Bodies Found Mutilated in the Florida Woods in the 90s. Was a Serial Killer at Work? By Christine Pelisek

On Feb. 1, 1994, two hog hunters discovered the decomposed remains of a man known as John Doe #1 in the woods in Florida’s northern Charlotte County.

A family dog found a second set of remains in the woods of nearby North Port on Jan. 1, 1996. A third body, which was later identified as John Melaragno, was discovered on March 7, 1996.

The following month, on April 17, 1996, two county workers stumbled across the decomposing remains of Kenneth Smith. As investigators searched the area for more of Smith’s body parts, they came across another body, which was rolled up in foam carpet padding. The man soon was identified as 20-year-old Richard Montgomery.

“When we found Kenny Smith and Richard Montgomery, then we knew that there was a fox in the hen house and potential for a serial murderer involved with these very similar methods of killing people,” Jim Myers, a retired investigator with the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, tells PEOPLE. “It all started making sense that we got a sick individual out here.”

Myers says the serial killer targeted transients and drifters, promising them money for bondage photos before sexually assaulting and killing them in Charlotte and Sarasota counties. Some of the victims were bound to trees with their genitals mutilated.

The killings were dubbed the “Hog Trail Murders.”

A key break came in the case came in May 1996, when David Payton, an inmate at a Florida correctional facility, reached out to authorities after he saw a broadcast about the murders on TV. Payton told investigators he was picked up in a blue Mercury Capri by a man who went by Dan, who offered him money to take photos. 

Dan drove Payton to a remote dirt road where the car got stuck in mud. A passing motorist offered to help and while Payton was steering the vehicle he looked in the back seat and saw a camera, a blue tarp and some rope.

“He knew what he was fixing to get into wasn’t any good and he was in fear,” says Myers.

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After the car was pushed out of the mud, Payton took off in the Capri.

Daniel O. Conahan Jr. reported the car stolen and Payton was arrested and charged with grand theft auto.

“[Payton] kept trying to tell these attorneys that I had to do it,” says Myers. “This guy was going [to] kill me. He says he took a plea deal and got sentenced to prison because nobody would believe him.”

Stanley Burden also had a story to tell about Conahan. He told investigators two years after his 1994 attack that he was approached by Conahan, who took him to a wooded area where he tied him to a tree for a bondage photo shoot and attempted to strangle him with a double ligature.

Conahan “even put his foot up on the tree to get more pressure on the rope,” says Myers. After a 30-minute struggle, Conahan reportedly asked him, “why can’t you just die?” before giving up and leaving Burden tied to the tree.  

Burden identified 42-year-old Conahan, a nurse who lived with his elderly parents, out of a photo lineup.

Conahan was indicted for Montgomery’s murder and later sentenced to death on Dec. 10, 1999. He was never charged with the other deaths.

Conahan is also a “person of interest” in the deaths of eight white males whose remains were found in the woods in Fort Meyers in March of 2007, Fort Myers Police Department detective Richard Harasym told Gulf Coast News Now. The victims — three of them since identified — are believed to have been killed in the mid 90s and are now known as the “Fort Myers 8.”

In 2021, John Doe #1 was identified as 27-year-old Massachusetts drifter Jerry Lombard.

Conahan is still on death row in Florida State Prison.