For Immediate Release
Thursday, September 10, 2026
STARKE, Fla. — Tonight, We the People of the State of Florida executed Navy veteran Daniel “Danny” Conahan, Jr. for the 1996 murder of Richard Montgomery. Danny’s execution was Florida’s 15th this year, the 43rd under Governor Ron DeSantis, and the 12th execution of a military veteran during his tenure. Danny maintained his innocence for more than three decades and was actively seeking DNA testing to support his claim when the Governor abruptly signed his death warrant last month.
We remember Richard Montgomery. His life mattered, and his murder caused immeasurable pain to the people who knew and loved him. We also recognize the grief of the families whose loved ones were killed in other, still-unsolved murders that law enforcement has – rightly or wrongly – attributed to Danny. Those families have lived for decades with devastating loss and unanswered questions. They deserve truthful answers supported by evidence – not suspicions and suppositions repeated so often that they are eventually treated as proven facts.
For three decades, and with increasing intensity in recent weeks, law enforcement and prosecutors have promoted the narrative that Danny was a “serial killer.” In the coming days, we expect press conferences declaring that “justice was served” not only for Richard, but for the victims of other murders authorities have blamed on Danny.
Yet Danny has never been charged with, let alone tried for or convicted of, any of those other murders. Calling him a serial killer does not make it an established fact, and executing him does not magically transform unsolved murders into solved cases just because he is no longer alive to defend against those accusations.
Danny was convicted of one murder: Richard Montgomery’s. Even the evidence in that case was shockingly thin.
Danny was sent to death row based on circumstantial evidence and salacious assumptions about gay men and their sexual behavior during a period of intense anti-gay stigma. Police began to view him as a suspect only after revisiting an allegation they had deemed unreliable two years earlier, in which Stanley Burden claimed Danny had attacked him during a sexual encounter. By then incarcerated in Ohio, Burden later admitted that he had been promised support for his release on parole in exchange for his testimony. Danny’s fate was then sealed by jailhouse informant John Neuman, who claimed Danny confessed to the killing. That testimony has since been seriously undermined by another cellmate, who confirmed that Danny never confessed and that Neuman was well known in the jail for inventing confessions.
Meanwhile, significant evidence pointed away from Danny. No DNA matching him was found on Richard’s body or where it was discovered. Paint chips and carpet fibers could not be conclusively matched to Danny or his property.
Investigators also failed to meaningfully examine another possible suspect: Richard’s uncle, James Bauman. Bauman was involved in an eerily similar murder and agreed to testify for the State in exchange for immunity in that case. The victim was located within 10 miles of Montgomery’s body, and both men were found with mutilated genitals. Despite that, the police never investigated Bauman, nor has his DNA been compared to any crime scene evidence.
In January 2025, Danny filed a request for post-conviction DNA testing. The State opposed this straightforward request. What they failed to admit, until forced to do so, was that they were conducting their own DNA testing in secret, desperately trying to link him to the other unsolved crimes. That testing repeatedly came up empty.
The Attorney General then fought to prevent further testing while Danny’s attorneys sought records concerning the State’s undisclosed work. Before that process could be resolved, Governor DeSantis signed Danny’s death warrant on August 11, 2026. Within 24 hours, Danny’s DNA-testing request – which had been pending for 18 months – was summarily denied.
What would have been lost by allowing the testing to proceed? What possible harm could have come from waiting? Danny had already spent more than 30 years in prison. There was no emergency and no threat to public safety. The only urgency was one created by the State itself.
Florida has wrongfully convicted and sentenced to death more people than any other state in the country. Danny’s case shares hallmarks found in many of Florida’s 30 death row exonerations: faulty or incomplete forensic testing, unreliable informant testimony, and the State’s resistance to any new evidence that could undermine its original theory.
There can be no credible argument – legal, moral, practical, or otherwise – for refusing to test available forensic evidence before carrying out an irreversible punishment, particularly in a state with such a poor track record. Even ardent supporters of capital punishment routinely support DNA testing before an execution. In Danny’s case, the refusal is especially shocking: the State secretly pursued DNA testing when it hoped the results would help cement its image of Danny as a serial killer, then fought additional testing that might have supported his innocence.
Danny was also more than the monstrous caricature the State painted to try to justify his execution. He was a Navy veteran, a nurse, a Catholic, and a former high-school choir member. On death row, he was known for helping other incarcerated people and sharing what he had, especially with the new arrivals who came to death row scared and uncertain of their future.
Tonight’s execution did not prove that Danny was a serial killer or provide other families with evidence-based answers about who killed their loved ones. It merely gave the State a convenient way to close the books without ever having to test its allegations in a court of law.
In a state that has gotten it wrong more often than any other, there is no excuse for executing a person while forensic testing remains available. Florida had time to seek the truth. Instead, it chose to run out the clock.
Why is the State so afraid of the answer?