Obtenez 3 mois à 0,99 $/mois + 20 $ de crédit Audible

OFFRE D'UNE DURÉE LIMITÉE
Page de couverture de Catch the Devil

Catch the Devil

A True Story of Murder, Deception, and Injustice on the Gulf Coast

Précommander avec l'offre Précommander avec l'essai gratuit
L'offre prend fin le 1 décembre 2025 à 23 h 59, HP.
Abonnez-vous à Audible pour 0,99 $/mois pendant les 3 premiers mois et obtenez un crédit de 20 $ en prime sur Audible.ca. La notification de crédit sera envoyée par courriel.
1 nouveauté ou titre populaire à choisir chaque mois – ce titre vous appartiendra.
L'écoute illimitée des milliers de livres audio, de balados et de titres originaux inclus.
L'abonnement se renouvelle automatiquement au tarif de 0,99 $/mois pendant 3 mois, et au tarif de 14,95 $/mois ensuite. Annulation possible à tout moment.
Choisissez 1 livre audio par mois dans notre incomparable catalogue.
Écoutez à volonté des milliers de livres audio, de livres originaux et de balados.
L'abonnement Premium Plus se renouvelle automatiquement au tarif de 14,95 $/mois + taxes applicables après 30 jours. Annulation possible à tout moment.

Catch the Devil

Auteur(s): Pamela Colloff
Précommander avec l'offre Précommander avec l'essai gratuit

14,95 $/mois après 3 mois. L'offre prend fin le 1 décembre 2025 à 23 h 59, HP. Annulation possible à tout moment.

14,95$ par mois après 30 jours. Annulable en tout temps.

Précommander pour 26,56 $

Précommander pour 26,56 $

À propos de cet audio

The gripping true story of a serial con man empowered by the justice system who destroys dozens of lives and puts a man on death row for a murder he didn’t commit. An exciting debut by “one of America’s finest journalists” (Robert Kolker)

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.
Escrocs, canulars et tromperies True Crime

Ce que les critiques en disent

“One of America’s finest journalists, Pamela Colloff, has delivered a wallop of a debut book—loaded with moral clarity and astounding detail—about one of the world’s most infernal liars, the scores of lives he destroyed, and the criminal-justice system that still, shockingly, benefits from those lies.”
—Robert Kolker, author of Hidden Valley Road

“Pamela Colloff has ripped the roof off the criminal justice system with this exposé of a jailhouse snitch. You can’t read this book without a feeling of horror that one man could do so much damage; but the real shock is that he was only telling prosecutors what they wanted him to say.”
—Lawrence Wright, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Looming Tower and The Human Scale

“A masterful and riveting anatomy of how a series of institutions colluded with one man’s pathology. I can’t imagine a more damning and poignant account of a criminal justice system that was, fundamentally, willing to be fooled—and the lives destroyed and transformed in that process.”
—Rachel Aviv, author of Strangers to Ourselves

“You read each page of Pamela Colloff’s subtly written and stunningly reported book with a deepening sense of outrage. How could this happen? How could the justice system be so remorseless, so intractably focused on protocol and career wins at the expense of justice itself? Catch the Devil is an infuriating, illuminating, gripping narrative by one of the heroes of American journalism.”
—Stephen Harrigan, author of Sorrowful Mysteries

“A mesmerizing, often enraging portrait of a man whose skill at manipulating the judicial system led to untold injustices. Told with all the care, nuance, and dazzling reportage we expect from Pamela Colloff—one of the very best in the field right now—Catch the Devil reads like a literary thriller, rich in atmosphere and lively characters, but its larger resonances give it an extraordinary depth and its timeliness during America’s current grifter era could hardly be greater.”
—Megan Abbot, author of El Dorado Drive

“Pamela Colloff lights up the criminal justice system with a precision that leaves nowhere to hide. Catch the Devil is an extraordinary achievement, its narrative moving with the taut urgency of a thriller—anchored by the heart and humanity she brings to the pursuit of truth. An unforgettable masterwork from the leading voice in American crime reporting.”
—Gilbert King, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Devil in the Grove
Pas encore de commentaire