The father of Harmony Montgomery, the 7-year-old who was reported missing two years after she was last seen in New Hampshire, was charged on Monday with stealing several guns just weeks before she vanished.
Prosecutors said the alleged gun crimes were not related to the disappearance of the child, but the timeline raised questions about what the father, who has a long rap sheet, was up to when she went missing.
Adam Montgomery, 32, was charged with eight new crimes related to the theft of a firearm that occurred between Sept. 29, 2019, and Oct. 3, 2019, the New Hampshire Attorney General’s Office said on Monday. While details of the thefts were not immediately clear, authorities said he faced two charges of being an armed career criminal, meaning Montgomery stole the weapons—a rifle and shotgun—after he was convicted of at least three other felonies.
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The charges come just days after Montgomery was indicted by a grand jury for allegedly abusing his 7-year-old daughter, who was last seen around November 2019.
“It’s the break we needed in the case,” Crystal Sorey, Harmony Montgomery’s mother, told The Daily Beast on Monday. “There’s no way he’s getting out of jail for a very long time.”
Sorey expressed hope that the charges against her daughter’s father may finally yield some answers about what happened to the child—and prove that Montgomery was an “unstable” father who should have not had custody of Harmony in the first place.
“I feel like this is what we needed to keep Adam in jail and possibly come up with a deal to make him talk about Harmony’s location,” Sorey added.
Montgomery has not been charged in connection with his daughter’s disappearance.
Authorities say that Harmony was last seen between Nov. 28 and Dec. 10, 2019, after her family was evicted from their home in Manchester, New Hampshire. At the time, investigators said, Harmony was living with her father, her stepmother, Kayla, and their two children. (Kayla has since been indicted for allegedly using Harmony’s food-stamp benefits even though she was not living with the child.)
Prior to her disappearance, prosecutors say, Adam Montgomery abused Harmony in 2019. An arrest affidavit previously outlined a series of disturbing abuse allegations against the father, including that he admitted to his uncle, Kevin, that he inflicted a black eye on Harmony in July 2019 just months after child-protective services granted him custody.
“I bashed her around the house,” Montgomery allegedly told Kevin Montgomery, after stating he left Harmony “in charge of watching her infant brother while [he] was in the bathroom.”
Prosecutors allege the abuse was punishment after Harmony’s young brother “started crying” and Harmony was found “holding her hand over the child’s mouth to stop him from crying.” Kevin Montgomery previously described witnessing the aftermath of abuse—including the black eye—to The Daily Beast.
That abuse, he told investigators, included Harmony being spanked “hard on the butt,” being forced “to stand in the corner for hours,” and being ordered “to scrub the toilet with her toothbrush.”
Authorities say they were not informed of Harmony’s disappearance that fall until the end of November 2021, when Sorey called Manchester Police to report her daughter “was missing and that she hadn’t seen [her] in over six months.”
The call prompted an investigation that ultimately led authorities to learn that virtually none of the 7-year-old’s family had seen her in years.
Authorities finally spoke to Adam Montgomery and his new girlfriend on New Year’s Eve 2021. At that point, investigators say, the father made “made contradictory statements,” including that Harmony “was fine and that he had seen her somewhere recently” before later admitting he had not seen his daughter since November 2019, when her mother “came to pick her up.”
The affidavit added that eventually Montgomery “stopped answering questions” and said, “If I’m not under arrest, I’m leaving.” (Montgomery’s girlfriend at the time, Kelsey Small, was found dead last month, though authorities do not believe there was any foul play.)
Montgomery pleaded not guilty to the abuse allegations and was set to be arraigned for the gun theft charges on Tuesday.
Court documents and media reports show the gun allegations against Montgomery are not the first time the father has been accused of crimes that do not involve his child. In fact, local news outlets reported in January that Montgomery was a suspect in the unsolved 2004 murder of Darlin Guzman in Massachusetts.
According to the outlets, police found Guzman fatally shot in the chest outside the parking lot of the former White Hen Convenience store just before 11 p.m. on Feb. 10, 2008. An online obituary notes that Guzman was a 28-year-old computer repairman who was born in the Dominican Republic.
At the time of the incident, Montgomery would have been 18 years old. Montgomery has not been charged in Guzman’s murder—nor has he been publicly identified as a suspect by the police.
In 2014, Montgomery was arrested after allegedly shooting a man in the head during a drug deal in Massachusetts. Police said Montgomery sustained a gunshot wound to the arm. In a hospital interview with police, according to documents obtained by WHDH, Montgomery said the shooting occurred during a struggle after a man he was supposed to buy heroin from tried to rob him.
A spokesperson for the Essex District Attorney’s Office previously told The Daily Beast that in September 2014, Montgomery pleaded guilty to several crimes in relation to the incident and was sentenced to 18 months in prison. The governor of New Hampshire, Chris Sununu, has slammed Massachusetts officials for subsequently awarding Montgomery custody of his child.
