The father of 5-year-old Harmony Montgomery, who captured the nation’s attention when she went missing in December 2019, has been sentenced for murdering his daughter.
Adam Montgomery, 34, was sentenced on Thursday to 56 years to life in prison, to run consecutively with his sentence of 33.5 to 60 years in prison for unrelated firearms charges, People Magazine reported. Montgomery was found guilty in February of second-degree murder, second-degree assault, witness tampering, falsifying evidence, and abuse of corpse.
It took a jury less than a day to convict Montgomery of Harmony’s murder, even though her remains have never been found.
Montgomery was in prison at the time of Harmony’s birth, so she lived with her mother, Crystal Sorey, until the Massachusetts Department of Children and Families (DCF) became involved when Harmony was just two months old. DCF placed Harmony in foster care, where she bounced back and forth between that and her mother’s care until February 2019, when her father and his wife, Kayla, were given custody. The couple lived in New Hampshire, and just five months after they gained custody of Harmony, the New Hampshire Department of Children, Youth, and Families (NHDCYF) received a report about abuse. Harmony had a black eye, and Montgomery admitted to hurting his daughter.
Even with Montgomery’s admission, NHDCYF’s assessment of the situation determined the allegations of harm were unfounded in October 2019.
On November 18, 2021, Sorey reached out to Manchester police to say she had not seen her daughter since a FaceTime call in April 2019, more than two and a half years earlier. On December 27, 2021, NHDCYF told the police they couldn’t find Harmony and police opened a search. Within days, Manchester police announced Harmony’s disappearance and that a search had commenced.
In early January 2022, Montgomery was arrested after he was found to be living in his car with a girlfriend. He was charged with Harmony’s disappearance. His wife was also arrested and charged.
At Montgomery’s trial, prosecutors alleged that he beat Harmony to death in December 2019 after she had a bathroom accident in his car, prosecutor Christopher Knowles said in his opening statements, according to CBS Boston. After killing his daughter, prosecutors alleged, Montgomery “pulled into that parking lot at Burger King and he ordered his food.”
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“He ordered his food and he ate. He didn’t stop to check on Harmony,” Knowles added, according to the outlet. “He didn’t look back at her. He didn’t show any concern for this innocent little girl, the child he had just beaten. He ordered his food, and he ate. And he didn’t stop.”
During the three months after Harmony’s death, Montgomery allegedly moved her body to different places and in different containers. His wife Kayla testified that at one point, Harmony’s body was in the trunk of a friend’s car, a cooler left in the hallway of her mom’s apartment building, the ceiling vent of a homeless shelter where she and Montgomery were living with her two kids, and a freezer in an apartment. Kayla also said the remains were held in a tote bag from a hospital maternity ward that she placed in a stroller between her own two kids to bring to Montgomery’s place of work, CBS reported. At another time, People magazine reported that Harmony’s body was apparently kept in a closet until neighbors complained about the smell.
It is believed that in March 2020, Montgomery disposed of Harmony’s body using a rented U-Haul.
Montgomery claimed at trial that it was Kayla who killed Harmony and tried to frame him, but jurors didn’t buy it. Kayla pleaded guilty to charges of lying to police to obstruct their murder investigation. She is serving an 18-month sentence as part of her plea deal.
