Adam Montgomery to be sentenced today for killing his 5-year-old daughter Harmony
Originally Published: 09 MAY 24 05:29 ET
By Lauren Mascarenhas, CNN
(CNN) — The New Hampshire man found guilty of murdering his 5-year-old daughter could be sentenced to life in prison Thursday, according to court documents.
A jury found Adam Montgomery guilty in February of second-degree murder in the 2019 death of Harmony Montgomery, 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.
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.
Sorey reported Harmony missing in 2021, saying she hadn’t seen her daughter since a FaceTime call in the spring of 2019. Police said Harmony was last seen in October 2019.
A 101-page report by New Hampshire’s 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.
In the 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.”
The Department of Children and Families previously said the report “illustrates the grave responsibility of balancing the child’s safety and best interest and a parents’ legal rights to have custody of their child.”
Prosecutors said in the sentencing memoMontgomery attacked Harmony several times on December 7 after she had a bathroom accident, ultimately killing her.
“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.
Prosecutors said Montgomery has displayed a lack of remorse for killing his daughter, writing that one witness said Montgomery “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.
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.
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