New Hampshire Supreme Court Overturns Adam Montgomery's Murder Conviction in Daughter Harmony's Death

The New Hampshire Supreme Court on Thursday unanimously overturned Adam Montgomery's second-degree murder conviction in the death of his 5-year-old daughter Harmony, whose body has never been found despite investigators believing she was killed in December 2019. The court ruled that trying the murder charge together with a second-degree assault charge — stemming from a separate July 2019 incident in which Montgomery gave Harmony a black eye — jeopardized his right to a fair trial, because jurors could have used the stronger, corroborated assault evidence to fill gaps in the weaker murder case. The murder charge rested largely on testimony from Montgomery's wife, Kayla Montgomery, who described him repeatedly punching Harmony in the head on December 7, 2019, while the family lived in their car, and subsequently hiding the child's body in a car trunk, a ceiling vent at a homeless shelter, and a walk-in freezer at his workplace. The court found that corroborating evidence — such as Montgomery asking a friend to rent a U-Haul and being seen pacing and saying he had 'f**ked up' — supported only his actions after Harmony's death, not that he was the one who killed her. Montgomery's convictions for second-degree assault, falsifying evidence, witness tampering, and abuse of a corpse were all upheld, and he will not be released from prison, as he is also serving a minimum 32.5-year sentence on unrelated firearms charges. The New Hampshire attorney general's office said it was disappointed by the ruling but intends to retry Montgomery on the murder charge. Last year, the state separately paid $2.25 million to Harmony's mother, Crystal Sorey, to settle a lawsuit alleging that child welfare workers failed to act on repeated reports of abuse before the girl's death.