Daniel Owen Conahan Jr. went to his death at 72, executed by lethal injection for the kidnapping and strangling of Richard Allen Montgomery in a case that haunted southwest Florida for nearly three decades.
Conahan was the only person ever charged in Montgomery's killing, though investigators long suspected him in a string of slayings known as the "Hog Trail Murders," a grim chapter in Charlotte County history that left at least six bodies scattered across a stretch of remote woodland.
He maintained his innocence until the end. The courts disagreed, and Florida carried out the sentence after both the Florida Supreme Court and the U.S. Supreme Court denied his final appeals.
Montgomery's mutilated body was found in a wooded area of Charlotte County, Florida, in 1996. His death was not an isolated discovery. Over a three-year span, at least six bodies turned up in the same general area, the New York Post reported. Investigators concluded that all victims found within a 10-mile radius were likely killed by the same person.
The killings became known locally as the Hog Trail Murders, named for the rural terrain where the remains were recovered. Despite the pattern, prosecutors brought charges against Conahan in only one case: Montgomery's.
Conahan was also identified as a person of interest in additional homicides, including eight bodies found in Fort Myers in 2007. He was never charged in any of those deaths.
Conahan argued throughout his appeals that the evidence against him was circumstantial. His legal team pressed a DNA argument, contending that genetic material from someone other than Conahan had been found on Montgomery's body.
The Florida Supreme Court was unmoved. The court ruled that proving Montgomery had DNA on his body from someone other than Conahan would not exonerate him. That finding effectively closed the door on his strongest appellate claim.
With the state court ruling in place, Conahan's attorneys turned to the U.S. Supreme Court. The justices declined to intervene, clearing the way for the execution to proceed.
Conahan's execution fits into a broader pattern of capital punishment in Florida under Governor Ron DeSantis. The state executed 19 people in 2025, a state record since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976, AP News reported. That figure accounted for more than half of the 24 total executions carried out across the entire United States that year.
No other state came close to matching Florida's pace. The numbers reflect DeSantis's willingness to sign death warrants and push cases through the final stages of appellate review, a posture that has drawn both praise from law-and-order conservatives and criticism from death penalty opponents.
The Hog Trail Murders remain, in practical terms, largely unsolved. Conahan was convicted of killing one man. At least five other victims found in the same woods during the same period have no one held accountable for their deaths.
Investigators concluded the killings were likely the work of a single person. If that conclusion is correct, Conahan's execution closes the case against the only suspect authorities ever publicly identified. If it is wrong, the real answers may have died with him, or may still be waiting in Charlotte County's case files.
Authorities have not publicly confirmed whether any active investigation continues into the remaining Hog Trail deaths. No additional suspects have been named. The families of the other victims have received no public update on the status of those cases.
Montgomery was killed in 1996. Conahan spent decades on death row, exhausting every available legal challenge. NBC News reported on the final stages of his case as the execution date approached, detailing the long procedural path that ended with lethal injection.
Nearly 30 years passed between the crime and the punishment. For supporters of capital punishment, the timeline itself is an indictment of a system that allows condemned killers to litigate for decades. For opponents, the circumstantial nature of the evidence and the unresolved DNA questions raise doubts that can never be answered now.
Conahan never confessed. He never cooperated with investigators on the other Hog Trail cases. Whatever he knew about those woods and those victims, he took with him.
The courts found the evidence sufficient to convict Conahan and sufficient to kill him. That is the legal answer. The factual questions are messier. A string of bodies in the same patch of Florida scrubland, one conviction, and a suspect who went to his grave saying he was innocent.
Florida's death chamber delivered finality for one case. The others remain open wounds, with no suspect, no charges, and no public sign that anyone is still looking.
When a state executes the only person it ever suspected in a serial killing spree, it had better be right. The courts said Florida was. The families of the other victims are still waiting for someone to say the same about their cases.
