Daniel Conahan | |
---|---|
Born | Daniel Owen Conahan Jr. May 11, 1954 |
Other names | The Hog Trail Killer |
Occupation | Licensed practical nurse |
Criminal status | Incarcerated in Union Correctional Institution |
Conviction(s) | First degree murder, Kidnapping |
Criminal penalty | Death |
Details | |
Victims | 1 convicted 8+ suspected |
Date apprehended | July 3, 1996 |
Daniel Owen Conahan Jr. (born May 11, 1954) [1] is an American convicted 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. 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.
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." [2] 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. [2] 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. In 1995, he became a licensed practical nurse, graduating at the top of his class from Charlotte Vocational-Technical Center [2] 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.
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.
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. [21] [22] 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. [23]
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. 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. [24] 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. In September 2008, Jonathan James Tihay, 24, was the third victim to be identified. 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. [25] 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. [26] 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. [27] Conahan's credit cards were subpoenaed and his house was searched, turning up evidence linking him to both Burden and Montgomery. On July 3, 1996, Conahan was arrested and brought to Lee County for the attempted murder of Burden. [27] The following February, he was charged with the murder of Montgomery, while the attempted murder charges in the Burden case were dropped. [10] [11]
Conahan was tried for the 1996 kidnapping and murder of victim Richard Allen Montgomery. In Punta Gorda, he waived his right to a jury trial on August 9, 1999, thereby electing a bench trial. The star witness was Stanley Burden, who authorities alleged had been nearly killed by Conahan in 1994. Conahan's attorney rebutted that Burden was an imprisoned pedophile, serving a 10-to-25-year sentence in Ohio. [28] On August 17, 1999, Judge William Blackwell deliberated for 25 minutes and found Conahan guilty of first-degree premeditated murder and kidnapping. [29] Conahan succeeded in moving the penalty phase of his trial to Collier County but, in November, a jury recommended a sentence of death and Judge Blackwell agreed on December 10. [30] Conahan is currently housed at Union Correctional Institution in Raiford, Florida. [23]
The case was covered by many true crime television shows, such as: The New Detectives , Most Evil , Forensic Factor and Buried in the Backyard.
Theodore Robert Bundy was an American serial killer who kidnapped, raped, and murdered dozens of young women and girls during the 1970s. After more than a decade of denials, he confessed to 30 murders. The total number of his victims is likely to be higher.
The Cleveland Torso Murderer, also known as the Mad Butcher of Kingsbury Run, was an unidentified serial killer who was active in Cleveland, Ohio, United States, in the 1930s. The killings were characterized by the dismemberment of thirteen known victims and the disposal of their remains in the impoverished neighborhood of Kingsbury Run. Most victims came from an area east of Kingsbury Run called "The Roaring Third" or "Hobo Jungle", known for its bars, gambling dens, brothels and vagrants. Despite an investigation of the murders, which at one time was led by famed lawman Eliot Ness, the murderer was never apprehended.
Dean Arnold Corll was an American serial killer and sex offender who abducted, raped, tortured, and murdered a minimum of twenty-eight teenage boys and young men between 1970 and 1973 in Houston and Pasadena, Texas. He was aided by two teenaged accomplices, David Owen Brooks and Elmer Wayne Henley. The crimes, which became known as the Houston Mass Murders, came to light after Henley fatally shot Corll. Upon discovery, the case was considered the worst example of serial murder in United States history.
Alphonse "Al" Indelicato, also known as Sonny Red, was an American mobster and caporegime in the Bonanno crime family who was murdered with Dominick Trinchera and Philip Giaccone for planning to overthrow Bonanno boss Philip Rastelli.
Gerald Eugene Stano was an American convicted serial killer. Stano murdered at least 22 young women and girls, confessed to 41 murders, and the police say the number of his victims may be closer to 88.
David Parker Ray, also known as the Toy-Box Killer, was an American kidnapper, torturer, serial rapist and suspected serial killer. Ray kidnapped, raped and tortured an unknown number of women over many decades at his home in Elephant Butte, New Mexico, occasionally assisted by accomplices including his daughter Glenda Jean "Jesse" Ray and partner Cindy Hendy. Ray was suspected by authorities and accused by accomplices of murdering up to 60 of his victims, however no bodies or definitive evidence have ever been uncovered linking him to any murders.
The Commission on Concealed Mass Graves in Slovenia is an office of the Slovenian government whose task is to find and document mass grave sites from the Second World War and the period immediately after it. It was established on November 10, 2005. The commission handed its report to the Slovenian government in October 2009.
The West Mesa Murders are the killings of eleven women whose remains were found buried in 2009 in the desert on the West Mesa of Albuquerque, New Mexico. Several suspects have been named, but none were arrested or charged. While the killings were initially believed to be the work of a serial killer, the involvement of a sex trafficking ring has been suspected.
The Gilgo Beach serial killings were a series of murders spanning from the early 1990s until 2011. Many of the victims' remains were found over a period of months in 2010 and 2011 during a police search of the area along Ocean Parkway, near the remote beach town of Gilgo in Suffolk County, New York. The search was prompted by the disappearance of Shannan Gilbert, who, like many of the known victims, was an escort who advertised on Craigslist. The perpetrator in the case is known as the Long Island Serial Killer, the Manorville Butcher, or the Craigslist Ripper.
Eklutna Annie is the name given to an unidentified murder victim whose body was discovered in a wooded area, one mile south of South Eklutna Lake Road in Eklutna, Anchorage, Alaska, in July 1980. She was aged between 16 and 25 at the time of her death, and her body was discovered several months after her murder. An autopsy report concluded that she had been killed by a single stab wound to the back.
Unidentified decedent, or unidentified person, is a corpse of a person whose identity cannot be established by police and medical examiners. In many cases, it is several years before the identities of some UIDs are found, while in some cases, they are never identified. A UID may remain unidentified due to lack of evidence as well as absence of personal identification such as a driver's license. Where the remains have deteriorated or been mutilated to the point that the body is not easily recognized, a UID's face may be reconstructed to show what they had looked like before death. UIDs are often referred to by the placeholder names "John Doe" or "Jane Doe". In a database maintained by the Ontario Provincial Police, 371 unidentified decedents were found between 1964 and 2015.
The Redhead murders is the media epithet used to refer to a series of unsolved homicides of redheaded females in the United States between October 1978 and 1992, believed to have been committed by an unidentified male serial killer. The murders believed to be related have occurred in states including Tennessee, Arkansas, Kentucky, Mississippi, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia. The murders may have continued until 1992. The victims, many remaining unidentified for years, were usually women with reddish hair, whose bodies were abandoned along major highways in the United States. Officials believe that the women were likely hitchhiking or may have engaged in prostitution.
Martha Marie Morrison was a 17-year-old American girl who was murdered in 1974, and whose remains went unidentified for over 40 years after their discovery.
The murders of Kerry Graham and Francine Trimble are a currently unsolved double murder that occurred in December 1978, when both girls—aged 15 and 14 respectively—disappeared after leaving their homes in Forestville, California, to visit a shopping mall in Santa Rosa. Their remains were discovered in July 1979 approximately 80 mi (130 km) north of Forestville, concealed within duct-taped garbage bags and buried within an embankment of a heavily overgrown woodland area located beside a remote section of Highway 20, 12 mi (19 km) from the city of Willits.
DNA Doe Project is an American nonprofit volunteer organization formed to identify unidentified deceased persons using forensic genealogy. Volunteers identify victims of automobile accidents, homicide, and unusual circumstances and persons who committed suicide under an alias. The group was founded in 2017 by Colleen M. Fitzpatrick and Margaret Press.
Othram is an American corporation specializing in forensic genetic genealogy to resolve unsolved murders, disappearances, and identification of unidentified decedents or murder victims. The company offers law enforcement agencies tools and programs to infer kinship among individuals, closely and distantly related, through a combination of short tandem repeat and single nucleotide polymorphism testing, as well as forensic genome sequencing of DNA.