Harmony Montgomery, Part 1: A Child is Missing
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You can also send questions there too. Thank you for listening, and I look forward to potentially welcoming you to the Murder, She Told team. I'm Kristen Sevey. This is Murder, She Told. This episode contains descriptions of child abuse.

It also includes a little bit of profanity that I've chosen not to censor. But mostly, this episode does contain more graphic descriptions than normal. And while I have toned them down, it's still pretty upsetting. So please listen to this episode with care. In early 2022, I covered the story of Harmony Montgomery, a little girl who was reported missing two whole years after she was last seen.

Back then, this case was still breaking, and I had no idea just how big this case would get. Since then, this case has had some major updates, and the things that we were guessing might have happened early on, we now know.

Going through all the court records, the audio, the documents, I can now tell it in a different way than I could back then. So even if you aren't familiar with the story, this is still a great place to start. So this is your Murder, She Told update on the disappearance and murder of Harmony Montgomery.

Harmony Montgomery was born on June 7, 2014, to Crystal Sorey, who was 24, and Adam Montgomery, who was 25 and was serving time in prison.

Harmony had health difficulties from birth. She was diagnosed with something called Holoprosencephaly, or HPE as a newborn. It's a condition where a part of the brain remains a single mass and doesn't cleave into its two halves during fetal development. It's a fatal condition that usually results in death within the first year of a child's life. Doctors told Crystal that Harmony was blind in both eyes and had less than a year to live.

From the very first days after Harmony's birth, the Haverhill, Massachusetts Department of Children and Families, or DCF, was involved. They, quote, "got three reports alleging neglect of the newborn due to Crystal's drug use in June of 2014."

Social workers with DCF investigated the claims and agreed that there was a problem. They gave Crystal a chance to get off drugs and start taking good care of Harmony. But when they got more reports of neglect a couple months later, in August of 2014, they decided it was time to act. They later wrote: "Despite Crystal's attempts to engage in substance use disorder treatment, she continued to struggle.

DCF took legal action in juvenile court and removed Harmony, placing her instead with a foster family. DCF told Crystal that she needed to do certain things to prove to them that she was capable of caring for Harmony. She had to prove to DCF that she wasn't using by submitting to and passing random drug tests, and she needed to stay involved in Harmony's life by participating in regularly scheduled supervised visits.

The goal, at first, was for Harmony to return to her mother's care, also known as reunification. While Crystal was fighting her demons, Harmony was being cared for by a foster family who took their responsibilities seriously. They were experienced, capable, and loving.

Her foster mom noticed that when she was feeding Harmony that she was tracking the spoon with one of her eyes. She brought this to the attention of her doctor team and they ended up revising the diagnosis. It was changed to septo-optic dysplasia, or SOD, which was good news.

Typical symptoms of SOD include eyesight difficulties, unusual eye movements, stunted growth, and developmental delays. But the prognosis wasn't fatal. Harmony was expected to live and thrive. The main impact early on was that she was still considered legally blind in one of her eyes. Her foster parents found Harmony to be a loving young child who was taking to them quickly.

There was a whole team of specialist doctors involved with Harmony's medical care and weekly appointments with nurses who came to the family's home. Starting in September of 2014, DCF started trying to reach Harmony's father, who was still in prison. For three months, between September and November of 2014, they tried several times, but he didn't respond. In December, they succeeded in getting in touch with him.

He asked for a visit with Harmony, and in January of 2015, that happened. When Harmony was six months old, Adam Montgomery met his daughter for the first time in the visitation room of his prison. Immediately following this touching visit, Harmony was reunified with Crystal. Crystal had proven to DCF that she was capable to care for her again.

Unfortunately, this was short-lived, and Harmony was taken again by DCF in April of 2015 and returned to the same foster home that she had previously known. She was 10 months old. In June of 2015, there was an important internal meeting held by DCF called a Foster Care Review, and at this meeting, they established that Harmony's case goal would continue to be reunification with her mother.

A month later, in July, Crystal took Harmony to visit Adam again. This same month, the DCF team had another important meeting called the Permanency Planning Conference, and because of the length of time she had been in foster care during the first year of her life, seven out of her 12 months, they decided that her permanency goal was no longer reunification. They changed it to adoption.

They wanted to find a family to permanently adopt Harmony. For the rest of 2015, Harmony remained with the Rafferty's. In September of 2015, Adam got out of prison, moved to New Hampshire, and a month later, started dating his future wife, Kayla Rivera. October 8th is the date that Kayla would refer back to as their anniversary.

In June of 2016, Harmony turned two. She'd been with her foster family for 19 out of her 24 months of life, which is 80%. And this is the biggest mystery of her early life. How is it that this little girl was not able to be permanently adopted within one year after DCF changed her permanency goal? In June of 2016, there was another foster care review meeting held by DCF.

They hadn't heard from Adam in 11 months. Crystal was inconsistent in meeting the requirements set forth by DCF. In October of 2016, after more than a year of silence, Adam contacted DCF and expressed interest in seeing his daughter. In the five months between October 2016 and February 2017, Adam saw Harmony at least once a month.

Kayla often joined him. Kayla had just become pregnant with her first child with Adam. During this period of time, DCF again had an internal meeting and reconfirmed Harmony's permanency goal of adoption. It had been a year and a half, and still, DCF had failed to find a permanent home for her. In February of 2017, the office in Massachusetts handling Harmony's case changed because Crystal moved.

With fresh eyes, they concluded that Crystal appeared to be more than stable and was consistently visiting Harmony. They had an internal meeting and decided to change Harmony's permanency goal back to reunification. At this point, Harmony was two and a half years old, and she had spent 85% of her life with a temporary foster family.

This same month, Adam's involvement went to zero. He ceased communicating with DCF and would remain incommunicado for six months. The next month, March of 2017, Harmony was returned to Crystal's care full-time. Things seemed promising… at first. In June of that year, Adam and Kayla got married the day prior to her giving birth to a boy who I'll call Davis.

Davis would be Harmony's younger half-brother. Despite the fact that Adam was not in contact with the Massachusetts DCF, he was in contact with Crystal, and she would allow him to talk to Harmony periodically. The DCF office admonished Crystal not to do that because they still had sole discretion over who would be involved in Harmony's life, and they wanted to supervise the interactions between Adam and his daughter.

In September, he got back in touch with DCF and said that for the four weeks leading up to his call, he had taken Harmony for overnight visits on the weekends. DCF told him that he needed to stop that, and everything needed to be scheduled through them. DCF confronted Crystal about this matter, and she said that Adam had threatened to seek sole custody of Harmony if he wasn't allowed visitation on his terms.

DCF met with Adam at the end of September and told him what he needed to do to have greater access to his daughter. He was offered weekly supervised visits at the DCF office located closer to him in New Hampshire. He eventually wasn't interested in working with them because he wouldn't see Harmony again for almost another year.

When Harmony was about to be three and a half in January of 2018, there were new reports coming in of neglect, which seemed to be coded language meaning that Crystal had relapsed again. DCF removed Harmony from the situation, and for the third time, she was given to the Rafteries, the same foster family she had spent much of her life with.

They expressed their frustration with DCF. They believed that Harmony was experiencing trauma with the repeated removal and reunification with her mom. Her behavioral issues had intensified and her needs had expanded. Three months into this final stint with the Rafterys, they made a difficult decision to return Harmony to DCF. They were at their limit with what they could handle.

Michelle Raftery later said that co-parenting a child with trauma and DCF involvement is extremely difficult. DCF placed her in a different foster care home in Haverhill, Massachusetts. In April of 2018, Crystal sought legal intervention through the juvenile court system by requesting a, quote, "review and redetermination" hearing. It was scheduled for 10 months later, which was quite a wait.

In June, for Harmony's fourth birthday, DCF had another foster care review meeting and noted that Crystal had been consistent in her scheduled visits and was participating fully in her recommended action plan. Adam's involvement remained minimal. The permanency goal remained reunification with Crystal. In August, Adam resumed supervised visits with Harmony. He would continue to see her one or two times per month for five months.

In October, in the midst of a burst of involvement in Harmony's life, Adam too went to the juvenile court system and requested his own review and redetermination hearing. It was also scheduled for February of 2019, to coincide with the one that Crystal had requested.

There was a lot riding on this hearing. The outcome of Harmony's life could be, and ultimately would be, radically changed in a moment by a judge's decision. This episode is sponsored by Lumen.

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That's L-U-M-E-N dot me slash she told for 15% off your purchase. In December of 2018, Massachusetts DCF requested that their counterparts in New Hampshire conduct a home visit and evaluate Adam's ability to care for Harmony. This report is called an ICPC, which stands for Interstate Compact Place of Children.

These types of reports can take months to produce, but because of the impending hearing, this one was ordered to be expedited, which would generally be produced in about four weeks. According to New Hampshire, because of some procedural paperwork issue, this evaluation was never started, much less completed in time for the February 2019 hearing.

Meanwhile, DCF held an internal meeting and determined that Crystal was, quote, "...unstable in her sobriety and inconsistent with her visits with Harmony." As a result of Adam's recent interest in Harmony's life and his compliance with DCF requirements leading up to the hearing, the review panel changed their permanency goal from reunification with Crystal to reunification with Adam.

They established a goal of one year for Adam to gain custody. Yet, one week later, they changed course again. It's a lot to keep track of. If you're feeling confused and overwhelmed by the back and forth from this, just imagine how Harmony felt. They held an internal meeting, a permanency planning conference, and returned to the goal of adoption.

They thought that four and a half years was too long to wait with another year of waiting on the horizon. They knew Harmony, who had known three different homes and had been bouncing around between them for her entire life, deserved a chance at a stable life. It's important to understand that, at this point, DCF had sole legal custody over Harmony.

Massachusetts DCF had complete control and responsibility for Harmony's well-being. They had petitioned for and been granted legal custody since Harmony was two months old. She was now four and a half. Incredibly, Crystal missed the February hearing. She'd been double-booked by the courts, and she hadn't sorted out the problem.

She had given birth to another child, a boy who I'll refer to as Jay back in December of 2016. He was now two years old, and like with Harmony, DCF was involved.

There was a family interested in adopting him, and there was a hearing scheduled at the exact same time as Harmony's hearing. She had two lawyers representing her, though, one in her son's case and one in her daughter's. So, in theory, she would be represented simultaneously at both hearings. The lawyers attended their respective hearings, and Crystal chose to attend her son's hearing.

Speaking of lawyers, there were four lawyers at Harmony's hearing. One represented DCF Massachusetts, one represented Crystal, one for Adam, and one represented Harmony herself. Obviously, Adam's lawyer presented a case that he was a capable and fit parent. Adam himself took the stand to testify about his life.

He said he had three years of sobriety since getting out of prison, was in a rehab program, had a stable job and a stable home. He looked the part too. Adam was handsome, fit, young and white.

He was married to Kayla, who was likely in the courtroom with their two boys, one of whom had just been born three weeks before the hearing. Though it would be up to the judge to make the final decision, the recommendations from the attorneys would hold a lot of weight. So that was one attorney voting for Adam to have full custody.

The attorney for Crystal, incredibly, spoke up early in the hearing and said that they had spoken to Crystal and that she too supported Harmony being placed with Adam. This defies understanding. Crystal herself later expressed outrage in an interview to NewsNation that she had been treated unfairly on that day. This question remains unanswered. Did her attorney represent her justly in court?

That was two attorneys in support of Adam.

The attorney for Harmony said that Harmony herself, a four-and-a-half-year-old child, had expressed her own preference to live with her father. The Office of the Child Advocate, which I'll call the OCA, later wrote an excellent summary of Harmony's case history and spent a lot of time on that pivotal hearing. They consulted legal experts to determine what kinds of duties a lawyer representing a young child might have.

It varies from state to state, but in Massachusetts, even if a child's stated preference might put them into a harmful situation, an attorney can still advocate for the child's stated preference. Attorneys have other options as well. For example, they could inform the court of the child's preference, but then advocate for what the attorney believes would be in the best interest of the child.

But this attorney decided to take Harmony at her word and supported her placement with Adam, someone who had seen her a total of about 40 hours over four and a half years. So that was three attorneys in support of Harmony going to Adam.

The only attorney that opposed the placement was the attorney for the Massachusetts DCF. They opposed it on the grounds that Adam was unfit. They said, at minimum, any decision should be postponed until the ICPC report on Adam was completed. The OCA advocate delivered a scathing review of the DCF attorney's performance.

They said that the most glaring omission from this hearing was any discussion about Harmony's special needs. This was a little girl who had a challenging medical condition, significant trauma, and behavioral and emotional regulation issues. What had Adam done to demonstrate that he was capable of providing for Harmony in a way that met her unique needs? Nothing. The answer is absolutely nothing.

but the judge was likely unaware of these issues, and three of the four attorneys seemed to be in agreement. To be fair, the track record for DCF wasn't too hot either. They had four and a half years to come up with a permanent solution for Harmony, and they had failed. She had been bounced around between two foster homes and her mother for those times.

So the judge made a sweeping decision. A decision that would later be criticized by the OCA in their report, saying that it wasn't even in line with Massachusetts case law. Even the governor himself of New Hampshire, Chris Sununu, would later write to the Chief Justice in Massachusetts, presenting for a full investigation into the judge's decision.

The OCA report said, "The totality of the facts rested on Mr. Montgomery's oral testimony that he was sober and stable, and not any other supporting evidence." Nonetheless, the judge awarded full custody of Harmony to Adam. They ordered DCF to close the case on Harmony. They waived the ICPC report requirement.

The judge even made phone calls to offices in New Hampshire to be sure that the decision would go through despite the lacking ICPC report. It was a done deal. And in less than a year, Harmony would be dead. Things moved quickly. About a week after the hearing, Adam took Harmony from Massachusetts to New Hampshire. He was living at 77 Guilford Street in Manchester.

It's a small three-bedroom, one-bath home with two floors. Adam's grandmother owned the home, but she didn't live there. She'd moved to Florida just a month prior. Adam lived there with his wife Kayla and their two young boys, as well as Adam's uncle, Kevin Montgomery. The home wasn't in great shape, but they were doing okay as a family.

When Adam got custody, he and Kayla decorated a room for her. It was Minnie Mouse themed. There was a castle that Adam's grandmother had gotten for her. Harmony was really excited. The day that they picked her up from Massachusetts, she was, according to Kayla, really, really happy. She loved becoming a big sister. She really liked helping and taking care of her brothers. Kayla remembered doing her nails with her and playing with makeup.

She loved going outside and riding her scooter. She loved talking and she loved taking pictures. She was just a happy kid. Kayla added Harmony to her welfare benefits, so she began receiving some support from the state for her. Crystal would occasionally have calls with Harmony. She had a FaceTime call with her on Easter of 2019. Little did she know, that would be the last time that she would ever see her daughter.

In June, Adam's uncle moved out. Before going, he placed a call to the New Hampshire Division for Children, Youth, and Families, which I'll refer to as DCYF. He told them that Adam and Kayla were doing drugs and that there was no electricity in the home. This was New Hampshire's first involvement with Harmony. Massachusetts DCF had dropped the case and was completely out of the picture.

Both DCYF and Manchester PD responded. It was true that the electric company had turned off power for non-payment. They were coping with it by using a generator to power key things like the fridge. The blue gasoline-powered generator sat in the driveway, running constantly 15 feet from their neighbor's home. Must have been an incredible nuisance. This would be their only form of electricity for months.

It would surprise me if they even had hot water. Later that year, on July 10th, 2019, Adam and Kayla had a big fight that spilled out into the street. A man called 911 and said that there was banging and screaming. Kayla and the kids went to leave the home together, but Adam was yelling at her to get back inside. Manchester PD responded and concluded that the matter was not criminal. It was only a verbal altercation.

In late July, Adam's uncle Kevin returned from Florida. When he got back, he noticed that Harmony had a fading bruise around her eye. He pieced the story together and called DCYF. About a week prior, Adam had asked Harmony to watch her little brother for a while. Harmony had just turned five years old a month prior and was hardly a capable babysitter.

When Adam returned to the room, she was trying to hold her hand over the little boy's mouth to stop him from crying. She didn't want to upset Adam. According to Kevin, Adam struck her in the face with his fist. Kevin later relayed to police that Adam had told him, quote, I bashed her around the house. Poor little Harmony was left with a black eye. On July 29th, a social worker from DCYF came by to do a home visit.

His name was Demetrios, and he would become more involved with the Montgomery household as time went on. He arrived at 10:52 a.m., and in his report, he wrote that he recognized Adam from the past. He saw Adam leaving with Harmony in the car just as he was arriving. Crystal later said that he and Adam were friends. When Demetrios toured the house, he said that though it was messy and smelled like a dog, it was safe.

Demetrios spent some time with the two young boys. They looked healthy and happy. Oddly, he didn't speak to Harmony. He didn't see the bruise on her face. He didn't insist to see her. The thrust of Kevin's complaint was that Harmony was being abused by her father. But during this visit, Demetrios didn't speak to Adam or Harmony.

Kayla was covering for Adam, saying that there was bad blood between him and his uncle and that his uncle was just making trouble for them. There was nothing to worry about. Demetrios left, satisfied. Also in July, the home was listed for sale, and the sale would be recorded in 45 days, which is very quick.

On August 7th, two weeks after the assault was reported, Dimitrios returned to 77 Guilford and met with Adam for a scheduled home visit. In his report, he wrote that Adam was lucid and sober. The home was tidier, the grass was cut. He met with Harmony and noted that she had an injury near her eye that was still healing.

Adam told him that he bought foam bats for the children and that his son swung a toy plastic lightsaber and struck Harmony in the corner of the eye, which caused some bruising and blood in her eye. He met with Harmony, who was in a good mood and watching a movie. He asked her what happened to her eye, and she echoed her father's story. Adam signed releases to allow Demetrios to review the medical records of the children and his own therapist.

Adam was cooperative and allayed the social worker's fears. But later in August, there was another call from the neighborhood to 911. The woman on the phone said that there was trash everywhere. There was a generator running, and the house was up for auction. She thought the Montgomery's were squatters, which, at this point, they might have been.

The house sold on September 5th, and a week later, Adam's uncle and his grandmother came by to gather some things. Adam had locked the front door and barricaded the rear door with the fridge. His uncle pushed his way in through the back door and had a confrontation with Adam. Both of them called 911, and the cops soon arrived. Uncle Kevin told the cops that he had flipped over a mattress and pushed Adam out of his way. Things were hot between them.

Kevin told the cops that he was just trying to get his things out before Adam and Kayla were evicted, which he predicted might be completed by the end of the month. The cops said that there was clutter in every room, quote, highly disheveled, but it didn't appear unsafe. This was the last time that the Manchester PD saw Harmony Montgomery alive. There were a couple more 911 calls in September from the neighbors.

On the 15th, there was a report of a dog being abused at 77 Guildford. And on the 18th, someone called complaining of music in the middle of the night at 3 a.m. Though he wouldn't be caught or charged for months, it was right around this time in late September that Adam stole two guns from another Manchester couple. One of the guns was an AR-15 assault rifle, and the other was a 12-gauge shotgun.

Adam was a felon. He wasn't allowed to have guns. This would later come back to haunt him. On October 1st, 2019, Demetrios returned to 77 Guilford for an unannounced home visit. He tried to schedule it with Adam, but his voicemail was full and he wasn't picking up. All the kids were home and everyone looked good. One of the little boys was playing in the front yard, and Harmony was on the couch watching TV.

He left, satisfied, but then had a realization and called Adam back. He asked, Why wasn't Harmony in school? Harmony had turned five years old and was eligible for kindergarten. From our research, it appears that it's not compulsory to enroll a five-year-old in kindergarten in New Hampshire. So, no laws were being broken.

Adam said that he was having trouble proving that he was a New Hampshire resident to the school district and was having difficulty getting Harmony enrolled. Demetrios offered to help, and Adam promised to try again. This would be the final time that anyone from DCYF saw Harmony.

October passed with little Pilly's presence at Guilford Street. But in November, Kayla was fired from her job at Dunkin' Donuts. And the clock on the eviction had finally come to an end. On Wednesday, November 27th, 2019, the day before Thanksgiving, the entire Montgomery family was evicted. They had no place to go, and they were living out of their four-door sedan.

They moved to the parking lot of a friend and a drug dealer named Anthony Bodero, who went by Tone Capone. The name of the large apartment complex where he lived was Colonial Village, a sprawling network of three-story apartment buildings with hundreds of units. Tone later said that he wasn't aware at first that they had chosen to squat in his parking lot.

On December 2nd, the Tuesday after Thanksgiving, there was an accident reported to insurance involving the front end of the Sebring. But it was still drivable. Tensions were mounting. They had no home. Their vehicle was damaged. Kayla had just lost her job and it's unclear if Adam was working. Adam and Kayla were both using heroin and crack cocaine. Harmony was having accidents in the car. It was a mess.

But things were about to go completely off the rails on the morning of Saturday, December 7th, 2019. I'm sending my Aunt Tina money directly to her bank account in the Philippines with Western Union. She's the self-proclaimed bingo queen of Manila, and I know better to interrupt her on bingo night, even to pick up cash.

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On the morning of Saturday, December 7th, around 2 or 3 a.m., Adam woke up and discovered that 5-year-old Harmony had soiled herself. Instead of changing her, Adam punched her 10 to 15 times in the face, according to Kayla. At 7.04 that morning, Kayla got her dose of methadone at a local clinic, and Adam followed her at 7.09 a.m.,

They returned to the car, and Adam started driving again. He realized in that moment that Harmony had had another accident. Adam was furious that she wasn't telling him when she needed to use the restroom. Harmony was seated in the back seat on the right. Adam was in the driver's seat.

He turned, craning himself over the center partition, and, quote, delivered sets of three to four blows several times over the course of a few minutes to Harmony's head and face. After the last set of punches, he told Kayla, I think I really hurt her this time. I think I did something. Harmony began moaning for about five minutes, and then she stopped.

This all happened on Route 3 in the morning on the way to a Burger King in Manchester. Adam returned to the Colonial Village apartment parking lot and called Tone. Kayla said that Adam had her get some heroin and fentanyl from Tone and that they did some drugs in the parking lot for about 20 minutes. They got back on the road in the Sebring, and then the vehicle broke down at the intersection of Elm Street and Webster.

The five of them were in the car: Adam, Kayla, the two boys, and Harmony. Adam couldn't get the vehicle started, so they started to round up the kids. It was mid-morning on that Saturday in early winter, and it was cold, just 10 degrees. They were trying to get the kids bundled, but Harmony wasn't responsive. When they looked more closely, they realized that she wasn't breathing. She didn't have a pulse.

Harmony Montgomery was dead. Adam moved quickly. He knew that he didn't have much time before a cop would stop to check on their stalled vehicle. He took a large duffel bag from the back of the Sebring and started to improvise.

Here they were, at a busy intersection on Saturday. They were both high on heroin and fentanyl, their car wouldn't start, and Adam was in the back seat with traffic flying by, trying to finagle Harmony's lifeless body into a black and red Under Armour duffel bag.

Somehow, he was able to. They were only a quarter mile from the apartment complex, so they decided to walk back. Kayla with the boys, Adam with the duffel. When they got back, they went straight to Tone and asked him if he could help. He offered them a place to stay, his Audi S4, which they also parked in the Colonial Village parking lot.

Their whole lives were in the Sebring though, so they asked if Tone could drive them to the Sebring to pick up some of their things. Tone later said that he didn't have a valid driver's license at the time, and with the likely police presence, he may have been skittish about driving. The Audi was a stick shift, and Kayla didn't know how to drive stick, so it's likely that Adam drove the Audi to the Sebring. They transferred some essentials out of the car and returned back to Colonial Village.

According to records from Manchester police, the abandoned car was discovered just after noon, and it was towed from the spot about an hour later. It was never recovered by Adam or Kayla, and eventually made its way to a salvage lot. Punching your daughter to death in the backseat of a car is incomprehensible. But what happens next defies belief.

And just a note that I am going to get through this the least graphic way possible. But at the same time, I think it's important, if you've made it this far, to know exactly what they did to her. For the next three months, Adam would keep Harmony's body close to him, like a lingering albatross, transferring it again and again to different nooks and hidey-holes.

Adam, Kayla, and their two surviving kids lived in Tone's Audi for a couple of days with Harmony's body in the trunk in the duffel. Kayla later said that Adam would often keep the heavy duffel outside of the vehicle in the cold New Hampshire weather to slow the decomposition of her body. On the first night in their new home, a friend visited. She would later recall that they only had two kids in the car with them.

Harmony was nowhere to be found. The battery was drained. They needed a jump. Evidently, the car had died after Kayla had run the cabin heat for hours without the engine running. The key in the ignition was in accessory mode and not on. Tone remembered this happening as well, but Adam got a jump from a friendly passerby, and so Tone didn't have to help resolve the problem.

According to location data later recovered by the police, the Montgomery family was last in the Colonial Village parking lot on Sunday, December 8th, just one day after Harmony was killed. The temporary living situation was untenable. A family of four plus one decomposing body in the back was causing everyone extraordinary stress.

They stayed with Kayla's aunt for a couple of days, but then moved in with Kayla's mother, Christina, who lived on Dubuque Street in Manchester in an apartment with her boyfriend. 258 Dubuque Street is a typical New England apartment house with three or four units, and it sits on the west side of Manchester. Christina occupied the full ground-level unit. Adam and Kayla had no vehicle, so they relied upon Christina and friends to help them get around.

She picked up the four of them with all of their possessions in hand and her green minivan and took them in. They slept on her pull-out couch. At points, Harmony's body was stored under the porch, but for the majority of their time on Dubuque Street, her remains were hidden in a red portable cooler with a white hinged top that was kept in the common corridors of the apartment house. Yes, you heard that right.

Adam likely picked the corridor because it was wintertime and it wasn't a heated area of the interior. The cool air would slow the degradation. The cooler was medium-sized, perhaps three feet wide, so her body had to have been folded in order to fit in the compact space, and it had two wheels so it could be rolled around.

Kayla and Adam utilized their Medicaid health insurance plan to get transportation assistance. They had a driver that took them to the methadone clinic in Manchester, near City Hall regularly. The Montgomery stayed for two to three weeks through the Christmas holidays with Christina and John. Christina later said that she was under the impression that Harmony had been reunited with her mother, Crystal, in Massachusetts.

This story would be repeated many, many times to many people. And it was corroborated by Kayla's friend Courtney, who later recalled Kayla telling her that, quote, it happened really fast. Harmony wouldn't stop peeing her pants, and she was just better off with her mom.

While living on Dubuque Street, Adam and Kayla worked on finding a better living arrangement. And on December 30th, in the week between Christmas and New Year's of 2019, Adam, Kayla, and the two boys moved into a shelter called Families in Transition, abbreviated to FIT.

The shelter is located on the east side of Manchester in a solidly constructed, modern, red-brick building on Lake Avenue. They would live at fit for about two months, through February 20th. Adam kept Harmony's body in the infamous duffel bag in the ceiling of their unit. He removed a duct-worth vent that laid in the ceiling grid, pushing it out of the way, and stuck his head above the ceiling plane in what's called the plenum.

The plenum is the space between the ceiling and the floor above them that contains piping, ductwork, the ceiling framing, and electrical wiring. Mostly, it's an empty space, and a good place to hide something. This would be the first time that the body was kept in an area that was a fully heated interior space. And in short order, it started to badly stink. A liquid started dripping from the ceiling.

Adam took the whole duffel and put it into plastic trash bags, an attempt to contain the liquid and the stench, and returned it to its hiding spot above the bunk beds where they slept. The living arrangements that fit are compact, so there were other families in close proximity. And, unsurprisingly, there were multiple smell complaints about Adam and Kayla's unit.

Maintenance told the Montgomery's that they needed to investigate, and when they showed up, Adam had moved the red and black duffel to a shut closet and cleaned the top of the ceiling. When maintenance popped out the ceiling vent, they found some staining, some remnants of a liquid, but nothing out of place. They guessed that it had just been a dead animal because it still smelled of decomp.

On January 8th, DCYF got a call about the Montgomery family. They visited Fit Shelter and ended up speaking with Adam. He told them that Harmony was with her mom in Massachusetts and had been with her since Thanksgiving. Later that month, DCYF New Hampshire called Crystal Sori and left her a voicemail. They asked her to call them back to confirm Harmony's address, but she didn't return the call.

This is likely the first point at which the alarm could have been raised about Harmony's disappearance. But she wouldn't be reported missing for another year and nine months. In mid-January, Adam got a job at a Manchester restaurant called Portland Pie Company. It's a Maine-based company named after Portland, Maine, but they have other locations like this one in Manchester, which has since closed. Adam was a dishwasher and a cook.

On about February 7, 2020, Kayla pushed a stroller to Portland Pie Company. The stroller was large and had room for the two boys and a large plastic bin. Inside the plastic bin was the duffel bag. Adam took the bag and stored it at his work in the Portland Pie Co. cooler for a week or two, with Harmony's body inside, after which he brought it back to the fit shelter.

Around this same time, Kayla became pregnant with her third child with Adam. If you aren't internally screaming at this point, just let that sink in for a moment. At this point, the Montgomery's no longer had a vehicle. Their gray Chrysler Sebring's title had been taken over by the impound lot and it was auctioned off to a junkyard.

By late January, it had been sold to Herbert's Used Auto Parts in nearby Goffstown, New Hampshire. They would eventually sell the car for parts until it was reduced to practically nothing.

On February 20, 2020, the family of four, with one more on the way, moved into their final home together, 644 Union Street, apartment number two in Manchester. It's on the east side of the river on a block near downtown. It's a three-floor apartment building with three entry doors facing the street. It sits just off of busy Union Street, and if bleak were a building, this would be it.

Kayla had, again, pushed a stroller with the two boys and Harmony's body concealed in the duffel bag, which was now placed inside a plastic tote bin. Adam put the container into a closet in the bedroom. At some point, they realized that it was leaking, so Adam took it out and put it in another trash bag and into the refrigerator.

One day, Adam took Harmony's body from the fridge and took her to the bathroom, where he spent the next four to six hours with the water of the shower running the whole time. Kayla has explained the timing of this event a couple of ways, and it's inconsistent, but the crux of the account is that Harmony's body was transferred.

Adam removed her body from the large duffel bag, Kayla helped to cut off her clothes, and Adam used the shower to wash fluids. Kayla later said that Harmony's body was still fairly intact, and that she could still make out who she was.

He then treated her with a white powder called lime. Though it is widely believed that lime aids in the degradation of bodies, that's disputed. It can, however, help with odor. He then put her body into a "maternity bag" which was branded with the logo CMC, which stands for Catholic Medical Center Hospital. A substantially smaller bag than the Under Armour duffel.

Kayla recalled banging and noises coming from the bathroom as if he was trying to make her fit. When he finally succeeded, Adam put the smaller bag into the apartment freezer and then cleaned up the bathroom with ammonia. Around this same time, there was a maintenance work order to snake the tub and fix the lever that directed water flow between the shower head and the faucet.

Adam stopped working at Portland Pie Co. on February 22nd, and within another week, the entire business would be shuttered.

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Adam asked a friend of his, Travis Beach, if he could help him rent a U-Haul. On Tuesday morning at 11.21 a.m., Travis Beach was talking with a woman named Teresa over Facebook Messenger. He asked her if he could put the rental in her name to, quote, help Adam with his move. Travis messaged Adam a couple hours later, saying, her mom said a big fat no. Sorry, Bubba.

They persisted and found help. Brendan Middleton successfully rented a U-Haul van and drove it to the Econolodge in Manchester on Hancock Street. And a woman named Brittany Bedard had rented two rooms at the Econolodge, one for the Montgomery family and another for Travis and her.

According to Kayla, Adam had brought Harmony's body with him. Shortly after arriving with the van, Brendan gave the keys to Adam. The five of them went to one of their hotel rooms and smoked some crack cocaine. Travis later recalled that after doing drugs, he was smoking a cigarette with Adam, and he kept repeating, I fucked up. I'm so fucked.

According to Kayla, Adam left around 1 a.m. with a U-Haul van and the maternity bag and returned around 5 a.m. Kayla said that Adam didn't want her to know where he'd gone in case it was later discovered that Harmony was dead. On his return, he said something to the effect of, It's done. The U-Haul's license plate was registered at a toll station in Boston, the Morris Tobin Memorial Bridge.

The van passed the toll reader going north at 4.44 a.m., going south a minute later, and then going north again at 5.25 a.m. In no case did the van stop to pay the toll. This doesn't quite line up with the time frame Kayla provided. She said that Adam returned by 5 a.m., but the drive time from the Tobin Bridge back to the Econolodge is about an hour and a half.

putting him back at the earliest around 7 a.m., two hours later than she told police in interviews. Toll readers don't lie, so I'm inclined to believe that Kayla's times are just off by a couple hours. Also that night, there were 11 missed calls between 3.35 a.m. and 3.53 from Adam to his friend Travis, suggesting that Adam was on his own and Travis was at the motel.

At 6.59 a.m., Adam called Travis one final time, his twelfth and final missed call to his friend. This lines up with my estimate of when Adam might have returned to the motel with the van. At 1.57 p.m., Adam returned the U-Haul to their location on Willow Street in Manchester. It's not clear what the van was used for, if anything, between 7 a.m. and 1.47 p.m. that day.

Police later confirmed that the vehicle was a cargo van. This is the type that has two seats in the front with a divider wall behind them, and then the back has no seats and is wide open. The total rental mileage was 133 miles.

The distance from the U-Haul location, to the Econolodge, to the bridge, and then back, was 110 miles, which is 21 miles less than the total mileage driven during the rental. 21 miles unaccounted for. Those 21 miles could have been driven around Manchester, or they could have allowed Adam to go further into Massachusetts, south of the Tobin Bridge.

21 miles is about 10 miles each way. And 10 miles from the Tobin Bridge would put you into some of the major neighborhoods in Boston, like Dorchester or Brookline, somewhere that would be an unlikely place to dispose of a body. What if the Tobin Bridge were the final destination? The bridge sits on top of a deep shipping channel called Mystic River, which is 20 to 35 feet deep and 1,000 feet wide.

Could Adam have weighted the maternity bag with rocks, stopped briefly on the bridge, and pitched the bag over the fence? Kayla and Adam continued to live at 644 Union Street for seven more months before being evicted yet again in October of 2020. The next month, Kayla gave birth to their third child, a girl that I'll call Claire.

It had been about a year since Harmony's death, and nobody seemed to be looking for her. Everyone in Adam's life thought that she was with her mom, Crystal, in Massachusetts, and everyone in Crystal's life thought that she was with her dad in New Hampshire.

The only record of someone looking for Harmony that we have in 2020 is her little brother's adoptive parents. They contacted Crystal in the summer inquiring how Harmony was doing. They still had an eye on adopting her. Crystal told them that she hadn't been able to reach Adam or see her daughter in a long time. It was the new year, 2021, and things started to change again.

In March, Kayla took the three kids and left Adam. She said that Adam physically assaulted her, and it wasn't the first time. She moved in with her mom again. Around this time, Adam started dating a woman from Maine named Kelsey Small. It's not clear if they dated before or after Adam and Kayla separated.

On June 2, 2021, Kayla notified a DCF caseworker that Harmony was back with her mother and to remove her from their case. The social worker complied and documented it in the file. On June 27, Crystal showed some interest in locating Harmony.

She posted a video on TikTok with a slideshow of pictures of her daughter. She left a comment of her own video a month later, saying, She's not quite missing. Her father has her and hasn't let me see her or talk to her in two years. She's in Manchester somewhere, and I need to find her. In late July, Crystal found a way to reach Adam on social media, but he blocked her immediately.

The Millers would still occasionally contact Crystal looking for updates on Harmony. They'd adopted her little brother, and they said that he was asking for her. In July, Kayla's mom filed for a restraining order against Adam. She found a steak knife in the yard. Adam had apparently come to her apartment and tapped on the window with a knife. It was later dismissed because he couldn't find Adam to surf him with the papers from the court.

This might have been a bit too much for Chris to bear, so Kayla and the three kids moved out and back into fit shelter once again. In September of 2021, the search for Harmony started to heat up. One of Crystal's friends contacted New Hampshire DCYF and explained that her mother hadn't seen Harmony since April of 2019, two and a half years ago.

On September 10th, DCYF contacted the school district looking for Harmony and learned that she had never been enrolled in school. DCYF then attempted to contact Adam and Kayla. They must have been ducking DCYF because things fizzled out for a couple of months. During this period, Kayla saw and spoke to Adam for the last time.

In November, Crystal drove around Manchester looking in places she believed Harmony might be living with Adam. On November 18th, she reported Harmony missing to the Manchester PD. Police notified DCYF to look into it. On December 27th, DCYF notified the police that they couldn't find Harmony either, so Manchester PD started contacting Adam's family. On December 28th, they got in touch with Kayla.

She told police that she had no idea where Harmony was, that Adam told her that he'd returned her to her mom around Thanksgiving of the previous year.

On December 29th, Crystal emailed the Manchester mayor's office, along with a number of other people, and said, "...my next step is going to the media to get whatever I need to find her and bring her home safe. She's supposed to be in first grade. Adam never enrolled her in school this whole time. She's missed important doctor's appointments concerning the disability in her eye."

The mayor's office responded, "Unfortunately, the city doesn't have jurisdiction of DCYF. They assumed that it was a matter for child protective services." But little did they know that the Manchester PD was already involved.

On December 30th, Manchester PD interviewed Adam's brother and his uncle, which brings us to December 31st of 2021, when the Manchester PD held this press conference. Manchester police received a report this week that Harmony Montgomery has not been seen since late 2019. The circumstances surrounding this prolonged absence are very concerning and are thoroughly being investigated as we speak. ♪

If you have any information on the location of Harmony Montgomery's remains, please call the new Manchester Police tip line at 603-932-8997.

Join me July 2nd for part two of this episode. I hate to make you wait two weeks, but I have to stick to a pre-planned schedule for the advertisers that I am so grateful for. And I'm grateful for you for your patience. I'm hoping that we can be back to weekly by next year. And I'm still working on ways to get you ad-free episodes. So stay tuned in the future. In the meantime, thank you so much for listening.

All sources for this episode can be found at MurderSheTold.com. You can follow Murder She Told on social media on Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook. Thank you to Byron Willis for his research and writing. If you have a story suggestion, you can reach out at HelloAtMurderSheTold.com anytime. I'm Kristen Sevey. Thank you for listening.