The author and journalist discussed her book on the life and crimes of Paul Skalnik, on the ‘Reality Life with Kate Casey’ podcast
Credit: Peter Yang; Knopf
NEED TO KNOW
- Pamela Colloff’s new book Catch the Devil investigates Paul Skalnik, a con man whose false confessions as a jail informant put multiple people in prison
- Colloff discussed writing the book on the July 11 episode of Reality Life with Kate Casey podcast
- “I now have a 257 page timeline of [Skalnik’s] path of destruction, and I feel like there’s still so much I don’t know,” the author and journalist said
In a new book, author and journalist Pamela Colloff investigates a notorious con man, whose lies had devastating consequences for many who knew him.
On the July 11 episode of the Reality Life with Kate Casey podcast, Colloff spoke about her new book Catch the Devil: A True Story of Murder, Deception, and Injustice on the Gulf Coast. The book centers on Paul Skalnik, who moved through the Gulf Coast under different identities. He married and defrauded women, preyed on young girls and sent multiple people to prison with fraudulent claims he made as a jailhouse informant.
Catch the Devil stemmed from a 2019 article that Colloff published in The New York Times Magazine and ProPublica. While Colloff generally moves on after one of her longform features goes to print, she “felt the opposite” with Skalnik. His lies began in childhood, when he told people that he was adopted in an attempt to “distance himself from his family.”
“He was a chameleon, so he’s a different person to many different people,” Colloff said on the podcast. Skalnik used a Bible to keep track of his different lies by writing them in the margins; his notes included fake names, dates and other details he’d given others.
Credit: Knopf
“One of the questions I always had with him, and it remains to this day, is whether he, at a certain point, even realized he was lying about his own life,” Colloff said. “I know he very well knew that he was lying about other men’s lives, and even sort of elliptically alluded to that in my last interview with him. But about his own life, I actually really think that he came to believe it on some fundamental level.”
Skalnik’s tenure as a jail informant, however, is perhaps his most infamous stint. After committing theft or fraud, the con man used his background as a cop to his advantage while in county jail.
“He would look at who it was in the jail who was sort of the most high-value person to prosecutors or investigators. Who did they most want to get a conviction against?” Colloff explained. Skalnik would then tell investigators that this person had confessed their crime to him.
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“He would manufacture a confession that then was very valuable to prosecutors,” the author continued. “They would put him on the stand. He would testify that this person confessed to what they did, and in return, he often got reduced sentences or even his freedom.”
One person impacted by Skalnik’s scheme was James Dailey, who was implicated in the 1985 murder of teenager Shelly Boggio. Skalnik’s recounting of Dailey’s confession to the killing, despite no forensic evidence, put Dailey on death row in Florida for decades. Years later, another man would come forward and take responsibility for Boggio’s death.
“I now have a 257 page timeline of [Skalnik’s] path of destruction, and I feel like there’s still so much I don’t know,” Colloff said. “I think what was hardest was seeing the damage that he did to other people.”
Credit: Peter Yang
Colloff herself was even impacted by Skalnik’s cons. When the author went to meet him in federal prison in 2018, Skalnik said that he was dying of cancer, and wanted her to tell his story. After months without an interview, Colloff realized that Skalnik was “stringing me along.”
“I start the book with that story because I don’t want anyone to feel superior to anyone in this book who fell for him,” Colloff said. “There’s every possible red flag, and I still fell for it because he knew how to read me. He knew what I was hungry for. He knew what I wanted, and he knew how to tap into that.”
The author hopes that Catch the Devil will encourage others impacted by Skalnik to step forward.
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“There were some people who were so hurt by what he did that even though I was able to find them, I couldn’t get them to speak with me,” the author said. “One of the things that readers will notice in the book is that the only pictures I have of Skalnik are mugshots, and that’s because the people who were close to him — family members, women who loved him — they had all destroyed the photos they had of him. One woman told me she had burned the photos she had of him.”
“I hope that this [book] sort of shakes loose the little bits and pieces of this that I still wanna understand better myself,” Colloff added.
Catch the Devil: A True Story of Murder, Deception, and Injustice on the Gulf Coast is now available, wherever books are sold.
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