This question began to form in my mind last year as I watched the tragic details of her life and death unfold on Court TV. Her story immediately struck a chord, not just because she was a child with special needs in the foster care system—a path I have also traveled—but because of the sheer number of times she was failed, by the ones who were supposed to love and protect her, and the system that was formed to protect vulnerable children like her. From the moment she was placed into Foster Care at just two months old due to her mother’s drug addiction, little Harmony Montgomery was disregarded. Her need for love, her chance for adoption, and her right to safety were overlooked again and again, leading to an unthinkable and preventable end.

To be fair, Harmony’s mother has said in interviews that she truly loved her daughter, and I don’t doubt she feels that way. But this is where the story gets complicated for me, and where my own past shapes my perspective. My biological mother’s alcoholism is the reason I grew up in foster care, and it’s shaped my perspective on how some individuals see their priorities. I know addiction is a powerful illness. I’m not saying it’s easy to overcome. I’m just saying that, from my point of view, a child’s needs have to come first. The love for your son or daughter should be the ultimate motivation to conquer your demons. When it isn’t, I’m left with the painful question my own life has forced me to ask.

Who Was Little Harmony Montgomery?

As I began writing this on June 7th, it is impossible to ignore the profound weight of this day, because this day would have been Harmony Montgomery’s 11th birthday. She should have been celebrating with cake and presents, surrounded by her favorite things, like Minnie Mouse and her favorite color, purple.  💜

Harmony was a fighter from the moment she was born, a fact proven by a story from her earliest days. Initially, doctors delivered a devastating misdiagnosis: they believed she was blind in both eyes and might only live for one year. But while in the care of a loving foster mother, something incredible happened. Her foster mother noticed Harmony was able to track a fork with one of her eyes. Refusing to accept the initial prognosis, she pushed for a second opinion. With a new, more accurate diagnosis, suddenly a world of new possibilities opened up for little Harmony’s entire life! It was a moment of hope, a testament to her spirit, and proof of what a caring advocate could do for a vulnerable child.

A Child with So Much Future Potential, but a Path Paved by System Failure

The hope that Harmony found with her new diagnosis should have been the beginning of a safe and stable life. Instead, she spent her earliest years in a cycle of instability, moving between her mother’s care and the homes of foster parents. While chaotic, this was a system where Harmony was at least visible to people who were tracking her well-being. But in late 2018, her father, Adam Montgomery, re-entered her life, setting the stage for the system’s most catastrophic failure.

That failure was cemented in a Massachusetts courtroom in February 2019, as detailed in the report by the Massachusetts Office of the Child Advocate (page 35-36). Despite Adam Montgomery’s violent criminal record and the fact he had spent very little time with his daughter, (40 hours total) the judge made the tragic and irreversible mistake of granting him full custody. This was done without the state ever conducting a “home study”—no one was ever sent to physically check his home in New Hampshire to ensure it was a safe environment. The state’s child welfare agency, which knew his dangerous history, failed to present a strong case to oppose it. And most shockingly, Harmony’s own court-appointed lawyer did not object to this decision.

In a room that should have been her greatest sanctuary, no one stuck up for poor little Harmony. She was treated like a file to be closed, a pawn to be moved off the board. This single decision was not just a mistake; it was the action that sealed her fate. By removing her from the foster care system, the court placed her in total isolation with her abuser. It is an undeniable and heartbreaking fact: had she not been placed in her father’s custody that day, she might still be alive.

Living with the Devil

A sweet, innocent girl just wanting to be loved was instead forced to live with the devil. When the courtroom door closed and the judge’s gavel fell, Harmony’s life changed forever. She was pulled from a system that, for all its flaws, at least saw her, it instead abandoned her to a life that depended entirely on her father’s care and trust. Like any child, Harmony was wired to believe her father loved her; she had to trust that he would keep her safe, only to discover soon after entering his custody that her faith was tragically misplaced. Away from the eyes of the court, the man who had presented himself as a capable father revealed his true nature.

The horror of Harmony’s new life became visible just a few months later. In July 2019, Adam’s uncle (Harmony’s great-uncle), Kevin Montgomery, testified that he saw Harmony with a shocking black eye, describing it as looking “like a raccoon’s eye.” When he attempted to ask Harmony what happened, before she could answer, Adam walked up behind her. Adam didn’t lie or make an excuse. He stood behind his terrified five-year-old daughter and boastfully confessed, “I bashed her around the f*****g house.” This brazen cruelty was reported. Kevin Montgomery testified that he called New Hampshire’s child protective services to report the abuse, but his desperate warnings fell on deaf ears. The agency was dismissive and, after a brief and inadequate investigation, closed the case as “unfounded”—a fatal decision that came just weeks before Harmony was murdered.

This incident was not an isolated loss of temper; it was part of a daily pattern of torture and dehumanization. Trial testimony revealed other horrific punishments, like forcing Harmony to stand in a corner for hours on end or scrubbing the toilet with her toothbrush. She was being systematically broken down by the very person who was supposed to protect her.

This sustained campaign of cruelty reached its final, desperate stage in the last month of her life. Around Thanksgiving of 2019, the family was evicted from their home and began living out of a car. This trapped Harmony completely, confining her in a small space with her abuser and removing any last chance of her being seen by the outside world, leading directly to the final, unthinkable act of violence on December 7, 2019.

Her Final, Claustrophobic Prison

After the family was evicted around Thanksgiving of 2019, their car—a Chrysler Sebring—became Harmony’s entire world. For a five-year-old girl, the cold, cramped space was a prison with no hope of escape. Trapped in constant, close proximity to her abuser, a new and tragic symptom of her terror began to emerge. Harmony, a child who her mother and foster mother confirmed was fully potty-trained, began having accidents in the car. This wasn’t disobedience or a step backward in her development; it was an involuntary trauma response—her little body physically reacting to the overwhelming and constant fear she was living in.

This horrific feedback loop culminated on December 7, 2019. The family had just left a methadone clinic in Manchester, and Adam was driving to a Burger King to get food. According to the prosecution, it was during this short drive that Harmony had another accident. Enraged, Adam turned around in his seat and, as the prosecutor described, “rained down blow after blow” on the five-year-old’s head and face with a closed fist. His wife, Kayla, who was in the passenger seat, tried to intervene by putting her hand between Adam’s fist and Harmony’s head, but he threatened her, warning that if she interfered, she would be next. The horror, however, did not stop with the vicious beating. With Harmony moaning and then falling silent in the backseat, Adam did not rush to a hospital or call for help. Instead, he calmly continued to the Burger King drive-thru, ordered their food, and the family ate while Harmony lay dying just feet away. Her life ended not just in a moment of violence, but in the hours of chilling indifference that followed. In the end, Harmony died because her father valued a trip for a hamburger more than he valued his own daughter’s life.

A Monster’s Secret

Hours after they ate their fast food, while parked in the darkness of a parking lot, Adam and Kayla Montgomery finally confirmed what they already knew: Harmony was dead. Most normal fathers, faced with such a horrific reality, would collapse in grief and guilt. But not Adam Montgomery. His mind did not turn to mourning his daughter; it turned immediately and coldly to the problem of hiding his crime. There were no tears, only a plan.

The months that followed descended into a nightmarish routine orchestrated entirely by Adam Montgomery. This was solely his disgusting plan to desecrate Harmony’s body, and he ensured his wife Kayla’s compliance through constant threats, warning her that she would be in big trouble with him if she ever went to the police. In an act of public deception almost too vile to imagine, he ordered Kayla to transport Harmony’s remains—tucked inside a tote bag—in a stroller between her two living sons, as if she were just another covered baby. It was Adam’s idea to then transfer the body to a cooler, his grotesque attempt to use lime to destroy the evidence, and his decision to store the remains in various locations. The cover-up, born from his violence, was fueled by his commands and ended with his own cold-blooded act of renting a U-Haul and disposing of his daughter’s body from a bridge, ensuring she would never have a proper resting place.

A Wall of Lies and a Mother’s Fight

For nearly two years after Harmony’s murder, the world remained completely unaware that she was gone. Adam Montgomery orchestrated a cruel and elaborate web of lies, forcing his wife Kayla to repeat his stories to anyone who asked. They claimed Harmony was safe and living with them, a lie that bought them time and hid Adam’s monstrous secret. During this period, Harmony’s biological mother, Crystal Sorey, who had been working hard and had achieved sobriety, was fighting desperately to reconnect with her daughter. Crucially, Crystal did not know Harmony was deceased; she believed her daughter was alive, and that Adam was maliciously keeping them apart. Every time she tried to arrange a phone call or a video chat, she was met with a new excuse: Harmony was sick, it wasn’t a good time, or they were busy.

By the fall of 2021, after two long years of being dismissed and deceived, Crystal’s maternal instinct screamed that something was terribly wrong. Refusing to be ignored any longer, she relentlessly contacted the Manchester, New Hampshire Police Department, laying out the timeline of Adam’s lies and her growing fear. Finally, in late November 2021, her fight broke through the wall of indifference. Police launched an official missing person investigation, and the public search for Harmony Montgomery began. Suddenly, the face of the little girl with the bright smile and glasses was everywhere. News outlets across the country picked up the story, and alerts about the missing 7-year-old—the age she would have been at the time—spread like wildfire online. Crystal herself made heartbreaking public pleas on the news, her voice trembling as she begged anyone, anywhere, to report any information that might bring her daughter home. But as the desperate search ramped up, the world was unaware of the grim reality that the police were beginning to uncover: they were searching for a 7-year-old who hadn’t been seen since she was 5.

The Grim Truth Emerges: A Search Ends in Heartbreak

For months, the faces of Crystal Sorey and little Harmony Montgomery were everywhere, plastered on news reports and social media, fueling a desperate public search. Every tip, every flicker of hope, was chased by law enforcement and a concerned public. Adam Montgomery, when initially questioned by detectives in late 2021, offered nothing but evasions and dismissals, even suggesting the search was a “waste of taxpayer money,” all while maintaining his elaborate web of lies about Harmony’s whereabouts. But as the investigation deepened, the grim reality that police had quietly begun to suspect became undeniably clear: the search for a missing child was, in fact, instead a search for justice and a proper resting place for little Harmony.

A major breakthrough in the case came when investigators, meticulously searching residences where Adam and Kayla Montgomery had lived, discovered traces of Harmony’s blood in a ceiling vent of a homeless shelter apartment. This chilling forensic evidence, combined with her prolonged disappearance and Adam’s obstructive behavior, led law enforcement to the heartbreaking conclusion that Harmony was, indeed, deceased. 

Based on this powerful evidence, in October 2022, a New Hampshire judge made the agonizing but necessary decision to officially declare little Harmony Montgomery deceased. This judicial declaration was not just a formality; it was the public acknowledgment that Harmony, who had already endured unimaginable suffering, would never be coming home alive. The search for a living child was called off, replaced by a relentless pursuit of accountability for her death.

Central to this horrifying truth was the eventual cooperation and compelling testimony of Kayla Montgomery, Adam’s estranged wife. Facing her own legal consequences, Kayla ultimately broke her silence. It’s a sad reality of justice that sometimes deals must be made, and in exchange for a plea agreement on lesser charges, Kayla provided investigators with the chilling, graphic details of Harmony’s final moments – the brutal beating by her father in the car – and the horrific, systematic efforts Adam took to conceal his monstrous crime. Her testimony, given under the weight of her own actions and the unspeakable knowledge she held, ripped away the last veil of lies, allowing prosecutors to piece together the full, agonizing picture of the events that led to Harmony’s tragic end on that fateful day in December 2019. It’s a painful thought that someone with children of her own could enable such a cover-up, yet her account was tragically essential to understanding the full scope of Adam’s depravity.

While Adam Montgomery himself never directly confessed to Harmony’s murder to investigators, his actions spoke volumes. During his trial, his defense team conceded his guilt on charges of falsifying physical evidence and abuse of a corpse – admitting to his role in desecrating and hiding her body. Ultimately, based on the overwhelming evidence, including Kayla’s harrowing account, a jury found Adam Montgomery guilty of second-degree murder in February 2024. His defense failed at blaming Harmony’s death on Kayla Montgomery.

Even with this agonizing truth revealed and justice served through his conviction, one cruel act of defiance remains by this monster. Despite the verdict and the desperate pleas from Harmony’s biological mother, Crystal, Adam Montgomery has continued to withhold the ultimate peace for Harmony. To this day, he has steadfastly refused to disclose the location of Harmony’s remains. Her body has never been found, leaving her without a final resting place and denying her loved ones the closure of a proper burial. It is a final, heartless act that underscores the profound depths of his depravity and leaves a permanent ache in the heart of this tragedy.

Final Thoughts

As a true crime blogger, I’ve delved into many dark stories, but I must be honest with you, my readers: some cases are far harder to write about than others. Harmony Montgomery’s story, by far, has been the most difficult. I had to take countless pauses and breaks, the sheer weight of this tragedy pressing heavily on my heart. The sheer callousness of Adam Montgomery, and watching footage of his interrogations where he showed absolutely no remorse for his own precious daughter, filled me with a raw anger—a visceral need for Harmony to receive a kind of vigilante justice she was denied in life. I researched, I reflected, and I cried many times for little Harmony. This profound emotional toll is why it has taken me so long to finish this blog entry.

Initially, I may have viewed Kayla Montgomery with a degree of reluctant sympathy, believing her to be merely a victim trapped by Adam’s terror. But after watching her testimony and hearing the chilling details of Harmony’s final hours, my perspective shifted profoundly. She stood by, watching Adam’s rain of blows descend on that tiny, defenseless child in the car. Even more horrifying, after the brutal beating ceased and Harmony lay dying, Kayla’s immediate concern was to ask if they could go to Burger King. While she claimed to be scared, what about Harmony’s fear? What about her helplessness? This inaction, this profound neglect in the face of such unimaginable cruelty, reveals that her hands are far from clean. Her fear, however real, cannot excuse her failure to protect Harmony, who was utterly dependent on the adults around her.

Some stories are simply easier to recount than others. Why? The heartbreaking truth is that Harmony, like a few other cases I’ve covered, involved a child. Children inherently trust their parents to keep them safe. And in my opinion, it’s a disturbing reality that some parents of children with special needs might believe their child lacks an active self-awareness – that they are “not all there.” This dangerous misconception can then be used to justify horrific abusive or neglectful actions.

But believe me, these children are “all there.” Whether they have developmental disabilities, as I’ve discussed in previous entries about cases like Cristina Pangalangan, or a physical disability, or even if they have no diagnosed disability at all, all children have thoughts, feelings, and emotions. They do not deserve to be disregarded and abused like trash. Harmony Montgomery, Cristina Pangalangan, and the sickening abandonment of 7-year-old Alivia Jordan are painful reminders that every child, regardless of their abilities, is a precious, developing human being deserving of respect and dignity. To act as a god over another’s life, for selfish desires or laziness, is a disgusting betrayal, snuffs out their purpose, and may ripple tragically through countless other lives. We are all here for a purpose; who are others to end someone else’s?

Call to Action: Be Harmony’s Voice

Harmony Montgomery was failed by those who should have protected her and by a system that tragically lost sight of her. Her story, and the stories of other children like Cristina Pangalangan and Alivia Jordan, scream a clear message: “If you see something, say something.” The thought that “it’s not my problem” is not just laziness, it’s a dangerous form of cowardice that allows innocent lives to be extinguished. We must all take responsibility, for the sake of every child.

Even though Adam Montgomery has been convicted, the pursuit of justice for Harmony is not truly complete until her remains are found and she can finally have a proper resting place. If you have any information, no matter how small or insignificant it may seem, regarding Harmony Montgomery’s whereabouts or the location of her remains, please contact the dedicated tip line:

• Harmony Montgomery Tip Line: 603-932-8997 (There is no dedicated website for this specific tip line, but the phone number is actively monitored.)

Beyond Harmony’s case, if you ever suspect a child is being abused or neglected, please do not hesitate to act. Your call could save a life. Here are vital resources:

• National Child Abuse Hotline: 1-800-4A-CHILD (1-800-422-4453)
  • Website: Childhelp National Child Abuse Hotline
• National Center for Missi ng and Exploited Children (NCMEC) CyberTipline: 1-800-THE-LOST (1-800-843-5678)
  • Website: MissingKids.org CyberTipline
• New Hampshire Division for Children, Youth and Families (DCYF) Central Intake Unit (to report child abuse/neglect in NH): 1-800-894-5533 (in-state only) or 603-271-6562
  • Website: NH DHHS Child Protection & Juvenile Justice (This page provides detailed info on reporting abuse to DCYF).

Let us honor Harmony and all children like her by committing to be their voice, their eyes, and their unwavering protectors. Every life has a purpose, and it’s our collective duty to ensure every child has the chance to fulfill theirs.

I have included the short documentary, “Lost Innocence: The Tragedy of Harmony Montgomery.” It is heartbreaking, but everyone should know her story: in order to find her remains, AND so that her story never happens to another precious child!

Until next time, be wise, stay safe, support & respect one another!

~Jennifer aka “wheelchair detective” 💚

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