A Florida man convicted in one of the so-called ‘Hog Trail Murders’ was put to death on Thursday, becoming the state’s 15th person executed this year.

Daniel Owen Conahan Jr., 72, was pronounced dead at 6:12pm after receiving a three-drug lethal injection at Florida State Prison. 

His last meal included chicken, a baked potato, corn, soda and pumpkin pie. 

He had been sentenced to die for the 1996 kidnapping and strangling of Richard Allen Montgomery, whose mutilated body was found in a wooded southwest Florida area where authorities found the remains of at least six people over a three-year span.

Conahan was already strapped to a gurney with an IV in his arm when the curtain to the death chamber went up at 6pm. 

A spiritual adviser was at his feet and prayed throughout the process.

The team warden asked Conahan if he had any final statement, and Conahan replied, ‘No sir.’ The deadly drug cocktail began to flow at 6:01pm. 

Conahan began to pant and then twitch briefly before going still. Several minutes later, the warden shook Conahan and shouted his name but there was no response.

Police now say he was the first victim of Daniel Conahan, a convicted murderer and rapist who killed a string of men in the 1990s in what became known as the Hog Trail Murders

Police believed Conahan to be the killer in at least ten murders but never managed to linke him to all of them with solid evidence

A medic entered the death chamber at 6:11pm to check for vitals, and Conahan was declared dead a minute later.

Conahan died in the nation’s busiest death chamber. Florida has carried out more than half the 25 total executions in the US so far this year under Republican Governor Ron DeSantis, who leaves office in January.

Conahan was identified by authorities as a person of interest in the other deaths, but he was never charged. He argued the evidence against him in Montgomery’s death was circumstantial.

Conahan was arrested in July 1996 after local and state law enforcement officials spent more than two years investigating a series of homicides in which mutilated and decomposing bodies were discovered in a wooded area of Charlotte County, north of Fort Myers.

As the number of bodies increased, so did media coverage. 

The deaths eventually were dubbed the ‘Hog Trail Murders’ because of the swampy, wooded locations where the bodies were found. 

The case has been featured many times over the past three decades on true-crime television shows, YouTube channels and podcasts.

Hunters found the first body in February 1994, and at least five more were discovered over the next three years. 

While most of the remains were severely decomposed, investigators believed Montgomery was found within 24 hours of his death. 

Investigators eventually determined the killer was targeting homeless men.

Detectives started looking into Conahan in 1996 after a man in prison claimed 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.

Later, detectives learned about a case with similarities in Fort Myers, in which a victim claimed a man who offered cash for nude photos had tied him to a tree and attempted to strangle him. 

Conahan was arrested and charged with attempted murder, and several months later was also charged in Montgomery´s death.

Conahan 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 about the investigation concluded that all of the victims discovered within a 10-mile radius were likely killed by the same person.

Exactly how many deaths may ultimately be connected to Conahan remains unclear, with roughly a dozen bodies discovered across cases investigators suspected could be the work of a serial killer.

Beyond Montgomery, authorities found the remains of four other victims linked to the so-called Hog Trail Murders in the same general area of Charlotte and Sarasota counties.

A body that had been referred to as a John Doe for 27 years but was identified as that of Jerry Lombard in 2021, who vanished from his home in Florida in 1991

The mystery surrounding the Hog Trail victims continued for decades after Conahan was sent to death row.

In 2021, advances in genetic genealogy finally gave a name to one of the mutilated bodies discovered during the original investigation.

Jerry Lombard had been known only as a John Doe for 27 years after his remains were discovered in Charlotte County in 1994.

Lombard had disappeared in 1991, and investigators eventually identified him after DNA taken from his remains was connected to one of his relatives through genetic genealogy.

A forensic anthropologist had submitted a tooth from the unidentified remains to the University of North Texas Center for Human Identification in 2013. Detectives later enlisted the FBI, before genealogy work produced the breakthrough years later.

Lombard came from a huge family of 17 children, meaning investigators had an extensive network of relatives against which they could attempt to establish his identity.

His identification again focused attention on the disturbing similarities between the men found dead in the area and the possibility that Conahan had left behind far more victims than the one murder for which he was convicted.

Investigators believed the killer targeted vulnerable men, sometimes enticing them into secluded areas with offers of money to pose for photographs.

One man survived an alleged encounter with Conahan and later told investigators that he had been tied to a tree and strangled after being offered cash to pose for nude pictures – an account that became crucial as detectives closed in on him.

Then came another disturbing discovery in 2007, when a land survey crew stumbled across the skeletal remains of eight men in woods in East Fort Myers.

The victims – who became known collectively as the ‘Fort Myers Eight’ – bore similarities to those found years earlier in Charlotte County, including the circumstances and condition in which their remains were discovered.

Police did not formally declare that the two sets of killings were connected, although Conahan was publicly identified as a person of interest in the Fort Myers investigation, but he was never charged.

A Florida Gulf Coast University criminologist said at the time that the similarities between the cases were difficult to ignore.

According to corrections officials, 11 victim family members attended Thursday’s execution, but the officials wouldn’t say if they were relatives of Montgomery or of Conahan’s other suspected victims.

Joan Rodemann, the sister of a Hog Trail victim named William Melaragno, released a written statement saying that her family would celebrate Conahan’s death.

‘Finally, the gates of HELL will open and you can join the other soulless spawns of the devil. Sadly, you won’t feel the pain or fear you horrifically brought onto your victims,’ Rodemann said. 

‘Our prayers are for the victims and their families.’

A total of 47 people were executed in the US in 2025. Florida led the way with 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. 

Another Florida execution is planned shortly, that of Curtis Wilkie Beasley, 77, on September 29. 

Beasley was convicted of beating a woman to death with a hammer and stealing her car in 1995.

All Florida executions are by injection of a sedative, a paralytic and a drug that stops the heart, according to the Department of Corrections.