David Lane /Pool/Union Leader/AP
Adam Montgomery is scheduled to be sentenced Thursday for the second-degree murder of his 5-year-old daughter.
CNN
—
A New Hampshire man convicted of killing his 5-year-old daughter was sentenced Thursday to life in prison in a case that rocked relations between Massachusetts and New Hampshire and spurred an investigation into the responses of the child protective services systems. A sentence may be imposed.
Adam Montgomery was found guilty in February of second-degree murder in the 2019 slaying of his daughter Harmony and her 2021 disappearance. He was also found guilty of second-degree assault, witness tampering, tampering with physical evidence and abuse of a corpse. , according to court documents.
Prosecutors asked for a sentence of 56 years to life in prison for Montgomery on all charges, according to a sentencing memo. Prosecutors said the defendant showed a lack of remorse for killing her daughter, with one witness saying he “admitted to her that he hated Harmony with all his heart.” wrote.
“The murder was not a hasty or impulsive act. Each time the defendant struck Harmony, there was an opportunity to stop,” the sentencing memo states.
CNN has reached out to Montgomery’s attorneys, Caroline Smith and James Brooks, for comment.
Authorities concluded that Harmony was murdered in Manchester in December 2019. A judge declared her legally dead in March at the request of her mother, Crystal Slay, but her body has never been found, CNN affiliate WMUR reported.
Montgomery killed Harmony on Dec. 7, 2019, then spent “three months transporting and preparing the body” before disposing of it on March 4, 2020, prosecutors said in a sentencing memo. Stated.
“Despite the defendant’s concession at trial that he had disposed of Ms. Harmony’s body, her body was never found, and as a result, Ms. Harmony was deprived of a proper burial,” the sentencing memo said. There is.
Inside and outside foster care facilities
Jim Davis/Pool/Boston Globe/AP
Harmony Montgomery was reported missing in 2021, but authorities determined she was murdered in 2019.
A 101-page report by the Massachusetts Office of Child Advocates details how Harmony was shuffled between her mother’s care and foster care until a judge decided to award custody to Montgomery in 2019. Are listed.
Harmony, born in June 2014, was blind in one eye and had other medical concerns, according to the report.
That summer, the Department of Children and Families’ office received a report of child neglect while the baby was living with a mother who was struggling with substance abuse, the report said. According to the report, her father was incarcerated at the time of Harmony’s birth and was “not involved in Harmony’s life.”
According to the report, Harmony was legally removed from her mother’s care and placed in a foster care facility, where she moved back and forth between her mother’s care and the care of the Department of Children and Families over the course of several years.
Montgomery communicated inconsistently over the next few years and supervised her visitation with her daughter, but in October 2018 he requested that Harmony be left with him, according to the report.
In February 2019, a judge granted him full custody and homeschooling for Montgomery under the Interstate Compact on Child Placement (ICPS), a compact between all states that governs the placement of children across borders. The court ruled that it was not applicable for constitutional reasons. He turned out to be a suitable parent.
About a week after the hearing and the involvement of the Department of Children and Families, Montgomery took her daughter to New Hampshire, according to the report.
Slay reported Harmony missing in November 2021 and said he hadn’t seen his daughter since a FaceTime call in spring 2019. Manchester Police then announced a search for Harmony, and Montgomery was arrested in early 2022.
The judge’s decision to have Harmony live with her father has come under intense scrutiny. New Hampshire Governor Chris Sununu wrote a scathing letter to the chief justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Court about the decision. In response, the Massachusetts Office of Child Advocates produced a 101-page report on her case, finding that state officials prioritized the rights of her parents over Harmony’s well-being.
“Our system ultimately failed her by not putting her and her needs first,” said OCA Director Maria Mosides. “We owe it to her to make the necessary changes that will allow our system to function better in the future.”
In their sentencing memo, prosecutors said the charges stem in part from an episode in 2019 in which Montgomery punched Harmony “with enough force to change the profile of her face.”
According to the memo, Montgomery attacked Harmony several times during a bathroom accident on Dec. 7, ultimately killing her.
“The defendant repeatedly hit Harmony as he was driving, stopping several times at traffic lights to continue the attack. He only stopped hitting Harmony when he felt something was ‘different’ and said, ‘This time I’m really going to give her a shot.’ “he loudly admitted that he believed that he had caused harm to the person,” the sentencing memo states.
Prosecutors say Montgomery could have spared, or even saved, some of Harmony’s suffering by asking her for help after the attack. The fact that he did not do so, they argued, showed a level of “cruelty and depravity” that goes beyond just a minimum sentence.
In the two years after Harmony’s murder, prosecutors said Montgomery told others, including law enforcement officers, that her 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 lies about what happened to Harmony, then beat his stepmother, Kayla Montgomery, and ordered her to stick to her story.
Kayla Montgomery pleaded guilty in 2022 to lying to a grand jury about her whereabouts when her stepdaughter was last seen, according to a parole hearing and court records. She testified against her estranged husband in February, and she was granted parole in March.
Prosecutors argued in their sentencing memo that Montgomery’s “extensive” criminal history, including threatening a teenage boy with a knife and shooting him in the face during a robbery, should be taken into account at sentencing.
