Harmony Montgomery prosecutors vow to find little girl’s body after father’s murder conviction
‘The search for her will continue until we find her,’ prosecutor Ben Agati told reporters outside the courtroom
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Authorities have vowed to continue searching for the remains of slain five-year-old Harmony Montgomery after a panel of jurors found her father guilty of her murder.
Adam Montgomery was convicted on Thursday on charges of second-degree murder, abuse of a corpse and falsifying information in connection with Harmony’s December 2019 death. According to testimony introduced in court, Montgomery beat Harmony to death after the little girl soiled herself in the back of his car.
Montgomery then went to horrific lengths to conceal and reduce Harmony’s remains. Her body has never been found, despite several massive multi-state searches along the route that Montgomery took on the night in March 2020 when he disposed of the remains.
The jury returned the guilty verdict after roughly seven hours of deliberation. At a press conference outside the courtroom, Manchester Police Chief Allen Aldenberg noted that the department’s determination to find Harmony would not be impacted by the ending of the trial.
“We’re still going to find her,” Chief Aldenberg told reporters as he choked back tears. “This girl deserves better than the life that she had. This is never about winning or losing, this is about a five-year-old girl who was killed by her father. And I can’t think of a worse crime.”
Prosecutor Ben Agati said the Rumney Marsh Reservation and the Chelsea Creek area are still the biggest areas of interest. Mr Agati encouraged the public to come forward with any information they think could lead to finding Harmony.
“There’s a part of her body that we haven’t recovered,” Mr Agati said. “We’re still hoping that we can do that and she gets a proper burial ... It’s what she deserves. And so the search for her will continue until we find her.”
Harmony’s mother Crystal Sorey also addressed reporters outside the courtroom. Ms Sorey said she didn’t want her daughter to be remembered by her father’s name.
“She’s no longer Harmony Mongtomery, she’s Harmony Renee,” she said, explaining that both she and Harmony shared the same middle name. “She’s no longer a Montgomery.”
Ms Sorey said that it had been hard to hear the gruesome details about the little girl’s murder during the trial.
“I’ve heard it so much over the last four years but it was a lot different hearing it from their mouths,” she said about the witnesses, including Montgomery’s estranged wife Kayla Montgomery.
Kayla Montgomery testified that her husband repeatedly punched Harmony in the head on the morning of 7 December 2019, because she had wet herself in their car, where the family was living after being evicted from their home.
After beating her to death, they drove to a fast-food restaurant.
She testified that they later discovered that Harmony was dead, before revealing all the places that her husband then hid the body – including in a ceiling vent at a homeless shelter and the walk-in freezer at his workplace.
Mr Agati said that he expects sentencing to take place sometime between late April and early May.