20. The Hog Trail Murders

​In the mid-1990s, the suffocating palmetto scrub of Southwest Florida hid a terrifying secret. A calculated predator was cruising the highways, cheap motels, and day-labor spots, luring transient and marginalized men into the woods with the promise of quick cash for a "nude bondage photoshoot." But once the ropes were pulled tight against the rough bark of the trees, the trap snapped shut.

​In this episode of Homocidal Tendency, we delve into the deeply disturbing crimes of Daniel Conahan, the man who turned the Charlotte County woods into his own personal slaughterhouse. We break down his chilling Modus Operandi, the agonizingly slow forensic fight to identify his victims, and the catastrophic systemic failure that allowed him to keep hunting even after a survivor miraculously escaped and handed the police the blueprint to his operation.

​This isn't just a story about a sadistic killer. It's a heavy look at how society's indifference toward "The Less Dead" provides the perfect cover for monsters to operate in plain sight.

​🎙️ In This Episode:

• ​The Lure & The Trap: How a soft-spoken nurse weaponized the desperate circumstances of transient men.
• ​The Discoveries: The grim reality of searching the brutal Florida terrain and the decades-long wait for victims to get their names back.
• ​The Survivor: Stanley Burden's harrowing 1994 escape and the enraging reason his police report gathered dust in a filing cabinet for two years.
• ​The Capture: The microscopic piece of evidence that finally brought the hammer down on Daniel Conahan.
• ​The Aftermath: The legal math that left the families of several victims without their day in court.

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​Until next time... stay out of the woods.

Transcript

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Southwest Florida in the mid-90s. If you stick to the coastline, it's a postcard of white sand and gulf breezes. But if you drive just a few miles inland, the landscape changes. The ocean area gets swallowed by an oppressive, suffocating humidity. The manicured lawns give away to dense, tangled stretches of slash pine and salt meadow. It's the kind of thick blinding brush where you can stand ten feet off the dirt path and become completely invisible to the world. For a young man down on his luck, a drifter passing through, or just a guy desperate for twenty bucks, an offer from an affulent, soft-spoken nurse might have seemed like a lifeline. Come out to the woods, he would say. Let's take some photos of you. I pay cash. It sounded easy, a little weird, maybe, but easy. By the time the victim was let off the trail, deep into the suffocating heat of the woods, the reality of the arrangement would snap into focus, the ropes, the isolation, the sudden, terrifying shift in the photographer's eyes. It wasn't an art project, it was a hunting ground. And once they were tied to the trunk of a pine tree, miles away from anyone who even knew their name, they realized the camera wasn't the only thing aimed at them. First off, if you're enjoying the show, please make sure you hit that follow or subscribe button on whatever platform you're listening on right now. It costs absolutely nothing, and it's the single best way to make sure you never miss an episode. If you want to go the extra mile and help me out, please take um 30 seconds and drop a 5 star rating and review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. The algorithm loves it, and every single good review helps push the show out to more true crime fans just like us. Finally, um be sure to connect with me on social media. You can find me on Instagram and TikTok at homicidal tendency. And this is where I'll post all the visual aids, case photos, crime scene layouts. So come hang out in the comments and let me know what you think of today's episode. Alright, the housekeeping's done, the doors are locked, and the lights are low. Let's get into it. Today, we are walking into the dark, lethal brush of Charlotte County to trace the footsteps of a predator who weaponized invisibility and the decades-long fight to finally give his victims their name back. This is the story of Daniel Conahan and the Hog Trail murders. Every monster has an origin story, a moment, or a series of them, where the wiring gets crossed and empathy just shuts off. For Daniel Owen Conahan Jr., that story doesn't start in a haunted house or a dilapidated asylum. It starts in a painfully normal, middle-class home in Twitter Order, Florida. Born in 1954, Conahan's early childhood was unremarkable, but as he grew into his teenage years in the late 60s and 70s, the cracks began to show. Conahan realized he was gay, and when his parents found out, the environment home became incredibly toxic. Remember, this was the 1970s. For a lot of families, this wasn't a conversation. It was a crisis. His parents refused to accept it and dragged him to a series of psychiatrists, desperately trying to find a way to quote unquote fix him. Conahan would later tell his friends that the rejection broke something in him. He carried a deep, burning anger towards his parents for the way they treated him, insisting that he wasn't a disease to be cured. He would tell people, being gay is part of God's plan too. It was a profound rejection from the people who were supposed to protect him from trauma that laid a very dark, dark foundation for his relationship with his own identity and eventually the gay community itself. In high school down in Miami, he was a ghost, a quiet loner who barely participated in anything. He just floated through the halls completely under the radar. But in 1977, he joined the United States Navy and shipped off to Illinois. And the rigid structure of the military didn't straighten him out, it acted like a pressure cooker. Just a year into his service, his behavior escalated dramatically. He was nearly court-martialed for sneaking fellow neighbor officers off the base for sex. Months later, the Navy officially discharged him following a violent physical altercation where he allegedly attempted to force another man to perform oral sex. Once again, he was rejected by an institution. After getting kicked out of the Navy, Conahan spent the next 13 years living in Chicago. It was a lost decade. We don't know exactly what he was doing day to day, but he was far away from the judgment of his family and the suffocating heat of Florida. In 1993, Conahan moved back to Punta Gorda to live with his now elderly parents, the very same people who had traumatized him for decades earlier. But it's what he did next that makes my blood run completely cold. In 1995, he enrolled in a local vocational center. He didn't just pass. He graduated at the absolute top of his class and became a licensed practical nurse. He got a job at the Charlotte Regional Medical Center. Let's think about the contrast for a second. By day, Daniel Conahan wore scrubs. He was a certified caregiver, trusted by vulnerable patients and respected doctors. He worked in a profession built entirely on empathy, healing, and trust. But when his shift ended, the uniform came off. He would head out to the local gay bars, using his soft-spoken professional demeanor to completely disarm transient men or sex workers or guys who just were down on their luck. He used the trust society gave him as a nurse to lure them right into the thick, inescapable bushes of the hog trails. To understand how Daniel Conahan got away with what he did for as long as he did, we have to pull back and look at the map. We have to talk about what Southwest Florida was actually like in the mid-90s. When people think of gay history in Florida during that era, they used to think of South Beach or the openly queer haven of Key West. Those places were vibrant and loud. Southwest Florida, places like Punta Gorda, Port Charlotte, and Fort Myers were the exact opposite. This part of the Gulf Coast was booming in the 90s, but it was mostly fueled by retirees moving down for the winter and a massive influx of transient construction workers building out the endless suburban sprawl. Culturally, it was very conservative, a traditional backbone, if you will. It wasn't the kind of place where you walk down the street holding your partner's hand. If you were queer in Charlotte or Lee County in the 90s, your life was largely underground. I mean, don't get me wrong, safe havens did exist, but you had to know where to look. Gay bars weren't sitting out on Main Street with neon science. They were hidden away. You had places like Tubby's and Fort Myers tucked quietly into a random, unremarkable strip mall. Or, the bottom line, an LGBTPU club shoved way out into an industrial district, a great part of town that didn't get much foot traffic. These bars were absolute sanctuaries. They were the only places where the community could take a breath and actually be themselves. And let's talk about it. Like the old school like gay bar names are really ridiculous and I'm living for it. But because society had forced the queer community into the shadows, a lot of gay life and connection had to happen on the margins. If you didn't have the money for the bars, or if you were deeply closeted and terrified of being seen walking into a known gay bar, you sought out other places. Highway rest stops, secluded parks, hidden dirt trails in the woods. And this is the tragic systemic piece of the puzzle. When a marginalized community is forced to hide in the dark just to exist, it creates the perfect hunting ground for a predator. Daniel Conahan didn't just understand the geography of the hog trails, he understood the vulnerability of the men he was hunting. He knew that the very society that forced these men into the shadows would be incredibly slow to come looking for them when they disappeared. In the true crime world, there's a deeply uncomfortable term used by sociologists and detectives. The less dead. It refers to victims who are marginalized by society. People who, when they go missing, don't trigger breaking news alerts, they don't get their faces plastered on the front page of the paper, and the police don't launch massive multi-counting grid searches. When Daniel Conahan went hunting, he didn't just look for a physical type, he was hunting a demographic. He was hunting the invisible. If you look at the victims connected to the Hog Trail murders, a chilling specific profile emerges. These were men, mostly white, ranging from their early twenties to their late thirties. But most importantly than their age is they were transients. They were drifters moving up and down the I-75 corridor, chasing day labor, seasonal construction jobs, or just trying to outrun whatever demons they left in another state. Many of them were completely untethered. They were estranged from their families, sometimes going years without making a phone call home. Some of them were struggling with severe substance abuse, while others were gay or bisexual men who had just been entirely rejected by their families and were living on the fringes of a conservative area just to survive. When you don't know where your next meal is coming from, or where you're going to sleep that night, the promise of quick cash is almost impossible to ignore. Conahan would approach these men with a soft, non-threatening demeanor. He offered them fifty or hundred bucks just to come out to the woods and do some quote unquote modeling, or take some new photos. It wasn't a sophisticated trap, it didn't need to be. Desperation did the heavy lifting. Because he targeted men with a transient lifestyle, he bought himself the most valuable currency a sewer killer can have. Time. He knew that when these men vanished into the Palmetto scrub, no one would immediately notice. A mother three states away wouldn't even realize her son was truly missing until Christmas came and there was no phone call. An employer wouldn't report it because it's just another day laborer who didn't show up for a ship. Conahan didn't just murder these men. He explored the fact that society had already looked the other way. I'm gonna pause here for a second because this is a thread we pull on on this show a lot. When you look at the darkest corners of true crime, you realize pretty quickly that most prolific monsters don't just share psychological traits, they share a hunting strategy. They prey on the marginalized. Think back to the cases we've already explored on this podcast. We saw it with Bruce MacArthur, who terrorized Toronto's gay village by specifically targeting queer immigrants, men of color, and those who struggle with addiction. Mint whose disappearance was easily brushed under the rug by the police. We also saw it in Atlanta with Michael Terry, and we saw it down in Louisiana with Ronald Dominique, the Bayou strangler, who spent a decade murdering dozens of poor, desperate men who society had already decided weren't worth saving. It's not just a coincidence, and it's not just about the killer's type, it's a calculated predatory equation. Killers like MacArthur, Terry, and Dominique, and Daniel Conahan all figured out the same dark truth. The most effective weapon a serial killer can wield isn't a knife or a rope. It's society's indifference. When a community is pushed to the fringes, whether it's because of their sexuality, their poverty, their race, or their transient lifestyle, a predator doesn't have to work hard to make them disappear. Society has already done half the work for them. These killers operate in the blind spots we create. And until we stop treating certain lives as disposable, those blind spots are gonna remain full of monsters. And in the humid, suffocating brush of the hog trails, Daniel Conahan knew exactly how to use all of this to his advantage. So, how did Daniel Conahan actually pull this off? How did a licensed nurse turn this dense palmetto scrub of Charlotte County into his own personal slaughterhouse? To understand his modus operandi, you have to understand the bait. Conahan drove a blue Mercury Capri and later some type of station wagon. He would cruise around the areas where the transit men gathered by day the labor pickup spots, the cheap motels, highway intersections. When he spotted someone who fit his demographic, he would pull over. The pitch was always the same, and deceptively simple. He would offer them fifty to a hundred dollars and sometimes alcohol or drugs to come out to the woods and participate in a quote unquote nude bondage photo shoot. Now, to the average person, getting into a stranger's car to be tied to a tree for photos sounds like a massive red flag. But if you haven't eaten in two days, or if you're desperate for your next fix, or if you need a bus ticket out of town, a hundred bucks is a hundred bucks. It's weird, sure, but it felt transactional. It it felt survivable. Conahan would drive them out to the hog trails, a network of unpaved, deeply secluded dirt paths carved through the woods by local hunters. He would park the car and lead them deep into the brush. He was careful to go far enough off the path that no one would hear them scream, and the dense palmettos would completely block out any line of sight from the road. Once they found a spot, the trap snapped shut. He had them stripped naked, then playing the part of the eccentric photographer, he bound them to a tree. He used thick rope, tying their hands and sometimes their necks to the tree trunk, ensuring they were completely immobilized. It was in this exact moment, once the knots were tied and the victim was utterly defenseless, the illusion dropped. The soft spoken nerves vanished. We know from forensics and from one man who managed to survive that Conahan's nature entirely shifted. He wasn't there to take pictures. Once the men were bound, Conahan strangled them, but the violence didn't stop at the murder. The most gruesome signature of the Hog Trail murders is what he did next. Conahan would sadistically mutilate his victim's genitals. It was a deeply personal, brutal desecration that spoke to a massive reservoir of rage and sexual sadism, and when he was done, he didn't bury them. He didn't try to hide them in a sophisticated way. He just left them out there in the brutal Florida heat. Conaghan knew that the environment would act as his accomplice between the punishing humidity, the trenchal summer rains, and the wild hogs and buzzers that roam the woods. Physical evidence it deteriorated incredibly fast. By the time the hunters or county workers stumbled upon the remains months or sometimes years later, there was rarely anything left but sunbleached bones and the deeply scarred bark of trees where the ropes had been. He didn't just kill these men, he erased them. The suffocating brush of the hog trails kept Daniel Conahan's secrets for an incredibly long time. But eventually, nature gives up its dead. The first horrifying crack in its terrifying routine happened on the morning of February 1st, 1994. Two hunters were walking through a remote, overgrown area of Port Charlotte. They didn't see anything out of the ordinary at first, but they noticed a kettle of buzzards circling persistently in the sky ahead. When they pushed through the dense brush to see what the scavengers were after, they stumbled into a total nightmare. They found the partially decomposed body of a man. The scene was deeply disturbing, and it immediately told investigators that they were dealing with a severe, organized sexual statist. The victim was completely nude. The medical examiner found distinct deep rope burns, severely scarring the skin and pelvic region. But the most chilling detail, the signature that would come to define the hog trail murders, was their mutilation. The killer had meticulously removed the victim's genitalia and discarded it before leaving the body completely exposed to the harsh Florida elements. For 27 long years, this man was known only as John No No. 1. It wasn't until 2021 that investigative genetic genealogy finally gave him his name back. He was 31-year-old Gerald Anthony Lombard from Lowell, Massachusetts. Based on the decomposition, he had been tied to the tree and dead for about a month before the hunters found him. Fast forward two years to New Year's Day 1996, in the nearby town of Northport, a family was hanging out on their home on Veranda Street when their dog trotted out of the woods and dropped something on the porch. It was a human skull. The horrified residents realized that for months their dog had been bringing them random bones from the neighborhood, and they simply hadn't realized what they were. The next day, police launched a massive bridge search of the isolated woods behind the residential area. About a half a mile away, they found the rest of the scene. They found a torso and hip bones. While most of the body was heavily skeletonized, there was some flesh remaining on the right hand and the chest. The medical examiner confirmed the exact same terrifying MO. The man had been severely mutilated around the groin, and the scattered remains showed clear evidence of being bound to the trees. To this day, this victim has never been identified. He is known only as Sarasota County John Doe. But the discovery that would ultimately bring the hammer down on Daniel Conaghan happened just a few months later, on April 17, 1996. Two county storm utility engineers were surveying a heavily wooded area off of Highway 41 in Charlotte County when they spotted another human skull. When the sheriff's deputies arrived and pushed deeper into the brush, a police dog aggressively alerted to a ten-foot sable palm tree. The rough bark of the tree was completely flattened and stripped bare on one side, bearing the heavy friction marks of nylon rope. Nearby, hidden under a piece of discarded rotting carpet padding, lay the new body of a young white male. This was twenty one-year-old Richard Montgomery. Montgomery had told his friends just the day prior that he was going out to the woods to make a few hundred dollars, and he would be right back. Now he was lying dead in the dirt. His body told the exact story of his final terrifying moments. He had deep, violent trauma and ligature marks on his neck, his wrist, and his waist, perfectly matching the flattening bark on the palm tree where he had been tied. And just like Gerald Lombard and the Sarasota John Doe, his genitals had been completely removed. On March 7, 1996, just two months after that family's dog brought home a skull in Newport, a man traveling down Interstate 75 pulled off onto Laramie Circle to relieve himself in the woods. But as he pushed past the tree line, he stumbled onto a horrifying scene. Lying in the dirt was the nude body of a man posed face up with his arm out to the side in the shape of a cross. When the medical examiner arrived, the autopsy painted a picture of pure terror. The victim had been dead for about ten days. Like the others, his genitals had been sadistically mutilated. But there was a distinct difference in this crime scene. The victim had four stab wounds, and the soles of his feet were completely shredded with cuts and scrapes. There were also deep slash marks across his upper body. Investigators concluded that this victim hadn't just been tied to a nearby tree, he had fought back. He had somehow managed to break free or slip his bonds, running completely naked and terrified through the brutal, jagged palmetto scrub in a desperate attempt to escape before Conahan chased him down and stabbed him to death. This victim remained a John Doe until 1999, when he was finally identified as thirty five year old John William Meligriano. Originally from Cleveland. He had moved to Northport less than two months before he was murdered. And then there is the twisted reality of how Richard Montgomery was discovered the very next month on April 17th. When I told you earlier about how the county workers they found a skull off Highway 41, I left out a deeply disturbing detail. The skull they found that day wasn't Richard Montgomery. The skull belonged to another man whose body had been heavily decomposed and visibly dismembered. When the sheriff's deputies brought in the canine units to search the thick brush for the rest of that victim's remain, the dogs picked up on a fresh scent. They dragged the officer about a half mile away where they stumbled onto Richard Montgomery's body, which had only been dumped the day prior. If Conahan hadn't dumped Richard Montgomery in the exact same stretch of woods where he had previously dumped another victim, Montgomery might not have been found so quickly. The decomposed dismembered victim they found that day was twenty five-year-old Kenneth Lee Smith. And the way he was identified, it's it's completely heartbreaking. When the local news covered the gruesome discovery, they broadcast a photo of a faint, heavily faded tattoo that was still visible on the victim's shoulder. Kenneth's sister was watching the news that night. She recognized the tattoo and called the police, and finally gave her brother his name back. Five men, five brutalized bodies left to rot in the sun across a small network of dirt trails. The police finally knew they had a highly organized sadistic serial killer operating right in their backyard, but they were completely in the dark on who it was until one man managed to do the impossible. Every serial killer gets away with it until they make a mistake. For Daniel Conahan, that mistake didn't happen in the form of physical evidence left at a crime scene. His mistake was leaving someone alive. To understand how the police finally cracked the hog trail murders, we have to rewind the timeline. We have to go back two years before the skull started piling up in Charlotte County. Back to August 1994, down in Fort Myers. Let's meet Stanley Burden. In 1994, Stanley fit the exact demographic Conagan hunted. He was a high school dropout. He struggled to keep a steady job. And he was transient, living on the margins. He was vulnerable. Conahan approached him with the standard pitch. He offered Stanley somewhere between $100 to $150 to come out to the woods and post her some nude photos. For a guy struggling to survive, it was an offer he couldn't afford to turn down. Conahan drove him out to a deeply secluded, rocky dirt road. He pulled out a duffel bag out of his trunk. Inside it was a blue tarp, a Polaroid camera, and a brand new package of nylon clothesline. At first, it played out exactly as Conahan promised. They walked deep into the thick meloluca trees. Conahan laid out the tarp, he had Stanley take off his clothes, and he started snapping Polaroid. He acted like an eccentric professional photographer. But then Conahan told him he wanted to take some quote unquote bondage pictures. Before Stanley fully realized the danger he was in, Conaghan moved behind him. He snapped the clothesline tightly around Stanley's body, pulling his hands violently behind the tree. He secured his legs, wrapped the rope around his chest, and then most terrifyingly, the the next part he wrapped the clothesline twice around Stanley's neck. Once Stanley was completely immobilized, the facade of the photo shoot vanished. Conahan began to sexually assault him, but Stanley didn't just freeze, he fought back as hard as he could. As hard as a man could who was tied to a tree. He struggled, he twisted, and he physically prevented Conahan from sodomizing him. And this is when Conahan's rage boils over. Conahan placed his foot flat against the trunk of the tree for leverage, grabbed the rope, wrapped around Stanley's neck, and pulled with all of his strength. For the next 30 minutes, Stanley Burton fought for his absolute life. As Conahan pulled the rope tighter and hit him in the head, Stanley desperately used his remaining strength to slide sideways around the bark of the tree, creating just enough slack to keep his windpipe from completely being crushed. It was grueling, it was a horrific struggle. At one point, staring at a man fighting desperately to breathe, Conahan coldly asked him, Why won't you die? But Stanley refused to give up. Eventually, after 30 agonizing minutes, Canahan became exhausted because he's an old fuck and I fucking hate him. He realized he couldn't kill him. Sorry. I try not to like to slip from the narrative, but I really can't stand this fucker. Back to it though. He realized he couldn't kill him, so the monster gave up. Conahan gathered his tarp and his camera, left Stanley tied to the tree, and walked back to his car. By some absolute miracle, Stanley managed to contort himself and slip his bonds. Battered, bruised, and with severe friction burns across his neck and body, he made it out of the woods and got to a local hospital. He told the Fort Mars police exactly what happened. But here's the tragic reality of how the justice system treats marginalized victims. Because Stanley was transient, and because the story sounded bizarre to the police, the report was filed away and largely ignored. No major manhunt was launched. Conahan was never brought in. The police report just sat there gathering dust in a filing cabinet for two years. It wasn't until May 1996 after Richard Montgomery was found. It wasn't until May of 1996 after Richard Montgomery was found, and the task force realized they had a serial killer tying into trees in Charlie County that a detective remembered the old Fort Myers report. They tracked Stanley Burton down. Two years later, he still had the thick rope scars across his body. He gave them the blueprint to Conahan's entire operation. Investigators went back to the exact tree in Fort Myers where Stanley had been tied. And the bark still bore the deep, identical ligature indications that matched the murder scenes in Charlotte County. Stanley Burton survived the Hog Trail monster, and in doing so, he handed the police the very key they needed to finally lock him away. But I need to stop here for a second and just scream into the void about this. Because this is the part of the story that should make every single person listening to this podcast a little angry. When we talk about true crime, it's so easy to put all the blame solely on the monster holding the rope. Daniel Conahan is a sadistic, terrifying predator. He made the conscious choice to hunt and kill these men. But the absolute undeniable truth of this case is the system acted as his silent accomplice. I mean, let's look at the facts. In August of 1994, the Fort Mars police were they were handed a serial killer on a silver platter. They had a surviving victim who had just spent 30 minutes fighting for his life against the man who literally asked him, Why the fuck won't you die? They had a distinct, highly specific modus operanda, the nude photo shoot, the nine clothesline, the brutal licature marks on the left on the tree. They had a location. If a middle class college student or a wealthy suburban tourist had walked into that precinct with severe rope burns completely encircling their neck, telling that exact same story, there would have been helicopters in the air. There would have been canine units combing those woods. There would have been a composite sketch plastered on the front of the page of every newspaper in Central and South West Florida by the next morning. But Stanley Burton wasn't a wealthy tourist. He was transient. He was a high school dropout. He was part of that demographic that society had conditioned us to look away from. And because of who he was, his trauma was treated as an annoyance. His near-death experience was treated as a bizarre story from an unreliable narrator, shoved into a manila folder, and left to gather dust in a drawer for two years. And here is the devastating, bloody cost of the apathy. Daniel Conahan walked out of those woods in August 1994, realized he had gotten away with it, and kept right on hunting. Because the report was ignored, John William Melagrano was stabbed to death and left in the dirt. Because that report was ignored, Kenneth Lee Smith was murdered and dismembered. Because that report was ignored, Richard Montgomery was choked to death and tied to a palm tree. These men didn't just die because Daniel Conahan was a monster. They died because the justice system looked at a marginalized survivor and decided his life wasn't worth the paperwork. And that systematic rot, that absolute failure to protect the vulnerable, is every bit as terrifying as the killer himself. The survival of Stanley Burden gave law enforcement the exact blueprint of the hog trail monster, but it was the murder of Richard Montgomery that finally gave him the name. When detectives started retracing the last few days of 21-year-old Richard Montgomery's life, they spoke to his mother. She told them the terrifying details. Shortly before he disappeared, Richard told her he was gonna go make some quick cash posing for nude photos. He told her the offer came from a new friend he had made, an older guy, a Navy veteran, and a nurse who worked at a local hospital. And Richard had gave her his name Daniel the fucking Conahan. The task force immediately pulled Conahan's background. Everything aligned perfectly. The age, the description, the nursing license, the military background, and his proximity to the victims. They immediately put Conaghan under heavy surveillance. During this time, the police caught an incredibly lucky break. Another man came forward with a deeply unsettling story. He told police he had been helping push a stalled vehicle out of a road. When he looked through the window into the backseat of the car, he saw a chilling collection of items. A large tarp, a knife, and a heavy bundle of rope. The driver of that vehicle? That's right, motherfucker. It was Daniel Conahan. The police knew they had their guy, but knowing it and proving it in court are two very different things. They needed physical evidence to tie the soft-spoken nurse to the brutalized bodies rotting in Charlotte County, and the floor environment had washed almost everything away. Well, almost. When the medical examiner meticulously went over Richard Montgomery's body, they found a microscopic piece of evidence that Conahan missed. It was a single tiny chip of automotive paint that stuck to Montgomery's skin. Armed with a search warrant, investigators descended on Conahan's property. They matched the chemical composition of that single paint chip directly to Conahan's vehicle. It was the smoking gun. In August of 1996, the police officially slapped the cuffs on Daniel fucking Conahan for kidnapping and murdering Richard McGomber. When they got him into the interrogation room, the mask it didn't slip. Investigators were sitting across from a man they knew was a sadistic, highly organized serial killer, but Conahan played the role of the polite professional caregiver perfectly. Detectives laid out the evidence. They brought up the nude photo shoot, the ropes, and the bodies in the woods. But Conahan didn't break. He didn't offer a dramatic confession, and he didn't boast about his crimes like most serial killers do. He flatly denied he had any involvement with the murders whatsoever. However, when detectives pressed him on his whereabouts during the times the men went missing, Conahan couldn't provide a single verifiable alibi. He had the opportunity, he had the means, and thanks to the bank chip, the police had the physical connection. But to this day, Daniel motherfucking Conahan has never admitted to a single murder. Conahan was taken to trial in 1999. It took a jury just a few hours to convict him of first-degree murder in the case of Richard Montgomery. He was sentenced to death and shipped off to a Florida State prison. The task force breathed a sigh of relief. The monster was in a cage. The hog trails were finally safe. In 1999, Daniel Conahan was sent to Florida prison's death row. The gavel dropped, the news cameras backed up, and the prosecutors patted themselves on the back. They got their monster. But if you look closely at the supposed victory, it leaves a profoundly bitter taste in your mouth. Because Conahan was only ever tried and convicted for the murder of Richard Montgomery. From a purely bureaucratic legal standpoint, prosecutors often do this. If they have a slam down case with physical evidence like that pain chip on Montgomery's body, and it results in a descendants, they don't bother taking the other murders to trial. Why spend the taxpayers' money to kill a guy twice? But that cold legal math completely ignores the human cost. It meant there was no trial, no official legal justice, and no world no courtroom closure for the families of Kenneth Lee Smith or John William Elegrano. It meant that Gerald Lombard, who wouldn't even be identified for another two decades, was essentially swept under the rug. The system got its lethal injection, well, not yet, but it will. And the rest of the victims, they're just left as footnotes, which is really fucked up. And then there was the media response. The press absolutely devoured this case, plastering the Hog Trail Monster moniker across every headline in Florida. But the coverage was steeped in 90s sensationalism. Instead of doing deep dive journalism into the systematic failures that allowed a predator to hunt vulnerable transi man for years, the tablets focused heavily on the bizarre, salacious details. They fixated on the nude bondage photo shoots and the mutilations. And so, normally this is the part of the episode where I wrap everything up with a neat little bow. I give you my final thoughts on the psychology of the killer, remind you to lock your doors and and I cue the outro music. And we put Daniel Conahan in his cage. We fade to black. But we're not fading to black. Because this story's not over. What the fuck you say? Fast forward to March 2007. Conahan has been sitting on Death Row for eight years. A land surveyor is walking through a heavily wooded overgrown area in Fort Myers, just 30 minutes south of the original hog trail crime scenes. He looks down in the thick palmetto brush and he sees a human skull. When the police bring in the grid surge teams and the cadaver dogs, they don't find just one body. They find two. Then three. By the time the search is over, they have pulled the heavily skeletized remains of eight different men out of the dirt. Eight men killed, dompeding the exact type of terrain, targeting the exact demographic, matching the exact horrific MO, and Dana Conahan is the absolute dead center of Prime Sex Back. The story of the Fort Myers 8 is too massive, too dark, and too completely enraging to tack on to the end of this episode. So I'm putting together a special bonus episode of Homeless Subtle Tendency, breaking down the exactly what happened in those woods. The forensic fight to identify the victims, and how the shadow of the hog trail monsters stretch much further than anyone wanted to admit. That bonus episode will be dropping in your feed later this week. Make sure you're subscribed so you don't miss it. Until then, stay out of the woods. I'm Matt, and this has been Homicidal Tendency.