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

About the Book

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

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

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

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

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

About the Author :
PAMELA 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 Best American Magazine Writing, 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.

Review :
Pamela Colloff is one of our great chroniclers of crime and criminal justice, and in this incendiary, emotionally devastating book, she depicts a justice system turned completely inside out, in which the innocent are incarcerated and the guilty skip free. The conman at the heart of her story, Paul Skalnik, is as chilling and unrepentant as any movie villain. Catch the Devil is a feat of dogged reporting, bravura storytelling, and clear-eyed moral conscience. One of America's finest journalists, Pamela Colloff, has delivered a wallop of a debut book-loaded with moral clarity and astounding detail-about one of the world's most infernal liars, the scores of lives he destroyed, and the criminal-justice system that still, shockingly, benefits from those lies. Pamela Colloff has ripped the roof off the criminal justice system with this exposé of a jailhouse snitch. You can't read this book without a feeling of horror that one man could do so much damage; but the real shock is that he was only telling prosecutors what they wanted him to say. A masterful and riveting anatomy of how a series of institutions colluded with one man's pathology. I can't imagine a more damning and poignant account of a criminal justice system that was, fundamentally, willing to be fooled-and the lives destroyed and transformed in that process. You read each page of Pamela Colloff's subtly written and stunningly reported book with a deepening sense of outrage. How could this happen? How could the justice system be so remorseless, so intractably focused on protocol and career wins at the expense of justice itself? Catch the Devil is an infuriating, illuminating, gripping narrative by one of the heroes of American journalism. A mesmerizing, often enraging portrait of a man whose skill at manipulating the judicial system led to untold injustices. Told with all the care, nuance, and dazzling reportage we expect from Pamela Colloff-one of the very best in the field right now-Catch the Devil reads like a literary thriller, rich in atmosphere and lively characters, but its larger resonances give it an extraordinary depth and its timeliness during America's current grifter era could hardly be greater. Pamela Colloff lights up the criminal justice system with a precision that leaves nowhere to hide. Catch the Devil is an extraordinary achievement, its narrative moving with the taut urgency of a thriller-anchored by the heart and humanity she brings to the pursuit of truth. An unforgettable masterwork from the leading voice in American crime reporting. Pamela Colloff's writing sits at the perfect intersection of journalism and literature. Catch the Devil is a masterwork, deeply researched and thrillingly composed.
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