By DAMIEN FISHER, InDepthNH.org

The sickening murder of five-year-old Harmony Montgomery took another turn Thursday as the New Hampshire Supreme Court ruled that prosecutors didn’t prove her father, Adam Montgomery, killed his daughter.

In a unanimous decision authored by Associate Justice Bryan Gould, the Court overturned Adam Montgomery’s second-degree murder conviction finding that the state’s murder case rested on the questionable testimony offered by Adam Montgomery’s wife, Kayla Montgomery.

While the state argued that all of Kayla Montgomery’s testimony was backed by corroborating evidence, the Court found that is not true.

“This evidence, however, supports only Kayla’s testimony about the defendant’s actions after the victim’s death; it does not corroborate Kayla’s testimony that the defendant killed the victim on December 7 [2019] by repeatedly punching her in the head. It is also not inconsistent with the defendant’s theory of defense — namely that Kayla caused the victim’s death and the defendant helped her cover up her crime,” Gould wrote.

Adam Montgomery isn’t going anywhere just yet, however. The Court upheld his convictions on other charges and remanded the second-degree murder case back to the Hillsborough Superior Court — North in Manchester.

He was serving 45-years to life in prison for the second-egree murder as well as three and a half to seven years for falsifying physical evidence; three and a half to seven years for witness tampering; and four to eight years for second degree assault. Montgomery is also sentenced to 12-month in jail for abuse of Harmony’s corpse, but that sentence is suspended for 25 years.

Adam Montgomery appealed the second-degree murder conviction on the grounds that original trial court Judge Amy Messner erred by allowing him to be tried on the second-degree assault charge at the same time he was tried on all of the other charges. The Court found that while the state had a solid case proving the assault, including that case with the weaker evidence in the murder trial prejudiced the jury.

“As compared to the evidence of multiple disinterested witnesses substantiating the July [2019] assault, the evidence of the December 7, 2019 fatal attack is substantially weaker,” Gould wrote. “We conclude that, under these circumstances, trying the second-degree assault and second-degree murder charges in a single trial jeopardized the defendant’s right to a fair trial.”

Kayla Montgomery testified that Adam Montgomery repeatedly punched Harmony in the head on Dec. 7, 2019 while he raged over the fact his daughter peed herself in the car that the family was using for a home. Adam Montgomery maintains that his daughter died on the night of Dec. 6, 2019 while he was out “trying to earn money” and Kayla Montgomery was alone with their children.

Adam Montgomery, a convicted felon and known drug user, was given custody of Harmony in the spring of 2019 thanks to a Massachusetts court ruling. The girl had months to live once she was in her father’s control.

After her murder, Adam Montgomery kept Harmony’s corpse for months. She was hidden in coolers, refrigerators, and inside ceilings and the Montgomery family moved from car, to shelter, to apartment throughout 2020. He finally cut up her body and disposed of his daughter somewhere between Manchester and Massachusetts, according to the convictions. Harmony has never been found.

There is cold comfort in the fact that the Supreme Court found the assault case carried the strongest evidence. There was enough evidence to convict Adam Montgomery of hitting his daughter after she was dead, but not enough for the Division for Children, Youth and Families to have saved her life.

Montgomery family members and neighbors started repeatedly calling the Division for Children, Youth and Families in July of 2019 to report Harmony being abused by Adam and Kayla Montgomery, according to the lawsuit brought by birth mother, Crystal Sorey. At nearly each turn, the DCYF investigator and other state employees failed the little girl.

Child Protection Social Worker Demetrios Tsaros failed to interview Harmony and Adam Montgomery for weeks after a report was made that the girl had been beaten and given a back eye, according to the lawsuit. Though he reported seeing bruising and redness in the girl’s eye, Tsaros never spoke to the girl, contacted police, or took any other action to protect her, according to the lawsuit.

Tsaros found the Montgomery’s living in a filthy house without heat or electricity, where food rotted, and littered with drug paraphernalia, Tsaros reported that both Kayla and Adam Montgomery claimed their house guest was in relapse, but they were clean.

Tsaros did speak to Kayla Montgomery a week after the alleged beating, but he did not speak to Harmony, or to Adam Montgomery. That did not stop Tsaros from telling Manchester Police there was nothing to worry about.

“Following this visit, Tsaros noted in the Contact Log that he sent an email to the Manchester Police Department stating that ‘…I think you folks are all set. I saw the children and did not observe any bruises, marks, etc…” the lawsuit states.

But relatives and neighbors, including Sorey, kept calling with their concerns about Harmony and her younger step-brothers. Uncle Kevin Montgomery, who reported the black eye, told DCYF the girl was regularly beaten, spanked, made to clean the bathroom with a toothbrush, and told she was “disgusting” by Kayla Montgomery. He also reported the drug paraphernalia in the house. But the lawsuit states the DCYF employee who first took his call did not seem that concerned.

“As noted in the Report, the DCYF worker who took the call questioned Kevin ‘on the accuracy of his dates,’ further frustrating Kevin, who said ‘…this is why children die’ and that ‘this child was punched clear in the eye socket with full force,’” Sorey’s lawsuit states.

Tsaros never spoke to witnesses, and never had a conversation alone with Harmony, according to the lawsuit. During his investigation, there were numerous police calls to the Montgomerys for reported domestic disputes, and to remove the drug using friend from the house, but Tsaros never seemed to act on those incidents, according to the lawsuit.

At one point, Tsaros reportedly told Adam Montgomery’s family he should never have been assigned to the case. Tsaros was a youth counselor at the Sununu Youth Detention Center 15 years prior, and had been Adam Montgomery’s youth counselor there, according to the lawsuit.

Last year, Sorey and the state settled her lawsuit for $2.25 million, with half of that going to a trust fund for Harmony’s siblings, and the other half to Sorey. Last month, Sorey obtained a $15 million civil judgement against Adam Montgomery for his daughter’s murder.

You can read the Supreme Court order here: https://indepthnh.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/order.pdf