Gulf Coast Life: Book Club - Pamela Colloff

Welcome to the Gulf Coast Life Book Club. I'm your host, Cary Barber. Today we hear from Pamela Colloff, whose new book is Catch the Devil A True Story of Murder, deception, and Injustice on the Gulf Coast. It tells the story of a jailhouse snitch named Paul Skolnick. His testimony sent many innocent people to prison and some even to death row. Pamela Colloff is an investigative journalist who works for ProPublica and The New York Times Magazine. This book is one of my favorite kinds of reads great, thorough reporting, written in the style of a page turner of a novel. So I am just thrilled to have Pamela Colloff on the show today Pamela. Welcome to the Gulf Coast Life Book Club. Thank you so much for having me. I wanted to start with like a line or two describing Skolnick, and I realized I couldn't do it. It's a lot. Yeah, there's so much going on there. Do you have, like, a concise description of him? Yeah, I call him a former police officer turned, fabulist turned con artist turned jailhouse informant. He's all of those things. He was a very. Yes, a very charismatic person and, very imaginative. And how did you first come across him? Yeah. I first learned about Paul Skolnick from an attorney named Laura Fernandez, who's a legal scholar at Yale Law School and Laura reached out to me after I had published a story in The New York Times Magazine and ProPublica in 2018. And she told me that she was representing a man on Florida's death row and sort of gave me a description of his case, and she said that she had come to the conclusion that he was innocent. And I'm sorry to say that I receive a lot of emails like this. But what made this one different was that at the end of the email, she said that the star witness against her client had been this, you know, former police officer turned con artist and, that sort of set me on the path of trying to investigate more about this case. And then I didn't realize that that would then open into this sort of portal of more than 40 different cases that Paul Skolnick, testified in. Oh my gosh. Yeah. This is there's so much going on here. And, first I just want to say you quote in your book, you quote a study from 2004 that says testimony from jailhouse witnesses and other criminal informants is the leading cause of wrongful convictions in capital cases. Can you say more about that? Sure. There's a little bit more of a current data that I've been referring to as. I've been talking about the book and, it comes from the National Registry of Exonerations and the National Registry of Exonerations shows that jailhouse informant testimony, led to the kind of the underlying convictions in 7% of all overall convictions that were wrongful. But in capital cases, when the death penalty is at play, it played a role in 25% of those cases. So I think we can see that in death row cases. The stakes are much higher. And because of that, because of the pressure that's on prosecutors and investigators that sometimes, some things go on that shouldn't and, and I should add, when Laura Fernandez got in touch with me, about her client's case, Jim Daly. I'd been looking for a snitch case for about ten years. At that point. And that was because in my work writing about wrongful convictions, it had become clear to me that jailhouse informants were a giant red flag. And, you know, if if a case has a jailhouse informant, there's usually something wrong with the case. It doesn't mean that the defendant is necessarily innocent. But there's something maybe the prosecutors overreached in terms of the types of charges they brought, or there's a problem with witnesses or evidence, but it just became this giant red flag to me. That something was wrong with the case if that was in it. That's so interesting. And then, I also just want to bring in, because we're in Florida and on the Gulf Coast. Yes. We, you wrote a great piece this summer in the New York Times Magazine about how Florida is one of the last remaining high kill states in terms of the death penalty. And I'll link to that article in the show notes. But that adds to the severity, too, of the punishment for men, that Skolnick put behind bars, particularly in Florida. Like, chances are they're going to end up on death row, right? That's that's absolutely right. And I think, thank you for bringing up that article, because that was sort of an outgrowth of the book. I had learned so many things while I was writing the book about the death penalty in Florida. I'm based in Texas, and I came up as a baby reporter, you know, covering the death penalty here in Texas in the 90s, in the early 2000, when Texas was executing more people than any other country. Forget about any other state. So Florida has since taken the lead on that. And, I the statistics are quite shocking. But Florida, was number one, this year and last year. And, you know, there are a lot of questions about why that is why there's been this ramp up in executions. But, when I went to, I believe it was in April, I went to Starke, Florida, to stand outside, of the prison there where the execution was taking place to kind of see what was happening on execution night. And I remember one of the people I was writing about as we were leaving saying to other activists, see you next week, because there was an execution the following week. That's how common this is become in Florida. Wow. Yeah. And you sort of intimated in your piece that DeSantis seems to be kind of wanting to push a lot of them through before his term ends in November. That that seems to be the case. He. Right. So he hasn't commented a great deal on this. He's just said that he's, you know, carrying out the the wishes of victims families. But one of the things I focused on in my story was there wasn't really, an obvious rhyme or reason to who was having dates be set. Just to give you an example, there are men on Florida's death row who've been there since the 1970s. Who and early 1980s. And let's think about how long that's been since the Ford administration and the Carter administration, who have been passed over for, more recent people who've been convicted. And, there are all sorts of theories as to what, you know, makes the governor pick, a particular case or a particular defendant. But Florida is unique right now in terms of states that are carrying out executions, active death penalty states in that the power to set an execution date all lies with the governor. He chooses who it is, who goes next and when that will be Caryd out. Yeah, I didn't know that before I read your article. That was really chilling. It's it's, It's unusual. Yeah. And just just for some comparison to explain to people here in Texas, cases work their way up through the courts. So, you know, someone is entitled to a direct appeal and then post-conviction appeals. And at a certain point, those Peter out. And when they're done with their claims, it returns to the trial court. And the, judge there sets an execution date. So that's very different than, than what goes on in Florida. Yes. One, one person who's not a judge. Yes. Yeah. Well, okay. So back to school. You you actually got to meet him before he died. He has since died. But, can you tell us anything about that meeting? I'm very curious if you got any sense of, like, his charisma. I know he was really sick when you met him, but, Yes. Did you get any sense of, like, why people were so willing to trust him? I did, so I met with him several times. I first met with him in federal prison in 2018, and then eventually went to go see him in a nursing home, in 2019, actually twice. And we had a, a rich correspondence back and forth for part of that time. And, you know, so Skolnick married nine different women, that that I was able to survive. I mean, time yeah, some at the same time. He was a bigamist. And so there may be other women out there. In fact, if anyone is listening and has information about Paul Skolnick, I would love to hear from you. I've actually got some interesting new information since the book came out, at any rate. Well, he, you know, women loved him, and I think and spending time with him, I came to understand that more because he was an incredible listener and conversationalist. Like, you could easily talk to him for five hours. I did, several times. And he was very, well read. He claimed to have traveled the world. He hadn't, but he was very knowledgeable. And I think for women who were lonely, who had had failed marriages, you know, who were coming out of difficult situations. He was someone who, and it wasn't just that he promised, you know, a new and exciting life, but he was someone who was very engaged at all times with them. There was one woman I met toward the end of my reporting who was engaged to Skolnick. And, my reporting and my bringing my reporting to her ultimately broke up that engagement. But I think for her, you know, she was living in a small town in East Texas, and she had always done things, you know, like for fun. She and her son, when he was little, would go park outside of the emergency room and watch the ambulances in this, little town where they were race off. That was exciting. And here came Paul Skolnick, promising international travel and, that he had bank accounts in the Cayman Islands and 100ft yacht in Belize. And I don't think it was so much even financial security for someone like Donna, the woman I'm talking to you as just a different and more exciting life. Yeah, interesting. And also, I was reading, I mean, a lot of the people he sent, including Jim Daly, who's sort of the main, character, one of the main characters in your book. He was white, but I was thinking, was there a racial component? Like, he sounded kind of. I mean, he was law enforcement at one point, for a short time, he looked like law enforcement. Do you think it had anything to do with, like, the law enforcement kind of believed him because they looked he looked like them or he acted like them? Absolutely. I'm so glad you asked about that. So yes, he not only was, you know, a white man who understood the way law enforcement worked and had operated within that, but he had that way. In fact, that really I think the only audio I have of him from, you know, the time before present day is an audio, recording of him from the early 1980s talking to a detective who figures, quite largely in the book, Detective John Halliday. And the way they're talking. Skolnick is sort of, almost cosplaying, I would say being in law enforcement. And he would always rely on that, like when he would testify for prosecutors. And I'll explain his ultimate scam with that in a second. He would say, you know, I've had some troubles with money and other things over the years, but really, I have law enforcement in my blood. And even though I'm not a police officer now, that's who my allegiances lie with. And just so listeners know, he has his biggest scam. You know, it began with stealing money from people, and it wildly escalated from there. But what he would do is whenever he was caught doing whatever nefarious thing he was doing, he would land himself in the county jail wherever he was, usually in Texas or Florida, and he would use that knowledge he had as someone who'd been in law enforcement to figure out who is it in the jail, who prosecutors and police most want to get a conviction against? Because just to remind people in jail, it's usually you're usually pretrial, right? It's different than prison. And then he would figure out who that person was, and he would go to investigators or prosecutors and he'd say, hey, that person just confessed everything to me, and I'd be happy to help you out with your case. And then they would call in to testify or sometimes just tell the defendant that he was going to testify. Sometimes that was enough to get people to take a plea deal. And then he would do his thing. He would give this dramatic testimony that provided prosecutors whatever they were missing in their case, they would get a conviction and a long sentence, and he would walk free. And he would then be an emboldened and empowered not just to continue, doing things like writing hot checks, but to commit more serious crimes. I also it also struck me when I was reading your book how, vulnerable. I don't know if that's the right word. The justice system is that they can depend that a whole case, indeed a whole person's life, can depend on this one. Jailhouse snitches word. I mean, can you say a little bit about that? Yeah. Yes. And so just so people know sometimes, and actually oftentimes the people that Skolnick was testifying against, they had committed their crimes. But what his testimony would do is sort of take that punishment over the top. So just to give a quick example, there's a man named Freddie Gaines, who was involved in a bar brawl in the early 1980s in Saint Petersburg. At the end of that bar role, the other man was dead. He had been stabbed. And there was this sort of Rashomon like series of witnesses where everyone thought they saw something different about who first pulled the knife. And you know how this all happened. And Skolnick came into that case and just provided the clarity that prosecutors needed. And he said not only had Freddie Gaines, confessed to this crime, he had boasted about it and that it had been premeditated. Now, if you think about this on on its face, it doesn't make a lot of sense. If you're going to murder someone, why would you do so in front of scores of people at a bar on, you know, a weekend night? But he told this story in such a way that it was very convincing. And, so Freddie, who would have been facing, you know, maybe 15 to 20 years? To be clear, a man was dead at the end of the sparvero. Now, currently is still serving a life sentence. This is a man who went into jail at the age of 24, in 1982. So that's what Skolnick had the power to tell a story that a jury could not only feel confident convicting someone of the most serious charge, but also, you know, the charge that Caryd the most severe punishment. He was like a lever that kind of just jammed it up. Exactly, exactly. And I think to me, it opened up a lot of questions about, you know, there are a lot of grays. In any case, like this. There are a lot of confusing facts, and not everything is obvious. Like, like this idea I'm talking about, about so many different people viewing this killing at a, at a bar. And what he provided was that clarity. And I think you can see in court proceedings how we sort of long for that, black and white ness. And, and life isn't like that. Right. But he was able to provide that, and the prosecutors or whoever are so desperate for that one little, you know, piece of straw that they can hold on to. Yeah. And I think. Yeah. And they were willing to go, you know, when it was his first or second time coming forward with a story like this, that's one thing. When it's his 37th time, which is what it was. And Jim Stanley, Jim Daly's case, and you start to think about the fact that this man has a better track record than their most, like, crackerjack homicide detective. And he's a con artist. There are a lot of questions that people in the State Attorney's office were, at best, not asking. Yes, yes, that's a great point. I want to we only have a couple of minutes left, but I want to really get into your process because I've been such a fan of yours since for through ProPublica and all your Q your investigative work is so impressive. Can you walk us through kind of how you move something from I think this is your first book, right? It is. I wrote a really long time. So this is how you move something from like the idea phase to the magazine article phase to the book phase, like, obviously not everything makes it as a book, but, are there certain was there a certain little, twinkle in this story that made you think it would be a good book as opposed such a great question? I love process questions, so thank you for asking that. And thank you for your incredibly kind words. You've always been very supportive. I think, you know, for me it's always as simple as like the story, you can't stop thinking about and the story you can't stop telling your friends about. So Skolnick was someone I mean, I started looking into his life in 2018, and I did do some, reporting about him for ProPublica and The Times Magazine. And I got to 2020, and it was definitely time to move on. And I just thought, I can't move on. There's so much here. And I decided at that point to try to tell the story through sort of all the, collateral damage through all the different people left in his wake, whether it's Jim Daly who's left on Florida's death row, or Freddy Gaines, who I mentioned, or the many wives who had all their money stolen, some of their daughters who he preyed upon. And so the book, that way you have people to root for. But there was so much reporting there. I mean, finding finding those women in particular, after many years of name changes and then getting them to trust me, getting their daughters to trust me and allow me to tell their story, took a lot of time. And I think I would just say quickly, as far as process, I just try to speak to people as I would in real life. Right? Like I am not immune from crying. In interviews where difficult things happen, I'm often asking people about the hardest things that have ever happened to them, and it's just sometimes having someone to finally listen to your story and to hear what you've been through. I found for some of these women was a very, cathartic experience. Yeah. That's another thing. He was he, he sexually abused a lot of people along the way to tell me I don't want to make him out is like oh he's just a, just a funny funny character. He's a con man. And you know he was a terrible person. Well and that was part of like I wanted to turn that con artist myth on its head. Yeah. You know, in Catch Me If You can. Were rooting for Leonardo. Right? Like, we want him to get away with it. And I start the book in such a way that maybe you feel that way. And then when you kind of see the damage done, you know, when I had to go to this woman, Donna McKee's house, and lay out all my reporting for her, because she had excitedly told me that Paul Skolnick was being released from prison and was coming to live with her, where she often took care of her six year old granddaughter. And he was, excuse me, and so excited to meet his her granddaughter. I was like, I need to come speak with you. Yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah, yeah. It's, Yeah, it's it's such a great. It's it's just such a great book. I hope everyone listening gets a copy. It's it's really something. Thank you. And I'm so sorry to say that we're running out of time, so. No, no, no, it's too much. And. No, you did not. Oh, my gosh. But I just want to thank you so much for joining us on the Gulf Coast Life Book Club. Thank you so much. I'm so honored to be here. That was Pamela Colloff, author of Catch the Devil A True Story of Murder, deception, and Injustice on the Gulf Coast by the book from a local independent bookstore through bookshop.org, or order it from books and books in Miami. I'm your host, Cary Barber. We had production help today from Emma Rodriguez. Mike Kiniry, Matt Krause and David Oquendo This is WGCU FM, Fort Myers 90.1 WMKO, Marco Island 91.7 FM, NPR for Southwest Florida.