Harmony Renee Montgomery

Harmony was last seen in Manchester, New Hampshire sometime in late 2019. The police were called to her residence on Gilford Street for unspecified reasons in October. On November 27, Harmony and her family were evicted from the Gilford Street home.

Multiple people reported seeing Harmony with her father and stepmother in the ensuing days, but between December 6 and December 10, the adults were seen only with their other children, not Harmony. She is believed to have vanished sometime between November 28 and December 10.

It was Harmony's mother, Crystal "Crys" Renee Sorey, notified police in November 2021 that Harmony was missing.

Due to substance abuse issues, Crys had lost custody of Harmony in 2014, when Harmony was two months old. Adam was in prison at the time. (Crys also later lost custody of Harmony's younger half-brother, and he and Harmony were placed in the same foster home.)

The initial goal had been to reunite the child with her mother, and Harmony was returned to Crys three times over the next few years, but each time she would be removed again and returned to the same foster family. Harmony's foster family believed the instable situation was causing trauma to her, as she developed behavioral issues which worsened every time she was removed from her placement again.

Several months after Harmony was taken from her mother's care the third time, she was placed in therapeutic foster care. Her original foster family said they loved her but felt unable to meet her needs. Therapeutic foster care involves foster parents with training and additional resources to deal with significant behavioral, emotional, medical and/or developmental problems in a child.

Crys wanted Harmony to remain in foster care, as did the child welfare authorities, but a judge decided to grant custody to her father, Adam Montgomery, in February 2019.

He had been incarcerated for the first year of Harmony's life, and afterwards lived in New Hampshire, and they had seen each other irregularly. Harmony had had approximately 20 hours of supervised visits with Adam over four years, during which it was noted he was attentive towards her, but sometimes had inappropriate expectations of her behavior given her age, visual disability and special education needs.

Harmony's half-brother was adopted later in 2019 and lives with his adoptive family, but remains in contact with Crys. After Crys went into recovery and became sober, she tried to contact Harmony. She had a video call with Adam around Easter 2019, and saw Harmony in the background, looking "frightened." This is the last time her mother saw her.

After Crys and Adam argued, Adam blocked all her contact with Harmony, and Crys tried to locate her daughter for months without result. She said she had "a gut feeling that something is not right." She stated she had made repeated calls to authorities about her concerns for Harmony's welfare and had been ignored.

For nearly six weeks after Crys reported her daughter's disappearance, police were unable to locate Adam. They finally found him, still in Manchester, living in his car. Harmony wasn't with him and he said he had given her to Crys around Thanksgiving 2019. This wasn't true, however, and Adam soon stopped cooperating with the investigation.

Harmony's uncle, Kevin Montgomery, said he had seen Harmony with a black eye during the summer of 2019 and asked Adam about it. Adam told him he had "bashed her around the apartment" after he left her unattended with her baby half-brother and came back to find her covering the infant's mouth to stop its crying.

Kevin said he had observed other behaviors by Adam that he thought were abusive, such as forcing Harmony to stand in a corner for four hours and telling her to scrub the toilet with her toothbrush. He said the family had made multiple reports to New Hampshire's Division of Children, Youth and Families (DCYF) and Adam cut off contact with them because of this. DCYF never took any action in response to the reports.

In January 2022, Adam was arrested and charged with felony second-degree assault for abusing Harmony in the summer of 2019, and misdemeanor charges of interference with custody and endangering the welfare of a child for failing to report his daughter missing. He has a history of violent behavior and was sentenced to 18 months in prison after shooting a man in the head during a 2014 robbery attempt

A day later his wife, Harmony's stepmother Kayla Montgomery, was charged with one count of welfare fraud for obtaining $1,500 worth of food stamps on Harmony's behalf between December 2019 and June 2021, when Harmony was no longer living with her and Adam.

While in jail awaiting trial on that charge, in April 2022, Kayla was also charged with receiving stolen property, namely a rifle and a shotgun, between September 29 and October 22 of 2019. Authorities stated the firearms charges were unrelated to Harmony's case. She was also charged with two counts of perjury and two counts of receiving stolen property: authorities believe she lied to the grand jury investigating Harmony's disappearance, and retained a rifle and a shotgun which Adam had stolen.

She initially pleaded not guilty to those charges, and the welfare fraud charge was dropped in July 2022 due to procedural issues. In November 2022, Kayla reached a plea deal with the prosecution and was sentenced to 3 1/2 to 7 years in prison, with a 1 1/2 years suspended and credit given for time served, emaning she will serve eighteen months.

Kayla and Adam have three children together. Kayla said the last time she saw Harmony was in November or December 2019, when Adam said he was going to take her to Massachusetts, where Crys lived at the time. He returned alone and Kayla never saw or heard about Harmony after that, and assumed she was safe in her mother's care.

Photos of Kayla and Adam Montgomery and Crys Sorey are posted with this case summary. Authorities don't believe Harmony was enrolled in school at the time of her disappearance. This wouldn't have been illegal, as the age of compulsory education in New Hampshire is six. While in foster care in Massachusetts, she did attend school and received special education services.

In May 2022, the Massachusetts Office of the Child Advocate (OFC) released a report about the role of the Massachusetts Department of Children and Families (DCF) in Harmony's life and whether the DCF acted correctly in her case. The OFC concluded that the DCF had failed Harmony in many ways and, by its failure to assess Adam, his wife and their home for suitability before placing Harmony there, had not followed its own policies.

In October 2022, Adam was charged with murder and other offenses in his daughter's disappearance. Authorities believe he killed her by repeatedly striking her with his fist on or about December 7, 2019. Investigators stated they found unspecified "biological evidence" that indicated Harmony had been murdered, something backed up by Kayla, who told them that Adam had killed his daughter and encouraged her to lie about the child's whereabouts.

Kayla said the family was evicted from their home in November 2019 and forced to live out of their car. Harmony kept having toileting accidents in the car. On December 7, Kayla said, Harmony had another accident and Adam truck her three or four times over the course of a few minutes and then said, "I think I really hurt her this time. I think I did something."

Harmony moaned for about five minutes, then the noises stopped, and Kayla and Adam did not realize she was no longer breathing until the car broke down later that day. Adam then put Harmony's body in a duffel bag and put it in the trunk of the car for some time, sometimes putting snow in with it to keep the body cold and slow decomposition.

Kayla said that Harmony's body was moved to several places after her death, at one point being hidden in a red cooler and taken to Kayla's mother's apartment building. Kayla's mother was unaware of its presence. When the family lived into a shelter between December 30 and February 20, Harmony's body was put in a plastic bag and hidden in the ceiling.

Neighbors later complained about the smell, so Adam then hid the body in a walk-in freezer at the pizza restaurant where he then worked as a dishwasher and cook. When the family moved into an apartment on Union Street, Adam took the body with them. In March 2020, he had a friend rent a U-Haul so he could move Harmony's body in the middle of the night. Authorities determined the U-Haul was driven to the Tobin Bridge area of Massachusetts.

The new charges against Adam included second-degree murder for recklessly causing the death of Harmony; falsifying physical evidence for altering, destroying, concealing or removing Harmony's body; abuse of a corpse for unlawfully removing, concealing or destroying Harmony's body; and tampering with witnesses or informants by attempting to get Kayla to perjure herself.

At his trial in 2024, Adam refused to attend. Through his defense attorney, he maintained his innocence and said he loved his daughter unconditionally, and blamed Kayla for the child's murder. He was found guilty of second-degree murder, second-degree assault, falsifying physical evidence, abuse of a corpse and tampering with witnesses and informants in February 2024.

Adam is awaiting trial for the murder. Harmony's body has not been found, but foul play is suspected in her disappearance due to the circumstances involved.