Daniel Owen Conahan Jr. is scheduled to be executed by lethal injection Thursday evening for the 1996 kidnapping and strangling of Richard Allen Montgomery, a killing tied to the cases known as the Hog Trail Murders. Between 1994 and 1997, investigators recovered the remains of at least six men from a wooded area of Charlotte County, and authorities believed the killer targeted homeless men who camped and traveled along trails north of Fort Myers. Conahan was convicted of Montgomery’s murder in 1999 after waiving a jury trial. He has maintained his innocence, was investigated as a person of interest in the other deaths, and was never charged in them.
The execution is moving forward after both the Florida Supreme Court and the U.S. Supreme Court denied Conahan’s final appeals this week. At 72, he becomes part of a record pace of capital punishment in Florida. Under Governor Ron DeSantis, the state has carried out 15 executions in 2026, accounting for more than half of the 24 executions nationwide so far this year.
For longtime Suncoast residents, the case remains one of the region’s darkest chapters, both because of the number of victims and the questions that were never answered. Families of the other men found in those woods have never seen anyone charged. Thursday closes one chapter of a story that true-crime audiences have followed for decades, but for many here, it leaves the biggest questions open.
Do you think the Hog Trail case ever got the attention it deserved? Let us know in the comments.
