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yesterday

Florida Executes Convicted 'Hog Trail' Suspect Daniel Conahan Jr.

The execution ends the state's legal case against Conahan as questions about other unsolved Hog Trail killings persist.

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FILE - Law enforcement vehicles sit parked outside the Florida state prison in Starke, Fla., on Tuesday, July 28, 2026. (AP Photo/David Fischer, file)
Gov. Ron DeSantis speaks at an event in Palm City, Florida, on Sept. 9, 2026.
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Overview

  • Prison officials carried out Conahan's execution by lethal injection Thursday, with time of death reported at 6:12 p.m.
  • Conahan was convicted by a judge in August 1999 after waiving a jury on charges of kidnapping and the 1996 strangling of Richard Allen Montgomery.
  • The Florida Supreme Court denied his final appeals and a request for more DNA testing, and a last petition to the U.S. Supreme Court did not stop the execution.
  • Authorities have long named Conahan a person of interest in multiple 1990s 'Hog Trail' killings of largely homeless men but he was never charged in those additional cases.
  • The case renews focus on the Hog Trail murders, a cluster of mutilation deaths found in wooded, swampy areas north of Fort Myers in the mid-1990s, and highlights Florida's high number of executions this year.