Pamela Colloff on America’s Top Jailhouse Informant, Wrongful Convictions, and Criminal Justice

Paul Skalnik ranks among the most prolific jailhouse informants in American history. A fresh bestseller, Catch the Devil, traces his work aiding prosecutors in securing numerous convictions, all while he remained a chronic liar and delinquent. His sprawling criminal record included elaborate fraud schemes, several grand thefts, and child sexual abuse; at different intervals, he posed as a Southwest Airlines executive, a high-powered attorney, and a Vietnam War veteran. In July, Reason‘s Billy Binion spoke with Pamela Colloff, a staff writer for The New York Times Magazine and a reporter at ProPublica.

Q: How is it possible for someone with such a long history of dishonesty to still earn the state’s trust for decades?

A: You’ve touched on the central question of the book. Skalnik had once worn a police badge, so he understood the mechanics of the game. In the county jail where he landed, he could assess which defendants prosecutors most needed to convict. He would manufacture these so-called “confessions,” and in exchange for testifying about them, he typically earned his release.

You can picture the number of officers and prosecutors who bought into it. The challenge grows as his services spread, especially in Pinellas County, Florida, where he helped send roughly forty men to prison. At what point would anyone admit, “Could this jailhouse informant outperform our best detectives?” That question never comes up.

Q: The book covers a lot of disturbing cases, but the centerpiece is a Florida murder. Can you set the scene?

A: It centers on a 14-year-old girl named Shelly Boggio who was found in a body of water. She had been stabbed more than thirty times, and the case carried an assumption of sexual assault.

The investigation quickly focused on a man named Jack Pearcy, who had a long history of violence against women. He was the last person seen with Boggio. When investigators questioned him, he realized they knew too much. He shifted blame to his housemate, Jim Dailey, claiming Dailey had committed the crime. Dailey did not share that kind of record, and there was no physical or forensic evidence tying him to the crime, nor any clear motive.

Skalnik is brought in just before the trial begins. He is moved within the jail to be near Dailey. Within 24 hours, he says he has secured Dailey’s confession—a total stranger who was awaiting trial. It was a narrative that tugged at jurors’ sympathies. He described how Dailey supposedly told him about stabbing Shelly Boggio to death, and how she had stared at him in a pleading way, yet wouldn’t die. That horrific image helped seal a death sentence.

Q: What makes you think Dailey is actually innocent?

A: There have been more than 200 people in the United States who were sentenced to death and later exonerated. We know jailhouse informants—renowned for unreliability—play a role in about 25 percent of those wrongful convictions.

As for Jim’s case, there’s no there there. When a case unfolds with three jailhouse informants, no physical evidence, no motive, and the person described as the key eyewitness turns out to be the principal suspect, there are many unresolved questions.

Q: To me, a secondary theme is that when credible evidence emerges that could exonerate someone after a verdict, getting a new hearing remains painfully difficult.

A: I am fixated on the idea that the system is built to compound its own errors. When new evidence surfaces—evidence that over the years increasingly points to his innocence—you’d think that would suffice. Yet, for many sound reasons, a jury verdict is treated as sacrosanct. Instead, courts tend to look backward at precedent and past verdicts rather than forward to new evidence.

Jim lands excellent lawyers in this case—too late. They perform extraordinary work, and it makes little difference. Far too many judges have rubber-stamped Skalnik’s testimony. There seems to be no mechanism for the courts to reexamine the case holistically and determine whether any of it makes sense. It was shocking to see.

This interview has been condensed and edited for style and clarity.