Download Catch the Devil: A True Story of Murder, Deception, and Injustice on the Gulf Coast by Pamela Colloff PDF
Key ideas from the book
- Paul Skalnik repeatedly used fabricated identities and stories to deceive others.
- As a jailhouse informant, Skalnik supplied prosecutors with alleged confessions from other prisoners.
- Jim Dailey was sent to death row after Skalnik claimed he had confessed to a murder.
- The case raises questions about the use of informant testimony and the pursuit of convictions.
- Colloff revisits the case after another man took responsibility for the killing.
About Catch the Devil: A True Story of Murder, Deception, and Injustice on the Gulf Coast by Pamela Colloff
Pamela Colloff examines the case of Paul Skalnik, a serial con man who spent decades inventing identities and, when jailed, claimed that fellow prisoners had confessed crimes to him. In Pinellas County, Florida, prosecutors used his testimony to secure convictions; in return, Skalnik was repeatedly freed. His claims implicated innocent people, including Jim Dailey, a Vietnam veteran accused of murdering a fourteen-year-old girl in 1985.
With no forensic evidence or motive linking Dailey to the killing, Skalnik’s account of a supposed confession helped send him to death row. More than three decades later, after another man took responsibility for the murder, Colloff asked Skalnik to recant. He refused. This true-crime account will interest readers of investigative journalism, criminal justice, and cases in which unreliable testimony and the pursuit of convictions have devastating consequences.
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