Three decades after young women started turning up dead along Miami's Tamiami Trail, the man convicted as the "Tamiami Trail Strangler" is still in legal limbo, waiting for a new sentence. Rory Enrique Conde, convicted in the late 1990s for a string of killings that rattled South Florida, remains without a final punishment after courts tossed his death sentence. Conde was convicted at trial for the January 1995 killing of 21-year-old Rhonda Dunn and was sentenced to death in 2000.
He later pleaded guilty to five other Tamiami Trail killings and received five consecutive life terms, according to Supreme Court of Florida records. Those separate guilty pleas, entered in 2001, left a single capital sentence — the Dunn conviction — as the only death sentence still on Conde’s docket. That death sentence has been the focus of years of appeals and post-conviction litigation.
His capital sentence was vacated in the wake of the Hurst rulings, which found problems in Florida’s capital-sentencing scheme and pushed courts to reexamine older death sentences. As outlined by FindLaw, those decisions require new jury findings in many cases and have touched off a wave of resentencing efforts across the state. Even with a clear legal path to a fresh penalty phase, Conde remains “awaiting resentencing,” according to recent reporting.
Local 10 reported on April 13, 2026 that the case has not yet moved to a new sentencing hearing. Legal ripple and what comes next Florida’s sentencing landscape has shifted again since Hurst. In 2023, the Legislature lowered the number of jurors needed to recommend death to eight of 12, a move critics said would reshape resentencings.
The 2023 change was reported by the Associated Press and analyzed by the Death Penalty Information Center, and it has been paired with continuing court guidance about how far Hurst reaches into older cases. That mix of new law and lingering litigation has left prosecutors, defense lawyers and families trying to gauge whether resentencing hearings will go forward, be converted to life terms or be retried. Victims named in court filings Court records and appellate opinions list the six victims whose deaths were tied to Conde: Lazaro Comesana (Sept.
16, 1994), Elisa Martinez (Oct. 8, 1994), Charity Nava (Nov. 20, 1994), Wanda Crawford (Nov.
25, 1994), Necole Schneider (Dec. 17, 1994) and Rhonda Dunn (Jan. 13, 1995).
Those names and dates are recorded in the state’s case file and summarized in appellate records, according to Justia. Family members and advocacy groups have long said the killings exposed dangers faced by people working the Trail, a theme that surfaces repeatedly in the historical record. For Miami readers, the case is a stark reminder that legal fixes after landmark rulings can take decades to play out.
Lawyers, victims’ families and civil-rights groups are watching for a court date that would finally set Conde’s punishment or close this chapter with life terms. As of April 13, 2026, however, no new sentence has been entered.