Florida Set to Execute Daniel Conahan in 'Hog Trail Murders' Case

A Florida man convicted in one of a string of killings that became known as the "Hog Trail Murders" was scheduled to be executed Thursday, in what would be the state's 15th execution this year.

Daniel Owen Conahan Jr., 72, was sentenced to death for the 1996 kidnapping and strangling of Richard Allen Montgomery. Montgomery's mutilated body was discovered in a wooded area of southwest Florida where authorities found the remains of at least six people over a three-year period.

Conahan has maintained his innocence and has argued that the evidence against him was circumstantial. Authorities have previously identified him as a person of interest in the other deaths, though he was never charged in connection with them.

He was arrested in July 1996 after local and state law enforcement spent more than two years investigating a series of homicides in which mutilated and decomposing bodies were found in a wooded area of Charlotte County, north of Fort Myers. As the number of bodies rose, so did media attention, and the deaths eventually were dubbed the "Hog Trail Murders" because of the swampy, wooded locations where the remains were discovered. The case has been featured over the past three decades on true-crime television shows, YouTube channels and podcasts.

The first body was found by hunters in February 1994, followed by at least five more over the next three years. Most of the remains were severely decomposed, but investigators believed Montgomery had been dead for less than a day when he was found. Detectives eventually determined that the killer was targeting homeless men.

Conahan came under scrutiny in 1996 after a man imprisoned for stealing his car claimed that Conahan had lured him to a remote area and offered to pay him to pose for nude photos. The man said he drove off in the car after seeing a knife. Detectives later learned of a similar case in Fort Myers, in which a victim said a man who offered cash for nude photos had tied him to a tree and tried to strangle him. Conahan was initially arrested and charged with attempted murder, and several months later was also charged in Montgomery's death.

He waived his right to a jury trial and was convicted by a judge of murder and kidnapping in August 1999.

Conahan was never charged with any other homicides, but a sheriff's office report on the investigation concluded that all of the victims found within a 10-mile (16-kilometer) radius were likely killed by the same person. In 2007, a land survey crew discovered eight bodies in Fort Myers. The four victims identified by authorities were homeless, and officials said they suffered injuries similar to those of the Charlotte County victims. Investigators at the time publicly named Conahan, who was already on Florida's death row, as a person of interest, but he was never charged.

The Florida Supreme Court last week denied Conahan's final appeals, including one seeking additional testing on DNA collected from the victim. The court ruled that proving Montgomery had DNA on his body from someone other than Conahan would not exonerate him. A final appeal remains pending before the U.S. Supreme Court.

Conahan was scheduled to die by lethal injection in the nation's busiest death chamber. Florida has carried out more than half of the 24 executions in the U.S. so far this year under Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, who leaves office in January. A total of 47 people were executed in the U.S. in 2025, with Florida leading at 19 lethal injections, a state record since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976. In July, Florida executed two prisoners in one day, the first state in nearly a decade to do so.