Conahan has also been named the prime suspect in the additional murders of eight men, collectively referred to as the Fort Myers Eight, who were discovered in a mass grave site in 2007.

Daniel Conahan was born on May 11, 1954, in Charlotte, North Carolina, to a middle-class family and moved with his parents to Punta Gorda, Florida, shortly after his birth.

[2] After his Navy discharge, Conahan stayed in Chicago for thirteen years before moving back to Punta Gorda to live with his elderly parents in 1993.

"I learned there are a lot of hitchhikers on U.S. 41 from North Port to Fort Myers, and some of them were looking to perform sex acts for money," he told detectives.

On March 23, 2007, eight skulls and skeletal remains were found in a wooded area in Fort Myers, the largest such discovery in Florida history.

With the help of area agencies, cadaver dogs, and forensic experts, the Fort Myers Police Department was able to retrieve a total of eight sets of skeletal remains.

The medical examiner has ruled the deaths to be homicides and Stanley Burden, the star witness at Conahan's trial, had been attacked within a mile of the site where the eight skeletons were found.

[28] On August 17, 1999, Judge William Blackwell deliberated for 25 minutes and found Conahan guilty of first-degree premeditated murder and kidnapping.

[29] Conahan succeeded in moving the penalty phase of his trial to Collier County but, in November, a jury recommended a sentence of death and Judge Blackwell agreed on December 10.

[23] The case was covered by many true crime television shows, such as: The New Detectives, Most Evil, Forensic Factor and Buried in the Backyard.