CONCORD, N.H. (AP) — Police suspect Harmony Montgomery was “dismembered or grossly distorted” by her father in the months following her murder.
Adam Montgomery, 33, was charged in the murder of his missing 5-year-old daughter and spent months moving and hiding her body before disposing of it, according to a police affidavit released Tuesday.
Montgomery pleaded not guilty in October to second-degree murder, falsifying physical evidence and abuse of a corpse charges. His daughter was reported missing in November 2021, nearly two years after police believe she was killed in Manchester. Her body has not been found.
Although prosecutors requested that information about the case remain sealed, a judge released the affidavit Tuesday in response to a public records request from WMUR-TV. Much of it is based on interviews with Montgomery’s estranged wife, Kayla Montgomery, 32, who agreed to cooperate with prosecutors after reaching a plea deal in a separate perjury case.
According to the affidavit, Kayla Montgomery told police that Adam Montgomery killed Harmony on Dec. 7, 2019, while the family lived in their car. Kayla Montgomery, who was Harmony’s stepmother, said he was driving to a fast food restaurant when he turned around and repeatedly punched Harmony in the face and head because he was angry that she was having bathroom accidents in the car.
“I think I really hurt her this time. I think I did something,” he said, according to Kayla Montgomery.
The couple noticed Harmony was dead hours later when the car broke down, at which time Montgomery put her body in a duffel bag, Kayla Montgomery said.
For the next three months, investigators allege, Adam Montgomery moved the body from container to container and place to place. According to his wife, the locations included the trunk of a friend’s car, a cooler in the hallway of his mother-in-law’s apartment building, the ceiling vent of a homeless shelter and an apartment freezer.
At one point, the remains were kept in a tote bag from a hospital maternity ward, and Kayla Montgomery said she placed it in between her own young children in a stroller and brought it to her husband’s workplace. An employee at the now-closed restaurant told police he saw it there but never questioned Montgomery “since he knew he had children.”
Investigators allege that Montgomery disposed of the body in early March 2020 using a rented moving truck. Toll data shows the truck in question crossed the Tobin Bridge in Boston multiple times, but the affidavit has no other location information to indicate the location Harmony’s body. In April, police searched a marshy area in Revere, Massachusetts.
Montgomery’s attorney did not respond to an email request for comment Tuesday.
Kayla Montgomery was sentenced in November to at least 18 months in prison. She had pleaded guilty to charges that she lied to a grand jury about working at a doughnut shop on Nov. 30, 2019, the day she said she last saw Harmony.
As part of that plea deal, she agreed to cooperate with prosecutors, who dropped charges that she lied to state health officials about having the child in her care in order to collect welfare benefits and that she received stolen firearms.
A Hillsborough County jury found Adam Montgomery guilty of six felony weapons charges in a separate case earlier this month, setting him up for at least two decades in prison.