Catch the Devil

For more than three decades, Paul Skalnik roamed the southern states of America 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 - and scammed them out of their money.

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 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 14-year-old girl and landed in jail with Skalnik.

Despite a total lack of forensic evidence, Skalnik's account of Dailey's "confession" was enough to put Dailey on death row where he still waits, four decades later.

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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