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What to know ahead of the murder trial of Adam Montgomery, accused of killing daughter Harmony
Prosecutors allege Adam Montgomery beat his young daughter, Harmony, to death in 2019. His trial is set to begin this week.
Jury selection began Tuesday in the trial of Adam Montgomery, more than four years after authorities allege he beat his young daughter, Harmony, to death.
Montgomery, formerly of Manchester, New Hampshire, is charged with second-degree murder, second-degree assault, witness tampering, falsifying physical evidence, and abuse of a corpse in connection with Harmony’s death. He has pleaded not guilty.
Harmony’s body has never been found.
The case garnered national attention when Harmony was reported missing in late 2021, prompting a massive search for the young girl and an examination of apparent lapses in the Massachusetts and New Hampshire child welfare systems.
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Here is what to know before the trial gets underway.
A missing daughter
On Nov. 18, 2021, Crystal Sorey called Manchester Police to tell them that she had not seen her daughter, Harmony Montgomery, in more than six months. Harmony, who was born in June 2014, was in the custody of Sorey’s ex, Adam Montgomery, she told police, according to an affidavit.
Sorey had lost custody of Harmony in 2018 while dealing with substance use issues. Sorey later told The Boston Globe that she had gotten sober and had been searching for her daughter since 2019, when Adam and his wife, Kayla Montgomery, cut off contact with her.
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Sorey told police she last saw Harmony during a FaceTime video around Easter in 2019 and that the girl seemed frightened, according to the affidavit.
In December 2021, police worked to track down Adam by interviewing various family members. They told officers that he had previously admitted to giving Harmony a black eye around July 2019.
Investigators eventually tracked down Adam on Dec. 31, 2021, sleeping with a new girlfriend in a vehicle in Manchester. Police “stressed” their concern about Harmony’s whereabouts, but Adam “did not exhibit much emotion or reaction to this,” police wrote in the affidavit. Adam, Harmony’s sole custodian at the time, was served with an order granting protective supervision of Harmony to the New Hampshire Division for Children, Youth and Families. He allegedly refused to provide any information about Harmony’s location and said to police “either arrest me or I’m leaving.”
Adam was arrested on Jan. 4, 2022, and charged with second-degree assault, interference with custody, and endangering the welfare of a child.
In May 2022, Kayla testified before a grand jury that she had last seen Harmony just after Thanksgiving in 2019 when Adam dropped Kayla off to work a shift at a Dunkin’ Donuts. Kayla said that Harmony was in the car at the time and that Adam was going to bring the girl to Sorey, according to the affidavit.
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But investigators found that Kayla was not working at the Dunkin’ Donuts on the day she testified she was and had in fact been fired beforehand. She was arrested and admitted to lying during the testimony.
How Harmony allegedly died
Kayla told police that the family was evicted from their Manchester home the day before Thanksgiving in 2019 and forced to live in a car.
On Dec. 7, 2019, Adam grew frustrated with his daughter because Harmony was not telling her parents when she needed to use the bathroom and was having accidents in the car, according to the affidavit. Adam struck Harmony in the head with a closed fist after each accident, Kayla told police.
This happened on three separate occasions that day while Adam was driving the car and Harmony was in the rear seat on the passenger side.
“Kayla stated that after the final blow, Adam said words to the effect of that he felt something or heard something when he hit Harmony, and, ‘I think I really hurt her this time. I think I did something,’” the affidavit reads. “Harmony began making a moaning type noise which went on for roughly five minutes and then stopped. At no time did anyone stop or get Harmony medical attention as a result of this assault.”
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Later that day, the family’s car broke down. It was then that Kayla and Adam discovered that Harmony was dead, according to Kayla’s account to police. Adam allegedly went to the trunk of the car, found a duffel bag, and placed Harmony’s body in the bag.
“Kayla stated at no point did either of them have any conversation about getting any type of lifesaving measures for Harmony,” police wrote in the affidavit.
Hiding the body
From then until early March 2020, Adam and Kayla moved Harmony’s body with them to various locations, according to the affidavit. After living in a neighbor’s car, the couple moved in with Kayla’s mother briefly. Kayla told police that, during that time, Harmony’s body was still in a duffel bag and was in a cooler in a common hallway of the apartment building.
At the end of December 2019, Adam, Kayla, and their other children moved into a Manchester shelter. Kayla told police that the bag containing Harmony’s body was brought to the shelter and that Adam stored it in a ceiling vent. Police later found evidence of decomposition in the vent, according to the affidavit.
Other residents of the shelter complained of foul odors coming from the ceiling, and maintenance workers were called to check on it. Adam moved the bag containing Harmony’s body to a closet while this happened, and the workers concluded that a dead animal must have been in the ceiling, according to police.
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Kayla told investigators she brought the bag containing Harmony’s body to her husband’s place of work, Portland Pie Company in Manchester. She described pushing the bag containing Harmony’s body in a stroller that also held two of her children, according to the affidavit.
In the affidavit, police describe how Kayla told them about moving Harmony’s body to another apartment and how Adam spent more than four hours in a bathroom with the bag containing Harmony’s body before transferring it into a smaller bag. Kayla recalled smelling cleaning supplies in the bathroom, and the new bag that Adam had apparently put Harmony’s body into was stored in a freezer. Adam later allegedly added lime to the bag to aid in decomposition.
In March 2020, Adam allegedly rented a U-Haul van with the help of a friend in order to dispose of his daughter’s body.
Transportation records obtained by investigators show that the van was traveling north on the Tobin Bridge between Boston and Chelsea at 4:44 a.m. A minute later, toll cameras recorded it traveling south on the bridge, according to the affidavit. The van was then seen traveling north on the bridge at 5:25 a.m.
“When he returned, he seemed very tired, and he said words to the effect of ‘it’s done,’” Kayla told investigators, according to the affidavit.
Adam Montgomery’s criminal history
In 2007, when Adam was 17, he faced charges for menacing a 15-year-old girl with a knife and pleaded guilty, the Globe reported.
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“He has a black soul,” the victim in that incident told the paper.
In 2014, six months before Harmony was born, Haverhill Police in Massachusetts were called to the scene of a shooting. A man who had been shot in the face told investigators that Adam had met up with him to buy heroin. But when the man produced the drugs, Adam allegedly pulled a gun out and tried to rob him. The man tried to grab the gun, and it went off, the Globe reported.
Adam was tracked down and found with a bullet wound on his arm. He was charged with armed robbery, armed assault to murder, carrying a firearm without a license, and discharging a firearm within 500 feet of a building. He was ordered to serve an 18-month suspended sentence concurrently with an unrelated case.
Adam was incarcerated when his daughter was born, and first met her when she was 6 months old during a supervised visitation at a prison, according to a 2022 report from the Massachusetts Office of the Child Advocate. The report found a series of failures by officials and the juvenile court to protect Harmony’s safety.
Adam had two total visits with the girl while incarcerated. He first expressed interest in being involved in raising her in September 2016, more than a year after he was released from prison, according to the report.
When he was granted custody of Harmony in 2019, Adam had spent only 40 hours with her, according to the report.
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Regardless of the outcome of this murder trial, Adam will spend decades in prison. Last August, he was sentenced to serve between 15 and 30 years on each of two armed career criminal counts, with the prison terms to be completed consecutively.
In that case, Kayla testified that Adam stole a shotgun and a rifle from an acquaintance in Manchester in 2019.
The guns “were sold to and brought back from a convicted sex offender and ultimately one of the guns was discovered in the hands of an individual who was apparently trafficking in both guns and drugs,” Superior Court Judge Amy B. Messer said during sentencing, according to the Globe.
Adam took responsibility for the charges at that time, but denied killing Harmony.
“You probably won’t believe me when I tell you that I didn’t wake up one morning and choose to become an addict. I don’t want to be an addict. And I will spend my time in prison utilizing it to the best of my ability to change things about myself. I could have had a meaningful life, and I blew that opportunity through drugs. But I loved my daughter unconditionally, and I did not kill her,” he said, per the Globe.
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