An Innocent Man on Death Row with Pamela Colloff

[Music] Welcome to the History Nerds and Nerds Podcast. I'm your head and nerdbreddon. Thank you so much for being here. Today author Pamela Kohloff and her book Catch the Devil. Some interviews are just super easy. I could have talked to Pamela for hours, but obviously no one's going to listen to that. No one can put out with me for that long. I understand. And it was just a great conversation. Her book is heartbreaking in a lot of ways, but we still find a way to have great conversation. Good fun. How about I shut up? Let's bring on Pamela. And here we are with author Pamela Kohloff. Catch the Devil. A true story of murder, deception, and injustice on the Gulf Coast. Pam, thank you so much for coming on. Thank you so much for having me. You're on here, first of all. Besides the fact that the book is absolutely fantastic, but also Patrick Rattenkeev told me directly, I needed to read this book. And then I look at it, we've got Gilbert King, Pulitzer Prize winner on the back saying how wonderful it is. You got to feel good. I mean, tell you got to feel good when you got those names attached to your book and they're like, yeah, everybody should read this. You are so kind both of those authors or heroes of mine and have become friends and are such generous people who, you know, I would read either of them writing about wallpaper really. So it's thrilling to have that feedback from them, but I think the true mark of success is whether someone picks up the book and sticks with the book. I wrote it in such a way to try to ensure that that would happen. Now listen, we're just talked about some New York Times best sellers, but I think the biggest compliment I can give you is that my wife stole this book out of my hands. And we talked a little bit about this. So spoiler alert, I know you are this way too. She's a book grazer. She's going to kill me for talking about this on air. She's a book grazer, which means she will grab books and then read like six chapters and then like put a bookmark and put it down and come back like three months later. It drives me insane. Your book, there was no other book. She sat down within 24 hours. It was done. That's really the compliment I think that you need this person that you've never met. Thank you so much for telling me that. I love your wife. I as a very busy journalist and mom and other things. I'm a book grazer also and I have what I call sort of the tower of shame next to my bed, which are all the books that I really truly do want to read. Some by friends, some by writers, I idolize and there just aren't enough hours in the day. So I do exactly what you described of grazing. And I had that person in mind when I wrote this, you know, what would keep someone's attention. I always think about this. I write for the New York Times magazine and for ProPublica and my editors will say to me, if the beginning of a story that I write is feeling a little slow, they'll say, remember, someone may be reading this on their phone and your words are competing with the text messages that are coming in and the notifications that are coming in. How are you going to grab them and keep them? So they're swiping those away and they're still reading. And it's a really big challenge, but it's a fun storytelling challenge as well. And in my mind, if your nonfiction leads with really strong characters and plot and storyline, then you can get people to stick with you. And to not take for granted, like, don't go down too many rabbit trails. You're telling one story that you really want to bring people along on. Well, I think that's one of the strengths of this book for me is especially with True Crime. You can go down those rabbit holes, but also having a point without hammering it home in the background of this. There's obviously bigger things that you're talking about, but you're not shoving it in the reader's face. And it also, this reads so fast. Is that as you're talking about, is that something you're sitting there every time you write a page or trying to do it? Or do you start with story first, then make it flow later? I think story first make it flow later, but with each, I mean, I'm constantly rewriting, you know, it's hard to know when to stop. And it's just any moment where someone's attention might drift. I want to do whatever it takes to bring them back. And I just feel in this attention economy, we can't not think about that as writers. We have to be cognizant of that. And as long as you're immersed in that world, I think it'll pull you along with that story. I do give a lot of credit to my editor who really put a premium on Pam, you're getting a little long-winded here or Pam, you don't need to make that point in quite that way. Just tell the story. The story makes those arguments for you. I feel very strongly after talking to so many authors that I could do a podcast just called What I Had to Cut Out and bring back all the same authors and say, all right, tell me what they made you cut. I think James M. Scott is like I usually have at least an extra 300 pages in the first script. This was the big, so this is my first book. And this was the big surprise, I think of writing a book was I always thought, oh, you write a book. That's when you, how, you know, you can explore all those things that as a magazine writer, you never get to explore, but I actually found you have to be more disciplined because the ask of the reader is bigger. If you're asking someone to come with you on a 80,000 or 100,000 word journey, you can't take that for granted any step of the way. So that was a learning experience for me was I would discover all these interesting things, but did it really lead to an important conclusion in the book not necessarily. So that doesn't mean I didn't bring in some fun and interesting details and some color, but I tried to be very disciplined in how I told the story. I really like to, and you pull this off where a lot of other authors, especially when journalists go from it's completely different writing to go from an article to a book. And in this book, you've got basically two main characters. One is a complete piece of garbage. We'll get to him in a second. And you start with one and the second person doesn't come in for a little bit of a while, right? So you have to kind of grab the reader with that first person. And you start with Paul Skellnick. As I said, piece of garbage, why start with him? Is it just because he's such a damn rascal? It's easier to start with the bad guy. Well, do you know that we experimented with all sorts of different ways of structuring this book? And it turns out that beginning with the colorful con artist as a way into what really is a much deeper and more complex story is sort of an invitation in for the reader. And I think that getting to know him, he tells the story of the first quarter of the book. And what I do in there is I set up the fact that he is someone who tells people the stories that they want to hear. He is very, very skilled and he did this with me. He also conned me, which is how I begin the book. He's very skilled at figuring that out. And so the beginning of the book, a lot of it is about storytelling and how you get people to believe a story, even if it's not true. And that sort of leads you into this larger story about another man, Jim Daley, who will get to. But there's a question mark, I think, that sort of hangs over the first half of the book. You've met the con man. But how does he factor into Jim's story? And then you sort of start to piece it together. I want to jump to it. I was going to say this for the end, but forget that we'll just start here. You get to meet Scalnic. And like you said, well, listen, this is your first book, but I don't want people to get it twisted. You are a veteran investigative reporter. Like you are one of those people walks into a room and human lie detector type situation. When you talk to him, was he just that good or as a investigative reporter, do you just sit there and say, I'm going to take everything in and check it later? Or does your instinct scream out as soon as somebody says something you're like that? Nah, he's full of it. So it was really interesting. I went to visit him in federal prison in 2018. That was the first time I interacted with Paul Scalnic. And I knew a lot when I walked in. I knew that he had a rap sheet that was like 10 pages long. I knew he'd been a con artist for many decades. I knew he had been married to at least nine women some at the same time. He was a big amist and a variety of other things. In other words, the ultimate unreliable narrator. And yet, what he did, I mean, he was very theatrical and said things at the outset that very obviously were not true. But what he did was he very quickly sized me up and realized that what motivated me that day that I came to see him was a combination of curiosity and ambition. And he said, look, I've never told this story to anyone, the story of how I worked with prosecutors for decades telling stories that helped them win convictions. But I'm going to tell it to you. And I'm dying, which I didn't think was true. But I'm dying. and this is my last chance to get this out. And why not now, after all these years? And so along with the lies, like he told me, he was dying of cancer and that he was fabulously wealthy. I knew those things weren't true. I did think that he did want to tell me this story, the way that he said that to me. And we came up with a plan. I was gonna come back to the prison to interview him. Again, we were gonna correspond. There's an email program you can use with federal prisoners. And so I was very excited. And I remember on the drive home, I live in Austin and this prison was outside of Dallas. I called one of my magazine editors and was just so excited that he was gonna talk to me and I went home and I did all these reading and I made long lists of questions. And it took me much longer than it should have because I didn't want to believe this that he was stringing me along and was never gonna tell me anything. And so he would come up with these reasons. He'd say, oh, you know, there's a problem at the mail room which is something that happens in prison or I was sick, I couldn't schedule that visit. But it took me longer than it should have to realize that he was gonna tell me absolutely zero. And that's really what began this book. It was, I'm not gonna get the story from him. I need to go out and find it 100% on my own. And I'm not gonna let the fact that he wouldn't tell me things, stop me from finding this story. - Did you go to the bathroom in the morning, look in the mirror and go, oh, Pam, you knew better. You knew better Pam, you fell for it. - I think in the months, I mean, it took months before I realized this is really not gonna happen 'cause he was feeding me stuff in between like just enough to keep this going. I was doing a lot of investigation already. So by the time I realized he was not on board, I was, you know, the sunken cost fallacy, like I was all in at that point. And I also wanted to know the answers to the things that he wouldn't tell me, like how is it that this man played a pivotal role in upwards of 40 criminal cases with prosecutors and helps send men to prison and to death row. How does that happen when it's a con artist testifying? - Have you interviewed anybody who was good at con as he was, like, was he just so smooth, they was in his own category, or have you run into people like this before? - Well, I think what's interesting is in many ways he was clumsy at it. Like when he was showing the photos of his yacht in this federal prison, it wasn't like I believed that. But I remember later, much later, I met the woman who was his, I believe she was his ninth wife and she said, "Paul always put enough truth and a lie to make you believe it." And I thought that was a really good way of putting it that even if you knew some of what he was saying was too good to be true, there was other stuff in there. And he was just very good at playing on people's emotions, sizing them up and figuring out he was very transactional. What did they want from him? He certainly wanted things from them. - With him, we could have a whole podcast series on just all his lies and arrests, but you already mentioned 40 different cases. I think I just wanna jump to kind of the bigger question, believing a guy like this, 40 times. It's not just one prosecutor, but it's all mostly Florida, I believe. Why is it just their crooked? Is it just that right, the cops and the prosecutors in this area just want that win? Is there any part of you that said, they actually kind of believe this guy because he is that good and he snowed them just as much as he did make? - So I think a couple of things were at work. What he would do, he would commit cons big and small. It might be writing a hot check for $500. It might be stealing someone's life savings and much worse things. But when he would get caught, which he always would, he didn't usually use a different name. He would be charged and arrested and put in jail. And his get out of jail free card was figuring out who in the jail was sort of the high value person who prosecutors really, really wanted to convict or wanted to get a long sentence for. And then he would zero in on that person. And he would claim that he had obtained their confession. And he would either testify at their trial or just the prospect once he got a reputation of him testifying at their trial might be enough to have someone take a plea deal. So I guess I can see early on in this, how there could have been prosecutors who would fall for this. I think what's harder as time goes on and you see the pattern and you see how many times he did this. What are the odds really that a stranger who's facing trial? So jail is different than prison. You're awaiting trial, generally speaking, is going to unburden themselves of their deepest darkest secrets. Before standing trial to a total stranger who as time goes on is known as a snitch, it just doesn't make sense. And as time went on, he was increasingly housed on his own. So the idea that he wasn't able to mix with other prisoners. So how would he even obtain these confessions? And there were really just prosecutors who looked the other way. And I think it's really interesting to think about how something like this happens systemically, but they could look at predecessors in their office, all these other prosecutors who had relied on him. So why would they be the person to raise a red flag? So it became this self-reinforcing phenomenon. - It feels like, especially for prosecutors, do they get paid by the execution? Because we're talking about Florida, you live in Texas. So you're kind of perfect to answer this question. Florida and Texas love Kill and Folk. And it's hard for me when you're reading this and we're not talking about the morality of the death penalty. We're not tackling that. But it seems especially with this book that there is cover my eyes, cover my ears because I need to get the death penalty. Is it just a feather in their cap every time they get one? What's that push for? - I think in some ways times have changed, the death penalty as far as new sentences is very much on the decline. But the book largely takes place in the late 70s, 80s, early 90s, really the war on crime era. And at that time, maximum penalties, that's what you were seeking as a prosecutor and this idea that of mass incarceration or that putting someone away for 50 years can be so damaging. These were just not things that were part of the public conversation. And crime was much higher than to be fair. I mean, people were afraid. And so for many district attorney and state attorney's offices, it was a premium to have the harshest sentence, the longest sentences. And in particularly gruesome crimes to have the death penalty. - And it seems especially with this book and we'll get kind of to it. It's also somewhat strange and probably one of the reasons it's on the declines because even the victims' families are getting kind of sick of the entire death penalty process. So we'll talk about Shelley Bajio, who is the victim in the crime we're about to talk about. And one of the things you talk about is her family is sick of the constant stays of execution and then there's this appeal and then there's something else where you look at the death penalty and why we have it. Even victims' families seems to really be turning on this. And I mean, those are the people that you could fault the least for wanting this to be the ultimate penalty. - Absolutely. I mean, I think when justice is so elusive, that is sold to victims' families as something that will bring closure. There have been a lot of studies done that show that often is not the case. It can be. But I think what's so hard is you have to balance a defendant's due process, which there are many, many checks and balances in a death penalty case against a family members wishes, obviously, to not be going back to court dates for 20 or 30 years. It's so painful. And that tension is really at the heart of the second half of the book. When you have a case that's as incredibly screwed up as James Daly's case, this is a case that Skullnick is the star witness in and results in a death sentence for James Daly, who I now know as Jim. When you have a case that's screwed up, it's gonna be caught in the courts for many, many years. - Let's talk about Jim. Let's just talk about kind of how he gets to the night of Shelley's murder. What's his deal? Like it's not great. Poor Jim, but also Jim need to also make some better decisions. Tell me a little bit about Jim. - Yeah, so the book is really the story of two men, Skullnick and Jim Daly, who both were born in the late 40s and the baby boom post were era, actually had fairly similar upbringings with abusive fathers and both showed a lot of promise early on. Jim was from Manhattan, Kansas. He was a really beloved figure there and was married and became a dad. But he went to Vietnam at the height of the Tet Offensive in 1968 and really went through some very difficult things. And I talk in the book about how Vietnam broke something in him that just really couldn't be put back together. And this becomes very poignant later in the book because Scalnick, of course, one of the many cons he runs as he's a stolen valor guy. He never spent a day in Vietnam, but he claims to have been this war hero, whereas Jim, who never speaks of his time in Vietnam, suffered greatly. And after really being broken in Vietnam, like so many men of his generation came home with terrible addiction problems and could not be free of them. And that leads him into the company of a man named Jack Piersi. They eventually end up in Florida in a place called Pinellas County just outside of Tampa on the golf coast of Florida. And that's where this case involving Shelley Bogeyau takes place. With Jim, there's, as I mentioned, there are kind of steps where you're like, oh man, come on. But what I find really epitomizes who he is to just kind of give a little bit of background. He ends up getting divorced. A friend of his basically steps in and becomes his ex-wife. New husband is starting to take care of his kids. And Jim himself kind of realizes that's what's best for his ex-wife and his kids and is almost in a way like supportive of it because he knows he just can't do it. And it's, you know, really tears your heart apart because you realize this is a selfless guy who wants to be better but knows he can't and can actually step back and say like the thought of have somebody else raising my child would drive me absolutely insane. But he seems to have a really good heart amidst a lot of bad decisions. I wanted to show the full dimension of who he is because spoiler he is on death row and has been for many years. And of course, there's a very black and white image of him because of that. But this is someone who deeply loves his children and the woman who became his ex-wife who's now back in his life who's really his lifelong love, Mary Kay. And when he was at his lowest really like just a broken human and could not be a dad and could not be a husband, he knew when he, like you said, he knew that this was what was best for his children and and his ex-wife. And one of the most poignant moments I think I heard in all the interviews I did about Jim was when his friend who's now married to the woman who's his ex-wife says to him, "Jim, I want to adopt your kids so they can keep military benefits," which you know, this man had. And they can stay at the same school. They can get great health care. Is that something you would allow me to do? And Jim says, "Yes." And then he says, "I wish you had adopt me." And that's really before he then sort of disappears and becomes this transient figure just not quite homeless but really on the margins of society. And I just found that to be that hit me really hard when I heard that in interviews. I'm going to jump ahead a little bit just to kind of streamline it for everybody. What my name Shelley is murdered. Is there any way with the facts that you know, facts that nobody can really argue with? Is there any way that Jim daily murdered Shelley? So Shelley Bogeyau, who is a 14-year-old girl in the area who Jack Peersey, Jim's housemate at the time, had been pursuing and was with that night. All indications I found in my reporting was that Jack committed this very, very brutal crime on his own and then shifted blame to Jim when law enforcement narrowed in. And without going into too many details, in addition to having been seen alone with her that night, having pursued her extensively, he offered multiple confessions later. This is after everyone's been convicted and were in modern times. He also recanted those numerous confessions, so it's very confusing. But there's nothing that I found that places Jim at the scene of the crime. And even at the time of his trial, I mean, there was no forensic evidence, there was no motive, there was no anything. There was the word of the prime suspect that was the only thing that put him there. And to get a death sentence out of that required someone like Paul Scalnick. Yeah, because Paul definitely said that Jim said he totally did it. Yes, Jim no other evidence whatsoever. Scalnick got up with the stand at Jim's trial and gave this very compelling dramatic testimony that said that Jim recalled stabbing Shelley and that she was looking at him and she was screaming and she wouldn't die. And the mechanics of how Scalnick would get this supposed confession are beyond absurd. He was in isolation at the time in the jail that they were in. But he was allowed to testify. He was allowed to tell the story and it was a shocking story, you know, and that helped, I think, put jurors over the edge into saying that death was the appropriate punishment. Now I want to keep the details behind the curtain. You and I know what happened, but it just like with Gilbert King's latest book that even when you have the murderer say out loud, oh, it was actually me. There is sometimes it's almost an impossibility to get a conviction overturned. Even when you have somebody who's like, yeah, you thought it was me, it is me and I'm telling you that right now. Again, we won't get into the details, especially of this case because, oh my god, but why is it so hard? Should it be so hard or is it prosecutors just refused to do anything about it or even when Gilbert's book, even when the prosecutors are like, hey, this is kind of messed up. It's almost impossible to get somebody out of jail. It seems. It's so hard. And when you do not have DNA evidence, which there was not in this case, it's close to impossible. The issue really is once you have a conviction in place, there's no presumption of innocence, of course, anymore. And the courts believe in the concept of finality. And that idea, it makes sense when you think about it that, okay, we can't litigate this forever. We had 12 jurors after lengthy period of time who saw live testimony make a determination. And that really is valued much more than other things are later, including even sometimes new evidence that comes to light. The way in which someone can be exonerated involves this almost impossible series of hoops that you have to jump through with very particular kinds of evidence being discovered at very particular times post-conviction that I will not bore us all with, but just know it's very, very difficult. And to me, what was so amazing was that this really very brief testimony by Paul Skalnek became enshrined as truth, you know, because he testified under oath, because a jury heard that and decided Jim was not just guilty, but deserving of death in the electric chair at the time that he was convicted in 1987, that became enshrined as truth, no matter what anyone did, no matter what Skalnek did, as you find out more later in the book to show just how it really was all lies. We're not going to tell everybody exactly what's happening right now, time now. But first of all, Shelley's murder was brutal and that's going to weigh on you enough. For you, you're also writing about somebody that, right, you've had contact with, you believe to be innocent as you're writing, you know, you know that this person is in jail unjustly. Does that weigh on you as you're writing this? Is it, does it get you kind of through that like, hey, I'm trying to write a room by writing this? Or, you know, are you crying yourself to sleep at night like poor Jim? You know, I first started going down the path of writing about criminal justice with a case back in 2010 here in Texas, so the man named Anthony Graves, who was on death row here, who has since been exonerated. And the work I did writing about his case and the work that his extraordinary lawyers did helped bring that about. And I will never forget for the rest of my life, the phone call I got from Anthony as he walked out of jail and got his freedom. And so it's not that I expect that or can even think about that happening in other cases that I write about. But I guess I look at it as how can I not write about these cases? I mean, once it becomes obvious that a number of people who I wrote about in the book are still in prison serving life and death sentences. How do I do anything else but write about that? And I think it's so easy to turn away from the fact that our criminal justice system is so imperfect, but it's really important to look at if we want to change it. Do you get gifts from Anthony to this day? I'm thinking Christmas and Hanukkah gifts you should probably be getting. I'm just saying if Anthony's listening, I hope you're following through, buddy. I think it's kind of a big deal. He is the most joyful person I have ever met and I know there's a lot that I don't see. I'm sure that's much harder. But the gift he gives me and I hope this doesn't sound too cheesy, but it is really true. Is the way that he sees the world around him, all the things we take for granted. You know, the first time he walked into a grocery store and saw all the produce, seeing colors, hugging and touching his family members. I mean, just the most basic elemental things. Seeing the world through his eyes has been the biggest gift I could possibly have. And he's just a very funny, wonderful person. Listen, that was very earnest and genuine. Totally cringe. We don't do that here. It's all true though. Back it down a little bit. Now, I want to talk about, because I feel like she might be listening. And there's one other array of light in this book that I think we need to talk about. I'm going to let you say her name. We talked about it right before we started this. Who kind of comes out of nowhere and brings a little light, the darkness on this one? I'm going to butcher her name. She's from the Netherlands. Mariecki Lauin. This was such an incredible moment as a reporter. So let me set the scene of how I connected with her and what she brought to the book. So I was writing a lot of this book during the pandemic and had no access to Jim or really anyone at that time. And I needed to describe a, you know, many decades of Jim being in prison. And how do you do that in an engaging way? How do you do? I mean, even interviewing him. There's only so much you're going to get. So I am contacted by Mariecki who became his penpal in the 1990s. And she was telling me this via email. And it was at that part of the pandemic early on when everyone was so stir crazy that, you know, it was actually a wonderful time to be interviewing people for a book, because people at all the time in the world. And she said to her, is there any chance you kept those letters that he sent you? And she said, well, I think so. I think they're in my attic. I'll go look. She kept everything. I mean, I think there's a letter here in there that's missing. And so I'm able to tell an enormous part of his life story through his own words really as it happened as he was writing to her and telling her about his experience in prison. That was such a find. And like, just such a windfall that, you know, every reporter hopes for a treasure trove like that. Now, I was definitely too general with my question. So let's go back. Tell me, generally speaking, people never talk about lawyers that raise of light. There are a number of lawyers in the last quarter of the book who really devote themselves to trying to get Jim exonerated or to at least getting him a lesser sentence. And to call this an uphill battle isn't really strong enough, right? So I was just so intrigued with these almost all young women lawyers who devoted themselves so completely to this cause. And, you know, started off skeptical. Did their homework. And I won't give away all the secrets of the end of the book. But as they go about their modern day investigation of the case, they find all sorts of stuff that would have changed the trajectory of this case had a really proper investigation taken place back in the 80s. But without giving away the end, I'll just say that, you know, that that isn't always in the quartz eyes, something that will change the outcome of a case like this. Yeah. The readers are going to, you know, punch the air a few times. It's it's very frustrating. Yeah. But listen, again, we have these lawyers. We have Mary Ecke. And thank you, Mary Ecke, for the wonderful Goodsreads comment. I very much appreciate it. So you got your shout out here. I want to do a little gain, a little bit of magic here. You've looked at the justice system, right? I think there's great things about it. There's things that we're talking about today. They're very worrisome. If I said to you, you can just write a law or an ethical guideline that will just go into force tomorrow. You don't have to send it through anything. It's just boom. Starting tomorrow, this is now true in the criminal justice system. Any particular one pop out to you right away. Granting myself, subpoena power would be amazing. But I don't think that's what you're asking. That's cheating. That's definitely cheating. Don't be selfish. I think to accurately answer your question, I would say that there really shouldn't be any place for someone like Paul Skellneck in the courtroom. Jill House informants are not something that belong in the criminal justice system and just to quickly explain the difference between a Jill House informant versus an informant. I think we're all familiar with what an informant is. Let's say there's a crime family and one of the more lowly members of that organization is brought in. And he's told, hey, if you tell us some things, we'll give you some leniency. So it's still what's called incentivized testimony and there are all sorts of debates about that. But I will say at least that person was a part of the criminal activity or witnessed it. A Jill House informant is someone who's a total stranger to the defendant who is claiming that this total stranger has told them their deepest darkest secrets and unburdened themselves before ever standing trial. Without any corroboration, these are witnesses that get on the stand and just say this happened. And here's how he said it to me. And in return, they get out of jail or prison more quickly. Sometimes they get money, they get favors, oftentimes those benefits are not disclosed to jurors. It's astonishing to me that this is allowed, but it's a part of our system. Let's change it up a little bit, right? First of all, I love this question now because you and I are talking because of this question. So now it's your turn. Do you get to read nonfiction for fun? Obviously you're a grazer. So we'll just find out if any of those are nonfiction, how much they are. And is there any specific authors you want to call out? Do you have any author friends that got books coming out you want to give them a plug? Okay, so we could do a whole hour on that, but I'll just say as far as titles this year, I'm finishing Tom's You Nodes memoir about his father, which is just an incredible book. The title is like 15 15 words long, so I won't attempt to botch it. Two books that are coming up that I just I cannot wait to get my hands on Bob Colcker's The Vanishing Family is going to be just an incredible book that comes out later this fall. And that's a book about a family where there's a genetic mutation and many, many members of the family get dementia at a very early age while others are fine and how that family navigates that. And while I know the subject sounds very heavy. Bob's writing is just so beautiful and so humane that I know it's going to be beautiful. And one other that's coming out this summer is a book by Rachel Evive, who's just one of my favorite favorite writers in New Yorker staff writer and it's called You Won't Get Free of It. And it's reported essays about mothers and daughters. And really with those three writers, Tom's You Nodes best known for a S. Guire piece called Falling Man about 9/11. And it's such masters of the craft that just everything they write is incredible and packably reported beautifully written. Okay, last question for you, Pam. Everybody gets this. So some people think nonfiction, even true crime. They're like true crime. It's gory. It can be boring or in this case, it can be quite sad. And some people just avoid nonfiction right now. We know that they are just poor misguided souls. They just don't know better. So if I sat one of them right in front of you and they said, why should I read catch the devil? What would you say? So first I have all that in mind when I'm writing as someone who really needs to be drawn into a book. I did so many things to try to flesh out who these characters are. Interesting why this time in place is fascinating to create a whole world around them. This is a very narrative forward piece. This is not a treat us about the criminal justice system. And I think I know I'm not the first person to say this on this podcast. But the idea that everything that's in that book, every sentence can be fact checked. Everything I'm describing. So much of it absolutely beyond belief. It all happened and I'm not sure if I can say that. And that to me is just so incredible. And there are things that happen in this book that had I put them in a work of fiction, my editor would have made me take them out because who's gonna believe that? But that release, what happened in real life. And I think that gives it some of its power. - Well Pam, I think it's fantastic. Obviously Lady History Nerd also thinks it's fantastic. Thank you so much for coming on to talk about it. - Thank you so much for having me. - And that's it for this episode. Pamela, thank you so much for coming on. Catch the devil, go out and get it people absolutely amazing. One of my favorites of the year hands down. In the meantime, hit us up Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, don't forget to hit the YouTube channel. Until next time, nerds, stay cool. (upbeat music) History Nerd seem like it.