It began on the afternoon of Tuesday, April 16, 1996, but no one in northern Charlotte County realized it at the time. The real terror, the almost hysterical dread that clutched the city of Punta Gorda, was to come later.

The following day, Wednesday, two Charlotte County road workers were working along U.S. 41, a forested area far from commercial strips, stores and motels. Around noon, the two county workers decided to do a little hog hunting on their lunch break.

Lonely spider roads led into the dense woodland barely assessable by car or pickup truck -- an almost matchless place to commit a murder or bury a truncated body without fear of being seen. An eerie silence engulfed the atmosphere as they plunged into deep woods. At the top of an embankment, they hesitated momentarily to peer down into a gulch where dark shadows flickered on a suspicious object, made to look eerie by flashes of sunlight. The two hog hunters rushed down the embankment to see what it was.

There, in a thick umbrella of foliage, at the intersection of Trembley Avenue and Willow Street, north of Port Charlotte, the two men bent over what appeared to be a human skull. Without saying a word, the frightened men spirited to their car and spun rear wheels for the nearest convenience store, where they found two police officers eating donuts.

After listening to the almost breathless stories of the two hunters, the officers agreed to accompany the road workers back to the woods. The officers peered closely at the skull and could tell right away it was indeed a human head. The uniformed officers immediately reported the ghastly find to their superiors, who in turn notified the Florida State Troopers. Emergency crews and deputies arrived at the scene faster than skateboards.

While making a thorough search of the woods, sleuths made another startling discovery. Beneath an old carpet, they found a hidden body. The young male was lying on his back, totally naked. Rope burns on his neck told the officers he had been strangled. A final, grisly twist was added to the find: The young man’s genitals had been carved from his body as neatly as if by a skilled surgeon.

In their search for clues, the detectives came across fresh footprints. Since the victim was barefooted, there was a strong possibility that the footprints belonged to the killer. That conclusion was based on the assumption that the victim and his killer had been the only two persons in the woods when the murder took place.

A coroner and more investigators were summoned to the scene in the woodlands and soon five law enforcement agencies were involved in the investigation -- the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, the State Attorney’s Office, the Charlotte County Sheriff’s Office, the Fort Myers Police Department and the North Port Police Department.

The lead investigator was Detective Rickey Hobbs of the Charlotte County Sheriff’s Office.

Sleuths sketched the crime scene, shot photos of it, and searched for plausible clues. By Thursday afternoon, pathologists turned over the preliminary autopsy report to the investigators. The victim had been raped and strangled to death with a rope, possibly a clothesline. The pathologists identified the body through dental records as well as fingerprints. The victim was 21-year-old Richard Montgomery. Ritchie’s family reported him missing the day before his body was found by the hog hunters.

The detectives interviewed Montgomery’s relatives, hoping for some leads. The victim’s mother told the officers that he mentioned someone offering him money to pose nude, when she saw him earlier that morning. And so with the murder case still into its first week, detectives already had made considerable progress toward zeroing in on the perpetrator in one of the toughest types of crimes, in which the killer is a casual acquaintance whom the victim had known for a very short time. In this case, the killer had been in and out of Montgomery’s life without leaving a minus-clue to who he was.

If Montgomery had gone into the woods with a man he barely knew to allow himself to be photographed naked, it wasn’t the wisest move to make. A killer, police knew, usually wins by matching wits with his victim.

The day after Montgomery’s remains were found, a party of police workers returned to the cordoned off area and scrutinized the earth for clues. They found another discarded, mutilated corpse close to where Montgomery’s body was found. Within an hour, the woods looked like John Wayne Airport on Mother’s Day weekend.

The whole of North Charlotte County was verging on a state of panic now, made worse by the discovery of the skeletal remains of three more male bodies that had been cast-off in the woods like so much rubbish.

In each case, Charlotte County Medical Examiner R.H. Imami arrived, conducted his own investigation, and then the remains were placed in a body bag, hoisted onto a stretcher, and carried to the coroner’s van. Advanced decomposition in every case left the time of deaths a mystery.

According to Imami, ligature marks left on each of the bodies had been inflicted after death. He indicated the same man was responsible for all of the murders. It was his opinion that whoever killed Montgomery tied him up after his death.

On Saturday, alerts were broadcast on television news stations, warning residents that a possible serial killer was on the lose and that they should take proper precautions to protect themselves. The individual was determined to be either a homosexual or bi-sexual. The speculation was that he was probably a schizophrenic sociopath and living in the area.

While investigating the case, police came up with another interesting story, woven together stitch by stitch, by veteran law enforcement officers.

When police uncovered the body of Bill Melaragno in a 10-mile vicinity of where Montgomery and several others died, it bore rope-like marks suggesting he had been tied up during the ordeal that ended his life under a canopy of branches in southwestern Florida. Police retracing his steps, reconstructed the crime this way:

Stunned and shaken, hallucinating from his terror and pain, the escaping man darted along the extreme edges of the Hog Trail naked and barefoot, sharp rocks cutting his feet on the rising rock-lined trail that led out of the woods. His attacker chased him down and stabbed him four times, mannered the body in the shape of a cross on the ground, then went about the gruesome task of removing his genitals with a sharp instrument. A detective described his death as unneeded and deliberate, "with execution-style wounds."

Melaragno’s was the third death in what authorities believed was a modus operandi followed in at least six ghastly slayings by the same killer. The choreography never changed in an attempt to throw investigators off his trail. It was as if he was begging to be caught.

The newspaper called the killings, "utterly, vile and depraved," and dubbed the incidents, "The Hog Trail Killings." The unprovoked attacks occurred in remote areas stomped by wild boar paths in Charlotte and Sarasota County,

It was May 1996, and Charlotte County sheriff’s Detective Ray Wier’s job was to appear homeless as he stood on a concrete median at Kings Highway and U.S. 41 in his ragged clothes and holding a crudely written sign that read: "Will Work For Food. " He had done this same routine for over a week on various corners of Charlotte Harbor, without results.

Among those lose ends detectives had tied up, was the conjecture that the killer used cash to lure vagabonds into the woods for nude photographs and then tie them to trees, where he sexually attack and killed them. So Wier volunteered to use himself as bait to capture the man who had scattered five bodies from Charlotte to North Port, before he killed again.

A month passed by quicker than abracadabra, then one day a gray Plymouth Reliant with darkly tinted windows pulled up to the curb where Wier was standing with his sign. The driver rolled down his window, gave Wier a dollar bill and asked him if he was looking for work.

Yeah," Wier said, "but I’ve got a bad back. But if it isn’t too hard, maybe I’d be interested."

The driver drove off, but he was back the next day.

This time when the driver of the Reliant gave Wier a dollar he asked him if he would like to do a little nude modeling for $150. Wier was wired and the following conversation was recorded on tape:

"Some of the pictures are a little on the kinky side, so I don’t know if you’d be into it."

"Money Talks"

"We’ll do some stripping, some poses nude and a progressive bondage scene."

Positive that he had his man, Wier placed the suspect under arrest. Then began the systematiac routine of obtaining a warrant to search his house. Because there was no reason to believe that Montgomery or any one else had been killed inside the house, they did only a tertiary search, at the time.

Wier was the second Charlotte County sheriff’s deputy that Punta Gorda resident Daniel "Danny" Conahan had solicited. Deputy First Class Scott Clemens said the suspect offered him money for oral sex and for posing nude in a motel room.

Three years after his arrest, on Monday, June 28, 1999 Danny Conahan, who was scheduled to go on trial in August, gave a jailhouse interview to reporters against his lawyer’s advice. Lounged behind a three-dimensional wall of clear Plexiglas in a graffiti-strewn interview room in the Charlotte County Jail, he sternly declared he was innocent. In another breath, he said he was sure he would be railroaded because the police had to solve the case quickly to save face.

Railroaded or not, was subsequently charged with the Hog Trail murder of Richard Montgomery and suspicion of killing five others. If convicted, he could face death by electrocution in Florida’s dreaded electric chair that sometimes goes haywire and blows the top of a man’s head off. Or life in the state penitentiary.

Gnawing on hard candies, Conahan spoke via the jail house phone, accusing his captors of trickery, perjury and witness tampering. Shaking like a dice box, he told his listeners that he was on antidepressant and had a hard time sleeping at nights.

In his lap were a pile of legal files that he had marked up with asterisks, frenzied underlines and scribbles, exclamation points and question marks and bold letters of "LIES! LIES! LIES." Next to the arresting officer’s name he had written "Sonofabitch!"

Dismissing his arrest as a theatrical ruse, Conahan chided authorities who had trapped him into an arrest. "At the beginning they expected all kind of evidence to come rolling in," he blurted. "My opinion is that right now they don’t know what to do because they don’t have evidence, they don’t have one piece of solid evidence."

Asked about knives and ropes he had purchased that were traced to a local Wal-Mart store, where a clerk identified him through a photo lineup, he snapped, "So what?"

He dismissed talk about allegedly picking up men on deserted roads, then killing them. "If I’m suppose to be tying these guys up, butchering them, cutting their dicks off, wouldn’t there be one speck of blood?" he asked.

With their man in custody Punta Gorda authorities began to search his background. Aside from being a superbly imaginative liar, he had no real trouble with the law except for a run-in with U.S. Naval authorities that resulted in his administrative discharge. The investigating officer in that case found that Conahan tried to perform oral sex on a sailor in 1978, which resulted in a fight.

Shortly before that, Conahan attempted to lure sailors off base for sex in a motel, for which he was threatened with a court martial. For that offense, he was never prosecuted because the district attorney could not find anyone willing testify against him.

Raised in Punta Gorda by parents who had passed away while he was awaiting trial, Conahan was the product of a troubled childhood exacerbated by the use of alcohol and drugs. He worked as a waiter, nurse and computer technician for an HMO in Chicago. Letters to lawyers, the American Civil Liberties Union, news organizations and the Florida bar were written articulately and successively incensed and freighted with a focus on legal minutiae.

There were more troubles along the way --- Conahan said he hurt his back lifting a patient into a stretcher and was forced to give up his job at Charlotte Regional Medical Center in 1996. He blamed this injury for his claustrophobic condition, claiming that staying at home all the time made him feel "cooped up," so he began trolling the lonely streets at wee hours.

He at first denied, then admitted that he had violent fantasies and that he picked up vagrants and took them deep into the forest for paid sex. He said he concentrated on photographing them in the nude and even discussed bondage. But he never tied any one up or killed them, he insisted.

Judge Bill Blackwell

Pretrial investigation showed that the Florida State Attorney’s Office filed an affidavit professing that Conahan made an obligatory confession to a homosexual lover in Chicago that he fantasized about picking up vagrants, taking them into the woods and tying them to a tree where he would have oral sex with them before the victim’s sexual organs were skewered.

The coincidence was too extreme. After grinding through the customary channels of checking and rechecking known facts, opening arguments began on Tuesday, August 10, 1999. The prosecutor was Robert "Bob" Lee. Conahan’s lead attorney was Mark Ahlbrand. The presiding judge was 20th Judicial Circuit Chief Judge William Blackwell, known around the corridors as, "Stonewall."

Conahan was charged with the first-degree murder, sexual battery, and kidnapping of Montgomery. Citing the barbarity of the case, the prosecution wanted the death penalty.

In a surprise move, Conahan waived his right to a jury trial because of pretrial publicity, and decided to let Judge Blackwell to resolve his guilt or innocence.

"We knew there would be a blast of publicity right before the trial," said Ahlbrand. "We also knew that probably a certain percentage of the jurors would probably be honest in their opinions."

In his opening statement, Prosecutor Lee told the court that Conahan was a lethal specter stalking the city streets, soliciting transients to pose for money, driving the mortality rate in peaceful Punta Gorda sky high. He said the 45-year-old defendant had a paranoid personality and a unnatural fantasy that he acted out with deadly consequences for Montgomery.

Lee said Montgomery was a high school dropout who ill-treated drugs and alcohol, adding "He was easy prey when he was drunk or when he needed some money."

In an effort to show the bestial side of the defendant, Lee described for the court how Montgomery’s body, ligature marks on his neck, chest and legs, was found close to the bludgeoned and sexually assaulted remains of Kenneth Lee Smith on April 17.

According to Lee, Conahan was able to cut off Montgomery’s genitals "with near medical perfection" because he was a nurse at Charlotte Regional Medical Center until January 1996. He did this, Lee said, because he knew that if he left them on the victim, investigators would have his saliva and DNA would connect him to the crime.

"His terrible lust and passion spent and his dark fantasy fulfilled, he walked away with his gruesome trophy in his hand," said Lee.

In contrast, Ahlbrand told Judge Blackwell that his client did have interest in casual sex with men, but that he was never aggressive in his manner.

"This man is on trial not because he is guilty of the offense, but because he has adopted a lifestyle which is similar to their scenario as to who killed Richard Montgomery. He matched their little profile," said Ahlbrand.

Continuing to portray Conahan as a man with documented back problems - one reason he should be found not guilty -- Ahlbrand said, "They’re describing this as a very brutal, physically demanding thing, and he was on his butt for about two, three weeks, and he was bedridden for a couple of months."

Montgomery’s roommate testified that he told him he was going to make $100 posing nude, as he left their rented trailer and walked toward Cox Lumber Yard, where Conahan picked him up. He said he mentioned a new friend named Conahan, who came looking for "Ritchie" a few weeks before his disappearance.

He wanted Richie to give him a ride, but Richie wasn’t there at the time, the roommate testified. He recalled the evening of April 16, when Montgomery left, saying he was going to make some money.

"When I asked him about it," the witness said, "he just said he’d be safe, not to worry."

"Did you ever see him again?" prosecutor Lee asked.

"No," replied the witness.

Under cross-examination by defense attorney Ahlbrand, the witness admitted he didn’t specify that he had a rendezvous with Conahan when he left that day. He never specified that it was Conahan who was going to pay him $100 for a photo-shoot, either.

A Fort Myers police officer called to the Hog Trail crime scene in 1996 remembered a man who told him he survived a similar attack in 1994. That led to the state’s star witness, 29-year-old Stanley Burden. Lee believed Burden’s testimony could provide chilling insights into how six men may have died at the hands of Conahan.

"I live the attack every night," he told the court. "You don’t forget nothing. It just beats at you and beats at you and tears you apart."

The witness, still badly shaken, said he was down on his luck, living in a chinzy motel room in 1994 when Conahan approached him and offered him $150 to go with him into the woods to pose for naked photographs he wanted to use for a magazine article. Burden was so broke he would hire out to the devil if he liked the propositon. He said yes, and the two men piled in Conahan’s station wagon and drove past supermarkets and housing developments until they reached the woods.

As they walked into the cathedral-like peacefulness of Hog Trail, Conahan asked Burden if he ever had pictures taken in bondage.

"I told him no," he testified. "Then he said he’d show me how to do it." Burden said Conahan began by tying his hands around a tree, then he took pictures of him in various positions.

Burden said he felt a little uncomfortable, then frightened when Conahan tied a rope around his neck. "He said ‘Here, I’m going to drape this just around your shoulders and take some pictures.’ Then he yanked straight back into the tree," Burden continued.

He said Conahan was perspiring, breathing heavy and cursing, "Why won’t you die you son-of-a-bitch?"

"He tried with everything he could to kill me. You got your foot on the back of the tree and you’re pulling with everything you’ve got and it don’t work. What would you do? It was like he gave up," Burden said.

Conahan sat at the defense table ignoring Burden as he pressed on with his startling testimony. He said Conahan sexually assaulted him then offered him money to forget about the occurrence. "He said he would give me a hundred dollars. I told him just keep it, I just want to be left alone. If he didn’t have somewhere to go that day, I believe he would have tried to stand there and keep going."

Ahlbrand said his client admitted to being with Burden in August of 1994, but his story was different than what the court was told. Conahan’s story was that Burden refused to be photographed in the nude, but accepted $20 for quick sex and that’s all there was to it.

Ahlbrand reminded the court that Conahan was held a year under those charges while investigators tried to build a case against him. But the state quickly dropped the Burden charges when they decided to indict Conahan for the Montgomery murder.

Without Burden’s testimony the prosecution probably could make the case but it would be a lot harder. But it was Burden’s inconsistencies in his testimony that bothered the defense attorney and Judge Blackwell as well. Defense attorneys and private investigators comparing notes discovered that Burden was anything but a credible witness.

Ahlbrand brought out that the state’s star witness lied like an affidavit. First off, he was a convicted child molester who admitted to having used marijuana, cocaine, and tequila. He said he had began drinking at age 14. He was currently serving 10 to 25 years in the Marion Correctional Institution in Ohio for sexually assaulting a 12-year-old boy. He was indicated for that crime a year after he claimed Conahan assaulted him.

A condition of Burden taking the stand was that he be allowed to say that Conahan’s attack led him to assault the little boy. "How do you know that I would ever have did that?" he asked the judge directly. He showed no remorse for what he had done. The kid asked him for sex, he said. "He was starting his puberty or whatever, that’s what he wanted, so that’s what he got."

Under cross-examination, Burden admitted to previous lies. In previous interviews with police he couldn’t remember or refused to supply a number of details about the Conahan incident. If that weren’t enough, he openly maintained he hated the "coppers" and indicated that he hadn’t told them the entire story concerning the Conahan case.

In yet another setback for the prosecution, after ME R.H. Imami testified that ligature marks on the body of Montgomery were inflicted ‘after’ death, Ahlbrand got him to admit that the killer could have tied him up while he was alive and the ligature marks could still have come after death from the weight of the slumped body pulling against the rope.

Probably the most essential witness called by the prosecutors before they rested their case on Tuesday, August 17th, was Paula Sauer, a microanalyst with the Florida Department of Law Enforcement ( FDLE). She testified that she found 15 types of fibers taken from Conahan’s home, his Plymouth station wagon and his father’s 1984 Mercury Capri, which he sometimes drove.

Sauer told the court that a 16th type of fiber found on his property matched fibers on a rope that police contended he used in the attempted strangulation of the Lee County man who testified earlier that Conahan tried to kill him. She said she looked at more than color, examining shade, hue, wear and tear and changes when exposed to sunlight.

Sauer used a film screen to explain her findings to Conahan, the judge and opposing attorneys, who had gathered in a jury box. When Cocahan returned to the defense table, he rolled his eyes, smiled and wiggled his eyebrows at the only relative who had come to support him.

According to Sauer, an uncommon pink fiber called polyprophlene, was lifted from Montgomery’s body that matched a rope found in the Mercury Capri.

Janice Taylor, a senior crime lab analyst with FDLE testified next. She said she found a paint chip in Montgomery’s public hair that matched a paint chip taken from the Capri that belonged to Conahan’s deceased father.

"These two paint chips were indistinguishable from each other," Taylor told the judge.

It was time to march up to the cannon’s mouth.

The judge’s decision came after in 25 minutes of deliberation. He found that Daniel Conahan Jr. was guilty of strangling Richard Montgomery, allowing the Punta Gorda police to close the book on the Hog Trail murder case. Judge Blackwell found Conahan guilty of first-degree murder, premeditated murder and kidnapping, while strangely enough, dismissing a charge of sexual battery.

Outside the courtroom, Ahlbrand told a gaggle of reporters, "I’m never surprised with a verdict. I’m always disappointed with an adverse verdict. I’m convinced Judge Blackwell began deliberating to some extent throughout the trial, which is what I’d expect a judge to do."

Conahan’s other attorney, Paul Sullivan, said it was up to Conahan to chose whether the penalty phase of the trial would happen before a jury or whether he would entrust his life to Judge Blackwell. Conahan chose a jury.

Conahan’s emotionless attitude no doubt played a part in the jury’s recommendation. On November 3, 1999, after 22 minutes of deliberations, they asked Judge Blackwell to send him to death row until such time he could be strapped to Florida’s dreaded electric chair. Since Judges very seldom go against a jury’s decision, by the time this goes to print he should be on death row.

Meanwhile, Dan Conahan’s case is on appeal.

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