David Lane /Pool/Union Leader/AP
Adam Montgomery is set to be sentenced for the second-degree murder of his 5-year-old daughter Thursday.
CNN
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The New Hampshire man found guilty of murdering his 5-year-old daughter could be sentenced to life in prison Thursday in a case that has rattled relations between Massachusetts and New Hampshire and spurred an investigation into the actions of the child protective services system.
Adam Montgomery was found guilty in February of second-degree murder in the 2019 death of his daughter Harmony, who was reported missing in 2021. He was also found guilty of second-degree assault, witness tampering, falsifying physical evidence and abuse of a corpse, according to court documents.
Prosecutors have asked that Montgomery be sentenced to 56 years to life in prison for all of the crimes, according to a sentencing memo. The prosecutors said he has displayed a lack of remorse for killing his daughter, writing that one witness said he “admitted to her that he hated Harmony to his core.”
“The murder was not a quick, impulsive act. Each time the defendant struck Harmony, he had an opportunity to stop,” the sentencing memo states.
CNN reached out to Montgomery’s attorneys, Caroline Smith and James Brooks, for comment.
Authorities concluded that Harmony was killed in December 2019 in Manchester. Her remains have not been found, though a judge declared her legally dead in March at the request of her mother, Crystal Sorey, CNN affiliate WMUR reported.
Montgomery murdered Harmony on December 7, 2019, and then engaged in the “transportation and consolidation of her body over three months” before disposing of her corpse on March 4, 2020, prosecutors said in the sentencing memo.
“Despite the defendant’s concession at trial that he disposed of Harmony’s body, her remains have not been found, and as a result, she has been deprived of a proper burial,” the sentencing memo reads.
In and out of foster care
Jim Davis/Pool/The Boston Globe/AP
Harmony Montgomery was reported missing in 2021, but authorities determined she was killed in 2019.
A 101-page report by the Massachusetts Office of the Child Advocate detailed Harmony’s time bouncing between her mother’s care and foster care before a judge decided to award custody to Montgomery in 2019.
Harmony was born in June 2014 and was blind in one eye and had other medical concerns, according to the report.
That summer, a Department of Children and Families office received reports of neglect while the baby was living with her mother, who was struggling with substance abuse, according to the report. Her father was incarcerated at the time of her birth and “not involved in Harmony’s life,” the report said.
Harmony was legally removed from her mother’s care and placed in a foster home, the report said, and she cycled between her mother’s care and the care of the Department of Children and Families over several years.
Montgomery had inconsistent contact and supervised visits with his daughter over the next couple of years, but in October 2018 he asked for Harmony to be placed in his care, according to the report.
In February 2019, a judge awarded him full custody and ruled a home study about Montgomery under the Interstate Compact of the Placement of Children (ICPS) – an agreement between all states governing the placement of children across borders – did not apply for constitutional reasons because he had been found to be a fit parent.
Montgomery then took his daughter to New Hampshire roughly a week after the hearing and the Department of Children and Families involvement ended, the report said.
Sorey reported Harmony missing in November 2021, saying she hadn’t seen her daughter since a FaceTime call in the spring of 2019. Manchester Police then announced a search for her whereabouts, leading to Montgomery’s arrest in early 2022.
The judge’s decision to place Harmony with her father has come under intense scrutiny. New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu wrote a scathing letter to the chief justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court about the decision. In response, the Massachusetts Office of Child Advocate wrote the 101-page report on her case and found state officials prioritized Harmony’s parents’ rights over her well-being.
“By not putting her and her needs first, our system ultimately failed her,” OCA director Maria Mossaides said. “We owe it to her to make the changes necessary to allow our system to do better in the future.”
In the prosecution’s sentencing memo, prosecutors said some of the charges stemmed from an episode in 2019, in which Montgomery struck Harmony “with such force that he altered the profile of her face.”
Montgomery attacked Harmony several times on December 7 after she had a bathroom accident, ultimately killing her, the memo states.
“The defendant struck Harmony numerous times while driving, stopping at lights several times to continue the attack. He only stopped striking Harmony when he felt something ‘different’ and acknowledged out loud that he believed he ‘really hurt her this time,’” the sentencing memo reads.
It’s possible that Montgomery could have spared Harmony some pain, or even saved her, by getting her help after the attacks, prosecutors said. The fact that he chose not to, they argued, displayed a level of “cruelty and depravity” that warrants more than just the minimum sentence.
In the two years after murdering Harmony, prosecutors said Montgomery told others, including law enforcement officers, that his daughter was alive and well with her mother in Massachusetts.
Montgomery then embarked on a “strategy of blaming others for Harmony’s injuries and death,” the sentencing memo states.
Prosecutors said he made up a lie about what happened to Harmony and beat her stepmother, Kayla Montgomery, ordering her to stick to the story.
Kayla Montgomery pleaded guilty in 2022 to lying to a grand jury about her whereabouts the last time her stepdaughter was seen, according to a parole hearing and court records. She testified against her estranged husband in February and was granted parole in March.
In the sentencing memo, prosecutors argued that Montgomery’s “extensive” criminal history, which includes threatening a teenager with a knife and shooting a person in the face during a robbery, should be considered in his sentencing.
