The state of Florida executed 72-year-old Daniel Conahan Jr. at 6:12 p.m. Thursday. He was sentenced to death for the kidnapping and murder of 21-year-old Richard Montgomery in 1996 in Charlotte County, but he is believed to be linked to several other murders in Southwest Florida.
He had no last words.
“The execution took place without incident,” Jordan Kirkland, said the communications director for the Florida Department of Corrections.
He was the 15th person to be executed by the state in 2026, following a record-breaking 2025, during which 19 people were executed.
The crime
On April 16, 1996, Montgomery told his friends he was going out to make $200 and would return soon, but he did not give them any details.
He told his mother that someone had offered him $200 to pose for nude photographs, according to court documents.
The next day, his nude body was found in the woods of Charlotte County, with visible signs of trauma. His genitalia had also been removed.
An autopsy showed Montgomery died from strangulation. Marks on his waist, wrists and neck indicated he had been tied to a tree, according to court documents.
Paint chips found on Montgomery’s body were indistinguishable from those found in Conahan’s father’s car, which he often used, according to court documents.
Credit card records also showed Conahan bought clothesline, Polaroid film, a knife and pliers at a Walmart in Punta Gorda, where he lived at the time.
Two years earlier, a man named Stanley Burden told police he was assaulted by Conahan in the woods of Fort Myers, and the details of the assault were similar to those in Montgomery’s case.
Conahan lured Burden into the woods by offering Burden money to pose for nude, bondage-style photos.
Conahan then tied Burden to a tree and sexually assaulted him. He then attempted to strangle Burden for 30 minutes but was unsuccessful, eventually leaving him tied to the tree.
Conahan was never charged with the assault, but police reviewed Burden’s statement after Montgomery was found dead because of the similarities between the cases.
The review of the statement led police to initiate an undercover investigation into Conahan, during which he offered an undercover officer money to pose for nude photographs.
During a police interview, Conahan also told police he had fantasies about bondage and sex.
In February 1997, Conahan was charged with first-degree murder, sexual battery and kidnapping in connection with Montgomery’s death, nearly a year after Montgomery was found dead.
Although he was never formally charged, Conahan was a person of interest in several other murder cases in Fort Myers and Charlotte County.
Five bodies were found between 1994 and 1996 in woods near where Montgomery’s body was found, in an area known as the Hog Trail. They became known as the Hog Trail murders.
The decomposed remains of Kenneth Smith were also found a half-mile from Montgomery’s body, and roughly a dozen total bodies were found in the area. One of the bodies was unidentified until 2021.
The skeletal remains of eight men were discovered in the woods of East Fort Myers in 2007, near where Burden said he was assaulted. The bodies had similar marks to those found on the Charlotte County bodies.
Conahan was named as a person of interest in the Fort Myers murders but was never charged.
The punishment
Conahan waived his right to a jury trial.
Conahan was found guilty of first-degree premeditated murder and kidnapping during his 1999 sentencing trial, and a jury unanimously recommended death, to which he was sentenced.
He was acquitted of the sexual battery charge.
He filed several appeals in the years following, but all were denied.
The Florida Supreme Court affirmed his death sentence in 2003. He then appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court but was again denied.
On Jan. 17, 2025, Conahan filed a motion for post-conviction DNA testing, but was denied on Aug. 12, just one day after Gov. Ron DeSantis signed his death warrant.
He argued advances in DNA technology might show a third person’s DNA on Montgomery’s fingernails, potentially supporting his claim that he was not the murderer. However, the Florida Supreme Court denied his request for DNA testing, finding there was no reasonable probability that having the DNA evidence would have changed the outcome of the trial.
His defense also argued the DNA of a third unidentified person was found at the scene. But the Florida Supreme Court noted that the area was commonly used as a trash dump, and therefore it wasn’t unusual that random DNA was found there, according to the court’s explanation for the appeal denial.
The day of the execution
A charter bus carrying about 60 people from Daytona Beach arrived at the lawn across from the Florida State Prison just before 5 p.m. Thursday.
They unloaded lawn chairs, a tarp, speakers and a cylindrical gong plastered with anti-death-penalty stickers from the undercarriage of the bus and carried the items to the side of the lawn labeled “opponents.”
The group, many of whom are members of the Our Lady of Lourdes church, drive the two hours from Daytona Beach to the prison ahead of every execution to hold a vigil and show their opposition to capital punishment.
They were joined by Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty Executive Director Grace Hanna.
“The evidence underlying that conviction is shockingly thin,” she said. “There’s no DNA linking him to the crime.”
She added that Conahan’s execution is just another example of the state inflicting violence.
Emmjolee Waters, who directs the Death Penalty Abolition program at the Catholic Mobilizing Network, also came to the prison, traveling from Washington, D.C., to oppose the execution.
“I think every person has human dignity,” she said. “ I believe in mercy and redemption.”
She added that accountability can happen without the state taking a person’s life.
“I think about the state of Florida, and the sheer number of executions,” Waters said. “It’s a reminder that we have to continue to be persistent in this work.”
On the other side of the lawn, separated from the opponents by a large tree, stood Bill Campbell of Marion County, a supporter of the death penalty.
“I’m here for the protestors,” he said. “They stop coming, I stop coming.”
He said he thinks the protesters are nice people, detailing a time when a storm blew his table over and someone came over to help him pack up, but they have just “got it wrong.”
He was joined by Daniel Garcia who drove from South Carolina to the prison to support the execution of Conahan, citing the brutality of the murder and Conahan’s connections to the other murders in the mid-1990s as the reason.
“I support the death penalty and I understand the controversy surrounding it,” he said. “However, the facts of this case, there’s really no other sanction that will be tantamount to justice.”
Garcia added that signing a death warrant shouldn’t be easy, but sometimes it’s the right thing to do.
He stayed outside the prison long after a surprise thunderstorm drove the other protestors inside.