Ep. 433 A Con Man Caper with Pamela Colloff

Summary

The Stacks - Ep. 433: "A Con Man Caper" with Pamela Colloff

Host: Traci Thomas
Guest: Pamela Colloff (ProPublica & New York Times Magazine journalist, author of Catch the Devil)
Date: July 15, 2026

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Episode Overview

This episode of The Stacks dives deep into the world of true crime and investigative journalism with acclaimed reporter Pamela Colloff. Traci Thomas and Colloff unpick the fascinating, disturbing true tale at the heart of Colloff's debut book, Catch the Devil, which follows the exploits of con man and jailhouse informant Paul Skalnick—a man whose web of lies and manipulated testimony landed a Vietnam veteran, Jim Daley, on death row for a murder he likely did not commit. The conversation covers society's obsession with con men, the ethics and process of narrative nonfiction, and the emotional toll—and importance—of telling stories of injustice.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

Introduction to the Book and Its Central Characters

• [03:00] Pamela Colloff: Catch the Devil is about Paul Skalnick, a former police officer turned masterful con man, who repeatedly traded manufactured confessions for his own freedom, devastating the lives of those caught in his wake.
  • "Every time he gets caught doing what he's doing, he goes to police or prosecutors and says, hey, that guy in the cell next to me... confessed everything... He would be the star witness against that person. And in return, he would get his freedom." (Pamela, 03:00)
• The narrative also follows Jim Daley, a Vietnam vet still on Florida's death row due to Skalnick's false testimony.
  • "Jim is caught still. He's 80 years old on Florida's death row and could be sentenced or could receive a death warrant at any moment." (Pamela, 03:59)

Exploring the Emotional Cost of Injustice

• [05:19] Pamela Colloff: The book prompts readers to confront the reality and cruelty of life on death row, and what it means to grow old—and possibly die—while incarcerated.
  • "Florida... is executing more people per year than all other states combined... We don't really think about what that looks like." (Pamela, 05:19)
• Colloff’s reporting is enriched by decades of correspondence between Jim and his Dutch pen pal, offering a unique, contemporaneous emotional record.
  • "She kept every letter he had ever written her since 1998... The letters allow you to hear what he was thinking and feeling... in real time." (Pamela, 07:38)

Crafting Complex Narrative Structure

• [09:14] Pamela Colloff: The book uses a three-strand approach: Skalnick’s con man escapades, Daley’s personal journey, and the collateral damage—primarily women and children—left by Skalnick's path.
  • "The book kind of has... three different strands... The con man... Jim and his journey... and the third strand—really a lot of the women who were left in the wake of Skalnick." (Pamela, 09:14)

On Society’s Fascination with Con Men

• [11:19] Pamela & Traci: The romanticism of con artists is seductive, but Colloff intentionally pulls the rug out from under the reader to reveal the pain beneath the spectacle.
  • "I love a villain... I think you've done a really nice job of reminding me of that, because it's easy in the beginning to be like, 'Oh, this is fun, this is a caper.' By the end, I was like, hate this guy a lot." (Traci, 11:08 / 11:21/11:26)
  • "The beginning of the book is more the caper and the adventure... and the latter half is... the fallout." (Pamela, 11:31)

The Reality and Process of Investigative Journalism

• [16:52 & 17:57] Pamela: Colloff attributes her drive to seeing The Thin Blue Line documentary as a teenager, showing her how character-driven nonfiction could create both art and real-world change.
  • "It was an awakening to a type of storytelling... Character-driven narrative nonfiction. That’s what I wanted to do." (Pamela, 17:57)
• She notes the "fun" of investigative journalism is often overlooked—there's a thrill in chasing mysteries, connecting dots, and experiencing the world through others' perspectives.
  • "It’s so fun... you're uncovering a mystery and you're able to call up whoever you want." (Pamela, 21:21)
• On impostor syndrome and blending magazine storytelling with investigative rigor:
  • "I got to ProPublica and I was like, wait, these people are investigative journalists—I'm just a magazine writer. There was such a learning curve." (Pamela, 19:50)

Reporting Ethics and the Human Impact

• [25:30 – 29:15] Pamela: Describes evolving ethical responsibilities, emphasizing radical transparency with sources, especially when recounting traumatic events.
  • "[Victims] want to talk. And investigative journalism... [if] you can back up what you're saying with records, those people will help you get where you want to go." (Pamela, 25:30)
  • The act of being heard and believed, as in the case of one of Skalnick’s victims, can be profoundly healing—journalistic inquiry itself can change lives.

Lessons Learned, Transparency, and Storytelling Process

• [33:54 – 46:23] Pamela:
  • Early mistakes led her to embrace open communication with those whose stories she tells—especially when recounting painful or potentially damaging material.
  • She walks listeners through how she revises, checks in, and seeks consent or comfort for sensitive material—without violating journalistic standards.
  • "If someone is more adamant about it and it's an issue like sexual assault... I would just write about it... without their name." (Pamela, 45:35)

The Joy and Challenge of Writing Narrative Nonfiction

• [53:12] Pamela:
  • Colloff is "a hot mess" in process, preferring long, uninterrupted stretches influenced by caffeine and obsessive thought. Her heart lies in reporting, not the writing grind.
  • "When I am really, really into a story, there is no work life balance. I don't sleep much; it's all I'm thinking about." (Pamela, 53:20)

The Investigator’s Blind Spots: What’s Not in the Book?

• [50:52] Pamela:
  • Certain states’ lack of transparent public records (e.g., Louisiana) meant key details about Skalnick’s activities and possible additional victims are missing.
  • "My secret hope is the book comes out and a few people come out of the woodwork... it would help to answer some of those questions." (Pamela, 51:59)
  • Even after confronting Skalnick on his deathbed, his true motivations remain a mystery.

Book Recommendations & Narrative Nonfiction Heroes

• [61:39] Pamela:
  • Recommends Patrick Radden Keefe (London Falling), Rachel Aviv, Robert Kolker, and Tom Junode’s memoir as exemplars of immersive, character-driven nonfiction.
  • "Patrick Radden Keefe is my hero, my writing hero. I love his work." (Pamela, 61:41)

On What’s Next

• [59:29] Pamela:
  • Hopes to pursue more book projects, shifting to the complexities of people who have committed crimes—not just the wrongfully convicted.
  • References her recent work on criminalized survivorship ("women serving life for killing their abusers") and the need to grapple with the gray areas of justice.

Notable & Memorable Moments

• On the power of bearing witness:

  • "[T]he act of telling it was huge in her life... to be believed and then to have this written about and to have other people believe it, she told me, was life changing." (Pamela, 28:02)

• On the goal of narrative nonfiction:

  • "I do so much research... so I can write in a more creative and omniscient way about what happened... Ideally, you read a book like mine, and you don't even think about the sourcing, you just think, 'wow, she, like, knows a lot.'" (Pamela, 48:38)

• Joys and impostor syndrome:

  • "I love gossip. I live for gossip... My two teenagers... really have to stop asking me for, oh my gosh, I cannot wait till my kids are gossip age." (Pamela and Traci, 21:24 – 21:49)

Favorite/Notable Quotes (with Timestamps & Attribution)

• "Florida... is executing more people per year than all other states combined... We don't really think about what that looks like."
  —Pamela Kolloff, [05:19]

• "[Jim Daley] had to be... relentlessly optimistic, cheerful... one of the gifts of writing... is you get to see the world through their eyes... these tiny little joys that we don't think anything about."
  —Pamela Kolloff, [14:00]

• "There's a girl... she was 12 years old at the time... and [Paul Skalnick] sexually abused her... The act of telling it was huge in her life... she told me, was life changing."
  —Pamela Kolloff, [28:02]

• "If it gets easier, it's time to hang it up, time to stop doing it."
  —Pamela Kolloff quoting Gary Cartwright, [41:00]

• "Patrick Radden Keefe is my hero, my writing hero... He sets the bar so high."
  —Pamela Kolloff, [61:41]

• On who she’d want to read her book:
  "My father died in 1992... he worked at CBS News and at 60 Minutes, and he never saw my journalism career... I would love for him to see what I was able to do."
  —Pamela Kolloff, [64:46]

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• 03:00 — Pamela introduces Catch the Devil and outlines the con man caper
• 05:19 — The reality and cruelty of death row
• 09:14 — Structure of the book: Capers, victims, collateral damage
• 11:19–12:38 — Why we love con men—and why we shouldn’t
• 16:52–17:57 — What inspired Colloff’s journalistic path
• 19:43–21:21 — From Texas Monthly to ProPublica and the NYT Magazine: Blending storytelling and investigation
• 25:30–29:15 — Reporting ethics, victims' healing, and journalistic influence
• 33:54–46:23 — Lessons learned “the hard way” and evolving transparency with sources
• 48:38 — Writing immersive, fact-checked narrative nonfiction
• 50:52–52:24 — What Colloff couldn't find out; the mysteries that remain
• 53:12 — Her writing rituals (or lack thereof)
• 59:29 — Looking forward: new themes, complicated justice
• 61:39 — Book recommendations

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Related Book Recommendations from Pamela Colloff

• London Falling by Patrick Radden Keefe
• Lost Girls, Hidden Valley Road, and the forthcoming The Vanishing Family by Robert Kolker
• Rachel Aviv’s forthcoming book
• Tom Junode’s recent memoir about his father

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Tone & Noteworthy Details

Colloff's style is thoughtful, warm, and reflective—balancing the rigor of investigative journalism with empathy and a sharp, often dark, sense of humor. The episode blends in-depth craft talk with philosophical questions about justice, memory, and the role of the journalist as both outsider and partner to her sources. There is a sense of wrestling—with ethical dilemmas, with narrative challenges, and with her own ever-evolving approach.

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For listeners who want a gripping true crime narrative and a candid look beneath the hood of high-stakes reporting—and anyone who wonders why con men stories grip us—this episode is essential.

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Transcript

[Pamela Koloff]

I had done all the things. I had gotten my National Magazine Award wins, and I had done every kind of story you can imagine. I got to ProPublica and I was like, wait, I'm not an. These people are investigative journalists. Like, I'm just a magazine writer. There was such a learning curve. It was learning on the job, right? It was learning as you go. And. And it's so fun. I mean, I feel like that's the thing that's sometimes lost with investigative journalism, when people talk about it, is you're uncovering a mystery.

[Tracy Thomas]

Welcome to the Stacks, a podcast about books and the people who read them. I'm your host, Tracy Thomas, and today we are joined by ProPublica Reporter, a new York Times Magazine staff writer, Pamela Koloff, to discuss her debut book, Catch the Devil, a story of murder, deception and injustice on the Gulf Coast. In this book, we delve into the life of a career con man, Paul Scalnick, whose pattern of trading fabricated prison confessions for his own freedom landed a Vietnam veteran on death row for a murder he did not commit. Today, Pamela and I talk about why people cannot get enough of con men, how she handles reporting on the worst parts of people's lives, and why she wanted to be an investigative journalist in the first place. Our book club pick for July is behind the Beautiful Forevers, Life, Death and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity by Catherine Boo. We will discuss the book with Juliana Hobner on Wednesday, July 29th. If you like this podcast and want more bookish content, more community, consider joining the Stacks Pack on Patreon and subscribing to my newsletter unstacked on Substack. It's not complicated. By joining either of these places, you support the work that I do. You make it possible for me to continue making this show, to work with my incredible team here at the Stacks. And you, dear listener, get bonus content for yourself. You get access to our virtual book club. You get to hear me wax poetic about sports and pop culture. You get to be part of our discord. You get a monthly bonus episode. And again, you make it possible for me to make the show every single week. So to join, you're going to go to patreon.com the stacks for the stacks Pack and you can check out my newsletter at Tracy Thomas, substack.com All right, now it is time for my conversation with Pamela Koff, Foreign.

[Christian Duenas]

Everybody. I am so excited.

[Tracy Thomas]

Every so often I get to read

[Christian Duenas]

some juicy narrative non fiction that makes me feel like, oh, books are awesome. And today I'm talking to an author of one of those exact kind of books.

[Tracy Thomas]

The book is called Catch the Devil, A True Story of Murder, Deception, and Injustice on the Gulf Coast. And my guest is the author, Pamela Koloff. Pamela, welcome to the Sacks.

[Pamela Koloff]

Thank you so much for having me.

[Christian Duenas]

I'm thrilled to have you. Let's just dive in, 30 seconds or so. Can you tell folks about the book?

[Pamela Koloff]

So the book is about a man named Paul Skalnick who is a former police officer turned con artist extraordinaire. And he figures out a get out of jail free trick, which is every time he gets caught doing what he's doing, he goes to police or prosecutors and he says, hey, that guy in the cell next to me, like, he just confessed everything that he did in this crime and be happy to help you guys out. And then he would be the star witness against that person. And in return, he would get his freedom and be released to do more. And so the book follows him through his nine different wives, some of whom he was married to at the same time, and these various cases and the collateral damage of the women and men left behind.

[Tracy Thomas]

And there's one particular case that you

[Christian Duenas]

sort of talk about in the book.

[Tracy Thomas]

Will you tell us about Jim Daley?

[Pamela Koloff]

Yeah. So Jim Daley is currently still on Florida's death row. He landed there in 1987 because of testimony that Paul Skalnick gave against him at his capital murder trial. And what. What we see as the. This investigation proceeds is that the person who likely committed this crime was his housemaid at the time, who has confessed to it multiple times and then retracted those confessions. But because Paul Skalnick's testimony stands that Jim supposedly confessed to him, Jim is caught still. He's 80 years old on Florida's death row and could be sentenced or could receive a death warrant at any moment.

[Tracy Thomas]

I know this is going to sound

[Christian Duenas]

really crazy, but I know that people,

[Tracy Thomas]

like, are put to death, obviously, and I know that people die in prison, but for some reason, it has never actually occurred to me what that means,

[Christian Duenas]

to die in prison.

[Tracy Thomas]

Like, that is a thing that happens

[Christian Duenas]

that is so deeply cruel and inhumane.

[Tracy Thomas]

Like the idea that you could just be in a place, a prison.

[Christian Duenas]

I don't know. It's. It's. It's an upsetting thought.

[Pamela Koloff]

It. It's. Well, you're making me happy in what you say because the book really wants you to contemplate that. I actually just wrote a cover story for the New York Times Magazine about this subject and about how fl. Florida, where much of My book is set is executing more people per year than all other states combined. And I tell the story of a priest who works with these men preparing them to die. And I think we don't really think about, you know, we think about they're bad guys, they're terrible crimes, some, maybe in some people's opinion, deserve death. We don't really think about what that looks like. Like, and we don't think about. In Jim's case, I was able to tell what all those decades. I mean, think about life in 1987 versus now. Right.

[Christian Duenas]

I was born in 1986.

[Pamela Koloff]

Okay, okay. So.

[Christian Duenas]

So this whole thing takes place in the course of my life.

[Tracy Thomas]

Yes.

[Pamela Koloff]

Right, right. And one of the, one of the interesting struggles that yielded something I'm really proud of in the book was how do I. How do I convey to readers what that time is like? What is it like to sit in a room? That's when you're on death watch. You have 30 days before your execution. And he was on, on death watch in 2019 before getting a stay. What is it like to sit in a 12 by 12 foot room with no windows and await that? What is it like to be there for decades and so something that sounds so dark, but one of the things that came out in my reporting, I connected with his pen pal in the Netherlands who he had been writing to since the 90s. And it was the depths of the pandemic. And I was just like, oh my God, how am I going to tell this story? And I said to her, you know, do you have any of his letters? You know, is it possible that you kept any of that? And she said, let me look. You know, I've got lots of time. It was during lockdown. She crawls into her attic. She finds this stacks and stacks, boxes of. She kept every letter he had ever written her since 1998. And so I'm able to use the letters and their really beautiful relationship that develops over the course of those decades. She goes from being a single woman to married to a mom. You know, all these different transitions, they each have all these different losses and they find this connection. And the letters allow you to hear what he was thinking and feeling with contemporaneous accounts in real time. Because it's so hard when you go back and try to interview someone. What were you feeling on that afternoon in 1999? Right. You can't recapture it, but with a letter you can. And that was such a gift.

[Christian Duenas]

Yeah.

[Tracy Thomas]

I mean, I think this, not to

[Christian Duenas]

get too nerdy, but like From a

[Tracy Thomas]

craft standpoint, what's really interesting about this book is that you've juxtaposed these two.

[Christian Duenas]

Two men, and you sort of use Jim as a way to tell Paul's story, and you're using Paul in a lot of ways to tell Jim's story. So how were you sort of thinking about these two, you know, protagonist antagonists, though? I. I think.

[Tracy Thomas]

I mean, I think Paul is the protagonist.

[Christian Duenas]

Like, he's like the evil villain. It's an evil villain story. But, like, how are you thinking about that?

[Pamela Koloff]

I know from your conversation with Patrick Radd and Keith, that braided narrative, it's not a term that we like.

[Tracy Thomas]

Well, it's not that I don't like braided narrative. I use it.

[Christian Duenas]

The thing is that I feel like

[Tracy Thomas]

people use it for everything.

[Pamela Koloff]

Absolutely.

[Tracy Thomas]

You know, it's like everything's a braid. It's a braided memoir.

[Christian Duenas]

I'm like, okay, okay.

[Pamela Koloff]

Right. What does that even mean?

[Tracy Thomas]

Yeah, I like braided narratives.

[Christian Duenas]

Like, those are the kind of books that I like to read when you're pulling all these different pieces together. But I think the term is, like, starting to be meaningless.

[Pamela Koloff]

Totally. And the. The book kind of has, I'd say, three different strands. So there's the con man, sort of. And I start it in a sort of catch me if you can type way. A lot of what the book is trying to do is turn that romance with the con artist on its head, but it's playing with it. And we follow him through all his hijinks and crazy things he does until it gets pretty dark. And then we have Jim and his journey. He was this kid with so much promise in Manhattan, Kansas, just a beloved guy. And then he went to Vietnam, and things really went off the rails there. And telling that story was. Was very. It was very moving to do, and I hope it reads that way. And then the. The third strand are really a lot of the women who were left in the. The wake of scaln of the collateral damage. Some of these ex wives who. Their lives were completely destroyed. You know, he would clear them out financially and really rob them emotionally of being able to trust people again. And then their. Their daughters, who he preyed upon and whose accounts, when they went to police, were not believed because he had become too valuable to prosecutors at that point. So I think bringing all those things together and having each sort of reflect back on one another was something I was playing with the whole time and calibrating that and structuring that was a big challenge of the story. But I think we finally figured it out.

[Tracy Thomas]

I think you did figure it out. I mean, I think, as I said,

[Christian Duenas]

I love a villain. I love a con man story. I think that I am maybe part of the problem. Right. I feel like we're not supposed to like a Paul Skalnick because he's many bad things. And.

[Tracy Thomas]

And I think you've done a really

[Christian Duenas]

nice job of sort of reminding me

[Tracy Thomas]

of that because it's sort of easy

[Christian Duenas]

in the beginning to be like, oh, this is fun. This is a caper.

[Pamela Koloff]

Like, ooh, right.

[Tracy Thomas]

And it.

[Christian Duenas]

By the end, I was like, hate this guy a lot. Like, I'm not having.

[Tracy Thomas]

Like, I stopped having fun.

[Christian Duenas]

I enjoyed the book, but I stopped having fun in that way.

[Pamela Koloff]

Yes. I think the beginning of the book is more the caper and the adventure of it all. And the latter half is more the emotional resonance and sort of the fallout of that. But I think. I mean, we all love that romance. That's part of why I wrote a book about a Connors. I'd been looking for a jailhouse snitch story forever.

[Christian Duenas]

Oh, really?

[Pamela Koloff]

To find. Yes. But to find this. Like, I always would think of Jack Nicholson when I was writing the sort of mischievous. You can't help but sort of like him, even though, you know, he's a scoundrel type. You know, that's how I always thought of him. And I think it's important. We love that kind of character and seeing what they can get away with. And the story, like, how far can you get? How much can you push the envelope? How wild of a story can you tell in. People will believe it. And I'm fascinated with all of that. And I left. I. There's some. There's some humor in this book. Like, some of the things he does are so funny and ridiculous.

[Christian Duenas]

Yeah.

[Pamela Koloff]

And I felt like you needed that because other parts of it are. Are heavy. Right.

[Tracy Thomas]

Yeah.

[Pamela Koloff]

And I hope. I hope that. Because there's some light and funny stuff in there, that when you get to the more emotionally resonant work, that it almost hits harder.

[Christian Duenas]

Yeah.

[Tracy Thomas]

I think also, like, just thinking, hearing

[Christian Duenas]

you say, like, Jack Nicholson, and I

[Tracy Thomas]

was thinking a little bit of, like,

[Christian Duenas]

Leonardo DiCaprio and the Catch, if you

[Tracy Thomas]

can, stuff, I think oftentimes what stories

[Christian Duenas]

about these kinds of, like, con men who. Who will do anything to get what they want or, like, service themselves is

[Tracy Thomas]

that we don't often see the impact. And so I feel like having a

[Christian Duenas]

gym daily where it's like, this is all fun and cute, except for there's a literal person on death row for

[Tracy Thomas]

40 years who's now an 80 year old man.

[Pamela Koloff]

Yes.

[Tracy Thomas]

For a crime that it feels like he didn't commit.

[Christian Duenas]

I mean it, you know.

[Pamela Koloff]

Yes, that's what the book suggests.

[Tracy Thomas]

Yeah, I think that's what the book suggests.

[Christian Duenas]

I think that's what, that's what I mean, given what you've presented, that feels like what the evidence suggests. But.

[Pamela Koloff]

And I think, you know, it's interesting because in Jim and Jim's part of the story, there he is. It's such a very hard fact of what he's having to deal with. He's run through his appeals. There's not a lot of hope at this point. But I was fascinated with him, something that made him actually hard to write about. And I had to be creative in how I got the material I needed is to survive all those years of such sensory deprivation. And you're so apart from the world. He had to be. And he already was sort of hardwired this way before, before alcoholism and Vietnam got him off course. But he's sort of this relentlessly optimistic, cheerful person. I remember when I wrote about him for the New York Times Magazine initially our photographer had to ask him not to switch smile because it didn't match the tenor of the piece. But I mention that because I feel like one of the gifts of writing, I mean I almost entirely write about prisoners and the criminal justice system is you get to see the world through their eyes, especially in the wrongful conviction cases I've written about through Exoneree. And so that means these tiny little joys that we don't think anything about. Like a good cup of coffee, sitting outside, you know, your feet touching the grass. I remember one Exoneree talked to me about the beauty and joy of going into a grocery store and seeing all the different colors and textures. And so as dark as some of this is, and I tried to bring that in in the book, like Jem, his outlet is through these paintings that he makes and when he has paint, that's his outlet. Or it's seeing his ex wife who they've now reconciled and she's stole the love of his life coming to see him and so trying to find those bright moments, you know.

[Tracy Thomas]

Yeah, I mean you've done so much work. I was saying before we started recording

[Christian Duenas]

that you're like a real journalist. Like, you know, I talk to journalists who write books, but like you're like a J J J journalist and that is high praise because my, my real dream job is to be is to like do a. To do a Watergate. You know, it's like to be. To like expose something crazy to the world. Though I literally have no idea how one would do that. But I read all the President's Men and was like, oh, me too. That's the job I want. I took zero steps towards that. So.

[Tracy Thomas]

But you, you actually do that, Pamela? You people out of jail?

[Pamela Koloff]

Well, not as often as one would would hope, but I'm sure we'd like

[Christian Duenas]

to get everybody out.

[Tracy Thomas]

But like, you've gotten like at least

[Christian Duenas]

like 500% more people out than I have. Like, I've gotten zero people out. But I guess the question is first

[Tracy Thomas]

and foremost, how did you know you

[Christian Duenas]

wanted to do this work? How did, how did coming in and telling these stories become sort of your lane?

[Pamela Koloff]

Sure. So I think there are a lot of different lanes. But I. When I was a teenager, I saw Errol Morris's documentary the Thin Blue Line. And I don't know how many listeners will be familiar with that, but it's about a wrongful conviction case in Dallas. And the film was mind boggling to me because it's a documentary, but it is as beautiful as any feature film that you'll ever see. And it is incredibly creative with this Philip Glass score and this just incredibly, incredibly beautiful cinematography and storytelling. And so that movie was sort of an awakening to. I mean, I was a total bookworm and we can talk about that later, but it was an awakening to a type of storytelling. You know, I always try to say that I do character driven narrative nonfiction. So it is investigative journalism. But I feel like sometimes you can hear the words investigative journalism and it sounds like kind of a drag.

[Tracy Thomas]

Not to me.

[Pamela Koloff]

To me, a character driven narrative nonfiction that's rooted in, you know, this book is rooted in. I don't know how many hundreds of public record requests that I did and attorneys before me did that to me. Having something read almost a little bit more like fiction. But you can fact check every sentence and it's really immersive and it's engaging and it's emotional. That's what I wanted to do. And that film was everything. And then there were so many other things along the way, of course, but that was pretty formative.

[Christian Duenas]

And then how did you do it? How do you do it? I like, I just. I don't know, I don't feel like it's like every day you get to talk to someone who does the work that you do.

[Pamela Koloff]

But it's so funny. We. So everyone feels imposter syndrome, Right. So I came to ProPublica and ProPublica in the new York Times Magazine. Let me explain my job because it's a little confusing and then I'll backtrack. So I'm co employed by the New York Times Magazine where I'm a staff writer, and ProPublica where I'm a reporter. And every story of mine is co published by both news organizations and they have different missions. Right. So the idea is to marry this really rigorous reporting and investigative journalism to really full, beautiful storytelling that's, you know, magazine type style writing. And so I joined, I, I got that job in 2017. And I came from a magazine called Texas Monthly, which does incredible narrative nonfiction long form work.

[Christian Duenas]

Their feature writer just won the Pulitzer, right?

[Pamela Koloff]

Just won the Pulitzer, yes, for that episode.

[Christian Duenas]

Oh my God, that story.

[Pamela Koloff]

Incredible.

[Christian Duenas]

Yeah.

[Pamela Koloff]

Incredible, incredible essay about that he wrote in like 24, 36 hours after his family survived this deadly flood. So I, I came to this job in 2017. I had spent 20 years at Texas Monthly. And this goes to the imposter syndrome thing. I'm trying to say. I had done all the things. I had gotten my National Magazine Award wins and I had done every kind of story you can imagine. I got to ProPublica and I was like, wait, I'm not an. These people are investigative journalists. Like they know what they're doing. I'm just a, I'm just a magazine writer, you know, and there was such a learning curve of how do I take these storytelling chops that I had developed previously and learn the skills of the Woodwards and Bernsteins around me to go back to your Watergate reference. And you know, it was, it was learning on the job, right? It was learning as you go. And it's so fun. I mean, I feel like that's the thing that's sometimes lost with investigative journalism when people talk about it is you're uncovering a mystery and you're able to call up whoever you want to call up and ask them whatever you want to ask them and then try to back that up with records. And it's always fun. It's always a little bit of a mystery.

[Christian Duenas]

Do you like gossip in your regular life?

[Pamela Koloff]

I love gossip. I live for gossip.

[Christian Duenas]

Okay, me too.

[Pamela Koloff]

My two teenagers who are like, really have to have to stop asking me

[Christian Duenas]

for, oh my gosh, I cannot wait till my kids are gossip age. They're only six right now. And I'm like, you guys are so boring. Like, what happened at school today?

[Pamela Koloff]

It's so, it's so, well, and then there are the years where they tell you things and then the years where they stop telling you things entirely. But no, I. So I was a total bookworm when I was little and my favorite book for a while was Harriet the Spy. Is this a book that, you know,

[Christian Duenas]

I know the movie. I'd never read the books, but I

[Pamela Koloff]

know, yes, the book. I think the book is far superior. But the book is about this very nosy girl who just wants to know everything. And for me, that was. That was the model. That was. That was me.

[Christian Duenas]

That was you.

[Pamela Koloff]

Yeah. That. That sort of informs all of this work to some degree.

[Christian Duenas]

I love it. I love it so much. I feel like, I don't know, this

[Tracy Thomas]

is just a sense that I have.

[Christian Duenas]

I feel like people who love gossip are particularly susceptible to loving a con man story.

[Pamela Koloff]

Yes.

[Tracy Thomas]

You know, like, because it just is so juicy.

[Christian Duenas]

Because, you know, there are people who don't like gossip, which is to me, like, so upsetting and confusing. I'm like, how are you alive? But there are people like, yeah, they're like, oh, I don't gossip. I don't like gossip. I don't, I don't care. It's not my business. I'm like, what do you mean? It's everyone's business. It's out in the world. We need to know.

[Pamela Koloff]

Well, I. So when I was in high school, Allen Ginsberg came to speak at my high school. And I was obsessed with his. At that age 17, you know, Jack Kerouac and the beats were everything to me. So. So Allen Ginsberg came to my high school and my high school newspaper, which, you know, was just, it did not do any interesting work, was just sort of documenting basic things that were happening. Didn't even bother to come to show up to cover this. And I decided I was like, I've got to start something. Like, I've got to do something. I have to have a way to like, we can't let this go unnoticed. So, so I grabbed my best looking guy friend because it's Allen Ginsberg and walked up to him after the reading was over and just, we just like said this on the fly. We said we'd like to interview you. I think we said for a newspaper. We didn't want to lie to him and, and we ended up creating a newspaper because of this. But oh my gosh, you know, we said we would just love it if, if there's any way we could take you to coffee after this reading and just ask you a few questions and do a Q and A for our paper, however we phrased it. And he went and sat with us at a coffee shop for, I want to say, it was, like, close to three hours. I mean, imagine you get to ask God anything. And then we, you know, edited it down into this incredible Q and A. And that inspired starting this paper. The reason I am telling this story is that day it occurred to me that if you approach someone as a journalist, I mean, what was I. I was 17 years old. I had no credentials whatsoever, but I said I was a reporter, right? That. That is this, like, card, this entryway into this whole other world. And you have the right to go ask Allen Ginsberg for coffee. And he says, yes. Yeah. I mean, you know, if I just walked up to him afterward and said, gosh, I just love your poetry, is there any way we could go get coffee for three hours? Like, I'm not sure.

[Tracy Thomas]

No. That's why I started this podcast, so that I could ask authors that I

[Christian Duenas]

wanted to ask the questions.

[Tracy Thomas]

I wanted to ask, like, why did

[Christian Duenas]

you name your character Susan? Like, that's so. That's a such a weird name. Or, like, right. You know, do you like gossip? Pamela Kaloff, serious journalist. Like, I don't know, but I'm gonna ask because I get to. It's true. It's like, if you just have, like, a microphone or if you just say you're writing for a paper, like, people

[Pamela Koloff]

might say yes to you, and they do. And then, you know, and then you can ask within reason. You want to be respectful. And, yeah, all. I mean, there are all sorts of things now I do ethically, that I did not do at the beginning of my career. I had to learn some things the hard way. But generally speaking, if you take care, you can ask people. I don't want to say almost anything, but you really can. And one of the surprises to come out of this work is how many people want, you know, don't feel listened to or don't feel people understand them or nobody knows their story and they want to talk. And investigative journalism, that can be really helpful because you can, you know, as long as you can back up what you're saying with records, those people will help you get where you want to go.

[Tracy Thomas]

And then their story also gets to

[Christian Duenas]

be part of the record.

[Pamela Koloff]

Well, and I've seen so much of how that affects people. So there's a girl in the book now, my age, in her 50s. She was 12 years old at the time that she met Paul Skalnick. And he was, you know, Again, this sort of larger than life, louche character. And she became very infatuated with him and fascinated with him. And he preyed upon that and took advantage of that and sexually abused her. And she eventually went to, police reported this, was hooked up to a polygraph, had to take a polygraph. This is without her parents, a male officer leading her to do this. And mind you, Paul Skalnick, the man who goes on to testify against upwards of 40 different people, some of them in capital cases, is never made to take a polygraph. So she goes through this ordeal. Ultimately, the case is not prosecuted because Paul Skelnick is too valuable of a witness to the state attorney's office. And long story short, the prosecutors make her case go away. I and this is 1982, I come back in in 2019 when I was working on the magazine story that this book grew out of and reached out to her. And by that point I had all the documents, I had all her statements. I had two witness statements. I mean, you never see witness statements with sexual assault. I had everything. So I call her. It was a long process of getting her understandably, to trust me and feel comfortable talking to me and to understand the importance of telling the story. But what I'm trying to say in too long of a way is while her story was very important for me to tell in the story, the act of telling it was huge in her life. She had walked for all those years without feeling believed and like, did I make this up? Or like, how did this happen? That nothing ever happened to him. And to be believed and then to have this written about and to have other people believe it, she told me, was life changing. So what I'm trying to say is investigative journalism in its best form can cause change in the world in the things that you're writing about. But it also, I think for me, feeling shy about asking people hard questions. I try to remember things like that, like with Karen and how that was very beneficial for her as well.

[Tracy Thomas]

We're going to take a super quick

[Christian Duenas]

break and then we'll be right back.

[Tracy Thomas]

It is officially summer, and you know what that means. It means pool and beach season. I have been spending so much time outside by the water with the Minis, they know how to swim now and it is literally all they want to do. What do I want to do? I want to lay down on a towel and be comfy, cozy. Which is why I am obsessed with Cozy Earth's plush towels. That's right. My love for Cozy Earth has gone beyond just comfortable bedding jammies, slippers, robes I am now taking my favorite brand to the poolside. I am not kidding when I tell you that these Cozy Earth towels are amazing. They're the perfect blend of style and practicality. I have these ones that are so much fun. They've got this oversized stripe pattern and hot pink, orange and white. They're capturing summer and whimsy. And they're made from a blend of cotton and viscose from bamboo, which means they're soft and smooth and also absorb moisture faster than your regular old yucky cotton towel. Plus, they're designed to withstand things like salt water and sand because the people at Cozy Earth think of everything and just like with their bedding, they get softer with every wash. Go ahead, try it for yourself. There's no risk. Cozy Earth backs your purchase with a 10 year warranty and they give you 100 nights to try new bedding to make sure you love it. If you don't, returns are hassle free, so head to cozy earth.com and use my code the stacks for an exclusive 20% off. That's code the stacks for an exclusive 20 percent off. And if you see a post purchase survey mention that you heard about Cozy Earth right here. Hello Hello. We are in the midst of summer which is my favorite season and also a very fun season over here at the Stacks. As always, we are bringing you a ton of great new reads, author interviews and behind the scenes bookish gossip and chit chat. But if you find yourself craving a little more, consider supporting us on Patreon and Substack as well. On Patreon, which is our community focused bonus content hub, you can join our virtual book club. You can be part of our private Discord. You can read with us for our year long mega reading challenge. Plus there are monthly bonus episodes over on Substack. You can subscribe to my newsletter Unstacked where I give my hot takes on books and pop culture and sports and fun food and whatever else I want on both the Patreon and the Substack. You also have access to my non fiction reading guide, but it only is available through the end of summer so make sure you subscribe now to either Patreon or Substack or both to get access to that. And if you don't have a few dollars to spare right now, don't worry, there are free options on Patreon and Substack so you can keep up with the goings on around here. Making this podcast is a huge team effort and by supporting my Patreon and substack you allow me to support my team so we can all continue to work together doing what we do best, which is bringing you bookish content, this very podcast. So if you or your friends are looking to meet other bookish people, support an independent podcast, come hang out with me, Patreon Substack, or both. Go to patreon.com thestacks and Tracy thomas.substack.com and we will see you in the stacks. Have a business idea, but don't know where to start? I know the feeling. I was there when I first started this very podcast. I quickly realized it required way more than interviewing authors.

[Christian Duenas]

And just like, like reading some books,

[Tracy Thomas]

there were scripts to write, brand assets to create, and eventually merch to sell. Luckily, by the time I was ready to sell, I had already discovered Shopify. If you've been sitting on a business idea, just know that Shopify makes it easy to bring it to life and start selling. Shopify Checkout makes shopping a breeze for your customers, offering a secure place for them to enter their information and easily complete their purchase. The process is even smoother after their first order. When they come back, they. Their details are already saved, so they're only one tap away from securing a shiny new item or a comfy new sweatshirt in the case of the stacks. And since Shopify handles setup and checkout, you can focus on what you do best. Growing your business With Shopify. Nothing stands between your idea and a real business. So go make it one. Start your free [e-mail] the stacks that's shopify.com thestacks okay, we're back. You just casually mentioned learning lessons the

[Christian Duenas]

hard way in the questions you asked. Can you share a lesson or two? I'm just so curious what that means.

[Pamela Koloff]

So many. We could do an entire podcast. I feel like lessons.

[Christian Duenas]

I would love that.

[Pamela Koloff]

So one of the things I love about journalism is that, that you just kind of get thrown in, right? There's not a lot of training. I, I think it's actually a really beautiful thing about my profession that, you know, people do go to graduate school for it. I don't recommend that. But you, you cut your teeth doing it. Sort of like public defenders get just like thrown into the mix. It's the same thing. So I started. I, I had a staff job at Texas Monthly at 25 years old, which was. I still don't understand how that happened, but every day I was sure I was going to be fired. They were going to figure out that I had no idea what I was doing. And so there were just. There were so many things. I remember early on when I wrote tough things about someone, let's say it was a more investigative piece. And this was back when I was in my 20s. I would write it, we would fact check it, we would publish it, and then I would sort of just be in this crouch position until they happen to find it and read it. And then I got the blowback or the reaction. That is the absolute opposite of how I work now. It's not fair to people. It's easy to make mistakes. So now I have this sort of radical transparency with sources where let's say I'm writing something and this, this happened in the book. There were people who would not speak to me, did not want to have anything to do with the book. And I have a pretty harsh assessment of their work as prosecutors or investigators back in. In the 80s and 90s. So if let's say somebody doesn't speak to me, I now go back to them. I send them sort of a paraphrased version of what I'll be writing to give them a heads up. We are publishing this on this date. Here's broadly what I say. If I've gotten anything wrong, if you dispute this, if you think I've mischaracterized anything, please let me know. And it's a process from there that can go in different ways. And it's just when I think about, you know, sort of the golden rule, like, how would I want someone to do this with me? Right. I think a more painful one was in my twenties, I wrote a lot about, you know, young people. I was seen as like the young person on staff, the voice of a generation. So I'm joking, I was not seen as that. And so I wrote a lot about teenagers and often teenage girls and sort of teenage life in Texas. And I would sort of embed with people. Like, I would spend a lot of time. I always say to people when we sort of talk initially about whether or not I, you know, I'll tell someone that I hope to write about them. And here's what that would involve. I say, this is going to take a long time. It's going to be annoying, and you're going to be really sick of me by the time this is done, because I'm going to be around all the time. So I was doing that with girls I was not that much older with. And I think for them, you know, they've never been written about in the media before. They don't really know what a Reporter is. The lines got really blurred. You know, was I a reporter, Was I a friend? It didn't matter. Even sometimes when I would have my notebook out as a reminder that I'm writing about this, that this was going to be in an article that was for sale in the grocery store that they and all their friends and friends, parents went to. And I remember there was one girl who just felt that it had gone too far, that I had said too much, even though we had gone over it in fact checking. And you know, I didn't do anything underhanded.

[Christian Duenas]

Right.

[Pamela Koloff]

But I just, I spend so much time now with sources, especially the people who entrust me with the story and allow me to spend time with them to make sure that I am as ethically, you know, doing my job as possible. I explain to them why I'm asking certain questions, what the story is that I'm trying to tell. And it can sometimes be an almost collaborative process. And that is so different when I was just this scared kid who had no idea what she was doing.

[Christian Duenas]

I have like a thousand follow up questions, but I think the, the one that I'm the most I want to spend, I want to ask, because I know we have other things to talk about is like you've been doing this work for a long time and obviously this story that you're talking about from when you were in your early 20s about these, this girl has stuck with you. How much are you sort of reevaluating your process, your ethics, like what you're doing as you go still now at this age like as like a per. You know, back then you were a newbie, but now like you're capital P, capital C. So I'm just like, I'm just thinking about like maybe like regrets or like how that shapes how you move going forward.

[Pamela Koloff]

I think it's always front of mind. Like I feel such a responsibility when people agree to spend substantial amounts of time with me or to talk usually with what I'm writing about. It's the most painful thing that's ever happened to them. Maybe it's losing a child, maybe it's going to prison, maybe it's fill in the blank, really tough stuff. And you know, no matter how many times you go over something with someone before it's published, it's just different when it's out there on, in the world. It's on the Internet, it's right everywhere. It's being taken out of context.

[Tracy Thomas]

Well, like people are calling them being like, saw you in the New York

[Christian Duenas]

Times, which is different than you being like, this is going to be in

[Tracy Thomas]

the New York Times.

[Christian Duenas]

Like, that's like, very theoretical versus, like, totally holding the magazine.

[Pamela Koloff]

Yes. Or like the Daily Mail takes some snippet of the story and turns it into some other thing, something yucky. So I think I'm always just evaluating that and how. How can I be sensitive to the challenges of this? How can I partner with people when it's appropriate? How can I be sensitive to what they're worried about? I published a story earlier this week that I knew was going on. It was going online at 5am Eastern. I live in Texas. I'm an hour behind, and I Woke up at 4am Just like, in a cold sweat and did not, you know, the cortisol is, like, coursing through me until I've heard from every source saying, like, I thought that, you know, you really captured what we talked about and this was fair. And so I really try to honor that. So I'm always sweating it and psychology, every story. And if I ever do a book again, which I hope to do, I'm convinced at the outset that, oh, yeah, this is the one that breaks me. Like, I have no idea. I can't remember how to write. I don't know how to do this. This is so hard. I'll never figure my way out of this Byzantine, you know, so it doesn't get easier. And actually, there's a wonderful writer I used to work with. He's passed away, Gary Cartwright, who was this sort of Hunter S. Thompson of Texas, basically. And I was asking him this. I was probably about 30 at the time, and I had just been through an awful writing process. It's just been. I feel like each one takes a lot out of me, to be honest with you. And I asked him about that, and I said, gosh, does it ever get easier? And he said, if it gets easier, it's time to hang it up, time to stop doing it. And that. I've thought about that a lot, that there's this. I don't mean that you should be in agony all the time and every. Your work should be difficult at all times. But if you're phoning it in, if you're not wrestling with this, if you're not worrying about how it's going to impact your sources, or, what if I don't get that person to talk to me? Or what if I'm. I'm wrong? My friend Maurice Shama calls it the error terrors, which I love. If you're not sweating like you're doing something wrong. I think in this line of work,

[Tracy Thomas]

you're writing the thing, you've got your sources, you spend all this time with

[Christian Duenas]

them, you put something together, you send,

[Tracy Thomas]

you send that draft or whatever to them.

[Christian Duenas]

You're like, this is the part. I mean, that's what I assume you send. Like this is the part you're in.

[Pamela Koloff]

No, I'm not allowed to do that.

[Christian Duenas]

You're not allowed to do anything.

[Pamela Koloff]

That's one of the tricky things. So standard across all news organizations is you can't send the actual story out before publication or even parts of it. So I'll be holding it in my hand, for example, and calling them and saying so. And then I say, you did this and you felt this way about it. Does that sound right to you?

[Tracy Thomas]

Got it. So you are sort of still checking with them.

[Christian Duenas]

Once you've, once you've taken everything, all your, like raw materials, your, your interviews, the time you spend together, the, you know, documents from court records or whatever,

[Tracy Thomas]

you write your thing, then you call

[Christian Duenas]

and you sort of paraphrase kind of.

[Pamela Koloff]

And this is for, just, for the very sensitive. I, I don't do this for all parts of the, the story. And part of that is because at the times it goes through a rigorous fact checking process. Most of my magazine stories have three fact checkers on them. So it's, and lawyers. So it's intense. But it's more like for the really sensitive parts of a piece, I want to make sure somebody is comfortable with it. And so just as an example, going back to Karen Parker, the 12 year old girl, I describe in great detail both her infatuation with Paul Skelnick and then the sexual encounter that happens between them that she's very confused about how to feel about because she's got a big crush on him. It's very complicated. I try to get into the complications of it. It was very illegal to be clear.

[Christian Duenas]

Yes, the emotional complication. There's no complication about him abusing a 12 year old. But the complication is like how she felt about it.

[Pamela Koloff]

Exactly, exactly. And to me, that was very interesting to write about. It's like, how does she come to terms with that and why does she end up going to police? And how did she get there? But so that was material that I went over with her in person. I went to Florida, sat with her in a restaurant and you know, we had a nice meal. And then I sort of described and read little pieces of it back to her because I just, I wanted every word of that to Be something not just accurate, but true to her emotional experience, comfortable, and that she was comfortable with.

[Tracy Thomas]

What if she says to you, pamela, no, I don't want this in there? Then what do you do? How do you balance your story that you've got to tell and your job as a journalist and the sensitivity to

[Christian Duenas]

this person who's opened up to you and told you about this horrible thing that happened when they were 12 that has basically shaped their life for the next 40 years.

[Pamela Koloff]

Yes. So I think there are a lot of different things that can happen at that point. If it's. I don't want that level of detail in there, or I don't want my current name. I use her married name rather than the name she had when she was 12. There are ways in which we can soften that, or we can find a way to still include it. If someone is more adamant about it and it's an issue like sexual assault. In that case, I would just write about it in a much more bird's eye view from. From records without their name. But this, the way I wrote this, is almost like fiction, where you're in her head and you're sort of experiencing this as it happens.

[Tracy Thomas]

Okay, I could do this all day.

[Christian Duenas]

I'm supposed to be talking about the book, and we are talking about the book. But I just think, like, here's my. This is my opinion about what I do.

[Tracy Thomas]

My sense is that the least interesting

[Christian Duenas]

thing we could talk about is the

[Tracy Thomas]

book, because people will get the book. The book is good. You should read it at home. But you're not going to get this

[Christian Duenas]

part of it from reading the book.

[Tracy Thomas]

So I don't. I. I am torn because I'm like, I want to talk about the book,

[Christian Duenas]

but also the book is the book, and it's great, and you're going to get it. And so this is, like, very exciting to me.

[Pamela Koloff]

I mean, I could talk about craft with you told the cows come home. Like, I. There's nothing I love more. And I always love with the narrative nonfiction writers who I admire, I love hearing how it came together and how they got things and. And the things they didn't get, you know, they're. They're the things you have to write around and the mysteries that remain. And I. I love all that.

[Tracy Thomas]

I love it, too. I love it, too. That's like, the gossipy side of it, right? It's like, what's the thing you can't

[Christian Duenas]

get from the book?

[Tracy Thomas]

Because my opinion is, like, the book

[Christian Duenas]

should be good enough to stand on Its own, you know, and then the

[Tracy Thomas]

part that we don't get is all

[Christian Duenas]

the stuff you're grappling with to make the book good enough to stand it on its own.

[Tracy Thomas]

But that is a question. Oh, go ahead.

[Pamela Koloff]

Well, I was just gonna say with. With a book or an article, it's sort of like. Okay. I think of it like when you go to the Olympic. When you go to the Olympics. When you watch the Olympics and you see maybe the ice skating finals, and let's say you've never ice skated before and you're like, oh, that's so beautiful. And they're so graceful. And then if you try it, you're like, wait, what? And I feel like great writing. That's what it's like. It is at such a high level, and you're just experiencing the storytelling and the characters, and that's always what I'm trying to do. Like, I. I mean, I can't even tell you how many thousands of court documents, years of public record requests, on and on and on and on this book is based on. But there's not one sentence in the book that says, you know, comma, according to such court document.

[Christian Duenas]

Yeah, right.

[Pamela Koloff]

It's written in such a way. And this is what I always try to do. It's like, I do so much research, I talk to so. So many people that I get to a level of confidence that I can write in a more creative and omniscient way about what happened. Creative based, in fact. Do you know what I'm saying? But I can bring in things like emotions and things that are not in a cold court record because I've done the reporting to fill that in. So ideally, you read a book like my book, and you don't even think about the sourcing. You just think, wow, she, like, knows a lot. And then you get to the end at notes on sources, and maybe you're interested and you dig in and you're impressed, and maybe you don't. Maybe it's just the storytelling that's the goal to me.

[Christian Duenas]

Yeah.

[Tracy Thomas]

And your notes on sources are. Is written.

[Christian Duenas]

And it's not like. It's not like one that's not like footnotes. It's like you go through. It's really cool, actually. It's like also narrative.

[Pamela Koloff]

Yes. So I. That was intentional because when I read narrative nonfiction, I am always trying to piece together, how did they get that? How did they know that? Yeah. And that's just my weird brain. And so I'll be flipping back to the footnotes and the footnotes don't really tell you a lot. It's like a page number in something or, Yeah. A reference to an interview. So I very intentionally wrote notes on sources in a narrative way so that for the, for, for the reporting nerds, they could dig in there and see how I put it together. And also, maybe there's something in there, you know, for someone like me when I was starting off to learn how to do that and to give them permission, like, hey, once you read these 218 documents about this event, you can write about it in a way that's like a scene. And you don't have to do those attributions because you've done the work.

[Christian Duenas]

Yeah.

[Tracy Thomas]

You mentioned some of the stuff that

[Christian Duenas]

you love to talk and think about is like, what's not in there? Like what you couldn't get. So what's not in this book that you wish could have been.

[Pamela Koloff]

I think every good project, there are pieces of it that you just, you don't know. They're the mysteries you can't fully solve. And, oh gosh, there's so many things. So I, I was able to track down the fact that Paul Skalnick was married nine times to nine different women. He was a bigamist. So there was a lot going on, sometimes at the same time. That's what we know of. He, I also know he did fake marriages. He abandoned women at the altar. I'm certain, I mean, I document three teenage girls who he preyed upon. I'm certain there were more. I could go on and on and on about all the different things. I mean, as anyone who picks up the book will see, it's extensive. What I get into about what he did in Florida and Texas, some other states where I know he spent some time, particularly Louisiana, which are not as transparent with records. I, it's like a black box. Right.

[Christian Duenas]

Interesting.

[Pamela Koloff]

So I, I, my secret hope is the book comes out and a few people come out of the woodwork and it would just be, for me, I'm not going to write a sequel, but it would sort of help to answer some of those questions. And then I think there's just the larger question I leave it open ended because I had to, about why Paul Skelnick did the things that he did.

[Tracy Thomas]

Yeah.

[Pamela Koloff]

There's a scene toward the end of the book I don't want to ruin, where I go and visit him on what turned out to be his deathbed and we have this absolutely bonkers conversation where I ask him a lot of things and he says Some really off the wall but revealing answers. And I sort of came to think through my conversations with him that he was the last person who could provide insight into who he was. I had to find it other ways. I had to find it both through his actions and through the people around him. And that's why so much of the book focuses on them.

[Tracy Thomas]

Yeah, this is sort of a hard shift, but I always like to ask, like, how do you like to write?

[Christian Duenas]

Where are you?

[Tracy Thomas]

How many hours a day? Music or no snacks or beverages? Rituals. Tell me about it.

[Pamela Koloff]

So, okay, so I am one of these. Whenever I hear writers say, you know, I sit down at my desk at 9 and I play classical music and I do this and this. I. It's funny, I'm very, very organized and disciplined in, in the work itself. But in my work process, I am just like a hot mess. I mean, I, you know, when I am really, really into a story, there is no work life balance. I don't sleep much. I. It is all I'm thinking about when I'm brushing my teeth, when I'm driving, when I'm in the shower. I. If I see friends, I'm talking about it, engaging their reactions to what I'm saying. It becomes a really all consuming thing. So I both love that process and dread it because it's very intense for me. There's a lot of coffee involved and there's a lot. I need long stretches of uninterrupted time. So I think this goes counter to everything we're supposed to do. But I try to get the emails and phone calls done very first thing in the morning and then just kind of shut it all down and go into the work. But I have a lot of trouble if I'm pulled out of it, getting back in it. My favorite part of the process is reporting it's not writing. I love being out in the world, meeting new people, hearing their stories, following them on various adventures, having crazy stories to come home to tell my friends.

[Christian Duenas]

Yeah, yeah. The. The gossipy part.

[Pamela Koloff]

Exactly.

[Christian Duenas]

The writing part. This is the scam of the whole job in your. Since you mention the Watchdog Writers Group, what is this? Can you say more?

[Pamela Koloff]

The Watchdog Writers Group, I'm so glad you asked. Is this amazing group that started in 2020 at the University of Missouri, started by a man named Clinton Chris Leonard, who's an amazing author in and of himself. And he saw through his own book writing how desperately lonely and hard and just what an endeavor book writing is. The financial and emotional strain are intense. So he set out to start this program. Miraculously got funding for it, where you get a year long fellowship. It's an extremely generous stipend. When I did it, it was $50,000.

[Christian Duenas]

5, 0.

[Pamela Koloff]

You also get again, at the time I did it, I think it's still the same a researcher who's a undergraduate or graduate student in the journalism program at the University of Missouri. And so if you can imagine having that kind of money.

[Christian Duenas]

Yeah.

[Pamela Koloff]

And having a researcher.

[Christian Duenas]

Yeah.

[Pamela Koloff]

And then we would have these check ins. And at the time it was, there were a bunch of different writers who cycled through it, but it was usually a cohort of anywhere from three to five writers. And here was this group of people who were going through this same exact things. You know, my big struggle going from magazines to books was pacing. Like the pacing of a magazine story and a book are totally different animals. I was really struggling with that. Everyone was in a different place in the process. Maybe someone was later and was trying to figure out, like, how do I get the word out about my book? And we would come together on these zooms and oh, I should say this was at the depths of the, of the pandemic. I, I was just starting work on this project and that we had this literal fellowship and that we had each other to go to was everything. It was. I couldn't have done the book without.

[Christian Duenas]

It sounds so amazing. I was like, I've never heard of this. This is, this name I know is enough for me to ask a question about it. What's the word you could never spell correctly on the first try.

[Pamela Koloff]

There's so. There's so many. Commemorate.

[Christian Duenas]

Good one.

[Pamela Koloff]

I mean, oh my gosh, there's so many. I'm blanking on what they are now. I'm a terrible speller. I'm married to a copy editor and I think maybe it's so he can help me. But that actually was like always a note when I was little was like, she's a great writer, but we're really concerned about her spelling.

[Tracy Thomas]

This is me. I'm a terrible speller.

[Christian Duenas]

I'm a terrible speller. That's why this question came to be. Because I was like, I can't be the only one.

[Pamela Koloff]

No. There's certain words where I always still

[Christian Duenas]

like, you could tell me how to spell a word, make me memorize a song about it, the whole thing, and I'll still just be like, oops, I don't know.

[Pamela Koloff]

Right. Right.

[Christian Duenas]

Can't do it.

[Pamela Koloff]

So it's so funny. I know.

[Tracy Thomas]

Are you good at math.

[Pamela Koloff]

Well, I never thought I was, but then I would score really high on things. Oh, okay.

[Christian Duenas]

I was thinking maybe there's something I'm bad at math. And I feel like that's another thing that's like, really, like, specific. Like you have to, like, just do the right thing. And I'm so, I was like, maybe that's what it is.

[Pamela Koloff]

But no, it's funny. So my, my son, who's a teenager, he's going to be going into engineering. He's a math science guy. And he was just explaining to me that the reason he loves math and science and not English and talking about literature. And I love this because he said, you know, in what I do, there's always referring to himself, what I do, there's always a right answer. And I was like, yeah, that's exactly what I love about books is there's not necessarily right. They're interpretations.

[Christian Duenas]

Yeah. You know, I, I, I need a little more space to do my work. You know, I can't be held back by a correct answer.

[Pamela Koloff]

Exactly.

[Christian Duenas]

Do you know what comes next for you?

[Pamela Koloff]

It's a great question. I would really like to do a book again. I have some ideas that I think are too early to, like, put out in the world, but that I'm hoping maybe I can explore through my magazine writing after the book tour. And I just, I've spent so much of my career focusing on people who are in prison, who shouldn't be there, who have wrongful convictions or other issues. I write a lot about things like junk forensic science and the things that lead people there. I really, really want to write about people who have committed the crimes that they are in for and wrestling with. What do we do with that? I wrote a story earlier this year for the Times Magazine about women who are serving life sentences in Oklahoma. Yes. For killing their abusers. Thank you. And, and to me, that really got into that moral gray area that I'm interested in of, you know, someone's life was taken. They have a family. We can't ignore that. At the same time, the person who did that was a victim themselves. And so how do we reconcile that? What do we, what do we do with that?

[Christian Duenas]

Have you do, do you know about Unreasonable Women? Justine Bailin's book.

[Pamela Koloff]

Oh, Justine's book. Yes, I, I, I have it and I'm so excited to read it. And I think so, so, so highly of her work.

[Christian Duenas]

It's really good. She was on the show a few weeks ago and she's incredible. I was really taken with the Book.

[Tracy Thomas]

And I was like, I've read this.

[Christian Duenas]

I've read something about this before, and it was your piece, but I would, like, couldn't quite place it. And then I was like, oh, okay, here we go. I got it all together.

[Pamela Koloff]

She's amazing.

[Christian Duenas]

She's amazing. And. And she. Yeah. I'd never really thought about this idea of criminalized survivorship at all. And now it's, like, all I think about.

[Tracy Thomas]

Great. I can't wait to read whatever it

[Christian Duenas]

is that you do next.

[Pamela Koloff]

Thank you so much.

[Christian Duenas]

Who, like, Catch the Devil. What are some other books that you might recommend to them that are in

[Tracy Thomas]

conversation with your work?

[Pamela Koloff]

Oh, great question. So Patrick Raden Keefe is my hero, my writing hero. I love his work. And he. In London Falling, and obviously in the books that preceded that, he does that thing that I'm always trying to do of that really immersive storytelling married to characters you're never going to forget. And he makes you feel things. And I feel like that is always the goal. He just. He sets the bar so high. There's so. I mean, I. I'm in awe of so many people. They're all people who are magazine writers who transitioned in one way or another to books. Rachel Aviv, who has a book coming out this summer. I have a. I just got a galley from. For Robert Kolker's book.

[Christian Duenas]

Oh, the new one.

[Pamela Koloff]

Yes. The Vanishing Family. And he wrote, of course, Lost Girls and Hidden Valley Road, which, again, are stories that just, like, are so alive on the page. And I'm so excited to read that. The book, I think, so far this year, that had the biggest impact on me. And I'm sorry to be mentioning all these Guy magazine writers, but it just is the crop we're having. Tom Junode wrote an incredible memoir about his father that came out this spring.

[Tracy Thomas]

Yes.

[Pamela Koloff]

And that I will not attempt the title. It's like 12 words long. And I'll.

[Tracy Thomas]

Yes.

[Christian Duenas]

It's like.

[Tracy Thomas]

It's like.

[Pamela Koloff]

What do I know?

[Christian Duenas]

Something of being a man. Yeah. About being a man. Yeah. Yeah. It's like blue.

[Pamela Koloff]

It's a Led Zeppelin song title that I'm.

[Christian Duenas]

We'll link to it in the show notes.

[Pamela Koloff]

Thank you.

[Christian Duenas]

Yeah.

[Pamela Koloff]

That book, which, again, is nonfiction, is so gorgeously written. I mean, more beautifully written than a lot of fiction I've read recently. There are scenes in which he describes his father where you feel like. Not just like you're in the room with him, but, like, you can, like, touch him, taste him, feel him. It is very tactile book. And the way he wrestles with, you know, this man, he loves so much, who he's modeled himself in some ways on, and who he's also so repelled by because he does some really terrible things. It's so incredible. And the last third of the book, this is also true of London Falling. The last third of both of those books. There are. It's like revelation after revelation after revelation. Like, what am I going to find out on the next page? And there's so much buildup leading to it heading there that when you get there, you're just like, let's do this. This is.

[Christian Duenas]

Okay.

[Pamela Koloff]

You know, they're both page turners.

[Christian Duenas]

Okay. Okay. I'm excited. I'm excited to read.

[Tracy Thomas]

Okay, last question.

[Christian Duenas]

If you could have one person, dead or alive, read this book, who would you want it to be?

[Pamela Koloff]

Oh, my gosh. One person, dead or alive, who could read this book, who would I want it to be? There's so many people I could think of. Well, I hope this isn't too sad of an answer. So my father died in 1992, and he worked in journalism. He worked at CBS News and at 60 Minutes, and he never saw my journalism career. You know, I was just a kid when he passed away, and I would love for him to see, you know, what I. What I was able to do. And. And. And I. I think and hope he would be proud of me. I should have a better answer about a particular author.

[Tracy Thomas]

No, that's a great answer.

[Pamela Koloff]

Honestly, not to be too cheesy or whatever, but the. The act of getting blurbs for a book which is like, oh, my God, is there anything more painful than having to ask, like, your. Like, it's scary enough to say hi to one of your heroes, much less, like, throw yourself at their feet knowing they have no time and ask them for something. But I was. I mean, I was so. I was so fortunate to get a lot of my heroes to read it through those.

[Christian Duenas]

Yeah, you. I. Part of the reason that I picked up this book is I was like, there's too many good blurbs from people whose work I love. You've got Patrick, Rod and Keefe, Lawrence Wright, Robert Golker, Rachel. Like, it's like. It's like a murderous row. All right, party people.

[Tracy Thomas]

You can get Catch the Devil out in the World now, wherever you get your books. I highly recommend it. I listen to a little bit of the audio. She does a fantastic job.

[Christian Duenas]

So if you're an audio person, this one for sure.

[Tracy Thomas]

Check it out on audio. Pamela, thank you so much for being here.

[Pamela Koloff]

Thank you. This was such a treat. Thank you so much. Thank you for what you do.

[Christian Duenas]

Oh, thank you and everyone else.

[Tracy Thomas]

We will see you in the stacks. All right, y', all, that's it for today. Thank you so much for listening. And thank you again to Pamela Coloff for joining the show. I'd also like to say a quick thank you to Kelly Shy for her assistance in making this episode possible. Possible. Our book club pick for July is Behind the Beautiful Forever's Life, Death and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity by Catherine Boo. We will discuss the book with Juliana Hobner on Wednesday, July 29th. If you like the show, if you want inside access to it, go to patreon.com the stacks and join the Stacks Pack and check out my newsletter@tracy thomas.substack.com get yourself some perks. Support the show. Make sure you're subscribed to the Stacks wherever you listen to your podcasts. And if you're listening through Apple Podcasts or Spotify, take a moment right now. Please leave us a rating and a review. Help people find the show. Give us a little boost. It goes a long way. It's a super easy thing you can do right now. For more from the Stacks, follow us on social media at the Stacks Pod, on Instagram, threads and now YouTube and you can check out our website at The Stacks Podcast this episode of the Stacks was edited by Christian Duenas with production assistance from Sahara Clement. Additional support was provided by Sheree Marquez and our theme music is from Tagirigis. The Stacks is created and produced by me, Tracy Thomas.