Florida suspected serial killer executed for 1996 strangulation connected to Hog Trail Murders

A Florida man convicted in one of a series of suspected killings that became known as the “Hog Trail Murders” in the 1990s was put to death Thursday, becoming the state’s 15th person executed this year.Daniel Owen Conahan Jr., 72, was pronounced dead at 6:12 p.m.after receiving a three-drug lethal injection at Florida State Prison near Starke.He had been sentenced to die for the 1996 kidnapping and strangling of Richard Allen Montgomery, whose mutilated body was found in a wooded southwest Florida area where authorities found the remains of at least six people over a three-year span.Conahan was already strapped to a gurney with an IV in his arm when the curtain to the death chamber went up at 6 p.m.

A spiritual adviser was at his feet and prayed throughout the process.The team warden asked Conahan if he had any final statement, and Conahan replied, “No sir.” The deadly drug cocktail began to flow at 6:01 p.m.Conahan began to pant and then twitch briefly before going still.Several minutes later, the warden shook Conahan and shouted his name but there was no response.A medic entered the death chamber at 6:11 p.m.

to check for vitals, and Conahan was declared dead a minute later.Conahan died in the nation’s busiest death chamber.Florida has carried out more than half the 25 total executions in the US so far this year under Republican Gov.

Ron DeSantis, who leaves office in January.Conahan was identified by authorities as a person of interest in the other deaths, but he was never charged.He argued the evidence against him in Montgomery’s death was circumstantial.Conahan was arrested in July 1996 after local and state law enforcement officials spent more than two years investigating a series of homicides in which mutilated and decomposing bodies were discovered in a wooded area of Charlotte County, north of Fort Myers.As the number of bodies increased, so did media coverage.The deaths eventually were dubbed the “Hog Trail Murders” because of the...