Catch the Devil

Investigative journalist Pamela Colloff traces the intertwined stories of two men whose lives collided inside the Pinellas County Jail in Clearwater, Florida: Paul Skalnik, a serial con artist who became one of the most prolific jailhouse witnesses in American history, and James "Jim" Dailey, a Vietnam War veteran whom Skalnik's testimony helped send to death row. A jailhouse witness is an incarcerated person who claims a fellow prisoner confessed to a crime, testimony prosecutors can use to secure convictions, often in exchange for leniency. Through years of reporting, Colloff reconstructs how Skalnik fabricated confessions, how prosecutors rewarded him, and how the courts repeatedly failed to correct the resulting injustice.

Colloff first meets Skalnik in 2018 at a federal penitentiary in Texas. The 69-year-old, who uses a wheelchair and is in declining health, boasts of his track record in Pinellas County but stops communicating after months of correspondence, having strung Colloff along without providing anything substantive.

Skalnik's story begins in the mid-1970s in Friendswood, Texas, where he married Penny Rogers, a single mother, after posing as a Southwest Airlines executive. He funded a lavish lifestyle through fraud while growing violent toward Penny. In 1978, he landed in the Harris County Jail in Houston and discovered a defining talent. He contacted the district attorney's office, claiming that one of the defendants in the high-profile trial of the "Moody Park Three" had confessed a conspiracy to him. The three activists were charged with inciting a riot that erupted after Houston police killed a Mexican American Army veteran. Skalnik's testimony gave prosecutors exactly what they needed, and he received a lenient plea deal.

A pattern emerged. Skalnik committed crimes, went to jail, and traded fabricated testimony for favorable treatment. A 1980 marriage brought him to Pinellas County, where he was arrested for grand theft in 1981. While awaiting trial, he claimed three murder defendants had confessed to him, drawing on newspaper reports and defendants' legal paperwork. Prosecutors rewarded him with probation. Upon release, he sexually assaulted 12-year-old Karen Parker, who lived next door to the family that employed him. Despite two eyewitnesses and Karen passing a polygraph, the state attorney's office dropped the charge as part of a plea deal, ensuring Skalnik stayed in the county jail where he was useful.

Over the next several years, Skalnik became the state's closer in capital cases, providing lurid confessions for defendants facing the death penalty and helping send three men to death row. Detective John Halliday and prosecutor Bruce Young advocated for his early release despite assuring juries he could not receive favorable treatment. Skalnik was paroled in 1985, just two years into a five-year sentence.

The book's other narrative follows Jim Dailey, a cheerful Kansas native who served three tours in the Air Force during the Vietnam War. Deployed to Bien Hoa Air Base during the 1968 Tet Offensive, a major coordinated enemy assault, he was assigned to recover the dead and wounded after nighttime attacks. The trauma triggered severe alcohol addiction that destroyed his marriage to Mary Kay Koon and cost him custody of his children. Around 1983, he met Jack Pearcy at a bar in Olathe, Kansas, and in 1985 followed Jack to Pinellas County.

On May 6, 1985, the body of 14-year-old Shelly Boggio was found floating in the Intracoastal Waterway near Indian Rocks Beach, stabbed 31 times. The crime scene yielded almost no physical evidence. Jack was arrested in Kansas and gave shifting accounts; in an unrecorded interview with Florida detectives, he claimed to have witnessed Jim stabbing Shelly. Yet Dwain Shaw, who was staying at the house they all shared, told investigators that he, not Jim, had accompanied Jack and Shelly when they left, and that Jack dropped him at a pay phone before driving off alone with Shelly. His girlfriend corroborated this account. Halliday's reports omitted a critical detail: that Jack returned home alone before later going back out with Jim.

Jack was convicted of first-degree murder in November 1986 but received life rather than death. Determined to secure a death sentence, prosecutors turned to Jim. Halliday questioned 15 men from Jim's cellblock; all came up empty. In the following weeks, three men stepped forward claiming Jim had confessed. Skalnik, back in the jail on new charges, reported two days after Jim was moved to his floor that Jim had confessed.

At Jim's June 1987 trial, the state had no physical evidence, and Jack refused to testify. Skalnik delivered the most damaging testimony, claiming Jim told him Shelly "kept staring at him, screaming, and would not die." He assured jurors no one had offered him anything for testifying. The defense failed to challenge the implausibility of the alleged conversation or Skalnik's known reputation as a snitch. Jim was convicted and sentenced to death. Five days later, Skalnik walked free, his release documented as "due to his cooperation with the state attorney's office."

Colloff follows Jim through decades on death row while chronicling Skalnik's continued crimes. Skalnik fled to Texas, was arrested, and filed a motion accusing prosecutors of coaching his testimony. Prosecutors dismissed the allegations while insisting his prior testimony was credible. Back in Texas, Skalnik sexually assaulted Misty Anderson, the 15-year-old daughter of his eighth wife. Because Texas prosecutors did not know about the dropped Florida charge, he received only 10 years.

Over the years, lawyers fought to overturn Jim's conviction. In 1993, Jack gave a sworn statement admitting he lied about Jim's involvement but refused to repeat it in court. Jim's post-conviction attorneys discovered a telephone bill corroborating Dwain Shaw's account that he, not Jim, was near the crime scene shortly before the murder. James Leitner, one of the jailhouse witnesses, privately admitted fabricating his testimony. Yet at a 2003 evidentiary hearing, Skalnik denied ever lying, Jack invoked his Fifth Amendment right, and the judge denied Jim a new trial.

In 2017, Chelsea Shirley, an attorney with the Capital Collateral Regional Counsel (CCRC), Florida's post-conviction defense office, took over the case. She persuaded Jack to sign an affidavit declaring he alone was responsible for Shelly's death and located former inmates who described Halliday's search for snitches. At a January 2018 hearing, however, Jack invoked the Fifth Amendment after his mother warned that testifying would alienate his son.

On September 24, 2019, Governor Ron DeSantis signed Jim's death warrant. Colloff visits Skalnik one final time at a Texas nursing home. He initially claimed not to remember Jim, then abruptly insisted Jim had confessed. When Colloff asks how Jim could have confided in a known snitch, Skalnik offered no explanation. That December, attorney Josh Dubin persuaded Jack to sign a declaration: "James Dailey had nothing to do with the murder of Shelly Boggio. I committed the crime alone." At a March 2020 hearing, however, Jack refused to testify, with his mother watching from the gallery.

Days later, the COVID-19 pandemic shut down the courts. Skalnik died in March 2020 at age 71; his remains went unclaimed. Jim was removed from death watch after 279 days and returned to death row. DeSantis resumed signing death warrants in 2023 and oversaw 19 executions in 2025, but Jim was repeatedly passed over for unknown reasons. As of this writing, he remains on death row, approaching his 80th birthday, painting landscapes of the natural world he no longer inhabits. He tells his attorneys he still hopes to come home, though his language has shifted from "when" to "if." Colloff closes by observing that if Jim is executed, the State of Florida will be asking its citizens to trust the word of Paul Skalnik.