Catch the Devil: A True Story of Murder, Deception, and Injustice on the Gulf Coast: A True Story of Murder and Deception on the Gulf Coast - Softcover

Colloff, Pamela

Softcover

ISBN 13: 9798217346998

Verlag: Diversified Publishing, 2026

Inhaltsangabe

The gripping true story of a serial con man and the innocent man he sent to death row by award-winning New York Times Magazine writer Pamela Colloff

For more than three decades, Paul Skalnik roamed the Gulf Coast lying about who he was. He passed himself off as a fighter pilot, a high-rolling oilman, a criminal defense attorney, an undercover agent, and a terminal cancer patient. In these guises he married nine women—some at the same time.

When Skalnik got caught, as he invariably did, he would run a different con. Locked up with other men awaiting trial, he claimed they confessed their crimes to him. Then he peddled those stories to prosecutors. In Pinellas County, Florida, he became a frequent witness for the state, thinking nothing of exaggerating men’s wrongdoing or implicating the innocent to help prosecutors win convictions. In return, the state rewarded him with his freedom, fueling his growing sense of invincibility. Soon he was not just committing fraud; he was preying on girls in their teens or barely into adolescence.

In 1985, Jim Dailey, a down-on-his-luck Vietnam veteran, was implicated in the murder of a fourteen-year-old girl and landed in the Pinellas County Jail with Skalnik. No forensic evidence or motive linked Dailey to the killing, but Skalnik’s account of his "confession" helped put Dailey on death row. Skalnik, meanwhile, walked free. More than three decades later, after another man took responsibility for the killing, Pamela Colloff, reporting for the New York Times Magazine and ProPublica, visited Skalnik and asked him if he would recant his testimony. He refused.

By then, Skalnik had caused untold damage: 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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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

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.

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1

Skalnik

In Friendswood, Texas, the only disturbance to the order of things came during hurricane season, when storm surges in Galveston Bay left the creeks with nowhere to drain and floodwaters could rise in an instant. Some seven thousand people lived there in the mid-1970s, when it still retained the austere calm of its early days as a Quaker settlement. Halfway between Galveston and Houston, it remained, as the county’s sole dry town, a world unto itself—a stubborn holdout against modern excess. Lisa Rogers had never lived anywhere else, and apart from school she spent most of her waking hours at her grandparents’ horse farm. At fourteen, she preferred the company of horses. She liked the quiet sameness of her days, the predictable hum of life. Her mother, Penny, longed for something different.

Penny often told her stories about an earlier, more exhilarating time, when she had been a regular on The Larry Kane Show, Houston’s own version of American Bandstand. Of all the bright-eyed teenagers who were chosen to appear on the show each Sunday in the late 1950s and early 1960s, it was Penny who stood out. Her heart-shaped face, framed by dark, dramatic eyebrows and high cheekbones, often drew comparisons to Elizabeth Taylor. But no modeling contracts followed; no acting career bloomed. After high school, she married and divorced three men, in quick succession, and suffered a shattering loss when her twin sister died of leukemia. By early 1977, at thirty-three, she was raising two children on her own, working as a receptionist at the funeral home her parents owned, and still living in Friendswood.

It was that spring, at the funeral home, that Penny first encountered a man named Paul Skalnik. He cut a striking figure in a three-piece suit, his blue-gray eyes tracking her from across a roomful of mourners. At twenty-seven, he was six years Penny’s junior, but he spoke with the polished assurance of a trial lawyer or politician, leaning in just close enough to make the conversation feel private without being intrusive. He told Penny that he had grown up in nearby League City and that, after college, he had quickly ascended the corporate ladder to become a top executive at Southwest Airlines. Then a scrappy Texas upstart, Southwest was known for outfitting its flight attendants in hot pants and go-go boots. Skalnik, with his outsized ambition, seemed to reflect the company’s brash confidence.

When Penny brought him home to meet Lisa and her younger brother, Lynn, Lisa was put off by his heavy-handed efforts to win over her mother. Penny, however, was enthralled by his attention. Skalnik held out the promise of a life that was bigger, brighter, grander, and he made it feel thrillingly within reach, carrying a business-sized checkbook with him whenever he took her out. Restraint, Lisa noticed, was not his strong suit. He cultivated a maximalist style, accenting his wide-lapelled suits with gold chains, a Rolex watch, and plush sideburns, and he encouraged Penny to live large, too. After a brief courtship, he spirited her away to Las Vegas for a weekend, and they returned to Friendswood as Mr. and Mrs. Paul Skalnik.

Skalnik moved into Penny’s condo, where he soon settled into a routine. On weekday mornings, he bounded out the door with his briefcase in hand, telling her that he was headed to the airport, to fly to Southwest’s headquarters in Dallas, and that he would be back home in time for dinner. On weekends, he took Penny, Lisa, and Lynn, to the best hotels in Dallas and Austin, where he ran up the tab on room service, summoning platters of chocolate-covered strawberries and bottles of champagne. He bought Penny a fur coat and jewelry, and outfitted their home with the latest technology, including a microwave and another modern marvel, a VCR. He gave Penny both a baby-blue Lincoln Continental and a customized Dodge van, complete with red velvet curtains, a TV, and CB radios.

Only Lisa seemed to see Skalnik’s idiosyncrasies: how he filched the robes and towels from their luxury hotel suites and squirreled away the purple velvet bags that held his Crown Royal. It didn’t escape her attention, either, that he always kept his handgun within reach, even stashing it under the driver’s seat when he was behind the wheel. What these details added up to, she could not be sure, but she took note of each peculiarity. Once, on a drive through League City, he pointed out the house where he said his parents lived, and Lisa stared at the sun-blistered paint and shabby yard. The tiny frame house, she thought, seemed oddly untouched by his largesse.

When Skalnik was in an expansive mood, he would regale the family with stories of his extraordinary achievements. He was skilled at weaving a narrative, and he knew how to hold a listener’s attention with a perfectly timed pause or an anticipatory smile. He frequently boasted of having helped the University of Texas clinch a national football title when he was a college student, before a knee injury sidelined his athletic career—always making a point, as he told this story, to flash his jumbo-sized championship ring. He was the hero of every story. No one else was ever as bold, or as quick thinking, or as clever. Lisa thought he seemed happiest when he was holding court, his hands shaping the air as he spoke.

Once, Skalnik promised Penny and the kids a trip to New York City—a trip he announced they would take on a Learjet that he had commandeered for the occasion. Lisa was elated until their departure day came, and she, her mother, and her brother found themselves in an empty airport hangar, watching Skalnik pace back and forth. As the day wore on, and the Learjet did not materialize, Skalnik became more distressed, shouting into the receiver as he made a series of frenzied calls from a nearby phone. Lisa watched as he waved his arms in what appeared to her, in a moment of sudden clarity, to be a pantomime of fury. Despite his show of outrage, he seemed to enjoy being the center of attention, she thought. As he barked orders, Lisa wondered if anyone was on the other end of the line. At the end of the day, Skalnik shook his head and told Penny the trip would have to be postponed. Engine trouble, he said.

Lisa kept her questions to herself, but she studied Skalnik as he moved about the house, which he did, increasingly, in nothing but his white Jockey briefs. She had failed to notice his crudeness at first, but as he grew more familiar, it was all she could see: the gold chain beneath his collar, grazing his dark pelt of chest hair; his gaudy self-regard; his obsessive need to accumulate newer and ever more expensive things; his taste for ersatz splendor. She grew exhausted with his grandiose stories and his thirst for praise and adulation. His wolfish appetite for all things—alcohol, spending money, her mother’s attention—seemed to have no limits. One evening when she was in the shower, she thought she felt his gaze, but when she turned to look, she saw nothing. She heard only the click of the bathroom door.

Her uneasiness was not lost on Skalnik. That Christmas, to win her over, he presented her with a lavish gift: a glittering Seiko watch that he told her was made of 24-karat gold and inlaid with diamonds. It glittered in the light.

Lisa looked up at him, unsmiling, and asked if it was real.

Skalnik broke into a grin. “Looks real to me,” he said.

That January, a series of typewritten letters addressed to Skalnik began arriving at the condo in Friendswood. The first, from Amco Jewelry Company, informed him that three different checks of his had failed to clear. The tenor of the letter was professional but urgent. If the total of $1,879 was not received by February 1, it warned, the matter “will be out of...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Diversified Publishing
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2026
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 13: 9798217346998
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 433
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Purmerul LTD; https://strengholt.nl/en/; ; 22 Liuleburgaz Str., floor 4, app. 9; Plovdiv; Bulgarien