Prosecutors said the alleged gun crimes were not related to the child’s disappearance, but the timetable raises questions about what the father, who has a long rap sheet, thought when he disappeared.
Adam Montgomery, 32, has been charged with eight new felonies related to a firearm theft that occurred between September 29, 2019 and October 3, 2019, the New Hampshire Attorney General’s Office announced Monday. Although the details of the thefts were not immediately clear, authorities said he faced two charges of an armed career, meaning Montgomery stole weapons – a rifle and a shotgun – after being convicted of at least three other crimes.
The charges come just days after Montgomery was indicted by a large court 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 is no way he can get out of jail for a long time.”
Sorey expressed hope that the allegations against her daughter’s father could eventually provide some answers to what happened to the child – and prove that Montgomery was an “unstable” father who should not have taken care of Harmony from the start. .
“I feel like we needed that to keep Adam in jail and probably come to an agreement that would make him talk about Harmony’s location,” Sorey added.
Montgomery has not been charged with the disappearance of his daughter.
Authorities say Harmony was last seen between November 28 and December 10, 2019, after her family was evicted from their home in Manchester, New Hampshire. At the time, the researchers said, Harmony was living with her father, her stepmother, Kayla, and their two children. (Kayla has since been accused of allegedly using Harmony’s food stamp privileges even though she was not living with the child.)
Prior to her disappearance, prosecutors say, Adam Montgomery abused Harmony in 2019. An affidavit previously described a series of disturbing allegations of abuse against the father, including admitting to his uncle, Harvin, that he had black eyes on July. 2019 a few months after the child protection services provided custody.
“I threw her around the house,” Montgomery reportedly told Kevin Montgomery after saying he had left Harmony “in charge of watching her brother. [he] he was in the bathroom. “
Prosecutors say the abuse was a punishment after Harmony’s young brother “started crying” and Harmony was found “holding her hand over the child’s mouth to stop him crying”. Kevin Montgomery has previously described himself as a witness to the aftermath of the abuse – including the black eye – in The Daily Beast.
The abuse, he told investigators, included beating Harmony “hard in the buttocks”, forcing her 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 in the fall until late November 2021, when Sorey called Manchester police to report that her daughter was “missing and had not seen [her] in more than six months “.
The call led to an investigation that eventually led authorities to learn that virtually none of the 7-year-old’s family had seen her in years.
Authorities eventually spoke with Adam Montgomery and his new girlfriend on New Year’s Eve 2021. At that point, investigators say, the father made “contradictory statements”, including that Harmony was “well and had seen her somewhere”. recently “before he later admitted he had not seen his daughter since November 2019, when her mother” came to pick her up “.
The affidavit added that Montgomery eventually “stopped answering questions” and said: “If I am not in custody, I will leave.” (Montgomery’s girlfriend at the time, Kelsey Small, was found dead last month, though authorities do not believe there was a bad game.)
Montgomery pleaded not guilty to charges of aggravated robbery on Tuesday.
Judicial documents and media reports show that Montgomery’s gun charges are not the first time a father has been charged with crimes against his child. In fact, local media reported in January that Montgomery was suspected of the unsolved murder of Darlene Guzman in 2004 in Massachusetts.
Police found Guzman fatally shot in the chest outside the parking lot of the former White Hen Convenience store just before 11pm on February 10, 2008. An online obituary notes that Guzman was a 28-year-old Dominican-born computer repairman. Democracy.
Montgomery would have been 18 at the time of the incident. Montgomery has not been charged with Guzman’s murder – nor has he been publicly identified as a police suspect.
In 2014, Montgomery was arrested after allegedly shooting a man in the head during a drug deal in Massachusetts. Police said Montgomery suffered a gunshot wound to the arm. In a hospital interview with police, according to WHDH documents, Montgomery said the shooting occurred during a fight after a man from whom he allegedly bought heroin tried to rob him.
A spokesman for the Essex Prosecutor’s Office previously told The Daily Beast that in September 2014, Montgomery pleaded guilty to several crimes in connection with the incident and was sentenced to 18 months in prison. New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununou has criticized Massachusetts officials for handing over Montgomery’s child custody.
