Father Arrested In Connection With Missing Manchester, NH 7-Year-Old Harmony Montgomery

MANCHESTER, N.H. (CBS) – Adam Montgomery, the father of missing 7-year-old Manchester, New Hampshire girl Harmony Montgomery, is now facing several charges as investigators released new information in the case Wednesday.

Montgomery was arrested Tuesday and charged with felony second-degree assault stemming from alleged 2019 conduct against Harmony. He is also facing a misdemeanor charge of interference with custody, and two misdemeanor counts of endangering the welfare of a child.

He was scheduled to be arraigned Wednesday afternoon in Hillsborough County Superior Court, but attorneys arranged for him to be held without bail and the hearing was not held.

Montgomery is not charged in his daughter's disappearance at this point in the investigation.

Harmony Montgomery has been missing since October 2019, but police were only notified recently about her disappearance.

According to court records released Wednesday, Manchester Police got a call on November 18, 2021, from Harmony's biological mother, Crystal Sorey, saying her daughter was missing and that the girl's father had custody of her.

Police reached out to DCYF which started a search for Adam Montgomery. They told police on December 27 they couldn't find him, so detectives started searching for him. Investigators later learned that Harmony "had not been physically seen since October/November 2019," according to the affidavit filed Wednesday in Hillsborough County Superior Court.

Sorey, who lives in Lowell, lost custody of Harmony in July 2018 "in part due to a substance abuse issue."

"Crystal said that both she and Adam had past issues with substance abuse," prosecutors said in the court documents.

Since then, Sorey told authorities she got sober and tried to track down Harmony and Adam, adding that she last saw her daughter during a Facetime video call around Easter in 2019 and that Harmony "seemed frightened."

During their search the last two weeks, police spoke to Adam's brother Michael Montgomery. He told them Adam was physically abusive to Harmony and gave her a black eye.

A detective then talked to Adam's uncle Kevin Montgomery and asked him about Harmony's eye injury.

He said, according to court documents, that Adam told him at the time, around July of 2019, that "I bashed her around the house." Adam was allegedly angry at Harmony, who was 5 years old, because she was supposed to be watching her infant brother, but he started crying and that infuriated her father. The uncle also said Adam spanked his daughter, forced her to stand in the corner for hours and ordered her to scrub a toilet with her toothbrush.

On December 31, police found Adam Montgomery's current wife who said she hadn't spoken to him since mid-November 2021.

She told investigators the last time she saw Harmony was "sometime in November or December of 2019" when Adam said he was driving her back to her mother in Lowell. Sorey told police that never happened.

Hours after interviewing his wife, police finally found Adam Montgomery and his new girlfriend sleeping in a car in Manchester, New Hampshire. She told officers Adam has never talked about Harmony.

Adam first told police Harmony "was fine and he had seen her somewhat recently," but then allegedly contradicted himself later, telling police he hadn't seen her since her mother came to "pick her up in Manchester, NH, around Thanksgiving 2019."

He then stopped answering questions and said "I have nothing else to say."

When police told him they were worried she might not be alive, they said "Adam did not exhibit much emotion or reaction to this." Investigators arrested him four days later on Tuesday.

Anyone who has information on where Harmony is located is asked to text or call 603-203-6060.

A reward of $33,000 was announced Tuesday for information that helps locate her. On Wednesday, New Hampshire businessman Peter Napoli added $10,000 to the total, bringing the reward up to $43,000.

"This is a rescue mission. We want to find her. We want to bring her back home," said Assistant Attorney General Jesse O'Neill. "People are coming back from the holidays. Somebody might not be in tune with what's going on. They might watch the news today, and see this right now and realize, I saw her, I know something about her," he said. "I don't know if anybody's intentionally holding back, but if anybody knows anything, we want to know it."