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Updated: August 13, 2026 @ 10:17 am
Daniel Conahan (Credit: WINK News)
Gov. Ron DeSantis on Tuesday signed the death warrant for inmate Daniel Owen Conahan Jr., who was known as the “Hog Trail Killer” and who was convicted of a 1996 murder in Charlotte County.
Gov. Ron DeSantis on Tuesday signed the death warrant for inmate Daniel Owen Conahan Jr., who was known as the “Hog Trail Killer” and who was convicted of a 1996 murder in Charlotte County.
Daniel Conahan (Credit: WINK News)
CHARLOTTE COUNTY, Fla. (WINK) — Gov. Ron DeSantis on Tuesday signed the death warrant for inmate Daniel Owen Conahan Jr., who was known as the “Hog Trail Killer” and who was convicted of a 1996 murder in Charlotte County.
Conahan Jr. was convicted of killing 21-year-old Richard Montgomery in Charlotte County in 1999. Now, 30 years after Montgomery’s murder Conahan is set to die by lethal injection next month.
Conahan, 72, is scheduled to be put to death by lethal injection Sept. 10, according to the warrant that put the window for the execution at Florida State Prison in Starke between noon that day and noon Sept. 17.
Crystal Spittler was friends with Montgomery in high school. She remembers him as a good person and someone who didn’t deserve to be murdered.
“I believe it is about time. He’s been there long enough. Taxpayers have been paying for him long enough. I think it’s about time,” Spittler said.
Montgomery was last seen April 16, 1996. Court records say he told friends he was going to make a few hundred dollars and would be back soon. He had also told his mother someone offered him $200 to pose for nude photographs.
According to court records, Conahan, an unemployed nurse, lured Montgomery into the woods in northern Charlotte County to take nude bondage photos.
Montgomery’s body was found a day later in a wooded area of northern Charlotte County, wrapped in carpet padding. He had been strangled. Investigators were in the woods because county workers found the decomposing remains of another man later identified as Kenneth Smith.
Conahan was arrested in February 1997, accused of raping Montgomery, strangling him and cutting off his genitals to eliminate DNA tracing.
Law enforcement tied Conahan to Montgomery through a police report filed in Fort Myers by Stanley Burden, who claimed to have been assaulted after being offered $150 to pose nude while tied to a tree in 1994. Fibers linking Conahan to both Burden and Montgomery were reportedly found at Conahan’s home.
“It’s very sad,” Spittler said.
Conahan was initially charged in July 1996 with attempted murder of Burden. The charge was dropped when Conahan was charged with Montgomery’s murder. An attorney for Conahan sought to discredit Burden by noting he was a convicted pedophile.
From 1994 to 1997, about five young men were also found murdered in Charlotte, Sarasota and Lee counties and detectives believe Conahan could be connected to all of them. Investigators believe Conahan lured his victims into the woods, forced them to get naked, strangled them, and cut off their genitals. It was Conahan’s M.O., to tie up his victims, take photographs of them and murder them.
Conahan was investigated but not charged in the deaths of five other men found in wooded areas from North Port to Fort Myers between 1993 and 1996. The first body found was discovered in 1994 by hog hunters in northern Charlotte County.
Conahan has long been a suspect in connection with the set of eight human remains found in Fort Myers in 2007 off of Arcadia Street. Investigators submitted DNA profiles for each of the eight male skeletons from 2007 to the University of North Texas Center for Human Identification. The database is a national clearinghouse for DNA profiles of missing persons and the unidentified dead.
Public Awareness campaigns were also conducted by detectives and families that reported a missing family members. Over time, four of the subjects were identified: Jonathan Tihay, Johnathan Blevins, and Eric Kohler and Robert Ronald Soden.
WINK News spoke with Jonathan Blevins’s mother in 2022 and she shared some thoughts about what happened when and since her son vanished.
“He just left the house and said he’d be back … and he never came back,” Blevins said.
Conahan has contested his conviction of the Montgomery murder and death sentence over the years.
With his execution less than a month away, his attorneys are seeking more time for DNA testing. The state has objected.
For Montgomery’s friend, the wait has been long.
“I think that his victims will finally get a little justice and closure. It’s been a long time coming,” Spittler said.
After a modern-era record 19 executions last year, Florida has executed 12 inmates in 2026, and the warrant for Conahan is the 15th DeSantis has signed this year.
William Frances Silvia, 61, is scheduled to die Aug. 18 for fatally shooting his estranged wife at her mother’s Casselberry-area home in 2006.
Harold Gene Lucas, 74, is to be executed Sept. 1 over the death of his 16-year-old former girlfriend in Bonita Springs almost 50 years ago.
Appearing at the Florida Sheriffs Association Summer Conference at Trump National Doral on July 28, DeSantis said capital punishment is needed to “bring justice” as “some of the victims’ families have been waiting a long time.”
“It doesn’t take away what happened,” he continued. “I don’t know if closure is the right word, because you’ll probably never get full closure. But at least knowing justice was served is something that was very important to a lot of people.”
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