Florida executes ‘Hog Trail Killer’ suspected in at least 13 killings

Florida has executed a suspected serial killer dubbed "the Hog Trail Killer" 30 years after the discovery of a naked man who had been strangled in the woods set off a complex investigation that's ongoing to this day.

The state executed Daniel Conahan Jr., 72, by lethal injection on Thursday, Sept. 10, for the murder of 21-year-old Richard Allen Montgomery. Montgomery's nude and brutalized body was found on April 17, 1996, in a remote, wooded area of Port Charlotte, an unincorporated community halfway between Naples and Sarasota on Florida's Gulf Coast. Montgomery's genitalia had been cut off.

Though Conahan was only tried for Montgomery's murder, investigators suspect he's responsible for at least 12 more killings, perhaps more.

Conahan, who was pronounced dead at 6:12 p.m. ET, has always denied killing Montgomery or anyone else. His attorneys have been arguing for a reprieve in recent weeks, saying that Conahan was convicted largely based on circumstantial evidence and that further DNA testing would prove Conahan's innocence.

"Just because I have been found guilty in a court of law doesn't mean I am guilty," Conahan told the judge at his sentencing hearing in 1999, according to the Sarasota Herald-Tribune, part of the USA…

Original source: https://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/