Daniel Conahan

Daniel Owen Conahan Jr. (born May 11, 1954) is a convicted American murderer, rapist, and suspected serial killer.

Conahan was convicted of one murder, but has been linked to a dozen murders, mostly of transients seeking employment and gay men in the Charlotte County, Florida area in what came to be known as the Hog Trail Murders.

Daniel Conahan was born on May 11, 1954, in Charlotte, North Carolina, to a middle-class family and moved with his parents to Punta Gorda, Florida, shortly after his birth.

When he was a teenager, he discovered he was homosexual; this displeased his parents, who sent him to several psychiatrists.

Conahan frequently told friends that his sexuality was not a disease and how he was angered by having been mistreated and traumatised by his parents for his homosexuality.

"It wasn't the kind of thing you were open about in the 1970s," Conahan later told investigators.

"But I found a gay bar, and if I got there early, they wouldn't card me. Being gay is part of God's plan, too."

He graduated Miami Norland High School in 1973 where classmates later described Conahan as a quiet loner, participating in school activities sporadically, and joined the United States Navy in 1977, stationed at Naval Station Great Lakes in Illinois.

In 1978, he was nearly court-martialed for taking fellow Naval officers off base for sex, and was discharged a few months later after getting into a fight with a man upon whom he had attempted to force oral sex.

After his Navy discharge, Conahan stayed in Chicago for thirteen years before moving back to Punta Gorda to live with his elderly parents in 1993.

Conahan is believed to have been responsible for the Hog Trail Murders in Florida between 1993 and 1996.

He is currently incarcerated and on death row for the murder of one of the victims, Richard Montgomery.

Although he has yet to be brought to trial on the other killings, he is generally believed to have committed them.

Furthermore, since Conahan's incarceration, several additional remains have been discovered and he has been named a suspect in those deaths as well.

Later, police linked Conahan to a 1994 Fort Myers police report where Stanley Burden had been propositioned, tied to a tree, and nearly strangled.

Burden survived and had rope scars on his body two years later.

Conahan's credit cards were subpoenaed and his house was searched, turning up evidence linking him to both Burden and Montgomery.

In 1995, he became a licensed practical nurse, graduating at the top of his class from Charlotte Vocational-Technical Center and was employed by Charlotte Regional Medical Center in Punta Gorda.

Conahan spent the majority of his spare time frequenting gay bars.

"I learned there are a lot of hitchhikers on U.S. 41 from North Port to Fort Myers, and some of them were looking to perform sex acts for money," he told detectives.

He had a criminal record for minor offenses and was last seen in 1995, but was never reported missing.

According to his mother, he mentioned plans to "go out" and to return shortly afterward.

Shortly after Blevins' identification, a second victim was identified that same month as 21-year-old Erik David Kohler.

Kohler disappeared from Port Charlotte, Florida sometime during October 1995.

He was a drifter who was last seen in October 1995 in Fort Myers, Florida, when he called his mother to ask for money.

A victim who was formerly known as "Victim H" was identified in September 2022 as 30-year-old Robert Ronald “Bobbie” Soden of Fort Myers, Florida, who disappeared in 1996.

Four of the decedents remain unidentified.

In May 1996, several witnesses directed police to Daniel Conahan, including one who had escaped him when Conahan's car became stuck while driving him down a dirt road.

Conahan has also been named the prime suspect in the additional murders of eight men, collectively referred to as the Fort Myers Eight, who were discovered in a mass grave site in 2007.

On March 23, 2007, eight skulls and skeletal remains were found in a wooded area in Fort Myers, the largest such discovery in Florida history.

These came to be known as the Fort Myers Eight.

In a forested area at Rockfill and Arcadia Streets, a property surveyor had initially found two human skulls.

With the help of area agencies, cadaver dogs, and forensic experts, the Fort Myers Police Department was able to retrieve a total of eight sets of skeletal remains.

They found no clothing nor remnants of coffins, body bags, or anything else that might be used to hold human remains.

There were no tracks or other indications that someone had recently visited the area.

Although a connection to a closed funeral home was considered possible, speculation soon turned to Conahan.

The medical examiner has ruled the deaths to be homicides and Stanley Burden, the star witness at Conahan's trial, had been attacked within a mile of the site where the eight skeletons were found.

In November 2007, 38-year-old John Blevins was the first victim of the Fort Myers Eight to be identified.

He had a transient lifestyle and lived in the Fort Myers area.

In September 2008, Jonathan James Tihay, 24, was the third victim to be identified.