Deceased/Not Found NH - Harmony Montgomery, 7, Manchester, Oct 2019 *reported missing Dec 2021* *REWARD* *Arrest*

[MassGuy]

“This is a child who was a ghost.”

As search for #HarmonyMontgomery continues tonight, here’s what #25Investigates recently learned about how a child can possibly go off the radar of two different state agencies.
https://twitter.com/kerrykavanaugh/status/1479975207670464514?s=21
https://twitter.com/kerrykavanaugh/status/1479975207670464514?s=21

 

[Megnut]

All those lit candles for Harmony....

If only she could've known that there's an army of strangers who support her now.

JMO

 

[Bodhi]

Carol Robidoux has a wonderful interview with Jamison's adoptive parents. They discuss fostering a relationship with his biological mother and trying to establish a connection with Harmony.

When worlds collide: D.C. couple who adopted Harmony Montgomery’s sibling choose to walk in the light on this dark road | Manchester Ink Link

 

[PommyMommy]

Carol Robidoux has a wonderful interview with Jamison's adoptive parents. They discuss fostering a relationship with his biological mother and trying to establish a connection with Harmony.

When worlds collide: D.C. couple who adopted Harmony Montgomery’s sibling choose to walk in the light on this dark road | Manchester Ink Link

I watched that video a little bit ago and my advice is to grab some tissue! MOO

ETA: Scroll down for video.

 

[Sachi]

“This is a child who was a ghost.”

As search for #HarmonyMontgomery continues tonight, here’s what #25Investigates recently learned about how a child can possibly go off the radar of two different state agencies.
https://twitter.com/kerrykavanaugh/status/1479975207670464514?s=21

"MANCHESTER, NH — When custody of little Harmony Montgomery was given to her father, Adam Montgomery, an out of state resident with a long criminal history, an Interstate Compact on the Placement of Children (ICPC) was not in place, 25 Investigates has learned."

Thank for this, I was trying to find info.

I read and re-read, She was released to him from MA DCF and he was a NH resident, wouldn't the ICPC be put in place by DCF right after he was awarded custody in court?


Someone or some group of persons is responsible for the ICPC failure - NOT being acted on and "put" in place to protect and monitor Harmony's well being as she transitioned to AM's care in another state.

One wonders why AM got custody of her, what could those "other factors"possibly be that made AM a better choice than foster care, could it be DNA alone? because on paper, his history is terrible or was it because he was married and had three other children -" illusion of family."
MOO

1. On February 25, 2019, Kayla added his daughter Harmony to their family’s New Hampshire Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) account.
2. He is Kevin Montgomery and Michael Montgomery‘s brother. He allegedly admitted to his brother Kevin that he inflicted a black eye on his daughter Harmony in July 2019.
3. In October 2019, his daughter Harmony went missing. In the same month, he left Kayla.

 

[PommyMommy]

Good review...

JAN 8, 2022
Harmony Montgomery: Timeline, everything known about girl’s disappearance (fox32chicago.com)
Sorey had to surrender Harmony to the state in the summer of 2018. After that, the girl’s father, Adam Montgomery, secured sole custody in February 2019 and moved her to New Hampshire, FOX News reported.

WHERE IS SHE, ADAM?

 

[StarryAnn]

So sad!! Obviously he knows!!

 

[PommyMommy]

So sad!! Obviously he knows!!

Welcome to Websleuths, StarryAnn. Yes, he does! MOO

 

[StarryAnn]

Thank you, PommyMommy! Did you see the video with her poor brother?? Ugh! So sad

 

[MimosaMornings]

Good review...

JAN 8, 2022
Harmony Montgomery: Timeline, everything known about girl’s disappearance (fox32chicago.com)
Sorey had to surrender Harmony to the state in the summer of 2018. After that, the girl’s father, Adam Montgomery, secured sole custody in February 2019 and moved her to New Hampshire, FOX News reported.

WHERE IS SHE, ADAM?

“Sorey told police that, since then, she unsuccessfully made attempts to find Harmony by contacting various schools and driving by addresses associated with Adam Montgomery.

She said last year, he and his partner had blocked all communication from her.”

I don’t know why I thought CS lived in Florida. Wish she had stopped by the Manchester Police Department on those times she drove by various addresses. So she knew he was with KM but couldn’t find them.

I don’t think money is going to loosen anyone’s tongue.

 

[Seattle1]

“Sorey told police that, since then, she unsuccessfully made attempts to find Harmony by contacting various schools and driving by addresses associated with Adam Montgomery.

She said last year, he and his partner had blocked all communication from her.”

I don’t know why I thought CS lived in Florida. Wish she had stopped by the Manchester Police Department on those times she drove by various addresses. So she knew he was with KM but couldn’t find them.

I don’t think money is going to loosen anyone’s tongue.

^^bbm
It's been reported that in between CS losing Harmony in 2018 and now, she moved to Florida, got clean, had another baby, and moved back to MA. MOO

 

[Ilex]

Harmony's mother speaks out
Mom of Missing Girl Harmony Montgomery Speaks Out at Vigil: ‘Mommy's Right Here'

 

[MimosaMornings]

Carol Robidoux has a wonderful interview with Jamison's adoptive parents. They discuss fostering a relationship with his biological mother and trying to establish a connection with Harmony.

When worlds collide: D.C. couple who adopted Harmony Montgomery’s sibling choose to walk in the light on this dark road | Manchester Ink Link

“On Nov. 19, 2019, they adopted Jamison in an open adoption and have maintained a relationship with Sorey. In fact, Blair says it was Jamison’s recent struggle to process the absence of his sister that led the Millers to encourage Sorey to reinvigorate her search for Harmony.

“He asks for his sister and looks for her at playgrounds. We pushed her to help us figure out where she is so we can have a relationship with her,” says Blair.

Sorey believed her daughter to still be in the custody of Adam Montgomery. After trying with no luck to locate Montgomery in recent months based on the information she had, Sorey was finally able to get Manchester Police involved. A missing person investigation was launched November 18, 2021, and, weeks later NH DCYF informed police they could not account for Harmony’s whereabouts. Police Chief Allen Aldenberg immediately went public with the case on Dec. 31.”

So the Miller’s were the reason to get the ball rolling? It was because of Jamison’s recent struggle to process the absence of his sister that they pushed CS to help them find Harmony. I’m glad he has a warm loving family to help him, I don’t think she will be found alive.

 

[PommyMommy]

Harmony Montgomery – The Charley Project

Harmony Montgomery

Details of Disappearance
Harmony was last seen in Manchester, New Hampshire sometime in October 2019, when the police were called to her residence for unspecified reasons. This is the last confirmed sighting of her. She was not reported missing until late 2021, however, over two years later.

Harmony's mother, Crystal "Crys" Renee Sorey, notified police in November 2021 that Harmony was missing. Crys had lost custody of Harmony in 2018 due to substance abuse issues, and after she went into recovery and became sober she tried to contact Harmony. The child had been in foster care with her brother, until she was reunited with her father, Adam Montgomery, in February 2019. (Her brother was adopted by a family later that year.)

Crys was able to locate them and she had a video call with Adam around Easter 2019, and saw Harmony in the background, looking "frightened." This is the last time her mother saw her. After that, Adam blocked all contact, and Crys tried to locate her daughter for months without result. She said she had "a gut feeling that something is not right." She said she made repeated calls to authorities about her concerns for Harmony's welfare and had been ignored.

Police were initially unable to locate Adam. He was eventually found in Manchester, living in a car. Harmony wasn't with him and he said he had given her to the care of her mother around Thanksgiving 2019. This wasn't true, however, and Adam soon stopped cooperating with the investigation.

Harmony's uncle, Kevin Montgomery, said he had seen Harmony with a black eye during the summer of 2019 and asked Adam about it. Adam told him he had "bashed her around the apartment" after he left her unattended with her baby half-brother and came back to find her covering the infant's mouth to stop its crying.

Kevin said he had observed other behaviors by Adam that he thought were abusive, such as forcing Harmony to stand in a corner for four hours and telling her to scrub the toilet with her toothbrush. He said the family had made multiple reports to New Hampshire's Division of Children, Youth and Families (DCYF) and Adam cut off contact with them because of this.

In January 2022, Adam was arrested and charged with felony second-degree assault for abusing Harmony in the summer of 2019, and misdemeanor charges of interference with custody and endangering the welfare of a child for failing to report his daughter missing. He has a history of violent behavior and in was sentenced to 18 months in prison after shooting a man in the head during a 2014 robbery attempt.

A day later his wife, Harmony's stepmother Kayla Montgomery, was charged with one count of welfare fraud for obtaining $1,500 worth of food stamps on Harmony's behalf between December 2019 and June 2021, even though Harmony was no longer living with her and Adam.

Kayla and Adam have three children together. Kayla said the last time shaw saw Harmony was in November or December 2019, when Adam said he was going to take her to Massachusetts, where Crys lived at the time. He returned alone and Kayla never saw or heard about Harmony after that, and assumed she was safe in her mother's care.

[...]

 

[Sachi]

About Kayla M
snipped from this informative article
Timeline: What we've learned from the Harmony Montgomery investigation

*Kayla added Harmony to her account with the New Hampshire Department of Health & Human Services, Division of Family Assistance, on Feb. 25, 2019.

Kayla told investigators the last time she saw Harmony was around November or December 2019.
One morning, before Kayla went to work, Adam told her he was driving Harmony to the girl’s mother’s home in Lowell, Kayla told police. She said since then, she never saw or heard about Harmony.


On Jan. 7, 2021, Kayla informed DHHS her household consisted of “2 adults married filing jointly, 4 children,” an affidavit in the case against her states.
“The DHHS case worker added a note on the redetermination paperwork of: ‘She [Kayla] seemed confused about whether or not Harmony lived there because (she) goes to her mom’s every other weekend,’” the affidavit reads.


June 2021
Days before Harmony’s seventh birthday, on June 2, 2021, another account change report regarding Kayla’s income began in DHHS, police wrote in court filings.

“During that contact, DHHS noted that case management for (Harmony) was closed, noting ‘client said she moved back with her mother and to remove her from her case,’” the affidavit states.

It seems possible that Kayla might know a lot more about what happened to Harmony. Moo

 

[Cubby]

Ownership was transferred from Adam Montgomery's relatives to the NH Housing Finance Agency. The following day NHHFA sold the property to US Housing and Urban Development. HUD rehabs houses and resells them. From the neighbor's comments and the record of the visit by police in October, it seems Adam and/or Kayla Montgomery and their family were squatters through November. HUD sold the house to the new owner on May 14, 2o20. My opinion is that if a body was concealed in the house, the contractors HUD hired to rehab it would have discovered it.

(Links provided in post #696 above)

No news on whether cadaver dogs were brought into the home.

I'd be interested in knowing what kind of rehab was done. Was the home fully gutted?

 

[Bodhi]

No news on whether cadaver dogs were brought into the home.

I'd be interested in knowing what kind of rehab was done. Was the home fully gutted?

I was wrong. HUD cleaned it out but did not rehab. There's a post shortly after where I posted the video when HUD was selling it. It was uninsurable because of the condition it was in.

I think I read someplace that dogs were used on the 1st search of the property. MOO.

EDITED to add: it was post 702. But here is the link to the video. And the description accompanying the video describes the condition of the house.

 

[txsleuth70]

Kayla is just as much a monster as Adam. How can you stay there, with your own children, with a monster that you know has likely murdered his own child? Even if he truly lied to her about Harmony going to her mother's, at some point she would've asked when Harmony was coming to visit, when are you going to send her money or child support, blah blah blah. I hope they both rot in h*ll. That'll be the only way their existing children will have any chance in life. Such a tragedy for this innocent child. Shame on her own mother, too!! It takes you 3 years to start asking questions and looking around?? Come on! Burn all 3.

 

[Bodhi]

I’m guessing none of Harmony’s blood relatives other than AM live in NH?

JMO, I think both parents have extended family in the Merrimack Valley. Not necessarily New Hampshire, but close by. Manchester is only 20 miles north of the Massachusetts border. It's 25 miles from Crystal's hometown of Haverhill, Massachusetts to Adam's hometown of Manchester, New Hampshire. So I think the answer is yes, he likely has relatives living relatively close--in the Merrimack Valley region of NH/Mass.

 

[HilaryHormone]

Sad to think that COVID might have played a part in this little girl missing for so long without being noticed. I have a family member who is a social worker, and other than for extreme circumstances, home visits were greatly reduced, especially during the first year of the pandemic. There is no way a case worker shouldn’t have known this little girl was missing. I’m all for COVID safety measures, but my heart breaks for all the kids being abused that haven’t been reported due to them no longer being in school and welfare visits being virtual or cancelled all together.

I think the issue was that Harmony didn’t have an allocated worker

The man they decided to give her to because he supplied one sperm shot someone in the head for crying out loud! She would have been better off if they just tossed her into a men’s high security prison to fend for herself. At least guards and a consciencious inmate or two might have looked out for her. Instead a violent criminal had her all to himself, 24 x 7, to do whatever the hell her wanted to her.

There are no doubt tons of caring people who’ve chosen social work as a career that feel sicker than I do about what happened to this poor little girl. If any happen to read this, what if anything can members of the general public (i.e. me) do to help avoid tragedies like this from happening?

I’m not in the US, but I’m in Social Work in the UK and I am certainly sick to my stomach and my heart about how Harmony has been failed at every turn. I think the issues with social work are pretty similar the world over, children’s rights are ultimately being superseded by parental rights. There is a also a real focus on maintaining a child in their birth family or rehabilitating them back to birth family following intervention. Research does indicate this generally has better outcomes for children, but every case must be considered individually because the risks are just too great for some. Laws and policies need to change, frontline staff have to navigate far too much red tape before we can act on concerns and establish grounds for statutory involvement. It’s depressing and demoralising and utterly dangerous at times, as Harmony’s case illustrates.

It’s everyone’s job to make sure a child is alright and in the current circumstances of a global pandemic, universal health and education services aren’t having the same level of contact with children they would have pre-Covid, families are becoming more isolated and vulnerable children are going under the radar. I actually think governments should be running media campaigns around child protection and safeguarding. We need to educate the general public on signs of child abuse and neglect and inform communities how they can report concerns.

In my country, which isn't by any means a perfect or better than other countries in any way shape or form, ALL at-risk children were monitored even harder during the pandemic and while everyone else was doing remote learning, they were required to come to school. Covid is not an excuse, period. LE never stopped working, did whoever was in charge of at-risk children get to go home? I think they would qualify as essential workers. No excuses.

Same here (UK). It has been business as usual, we’ve actually been busier because community and health services have been drastically reduced. Domestic abuse has rocketed and mental health has deteriorated. Covid has, however, been a convenient excuse for many non-compliant or difficult to engage families to withdraw even further. We’ve had several children die at the hands of parents in horrendous circumstances since the pandemic began though, it’s heartbreaking.

im thinking that when Ma closed their case, it somehow was never reopened in NH.

IMO the last allocated worker in MA, and their immediate supervisor, would have been responsible for liaising with NH to transfer the case. I’m interested to know whether any attempts were made to do so. Over here, it is notoriously difficult to get a neighbouring authority to take on a new case, whether it be due to professional/political power struggles over budgets or judgement, who knows.

Even if there had been a telephone call between the states, that would have been logged so Harmony’s name would have been flagged in the system back in 2019 when Police attended surely? Although that would be dependent on an officer making checks in the first place. They certainly didn’t act on the child assault allegations by Harmony’s paternal uncle.

It sounds like the judge who gave custody to the father is the one who would have orderd an Interstate Protective Measure. According to this judge being interviewed in this article (not a judge involved in this case), she would normally require an Interstate Protective Measure in all cases where a child is being placed out of state. This deserves additional review, and should be mandatory, only with rare exceptions. But certainly with a biological mother and father with histories like these two have.

Forgive my ignorance, but would a judge who deals with custody issues in the US also deal with care orders for child and family social work? I’m interested as our civil courts deal with custody issues and we have a separate system for children requiring care and protection. Social work doesn’t tend to have any influence in civil cases, although we can provide welfare and background reports if requested. If Harmony’s situation were to have happened here, Dad would have had to apply for custody personally and argued for Mum’s rights be terminated. I wonder what his motivation was, as he was in prison for much of her early life. Did it benefit him financially to have custody?

Social Works continued involvement in Harmony’s life would have then had to be legally quantified in a separate Children’s Hearing. Dad’s criminal and violent history alongside his homeless status would certainly have met the threshold IMO. But as with any process, it can only be actioned by a diligent worker. I can’t fathom how any professional worth their salt would have happily sent Harmony on her way with that man without at least linking in with the new authority area and sharing pertinent information.

I'm thinking DCFS has her blood on their hands...MOO of course.

I 100% agree that Harmony was failed by professionals. It’s inexcusable and they should be investigated and disciplined accordingly; However, Social Workers don’t mistreat, neglect or kill children. Crappy, evil parents do that.