Attorneys for Daniel Owen Conahan, 72, petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court this week for a stay of execution. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed Conahan’s death warrant on August 11th, scheduling the convicted murderer for death via lethal injection on Thursday, September 10th. His legal team filed a request with the Supreme Court on Monday, potentially halting proceedings for several days, weeks, or even months.
Conahan has been on Florida’s death row since 1999. A Florida jury convicted Conahan for the 1996 kidnapping and murder of Richard Montgomery. Court documents from the time of the trial reveal that Conahan lured Montgomery to a remote dumping area in Charlotte County, where he promised the other man payment for nude, bondage-style photographs. Montgomery’s body was later found with ligature marks on his neck, chest, and legs. A forensic analysis in the 1990s proved that Montgomery, who was only 21 at the time of his death, died via asphyxia from strangulation. Conahan’s appeal to the Supreme Court is based in part on the fact that Governor DeSantis signed Conahan’s death warrant while a petition requesting DNA testing for evidence found at the Montgomery crime scene was still pending.
“Mr. Conahan does not ask to be declared innocent at this posture. Nor does he ask to be released from prison. All he asks is for this Court to stay his imminent execution so that this Court can review his meritorious claims,” Conahan’s Supreme Court filing says.
If Conahan’s stay of execution is denied, then he would become the 15th inmate executed by Florida this year.
Two years prior to kidnapping and murdering Richard Montgomery, a drifter in Fort Myers named Stanley Burden informed police that Conahan had propositioned him for sexual photographs before tying him to a tree and attempting to strangle him. This case helped investigators establish a possible pattern employed by Conahan, and since the 1990s, the convicted murderer has been accused of being Florida’s infamous “Hog Trail Killer.”
Between 1994 and 1996, five bodies were found in rural dumping areas known locally as “hog trails” by residents of Charlotte County. The first body, which was discovered on February 1, 1994, was not positively identified as Gerald “Jerry” Lombard of Lowell, Massachusetts until a DNA match was found in an electronic database in 2021. Later, on April 17, 1996, several more bodies were found in the general area of the Jerry Lombard crime scene, with one of the bodies identified as Kenneth Smith of Naples, Florida. The other was identified as Richard Montgomery.
In total, a dozen bodies were discovered in the 1990s, and most were pinned on the as-yet unmasked Hog Trail Killer. Then, during a 2007 land survey conducted in a wooded section of East Fort Myers, eight skeletal remains of adult males between the ages of 18 and 49 were uncovered. Of those eight, only four have been identified so far: Robert Ronald “Bobbie” Soden, Jonathan Tihay, Johnathan Blevins, and Eric Kohler. These four victims were between the ages of 21 and 26, and most were unemployed drifters who either lived in Fort Myers or spent most of their time in the coastal city. All eight skeletons showed similar wounds and injuries to Richard Montgomery.
The Hog Trail Killer’s M.O. of soliciting sex or sexual photographs from young, male drifters, plus his signature of dumping their strangled bodies in little-used dumping areas across southwestern Florida matches perfectly with the known facts in the Richard Montgomery case. Investigators zeroed in on Conahan following the events of May 24, 1996. On that day, Conahan offered undercover deputy Scott Clemens $7 to see his penis or $20 for a sex act. Clemens refused, but Conahan returned to Kiwanis Park the next day with another offer. This time, the killer proposed nude photographs for a $150 payout. Six days later, Conahan’s home and vehicles were searched. Detectives found paint samples from Conahan’s Mercury Capri that matched a paint chip found on Richard Montgomery’s body.
Conahan was indicted for first-degree premeditated murder, first-degree felony murder, kidnapping, and sexual battery on February 25, 1997. To this day, Conahan remains only a “person of interest” in the Hog Trail Killer case.
