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00:01:42
welcome to True Crime garage wherever you are whatever you are doing thanks for listening I'm your host Nick and
00:01:48
with me as always is a man who has agreed to play out the rest of the season on the franchise tag here is the
00:01:55
captain oh honey it's good to be seen and good to see you thanks for listening thanks for telling a
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[Music] friend today we are still sipping on Pulp friction from the Motorworks Brewing if you like citrus grapefruit
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and a beautiful golden and orange Brew you're going to love pulp friction which took the gold medal at the 2017 best
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Florida beer Championship garage grade three and 3/4 bottle caps out of five and here's some PR and thank you that
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goes out to our good friends that helped us with this week's beer run and those are first up a cheers to Melissa and
00:02:37
Fort Meers Florida and a big shout out to pel in Hillsdale New Jersey and next we have hailing from the beautiful Parts
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Unknown we have Teresa Bower everyone we mentioned helped us fill up the fridge for this week's shows and for that we
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thank you yep yep yep yep yep yep BW R in beer run make sure you go to our website sign up on our mailing list if
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you need more True Crime garage for your earballs check out our bonus show code off the Record and also if you want to
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keep the lights on go to the store Page get yourself some swag you'll be looking good in that swag
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that's enough of the business all right everybody gather around grab a chair grab a beer let's talk some true
00:03:24
crime the end anybody [Music] end two south Florida counties in the mid99s were rocked by the disturbing
00:03:48
discovery of five disfigured and mutilated bodies in three different locations across the cities of Northport
00:03:55
and Port Charlotte this between 1994 in 1996 five bodies were discovered but it was the last one which was the first to
00:04:07
be identified all five cases were considered homicides two of the five victims at this point in our timeline
00:04:14
are identified and along with autopsy reports it was believed that the killer was praying on vulnerable young male
00:04:23
victims who were either transient or homeless now one victim that was identif ified was Richard Montgomery who was
00:04:33
killed a short time before his body was discovered this would make his case quite a bit different from the others
00:04:40
and the police were gearing up to try to track down the persons known to Mr Montgomery to find out what they could
00:04:50
possibly know about his murder and what they find is some great Witnesses for the Montgomery case here's what they
00:04:58
learned they find two witnesses that say that they had seen Mr Montgomery the day
00:05:04
before his body was found in the woods according to these Witnesses these were people that knew Mr Montgomery to some
00:05:12
degree they said that he told friends the night that he disappeared that he had a gig he had a job that was going to
00:05:21
pay him $200 and he was last seen by his friends standing by a rural road waiting for
00:05:29
someone waiting to meet someone but it sounds more like he was waiting for someone to meet him and pick him up at
00:05:36
that location then of course we know that Mr Montgomery was found dead the next day police also learned that
00:05:44
Richard Montgomery lived with his sister and they could place the victim with some other individuals this is Bobby
00:05:52
Whitaker and Gary Mason and some other friends the day before when he mentioned that he was going out to make a few
00:06:00
hundred and would be back shortly when asked by somebody in the group if whatever he was up to was legal Mr
00:06:08
Montgomery simply smiled Mr Montgomery also told his mother that someone had offered to pay him $200 to pose for n
00:06:15
pictures but he did not tell her who made the offer right in this same conversation with his mother mcgomery
00:06:23
mentioned that he had recently met a man named Daniel conahan who lived in Puna Gorda Isles and was a nurse at a medical
00:06:32
center the last time friends saw Montgomery alive was on April 16th between 400 p.m. and 7 p.m. weeks later
00:06:43
in may of 1996 two witnesses came forward to point out that Dan conahan is likely to be the
00:06:52
last person that they were aware of to be in contact with the now deceased Richard Montgomery again he was the
00:06:58
fifth body found but this is huge because we can identify one of the victims and we have some people that
00:07:04
knew the victim while still working to pce these alarming details together an unexpected call came into law
00:07:12
enforcement this maybe from one of the strangest places that they would think to possibly get a break in their case
00:07:21
this call came from an incarcerated individual who told the police he knew who had murdered Richard
00:07:29
Montgomery well and if this guy is credible this could be a huge break for law enforcement the person who calls in
00:07:36
is a one David a Payton so the next big break in this case came on May 8th 1996 that from a prison inmate located
00:07:46
in Mor Haven and this was David a pton who had a story for the detectives David Payton told police that before he was
00:07:57
locked up he said that he would Cruise the streets of Fort Meers Florida and hustle gay men for
00:08:05
money he told detectives that in March of 1995 he was picked up by a person that
00:08:12
he identified as Dan conahan he said Dan gave him drugs and alcohol and asked if
00:08:19
they could drive to a remote area to take some photos of David pton naked and tied to a tree this is an incredible
00:08:28
detail and graphic account of this incident and this is all from a fantastic website
00:08:35
called Twisted Florida it's a Blog about several different true crime stories from the Florida area yeah I recommend
00:08:42
this blog which I love Florida Captain especially the beach communities there but Florida is as weird as any state
00:08:49
when it comes to True Crime so well you love to go on vacation there and uh and because of you you have shined so much a
00:08:58
light on the the crimes in Ohio so basically the two places you go most of the time have some weird cases
00:09:07
suspicious a little bit of a red flag so I'll tell this portion of our True Crime
00:09:12
Story as it is told on the Twisted Florida blog go on kind David pton might have thought he was in for a good time
00:09:20
when a stranger in a car rolled up alongside him and asked him if he wanted to smoke some joints pton often spent
00:09:27
his nights hanging out on the streets of Fort Meyers hey bro you want to smoke some weed that late evening in 1995 he
00:09:35
accepted a man's offer and hopped into his car what followed would not be a typical night in Southwest Florida as
00:09:46
the two were coasting along US 41 Payton noticed that while The Quiet Man in the
00:09:51
driver's seat was supplying him with marijuana valume and beer the driver was not partaking
00:09:58
himself little conversation was taking place between the two strangers until the man seemingly out of nowhere asked
00:10:05
pton if he had ever had photographs taken of him specifically nude photos The Stranger said he wanted to drive to
00:10:13
the woods and take photos of Payton's naked body tied up mhm reaching over he touched Payton in a certain area and
00:10:23
explained that the Rope would not be flicky flicky and explained that the Rope would be tied tightly but not bad
00:10:32
enough to hurt him yeah right continuing on their Drive the two ended up on an outof theeway Dirt Road in Charlotte
00:10:39
County Florida they passed a couple of people in trucks with dogs and upon seeing them the Man became agitated and
00:10:47
upset this is the driver the two moved along slowly until they hit a mud hole and the vehicle became stuck when pton
00:10:56
offered to go ask the other people that they had just seen for help the man's demeanor darkened and he firmly said to
00:11:04
not move from the car while he talked to them run for your life returning with another person to help push the car out
00:11:13
of the hole he directed pton to remain inside the vehicle alarmed pton turned around and looking at his surroundings
00:11:21
he noticed a few disturbing items in the back seat of the vehicle items with a potentially chilling purpose
00:11:29
the these items that he says he saw there Captain were a camera a bag a tarp some rope and a hunting knife well the
00:11:38
camera maybe that doesn't throw up any red flags but I don't like people having big trash bags in their car so run for
00:11:45
your life or oh you got some ropes maybe run for your life or once you see a tarp
00:11:51
run for your life get out of there this is not a good place to be I don't find myself in that vehicle at all so it's
00:12:00
hard for me to think past that part one I'm not getting in the vehicle in the first place two once you touch my
00:12:08
purple-headed yogurt Slinger I'm gone but also when you say hey I'd like to take some nude photos of you tied up to
00:12:16
a tree well first of all nobody nobody wants to see the captain nude but second of all you do not want to see me tied up
00:12:24
naked on a tree but oh this guy driving this car he does well yeah he sent me a couple I've not asked
00:12:33
him specifically this question but I'm here to tell you I would wager $100 bill he does well
00:12:39
on on our 600 episode you just said the funniest thing that you've ever said so I guess the next 600 shows it's all
00:12:48
uphill from here ladies and gentlemen but yeah I'm not getting into that car there's too many red flags and and if I
00:12:56
get in that car there's so many red flags that I am jumping out of the window for my life this is what's going
00:13:02
to push him over the edge I don't know how scared or frightened he was or how off-put he was by any of the actions
00:13:09
leading up to this I can simply simply uh regurgitating the story that's on Twisted Florida as they saw it so he
00:13:19
says pton says that you know seeing these items he was already kind of getting frightened and he said driven by
00:13:26
fear I had to make a Split Second decision and tell you what this pton guy now while I would not have gotten in the
00:13:33
car this guy makes a great effort uh here this is a very smart move on Payton's behalf so what he does is as
00:13:41
soon as this man Dan conahan and this other person get the vehicle remember the the
00:13:49
car is stuck in this mud hole right as soon as these guys push it out Payton he does as instructed by this this person
00:13:59
that's been driving him around remember Dan conahan says don't get out of the car you stay you are to remain in the
00:14:05
vehicle well David Payton remains in the vehicle he just hops in the driver's seat and flees the
00:14:12
area takes the vehicle with him so smart move he's driving off in this blue Mercury Capri and he's heading south on
00:14:22
us41 in the man's vehicle that you know the guy that picked him up but because of the drug in the beer in his system he
00:14:31
was already having a hard time staying awake at the wheel as he's trying to flee this area well and again so it
00:14:39
could be a situation where they start moving the the car and he starts going man whatever this guy gave me is is
00:14:47
doing something to me it's trying to pass me out right well I don't know if he's trying to pass him out I think he's
00:14:53
just plying him with drugs and alcohol so that this guy becomes easier victim even more vulnerable and I mean you're
00:15:01
talking that combination as described by Payton right is volume marijuana and beer well party
00:15:10
you want to stay awake and drive a vehicle you better get some toothpicks and and keep your eyes Pride open your
00:15:16
eyelids Pride open there but um he says that he drove off the drugs are in his system they're taking effect he was
00:15:23
having a hard time staying awake of course this whole thing there's no real violence
00:15:29
here what happens is you would think that maybe or as the good people at Twisted Florida wrote that Payton would
00:15:37
contact the authorities after such a strange and frightening experience but the flip side of that coin is ironically
00:15:45
it was not pton who contacted the police but rather Dan conahan who was the owner
00:15:51
of the rope and the knife and the tarp uh he lost very little time in contacting police and this is because he
00:16:00
was driving his father's vehicle right so when he comes home without his father's vehicle because his this person
00:16:10
that he picked up made off with the vehicle he contacts the police and says hey someone stole my father's car and
00:16:17
here is a story or my version of the story as it goes unfortunately soon after David pyton reached Fort Meyers
00:16:27
Florida he's picked up and arrested for the stolen vehicle so now he's telling police what happened that
00:16:34
night and they don't believe Payton's story Dan conahan he reports his father's car has stolen on the on that
00:16:45
same night and he his story was very different he said that the theft happened when he stopped on the side of
00:16:53
the road and he went to relieve himself now an initial background check of Dan conahan revealed that he was an
00:17:01
unemployed licensed practical nurse who had previously worked at charlot Regional Medical Center he had formerly
00:17:09
served in the military until being discharged he was currently living with his parents in Punta Gorda so they
00:17:17
didn't believe David Payton's story Payton's defense attorney at the time told him to take the plea or he was
00:17:24
going to be risking more time in prison so with no support on his side David pton plad guilty to vehicle theft and
00:17:32
was sentenced to two years in prison so now we fast forward to may of 1996 David Payton still incarcerated
00:17:40
tells authorities hey I know who committed the hog Trail murders it's the same person that picked me up a year
00:17:47
before took me to a road not well traveled and told me that he wanted to take nude pictures of me tied up and of
00:17:56
course he's not able to to identify the man by name uh I'm guessing maybe even on this phone call he's
00:18:05
certainly not able to identify the person driving the vehicle that night as it happened but when you later plead
00:18:12
guilty to stealing the car you know who filed the police report so of course police have that man's name from the
00:18:20
police report of that stolen Mercury which ended up leading them to Daniel conahan Jr right and you have to
00:18:27
remember where he jumped into the driver's seat and drove off to escape where they claimed that he stole the
00:18:35
vehicle from was only a few miles from one of the dumping sites where they found all those bodies well let's just
00:18:41
think for a second how bad that would suck you you get in the car you shouldn't have got in the car but you
00:18:46
got in the car you took some drugs they're doing some stuff to you this guy's acting strange he's talking to you
00:18:52
about taking pictures of you nude tied to a tree he has this knife in his car that you get stuck you jump in the
00:19:00
driver's seat you take off you get arrested the cops don't believe you and now you're sentenced to two years in
00:19:06
jail I mean maybe you'd feel lucky at that point like look I could have been murdered and then you would think at
00:19:13
some point that this person after the situation happens then kind of sees different things in the news that would
00:19:20
make him believe that he escaped death yeah after all it was it was he the inmate that contacted police and said
00:19:29
hey I know who I think did this and then you know let's go back to some of the other unique details of these cases you
00:19:39
know we have police who are working these as they are in fact connected due to the unique nature of the homicides
00:19:47
and the fact that they believe and have proof of the victims being tied to a tree tied naked to a tree and then
00:19:56
strangled the police are reviewing similar assault reports from the recent past and we talk about this so many
00:20:05
times when we cover cases like this and unsolved cases of Serial offenders you have to remember in the cases that are
00:20:14
solved it's not something that happens in every single case but it happens often and sometimes it's not until the
00:20:20
guy's already in handcuffs are already on trial or even after the fact that he gets locked up right but often we find
00:20:29
the one who got away yeah Ryan goling there's usually somebody who got away the the managed to survive a serial
00:20:38
killer and they're able to give us great insights into the other attacks that happened on victims that weren't so
00:20:46
lucky so one such report if in fact police were looking for one that got away or similar types of crimes they
00:20:56
come across this report that is from August 15th 1994 so it falls into our general timeline right the 94 to 96
00:21:06
seems to be the the span of concern here right and I have a very kind of basic version of this story but I'll go
00:21:16
through what I have here Captain it says Stanley Burton was a high school dropout
00:21:21
who had difficulty keeping a steady job the assault report indicated that Burton
00:21:27
met Dan conahan who offered to pay him1 100 to $150 to pose for nude photographs
00:21:34
Burton agreed and conahan drove him to a rocky Dirt Road in a secluded area where
00:21:40
conahan pulled out a duffel bag with a tarp and a Polaroid camera the two men headed into the woods where conahan laid
00:21:48
the tarp out and asked Burton to take off his shirt after taking numerous pictures of buron conahan then took out
00:21:56
a new package of clothesline so he could get some bondage pictures he asked Burton to step close to a nearby tree
00:22:05
and then clipped the clothesline in several pieces draping them over burden to make it look like bondage conahan
00:22:13
moved behind Burton snapped the Rope tightly around him pulled his hands behind the tree placed the ropes around
00:22:21
his legs and chest and wrapped the Rope twice around Burton's neck conahan then performed a sex act on Burton and
00:22:29
attempted to sodomize him after many unsuccessful attempts conahan snapped the Rope around Burton's neck placed his
00:22:37
foot against the tree and pulled on the rope in an attempt to strangle Burton who tried to slide around the tree to
00:22:45
keep his windpipe open conahan hit Burton in the head this dude is a absolute Savage I mean he is a sick So
00:22:56
eventually he gives up on this attack conahan seems to get frustrated as the two are struggling back and forth in the
00:23:03
woods and he gives up on this attack and he leaves the area but he left this man tied up to the
00:23:12
tree right now who knows how long he would have been there the way that Burton describes it it sounds to me like
00:23:20
he leaves conahan that is leaves mid struggle who knows I wasn't there and again this is a brief description Maybe
00:23:28
thought he had successfully choked the guy to death sure you w using the Rope but regardless what we know ends up
00:23:34
happening is this burden guy gets extremely lucky that conahan left something at the scene it was like a set
00:23:42
of pliers or something that somehow in a struggle he was able to reach these pliers I don't know if he used his his
00:23:51
foot to grab them off of the ground but he's able to use these pliers to help pry himself loose from from the rope and
00:23:58
from the tree and he he he managed to escape with his life uh in that way now it's uncertain to me what what is
00:24:08
unclear through all of this is they have this assault report that was filed by this individual by Stanley Burton but
00:24:21
I'm curious if that because we're reading it after the fact that they've retroactively applied Dan conahan's name
00:24:30
to this report because it seems like conahan should have been arrested and charged with something knowing that he
00:24:36
filed this police report but it doesn't seem like that ever happened so it's very likely that this victim Stanley
00:24:43
Burton didn't know the man who picked him up and who tried to kill him there in the woods yeah so even though he
00:24:51
didn't know him so he couldn't say hey well it was John it was my buddy John they were able to have have him identify
00:24:59
he was able to identify Dan conahan through a police [Music] lineup this show is sponsored by better
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[Music] GameChanger all right we are back can't believe we made it this far it's all cuz of you but make sure you
00:27:25
subscribe to the podcast and make sure you tell friend so we can reach another 600 episodes cheers to you Colonel
00:27:33
cheers captain now remember our inmate David pton who called police says hey I know who killed Richard
00:27:41
Montgomery they hear his story they are aware that well we charge you with stealing Dan conahan's father's vehicle
00:27:51
so we do know that you know this individual or spent you know some deal of time with him even if you were in
00:27:56
fact guilty of stealing the car or if you say what happened happened they can clearly connect the dots between Payton
00:28:06
and Dan conahan now what happens here is they're like you know what we better double
00:28:12
check everything before we really start investigating this guy we have other people mentioning Dan conahan's name to
00:28:20
law enforcement as well in regard to Richard Montgomery's murder they hook Payton up to a lie detector test he
00:28:28
passes the test and so with that they decide hey that's enough for investigators to put a tail on Dan
00:28:36
conahan they want to start their investigation but they're going to surveil Dan conahan for some time before
00:28:44
before they take the investigation any further well it's smart on law enforcement's part to hey we don't know
00:28:51
if we should believe him let's give him a polygraph at least they give us some kind of barometer of if we can trust him
00:28:59
or not yeah and they're going to use that information to start to tail Dan conahan and they start by going to the
00:29:06
condo where he shared uh a living space with his father in Puna Gorda and the detectives they discover very quickly
00:29:17
that he has some erratic driving behaviors he's always out driving he often pulled u-turns he stopped on side
00:29:25
streets and parking lots they wondered if he was aware that they were trailing him or if he just did these types of
00:29:35
Maneuvers because he was worried that somebody may be tailing him you see what I mean like not necessarily any
00:29:42
awareness that somebody is in fact doing it right but as it just in case so they
00:29:48
decide very quickly that they're going to put a tracking device on this vehicle in fact soon after they received David
00:29:57
payon's information police began monitoring Dan conahan and a mobile tracking device was placed on that
00:30:04
vehicle they say every time he left his house we had six cars bracketing him yeah one of the best tips I've ever
00:30:11
heard from law enforcement is if you think somebody's falling you do four left turns or four right turns they had
00:30:19
Dan conahan's home under 24-hour surveillance with both human eyeballs on the team as as well as video cameras
00:30:29
surveilling this condo where he lived at with his parents at all times they say that they surveilled him for 50 days and
00:30:36
they had two separate instances when they had undercover detectives who posed as homeless men who stood on the side of
00:30:45
us41 and while they were wearing a wire Dan actually approached these two men and asked them about going to have them
00:30:54
pose for nude pictures in the woods aha aha feels like a goty moment some more details about that is one detective said
00:31:06
that he was asked if he was into modeling and Dan told him that he liked to take photos with the theme of
00:31:14
progressive bondage and then we have a second undercover detective that put himself in conahan's path and he said he
00:31:21
too was propositioned with cash if he would pose naked for some pictures now they couldn't get these two undercover
00:31:31
detectives they could never get him to take them to the actual to any place in the woods or out in any of these
00:31:41
locations they were hoping to have him do that the interesting thing here though too is if you look at the
00:31:47
situation and you have these five victims and I know we're talking about a span of of two years or so in which we
00:31:56
had these five vict victims but with the 50 days of surveillance they're really hoping to catch this dude red-handed is
00:32:04
what it tells me and unfortunately that means that based off of the crime scenes
00:32:09
and how decomposed some of their victims were they likely didn't have much in the
00:32:13
way of physical evidence against Dan conahan they were able to trace some of that fiber evidence that they had and
00:32:23
some paint chip evidence that they had found at the crime scene and on some of the murdered victims back to Dan conahan
00:32:31
back to the vehicle that he was using and back to the home that he shared with his parents right so that gives us some
00:32:38
kind of physical evidence the other troubling thing they were able to subpoena Dan conahan's credit card
00:32:45
records and they were able to see his purchases and his purchases are lining up with some of these stories of of what
00:32:53
people called in mainly Stanley Burton story then also David Payton's story where
00:33:01
they got credit card statements showing that Dan conahan purchased clothesline rope Polaroid film pliers a utility
00:33:09
knife this all in the area and they also found that he was using ATM machines located close to the areas where he was
00:33:19
propositioning these men and picking them up yeah because he doesn't have to give them the money but he might need to
00:33:25
show them the money correct so not only does he have this kill kit but he has the tools of the trade to also document
00:33:33
the kill and then also like you said the the ATM to have the money on hand so he
00:33:39
could show these individuals hey I got the $200 so armed with all of these statements of the witnesses that led up
00:33:46
to the Richard Montgomery murder and then the two statements of the individuals that survived Dan conahan
00:33:55
and that physical evidence and these credit card statements and ATM statements this is enough for them to
00:34:01
make an arrest they arrest him and they are going to charge him with the assault
00:34:08
on Stanley Burton and also the murder of Richard mcgomery ultimately the Stanley burden case the
00:34:17
the assault case they dropped the charges on that case and I think it's a rather complicated matter and we we
00:34:25
still have quite bit to get to so I don't want to go through the details of that uh people are certainly welcome to
00:34:32
find those on their own now while they are awaiting trial for Dan conahan another skeleton was found in Charlotte
00:34:41
County 10 months later DNA identified the remains as a one William Charles Patton uh who disappeared in
00:34:49
1993 so if in fact this William Charles Patton murder is connected to Dan conahan this would be likely the
00:35:01
earliest one to date in our timeline this man disappeared in 1993 at this point in our timeline
00:35:10
captain we're bringing up murder charges against this guy only for one murder that being of Richard Montgomery right
00:35:18
four other victims that we believe are connected to Dan conahan but three of them still hadn't been
00:35:25
identified at this point by the time they go to trial against this guy that they believe is a serial killer and like
00:35:32
what you were stating the other day that some of these victims were put out there
00:35:38
and then once they were discovered then another victim was put out there so we didn't believe that the victims were
00:35:44
just all out there at the same time and law enforcement didn't find them they were finding the victims as he was
00:35:50
dumping them but that does not mean because we got miles of wooded area that doesn't mean that they found all the
00:35:57
victims that could be connected to this like I said psychopath Psychopathic killer it would take a couple years but
00:36:06
in 1999 Dan conahan was found guilty he was found guilty on first-degree premeditated murder charges and
00:36:13
kidnapping and in December of 99 he was sentenced to death he is currently still
00:36:21
alive and he is being held at the Union Correctional Institution and Rayford Florida and if you look him up online
00:36:31
the the one of the first sentences and first paragraphs that will come up is that he is convicted of one murder but
00:36:39
suspected in six plus murders now depending on who you talk to that number can vary to a great degree that's
00:36:48
because several more bodies were discovered in the Charlotte County area with similarities to the hog Trail
00:36:55
killings there was one victim found in 2000 two victims found in 2001 and an additional one found in 2002 now that's
00:37:06
going to lead us up to this horrific discovery which took place on March 23rd 2007 this is when eight skulls and
00:37:16
skeletal remains were found in a wooded area in Fort Meyers this is reported to be the largest such Discovery in the
00:37:26
state of Florida's history and you had referenced this captain in episode one where this case has some things that
00:37:35
reminds one of the West Mesa body pit or the Long Island serial killer case right
00:37:43
what happens in the discovery of all of these bodies well we can get the details
00:37:49
straight from an article that is titled Fort Meyers police seek clues in deaths the skeletal remains of eight people
00:37:57
were found in a wooded area about 25 ft from an unpaved section of Arcadia Street and East Fort Meyers so to give
00:38:07
one some perspective of distance here I don't have the exact locations of where the first five victims were found and
00:38:18
then we have a sixth potential victim that is found leading up to conahan's trial we have four other Vic victims
00:38:26
that are found in the early part of the 2000s and then we have eight that are discovered together these eight are are
00:38:34
discovered in a relatively small space but it could be upwards of 20 to 30 miles from where some of the other
00:38:44
bodies were found and keep in mind these these eight bodies are being discovered
00:38:51
what over 10 years after Dan conahan was arrested yeah so these deaths have been worked as a homicide all eight of
00:39:07
them and they believe police believe this to be a body dump location in fact it was somewhat obvious early on we have
00:39:17
a quote here from one of the officers involved that says it certainly sounds like a dump site but having said that
00:39:25
you would now have to determine whether they were murdered and dumped killed at that location and left there or just
00:39:33
bodies illegally disposed of one could make an argument that these are connected to the other victims I think
00:39:41
you can make a strong argument that they're not and this is probably the working of a entirely different serial
00:39:49
killer just in the same area well and that's where we kind of find ourselves left here in this case because because
00:39:56
there are many people that argue that these eight skeletons that were found together these victims would go on to be
00:40:03
known as the fort Meers 8 that they are all just other victims of Dan conahan right he's the easiest one to go well he
00:40:12
was active in this area and active believed to be about the same time that maybe some of these victims went missing
00:40:22
yeah I wish we could put a time period on on the deaths because that would give us a sense of if these were before or
00:40:31
after the victims well that's interesting here Captain because what we have here
00:40:38
is um some kind of it's it's really sad information because in in the first set of bodies that are found that we covered
00:40:48
extensively there are still some of those victims that are unidentified of this fort Meers
00:40:54
8 I've seen reports that three of them have been identified I've seen reports that only two of them have been
00:41:01
identified uh the the more concrete information that I have in front of me is that two were later identified as men
00:41:09
who disappeared in 1995 which would certainly fall into the Dan conahan timeline that we were working
00:41:19
with with his sus other suspected right victims which we should say other suspected victims because Dan conahan of
00:41:28
course was spoken to very quickly after the discovery of these bodies it wasn't lost on police that hey we have a known
00:41:36
serial killer that's locked up that may be responsible for these additional murders and yeah and he has a life
00:41:44
sentence so is it a possibility that he's going to come forward and confess it's possible the problem with Dan
00:41:51
conahan is he's he's only been convicted of one murder he's suspected of many more obviously he's never admitted to
00:41:58
even the one that he's been convicted for right he's admitted to killing zero people and with the amount of
00:42:06
decomposition and evidence lost due to time and weather and other items as well it doesn't appear that the police
00:42:16
have any evidence to connect Dan conahan to the Fort Meers 8 my problem with the
00:42:23
Fort Meyers 8 is that they're they're buried in Shallow Graves they say what less than two feet deep less than two
00:42:32
inches oh sorry of dirt yeah less than two Ines of dirt so th this is doesn't go with the signatures of his other
00:42:41
crimes the problem with the signatures of his other crimes though is those signatures are are not there's no way of
00:42:51
knowing so the right the the bearing of the body necessarily isn't you can look at it as a potential signature or as a
00:43:00
potential Mo which are two very different things but it could fall into either one of those categories based off
00:43:08
of the psychology of the killer but because we don't know the Killer and can't say for certain it's hard to
00:43:16
really hone in on that psychology so the the problem with with looking at signatures and comparing them from
00:43:24
Richard Montgomery to the fort Myers 8 right is these are skeletal remains his signatures Dan conahan's signatures as
00:43:34
they were on victim Richard Montgomery are all based off of they still being skin very true on our victim yeah where
00:43:42
we can see the ligature marks where we can see that there was a portion of the body amputated or removed cut off right
00:43:51
none of that is available for us to to view or even speculate on in regard to the Fort Meers 8 because they're all
00:43:59
skeletal Remains the problem is I I don't think we can look at this situation and say nope can't be Dan
00:44:06
conahan because the signatures don't match up the the issue being when we talk about burying somebody in two
00:44:14
inches of dirt one we don't know how long they've been there police have outwardly said that this could simply be
00:44:23
due to flooding in the area or changes in the area over time that maybe necessarily they were
00:44:31
just left on the ground and these changes occurred due to the passing of time right the other thing that they
00:44:37
point out the the officers that do believe that the fort Meers 8 were in fact buried in these shallow Graves if
00:44:44
if we were to call it that that's how it's referred to in some of the news articles and Reporting on this case but
00:44:51
I think that paints a whole entirely different picture than what police say that they saw at the scene at the scene
00:44:59
of the fort Meers 8 they're saying that it they wouldn't even go as far to calling it burying somebody more as
00:45:06
somebody just took the time to throw some dirt leaves and sticks over top of the bodies before leaving the area yeah
00:45:15
but it's it's also different in the sense of the other victims are not found in in a cluster like like these victims
00:45:25
are or as close of a cluster as these victims are yeah with John Doe one four and five and obviously four and five
00:45:34
were later identified I would call that a body cluster I I believe it was Gary Ridgeway the Green River Killer who
00:45:41
referred to some of his kills and and where he left remains as body clusters this to me with the fort Meers 8 that's
00:45:50
that's eight people all together in one location who's to say that he wasn't spreading
00:45:57
out uh at some point the other thing too is he you could look at it as if he did
00:46:04
all of these well maybe he was evolving or devolving whichever way you want to look at it maybe his crimes evolved to
00:46:11
something else or devolved that he was getting lazier with how he was choosing to conceal the bodies right then on the
00:46:18
flip side of that though you still have the possibility because we don't know who these victims are because we don't
00:46:23
know who is in fact responsible you could have had two killers working at approximately the same time with similar
00:46:31
similar victimology you could have a copycat situation now it's been reported that with the fort Meers a again many of
00:46:38
them still to this day not identified uh but they put the possible span of murders from as early as 1987 and one or
00:46:48
two maybe as late as 2001 which is super scary because we know that Dan conahan was locked up in
00:46:55
19 1996 so if if this again this is all speculation they're not basing any of this off of scientific fact but let's
00:47:04
say this speculation is correct and one or two of these murders happened that late well Dan conahan was already locked
00:47:12
up and incarcerated at that time so he couldn't have been responsible for those later murders and therefore make it even
00:47:20
much more difficult to believe him to be responsible for any of the fort Meers where we stand is we have the psychopath
00:47:27
in jail for Life convicted of one murder now if you put all the victims that they found
00:47:35
together that they don't have somebody in jail responsible for that's 18 victims and and we've both said I think
00:47:43
you could make a strong argument uh that all of them are connected and whether you want to put the the eight of the
00:47:51
fort Meer eight in your in their uh there's a strong argument I think either way right and
00:47:59
with one situation I mean you look at John Doe number five who's identified as Richard Montgomery and John Doe number
00:48:06
four who is identified as Kenneth Smith well those two victims are found 50 yards apart from one another one was
00:48:16
killed the day before he was found and one was killed just weeks before he was found and that's very difficult to say
00:48:24
well whoever did the killing of Richard Montgomery didn't kill Kenneth Smith it's you you would have to go out of
00:48:32
your way to be able to prove that right I think what what to me that shows is the difference in the degree of what
00:48:41
they were able to work with in their investigation with Richard Montgomery he was killed so shortly before he was
00:48:48
found they were able to piece together a series of events that made a a a a courtroom only deliberate for less than
00:48:57
30 minutes before sentencing this guy to death where the case that happened just
00:49:02
weeks before Richard Montgomery's death and murder that of Kenneth Smith there's
00:49:09
so much evidence already lost to time just weeks prior that one loses very little confidence in all these other
00:49:16
murders that likely happen months or maybe even a year or two before that of Richard
00:49:22
Montgomery now one piece of good information or or good news anyway occurred last year when authorities tell
00:49:31
us in July of 2021 that using genetic genealogy they have in fact positively identified one more of the unidentified
00:49:44
victims here this is more than 27 years after his mutilated and decomposed body was found in a wooded area of South
00:49:53
Florida they say now that John Doe number one was 31-year-old Gerald who went by
00:50:02
Jerry Anthony Lombard so now they've identified John Doe number one and now they are tasked with trying to connect
00:50:12
him to his alleged [Music] killer me this is the end anybody [Music] mebody you could be anywhere but you
00:50:34
choose to be right here and we thank you Colonel do we have any recommended reading for the beautiful listeners
00:50:40
today we will be recommending Boogeyman by Stephen Jackson Boogeyman he was every parents nightmare this is the true
00:50:48
story of a detective that refused to let some cases go cold he tracked down a serial killer and put him Behind Bars
00:50:57
check out Steven Jackson's great book Boogeyman you can find that great title and many other wonderful recommendations
00:51:03
on our recommended page at true Crim garage.com yeah I'm going to write a book called Boogerman that'll be out
00:51:11
next year until then be good be kind and don't litter [Music] is it possible to predict the
00:51:54
unpredicted can 3D printed life-size organ models help to map out complex surgeries ahead
00:52:00
of time is it possible it already is right here Mayo Clinic you know where to go