Just two weeks before Christmas, when other children her age were anticipating the arrival of Santa Claus, five-year-old Harmony Montgomery was allegedly beaten to death by her father in the car they had been in since Thanksgiving.
The disturbing account is part of a recently unsealed report on the New Hampshire girl’s disappearance.
It is the first time the world is learning exactly what happened to the little girl whose case drew international attention after it was revealed she was missing for more than two years before authorities took notice.
In the newly-released document, entitled the “Probable Cause Statement For The Arrest Of Adam Montgomery,” who is Harmony’s father, Adam is alleged to have beaten his daughter to death just nine months after a family court judge stripped her biological mother of custody and awarded sole custody.
Montgomery was awarded sole custody of Harmony despite his lengthy record of violent crimes, including a string of drug-related crimes.
As has been previously reported, Harmony’s disappearance went undetected even though The New Hampshire Department of Child Youth and Family was assigned to do welfare checks on the little girl.
Records show the agency failed to follow up on information about Harmony as recently as 2020.
Harmony was declared missing in December 2021, two years after what the newly released documents reveal for the first time as the presumed exact date of Harmony’s death.
The new details into her alleged murder come just a few weeks after what would have been her 9th birthday on June 7.
Details laid out in the statement are, at times, gruesome and riddled with unbearably sad accounts of what Harmony, who had a special love for Minnie Mouse, endured before her untimely death on Dec. 7, 2019.
According to the state report, while living in a Chrysler Sebring with her father, stepmother and two other children, including a baby, Harmony began having bathroom accidents. Adam Montgomery became so enraged over the accidents that he would punch Harmony repeatedly in the face as punishment, according to the state report.
Kayla Montgomery, Harmony’s stepmother, told authorities that Adam delivered a final and lethal blow to the little girl while he was driving them to a Burger King.
“I think I really hurt her this time,” said Adam Montgomery to Kayla Montgomery, as reported by New Hampshire Det. John Dunleavy, who prepared the now unsealed report.
Dunleavy stated that Kayla Montgomery told him that Harmony moaned for five minutes after Adam punched her and then stopped.
That same day, the couple switched to another car owned by a friend after their Chrysler Sebring broke down.
According to the report, Adam first kept Harmony’s body in a duffle bag in the trunk but sometimes left it on top of a snow bank to keep her body from decomposing, Kayla told authorities.
Adam Montgomery allegedly spent the next several months moving around the remains of his daughter at various locations around the City of Manchester—from a common hallway outside the apartment of Kayla’s mother, a mini fridge at a motel, to a ceiling vent at a homeless shelter.
When fluids began leaking from the vent, Adam put Harmony, still in a duffle bag, in a garbage bag and put her back in the event.
Kayla told authorities that when other residents began complaining about a smell coming from the event, Adam spent hours in the bathroom reducing Harmony’s remains in the bathroom to fit into a tote-sized bag.
The bag was a maternity tote issued by a Catholic hospital. On one side of the bag, there is the saying, “The Mom’s Place.”
Kayla had a 10-month-old baby and 2-year-old son staying with her and Adam, according to the state report.
For several months, Adam Montgomery kept the tote bag containing Harmony’s remains in a walk-in freezer at a pie company in Manchester, Kayla told police, according to the state report.
She then described how Mr. Montgomery tried to further dissolve his little girl’s remains by emptying them into a motel bathtub he filled with lime.
“Kayla explained that Adam dumped Harmony’s body out of the CMC maternity bag into the shower. Kayla said Harmony wasn’t bone, she had skin, teeth, and hair, and Kayla could still tell it was her,” Devaney wrote in his report.
Based on sworn statements by various witnesses, including coworkers, co-tenants, friends and relatives of Kayla and Adam Montgomery, it is believed Adam eventually disposed of Harmony’s remains after transporting them to an unknown location using a rented U-Haul.
Police collected relevant DNA at various places Adam was alleged to have kept his daughter’s body. DNA taken from a little pink “Trolls” toothbrush found in the car Harmony lived in also was a high match to hers.
In a June 27 interview with Court TV following the unsealed New Hampshire report, Harmony’s biological mother, Crystal Sorey, said that her pleas to both the courts and child protection services not to give Harmony to Adam were ignored.
She said the agency also ignored her pleas to check on her daughter.
“I never felt so invisible in my life,” said Sorey, who described Harmony as having an advanced intellect and capable of speaking up for herself “had she been given the chance.”
Sorey said Harmony was afraid of her father and that “she called him Adam and not Dad.”
Sorey also said during the CourtTV interview that her daughter had lived with a great foster family who would have continued to foster Harmony and that there was, therefore, no reason for the courts to give Adam Montgomery custody.
Sorey said the last time she saw her daughter was on Facetime with her on Easter in 2019.
Sorey, a Massachusetts resident, had been stripped of custody by a state family court judge in 2018 over a drug addiction problem, but was living in a Sober House, had completed several rehabilitation and treatment programs and had just landed a job when the court decided to give Adam custody of Harmony.
Court records show that at the time they gave Adam Montgomery full custody of Harmony, he was out on parole for armed robberies and attempted murder.
The Massachusetts family court judge awarded Adam Montgomery, who was living out of state in New Hampshire, during a custody hearing without the presence of Sorey.
“To me, that’s inexcusable when you are making a decision about a small child, and you are deciding to give that child to a career criminal who has his own substance abuse issues, and you haven’t done any background look at what’s going on his life, and can he actually take care of that child—that’s problematic,” Court TV host Vinnie Politan, a former prosecuting attorney, said to Sorey.
Neither Kayla nor Adam Montgomery could be reached for comment.
A Nationwide Issue
Family courts across the country have been faulted for handing custody to abusive parents.
A legislative review committee has been hearing testimony over the past few months about the chronic practice in New Hampshire.
Several organizations, including Child Justice, One Mom’s Battle, and the National Family Law Violence Center, have called upon lawmakers to make the issue a national priority.
In 2018, Congress passed a resolution calling on states to reform family courts to ensure judges were making rulings that put a child’s safety first in custody cases.
Since then, more than 200 children have been murdered by a parent whom a family court awarded sole custody despite having either evidence or conviction of child abuse against them. According to the Department of Justice, a total of more than 800 have been murdered by a parent in the United States over the past decade.
