, Jack Peary. At that time the police and prosecution believed two men perpetrated the murder. Daley kept professing his innocence but due to shoddy investigation, reliance on a dodgy jailhouse snitch, poor representation by the defense, and the feverish conviction at the time to be tough on crime, Daley was convicted and sentenced to death - while the true killer got life.
The story weaves a history of how some Florida state sources worked to get Daley a new trial but often were stymied by budget cuts and having to drop Dakey’s case. it was frankly disheartening to listen to this poor man’s plight and how Skalkin and Peary both contributed to keeping Daley on death row - where he still remains - because neither was willing to tell the truth for one reason or the other. And then as been established in several other true crime books I read or listened to, the desire to win overrides the truth - taking the word of a man whose statements are usually never vetted cries out for justice. Also then there is the belief all cons are guilty and once convicted by jury proves this - even though recent overturned cases disabuses this idea. Finally states that execute people are usually driven by the belief that being tough on crime will prevent more crime.
We live in times where lying is honored over truth. This book helps dispel this. I don’t think I’ve ever come so close to tears as this book went on. My anger at how selfishness was more important than a human life probably raised my blood pressure quite a bit. But then I was reminded that the megalomaniac that does this every day - golfs while troops die, cuts aid to organizations that help humanity. I got my tissues out at this point.
I gave this book five stars for the topic is the covered so convincingly, for its detail and depth into went into in telling this story and for its excellent narration. I really enjoyed this audiobook.
The villain in this book is one of the most “prolific and most effective jailhouse informant in American history.” Paul Skalnik repeatedly testified at trial after trial giving supposed confessions he heard while locked up. According to Skalnik he put 34 men in prison and four on death row. When but not in prison he married nine times - sometimes when married to someone else. He bilked his wives and others out of money, cars, real estate, and jewelry, all the while representing himself as a Marine veteran, ace flier, wealthy lawyer, University of Texas football star among other guises he assumed. But most heinous of all, he was a pedophile.
In the 1980s, Skalnik ever in trouble with law and always looking for “deal” offered a confession from a down-on-his-luck Vietnam veteran, Jim Daley, who was being prosecuted for participating in the murder of a teenager along with another man, Jack Peary. At that time the police and prosecution believed two men perpetrated the murder. Daley kept professing his innocence but due to shoddy investigation, reliance on a dodgy jailhouse snitch, poor representation by the defense, and the feverish conviction at the time to be tough on crime, Daley was convicted and sentenced to death - while the true killer got life.
The story weaves a history of how some Florida state sources worked to get Daley a new trial but often were stymied by budget cuts and having to drop Dakey’s case. it was frankly disheartening to listen to this poor man’s plight and how Skalkin and Peary both contributed to keeping Daley on death row - where he still remains - because neither was willing to tell the truth for one reason or the other. And then as been established in several other true crime books I read or listened to, the desire to win overrides the truth - taking the word of a man whose statements are usually never vetted cries out for justice. Also then there is the belief all cons are guilty and once convicted by jury proves this - even though recent overturned cases disabuses this idea. Finally states that execute people are usually driven by the belief that being tough on crime will prevent more crime.
We live in times where lying is honored over truth. This book helps dispel this. I don’t think I’ve ever come so close to tears as this book went on. My anger at how selfishness was more important than a human life probably raised my blood pressure quite a bit. But then I was reminded that the megalomaniac that does this every day - golfs while troops die, cuts aid to organizations that help humanity. I got my tissues out at this point.
I gave this book five stars for the topic is the covered so convincingly, for its detail and depth into went into in telling this story and for its excellent narration. I really enjoyed this audiobook.
July 20, 2026
Pamela Colloff has long been one of the finest investigative journalists writing today, and Chase the Devil is a masterclass in long-form true crime. This is far more than a story about a single case—it is a devastating examination of how easily the criminal justice system can fail when investigators develop tunnel vision and evidence is shaped to fit a predetermined narrative. Colloff’s reporting is meticulous, compassionate, and remarkably balanced. She presents an incredibly complex case with clarity, making the legal proceedings, investigative failures, and human consequences accessible without ever oversimplifying them.
What struck me most was the humanity at the center of the book. Rather than focusing solely on the crime itself, Colloff gives equal weight to the lives forever changed by the investigation, reminding readers that wrongful convictions create multiple victims. The pacing is exceptional for investigative nonfiction. Every chapter reveals another layer of the case, and despite knowing many of the issues surrounding wrongful convictions, I still found myself stunned by several of the revelations.
This is exactly the kind of true crime I want to read—thoughtful, deeply researched, ethically reported, and willing to ask difficult questions about accountability, justice, and the systems we trust to protect us.
Specifics:
-an outstanding work of investigative journalism backed by exhaustive research
-the legal and investigative details are presented clearly without sacrificing emotional impact
-essential reading for anyone interested in wrongful convictions, criminal justice reform, and investigative reporting
-one of the best true crime books I’ve read in recent years and one that will stay with me long after the final page
Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for sending me an advanced copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
What struck me most was the humanity at the center of the book. Rather than focusing solely on the crime itself, Colloff gives equal weight to the lives forever changed by the investigation, reminding readers that wrongful convictions create multiple victims. The pacing is exceptional for investigative nonfiction. Every chapter reveals another layer of the case, and despite knowing many of the issues surrounding wrongful convictions, I still found myself stunned by several of the revelations.
This is exactly the kind of true crime I want to read—thoughtful, deeply researched, ethically reported, and willing to ask difficult questions about accountability, justice, and the systems we trust to protect us.
Specifics:
-an outstanding work of investigative journalism backed by exhaustive research
-the legal and investigative details are presented clearly without sacrificing emotional impact
-essential reading for anyone interested in wrongful convictions, criminal justice reform, and investigative reporting
-one of the best true crime books I’ve read in recent years and one that will stay with me long after the final page
Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for sending me an advanced copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
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.
July 24, 2026
This book has received a lot of attention with its release. Before reading it I knew only the broad outlines and I was expecting a portrait of a shrewd, manipulative criminal genius. The truth behind the story is much sadder and much more infuriating. Paul Skalnik was a pathetic con man; his power came purely from a thoroughly corrupt state attorney's office that happily took his obvious lies at face value to secure easier convictions when they lacked actual evidence. In this book, Pamela Colloff expertly examines three separate angles: a profile of Paul Skalnik; the machinations of high-level prosecutions and appeals; and a detailed look at Jim Dailey, who is one of multiple men (in separate cases) sentenced to death based on Skalnik's bogus jailhouse testimony.
It is astounding (and terrifying) how much work has to be put in to reverse a completely obvious miscarriage of justice. One man can tell a self-serving lie, and multiple attorneys have to spend thousands of hours, countless dollars, and so much wasted energy that could be spent elsewhere to undo it. Of course, the greatest tragedy of all is the innocent person spending decades behind bars for a crime that never happened, but people often ignore that person since it's so much easier to just believe they did it. Colloff pulls it all into an excellent book that covers true crime, character studies, and justice-system explainer all at once.
It is astounding (and terrifying) how much work has to be put in to reverse a completely obvious miscarriage of justice. One man can tell a self-serving lie, and multiple attorneys have to spend thousands of hours, countless dollars, and so much wasted energy that could be spent elsewhere to undo it. Of course, the greatest tragedy of all is the innocent person spending decades behind bars for a crime that never happened, but people often ignore that person since it's so much easier to just believe they did it. Colloff pulls it all into an excellent book that covers true crime, character studies, and justice-system explainer all at once.
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.
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