Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan: What Happened to Harmony Montgomery?

Episode Date: February 25, 2024

Harmony Montgomery was missing for two years before anyone looked for her. Police began looking for a 7-year-old girl and soon realized they might really be looking for remains of a 5-year-old girl. She is still among the missing but presumed dead. Her father stood trial for her murder. Join Joseph Scott Morgan and Dave Mack as they investigate the heartbreaking story of a little girl who never had a chance, and the forensics that just might get justice for her yet.    Transcript Highlights 01:34.45 Joe talks about memory  04:22.26 Discussion of years since Harmony has been seen  07:22.44 Talk about Harmony, looked nervous  10:09.25 Harmony was never enrolled in school  14:36.89 Discussion of police find Harmony's Dad  20:32.13 Talk about moment of clarity  25:22.45 Discussion of what really happened to Harmony  31:02.25 Discussion of waiting 2 years to call about child  35:18.87 Discussion about life lived in a car  38:25.26 Talk about neither adult checking on Harmony  43:49.54 Discussion of carrying Harmony  45:43.17 Finally went too far, hit too hard  50:51.68 Discussion perfect hiding spot was found  54:25.15 Discussion about how body is stored  59:33.43 Talk about using bathtub for dismemberment  59:19.23 Discussion of what might be found of Harmony See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan. As far back as I can remember, going way, way back, I have a memory that is burned into my mind. And I don't know if any of you guys had this experience, but my grandmother had bought me what was referred to as a children's book of Bible stories. And she started at the beginning when I was a little old thing. And she read me the creation story.

And I was always fascinated by it. The reason I was fascinated by it was, you know, you learn about the progression as it's laid out in the Bible about the creation of the heavens and the earth and, you know, you learn about the progression as it's laid out in the Bible about the creation of the heavens and the earth and, you know, the creatures. But then it gets to the creation of Adam. And Adam, the name Adam actually originates from a Hebrew word. And I'm probably going to get this wrong, but it's called adamha, I think is how it's pronounced.

And it actually goes back to the term soil or dirt. And it makes sense, you know, because, you know, as the story goes, God created Adam from the earth, right? And I was always amazed by that. And then the word is taken and it is, Adam itself is used for, in Hebrew, apparently, and I'm no theologian, but the way I understand it, it actually is translated man.

And I've been thinking about the name Adam quite a bit. I've been thinking quite a bit recently about, particularly this week, about what it means to actually be a man. What it means to take care of those that are within your circle, those that are yours, your children, your wife, standing up, doing the hard thing when life is really, really beating you up to make the correct decision.

But you know, you take a person who got a monster on your hands. Today, we're going to have a discussion about a person named Adam. I won't call Adam a man. I'll say he's a male. And another person who is arguably one of the most defenseless creatures that's out there. Who also had a name. A beautiful name. Called Harmony. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan. And this is Body Bags. Dave Mack, I've got to tell you, brother. I had a moment this week, and I don't have these frequently,

but, you know, I do so much TV, moving about from these various platforms that are out there. I had a moment. I guess it was on, uh, to us, I guess it's midweek. It's probably this past Wednesday, Wednesday night or Tuesday night.

And I was, I was on court TV when my buddy, Vinnie Paul, who by the way, is one of the finest people you'll ever meet in, in the news media, genuinely a good man. And I revisited with Vinny the case of Harmony Montgomery.

And Harmony still, to this day, we're what, two years? No, we're what two two is it two years no we're we're more than that we're multiple years down range from when she was actually last seen alive actually last seen um 2019 2019 probably yeah yeah roughly december yeah and it all runs together after a while, because I got to tell you, we're in 2024 now. And, um, and I, I really thought that by this time we were going to find harmony. I thought that there would be a breaking news story that, you know, and it's typical, you know, you, you, they go to a shot on TV, you see a bunch of trucks lined up and you say, we don't, we can't confirm yet, but we know that the police are working in this area.

Unnamed sources now tell us that they're, you know, they're on a recovery. And as horrible as that is, I thought that maybe that would happen and we would have more answers. But my friend, I don't have really any more answers today than I did back in 2019. We have a bit of a storyline, I think, but we still don't have all that remained of Harmony. It was at the end of 2021 when we actually heard the story that of little Harmony Montgomery, five years old and she's missing. That was the first thing that we heard.

And I remember pulling, you know, everything you could finding news reporters and reading the reports and getting it all together. Harmony Montgomery missing. And we started finding out it's in massachusetts we're dealing with the northeast and we've got her mother uh crystal story um she's in florida at the time and so they the reporters had her on skype now mom says she hasn't seen her daughter

in two years and all of a sudden who had her her then? Okay. Her biological father, Adam Montgomery, he had her. But Adam Montgomery told friends and family that he actually took Harmony back to Harmony's mother two years ago. And that's when her mother is saying, absolutely not. That did not happen. Now, when we first started covering the story, that's what it was. It was a missing child let's find harmony montgomery then we found out the layers just as the police did wait a minute she's been missing for how long when was the last time you saw her and i remember her mother

crystal sorry saying i have been trying to find out where my daughter is, but my ex has blocked me. He won't talk to me. They won't, I can't have any communication whatsoever. So she went to the police and she said, I have not seen my daughter, you know, since April of 2019 Easter. And after that, they blocked me. and the one thing crystal sorry said is when i last saw my daughter on a facetime phone call her dad was in the background and harmony looked nervous she looked upset and that's when we found out a little bit more about harmony harmony had some she was a very special child and there was a lot of special things that Harmony dealt with. She did not see, I, I, was she completely blind? Yeah. And her,

yeah, Harmony was actually blind. And if I'm not mistaken, um, she had, she had a deficit, I think since birth and it's, it involved the right eye and, you know, she, I think, since birth, and it involved the right eye. And, you know, her right eye, if you see these images, and she looks like an angel. Oh, she does. You know, this perfect little smile. Her right eye is kind of drawn to the center, if you will. And she wore these rather robust glasses with very thick lens lenses. And, and, you know, this is something that, um, I don't know if she, if it was total

blindness, um, and I don't know how the left eye was affected, but she was affected. And, and Hey, look, look there, you know, how many stories are there of people out there that have dealt with, with blindness since birth? Sure. You know, and they, they adapt. Yes. But, you know, it takes, it takes a, a lot of patience on the part of a parent, of a parent that's dealing with sight impaired and also hearing impaired. My wife spent a long time in public education working also hearing impaired. Um, my wife spent a long time in public education working with hearing impaired and she, she's very proficient at American sign language.

And so she always had a heart for these kids and she'd work with them. And I, I don't know how she did it, but, but she did it. And I'll get her to talk to me in sign language sometimes. But she truly has a heart for it. And as much fury as I've had about this case, when Kimmy and I sit around and, you know, we go over the cases that I work and whatnot, I'm real careful when I begin to bring up Harmony's case to her because I have, it elicits such a level of rage from her that I don't, I don't think it's going to end well at any point in time because she's seen kids that have come through the system over the years that have problems at home and they don't get dealt with. People act like they don't care about them. They're discarded. And unfortunately, well, unfortunately, you know, Harmony never made it to the point where

she was going to go into the public education system. She never had a shot at that. That was actually one of the tip-offs because she was five the last time she was seen and based on the fact she hadn't been seen in two years she should have been enrolled in school that was the first layer they pulled back and went wait a minute where was she going to school when the story started falling apart from the mom and saying well dcyfYF, that's the Department of Children, Youth and Families. They were involved. There was a judge involved because there was a custodial issue dealing with because both

parents, both biological parents had drug problems at the time that they decided that Harmony needed to be with her dad. Her mom was in a treatment program. She wasn't capable of caring for her daughter. Biological father got custody but he didn't steal her he had custody given to him by a judge signed off the court yeah by the court yeah and adam montgomery was nowhere to be found when crystal story said i haven't seen my daughter i haven't talked to my daughter my ex-husband will not let me see he will

not communicate with me she goes to the police and people, I will call myself as one of these people. Why did you wait so long? Why did two years? But let's put that aside for a minute. Find out where she is. Well, we can't find the dad. They found Adam Montgomery at the end of December. And he was now, uh, they found his ex, his wife, Kayla.

Um, and she said, he's not with me anymore. He's not a new girlfriend lives in another town. And they're like, where's harmony. And she said, I haven't seen harmony, uh, since Adam took her back to her mom. They finally get up with Adam Montgomery and he's gives them the same song and dance, you know, that I get, you know, mom has. And no, I know she doesn't. We're, we're here because she called us saying you won't return her call you had it now where is harmony you know what dave i gotta

tell you buddy one of the things that has always stuck with me and i could see it in the faces of those police officers and we're talking about up in manchester new hampshire yeah and he's talking to a couple of these uniforms that are out there and they're saying, look, man, we, you know, paraphrasing here, we, we know that you have issues with the law. That's, that's secondary at this point in time. You know, we're, we're not looking to jam you up or hook you up on charge. We just want to know where she is. And trust me, you know, I think that they knew that maybe they knew, I'm not sure because here, here's the unfortunate part. The department of family and children's services, as well as the judge may have had more intimate

knowledge about Harmony, about her needs, because she is truly, look, she is truly a definition of a special needs kid that would need not just educational services. She needs medical services. She needs therapeutic services so that she can begin to deal with life and, you know, develop in that way because she has this problem with her eyes. There are some emotional issues, too, that might be as a result of some kind of neurological deficit. Both parents have drug histories. I don't know if she was born into a situation where maybe, you know, that birth, at birth, she may have been affected by whatever was going on systemically with her mother at that point in time, who knows? And that's, that's the real dark veil that kind of

covers this whole thing, you know, because I think that any of us, when we, I I'm speaking for you and I shouldn't, but when I look at that baby, uh, you know, I think of, first off, my grandchildren. And I think about how much I like to read to them, how much I like to sit in a chair with them. And I like to just close the world out and devote myself to that moment in time where I can be with them in the moment. And this child never had that. And it's, yeah, the parents here have a burden to bear in this.

And as we will discuss, Adam Montgomery is certainly somebody that's going to go to trial. Police go to him, Joe. Where is your daughter? We just want harmony. Don't care if you've got drugs in the care where's your daughter we just want harmony don't care if you got drugs in the car don't care about your girl we don't care about anything look happy new year tell me where is harmony who has harmony and if you hurt her where did you leave her we need to know where harmony is that's all we're asking adam we don't care about anything else

and he says am i under arrest no sir you not under arrest. We're trying to find your daughter. And I ain't talking to you. I know. That's what he did. I can't, I can't begin to fathom this. I'm not talking to you. If I'm not under arrest, I'm out of here. What do you do if you're a police officer at that point in time?

You know, I mean, they don't have, I think at that point in time, remember from an evidentiary standpoint, you have to develop probable cause in order to affect an arrest. And I know a lot of people out there are going to think, well, you know, a missing child and uncooperative parent, if that's not probable cause, I don't know what is. Well, there's a high probability that the court might not necessarily view it that way. Right.

And that's, he knows that because he's been on the inside. Oh yeah. You may. I'm glad you said that. He knows how the system works and he has used it to his advantage. He's living in his car with his girlfriend on drugs. Doesn't know where his,

he knows where his daughter is. He knows where she is. He's the only person other than Kayla Montgomery, his wife. They both know where she is and they're both lying but job of police is to figure this out and the job the police did i told joe this earlier when i was looking over this case because it gets really emotional joseph joseph scott morgan and dave mack both get overly emotional about this particular story because when we first covered it, she was missing. The missing girl. She's a beautiful little girl.

Let's find out. Let's bring her home. Let's bring her home. And then it's like, she ain't coming home. No, she's not. And I got to tell you, as a death investigator, when I get into cases and I start covering cases and watching them, I know that they're, you look, people want hope. Everybody wants hope that, you know, the door is going to fly open and their loved one is going to show up. Uh, you know, you, you use the word, uh, we had, we had a discussion off air just a little

while ago, uh, where you said that, you know, you're a cynic. And I said, no, dude, you're a realist. Uh, and I, I am a am a cynic. I try to be realist, but I am very cynical most of the time. And it's the world that I inhabit relative to what I do as a death investigator. If you think about an adult, there is always that outside chance, Dave. There is always that outside chance that there could be a knock at the door. There could be a phone call. I don't know. They could be passed out in the driveway and you hadn't seen them in years and years. But when you're talking about a precious little angel that is so fragile that she would require daily care to look after her,

after a certain point in time, hope evaporates and stark, cold reality sets in. What do you love in life? A relaxing getaway? Spending time with friends? Whatever life looks like, vaccinations keep you healthy so everyone can keep doing what they love. Vaccinate and protect yourself and others.

Visit health.nsw.gov.au forward slash vaccination info. I think possibly in my career, I had a moment, a moment of clarity, I guess it is, when I realized what I was in the middle of as a death investigator when I was standing over the body of a child that had died as a result of chronic abuse. And in that particular case, the child didn't show marks around their face and on their arms. The perpetrator in that case loved to attack the abdomen, and they would kick and punch a child over and over again, this particular child.

And interestingly enough, here's a little forensic aside, the liver, which is essentially in the upper right quadrant of your abdomen, is arguably the most robust organ in your abdominal cavity. And it receives quite a bit of trauma when these blows are meted out by those that intend great harm. This child died of eventually what was referred to, and yes, this is actually a term that forensic pathologists use, a fractured liver. You associate that with bone most of the time, but it's blunt force trauma in the liver. When you see this, it actually has kind of a jagged appearance to it. It looks like a fracture. But Dave, with Harmony, there weren't no covering up. Because allegedly, when Adam Montgomery decided to fly into what seems to be a consistent rage with this child.

He didn't try to mask it. He struck her in the face and about the head over and over and over again. And actually in front of this witness that it turns out he was married to i think for a time and she bore witness to this and uh no shame whatsoever you know you talked you made a great point when you talk about tell me again what do you say to the cops he says if what what was it i'm not under arrest you know i'm out of here that's almost like you have you got no shame whatsoever you have no self-awareness let me share one thing with you that came out of the investigation okay when crystal sorry harmony's mother

calls police for help she also called d DCYF, the Department of Children and Youth Family Services, and she was calling anybody she could. Now, I was one of the first to say, why did it take you so long to call? And that's judgmental, Dave, and I shouldn't have said that because I don't know what she's going through. Granted, I don't know people's situations.

I don't want to be harsh, but that is my first thought because I have children. I got grandchildren. I know where's situations. I don't want to be harsh, but that is my first thought because I have, I have children, I got grandchildren, you know, it makes me, I know where they are. I know what condition they're in right now. All of them. Can I stop you real quick, Dave? I just, I want to tell you this relative to making a comment about crystal and why you would, it's a, it is a logical train of thought. And you're thinking like an investigator, because I got to tell you, if I'm out on the street and I'm dealing with a mother, the thought of, you know, am I going to bruise her in some way

emotionally? That's not what I'm interested in at that point. I will pointedly ask her, why did you wait so long to call us? Because now, you know, we have those golden moments as investigators. You know, that's why, you know, you hear about the first 48, for instance. That's an old term that goes back. It predates, you know, predates, yeah, the TV show. Because what you talk about is the further out in linear time you move from the actual incident or when they were last known to be alive. Clock's ticking.

You're losing more and more information. You're losing evidence. I'm reminded of the 911 call on Casey Anthony. When Casey Anthony's mother called 911, wanting her daughter to be arrested for stealing her car, she said, we hadn't seen her in a month. Then we got her car and it smelled like a dead body's been in the trunk. Now we find out our granddaughter's missing. She's

been missing for a month. And the 911 operator says, wait a minute, is the mother there? Let me talk to her. Casey Anthony nonchalantly gets on the 911 call. Hey, what's up? your daughter's missing yeah she's missing for a month i've been looking for really why did it take you a month what have you been doing for a month well this is two years a month got the 9-1-1 operators saying why did you

wait till now we're talking two years now in this case yeah in this case crystal story calls you know she calls police i haven't found my... I don't know. She doesn't accuse anybody of any wrongdoing, just saying, my ex-husband is keeping me away from my daughter. Now, I can't find him. I can't find her. I can't...

Nobody will give me an answer. Would you help me? So, they did. They opened it up. Let's look into it. They think they're going to find her somewhere nearby. Not a big deal. But once they start unraveling it, they realize, okay, there's more to this.

We can't even find Adam Montgomery. They go and they talk to Kayla Montgomery. She says, Crystal has her. And then they know that Crystal's the one that called in. You know, I haven't seen my daughter. And so that's when they, I got to find Adam. Adam Montgomery is supposed to legally be responsible. Let's find him.

So they start tracking back addresses, phone numbers, associates. He is known to law enforcement and that's how they find him. They find him a couple of weeks after they start looking for him in his car, living with his girlfriend at the moment, drug addicts. That's when, where's your daughter? He lies. They know he's lying. He knows he's lying, but they know they've got an investigation. So they let him go. They can't arrest him for no reason. But once they're able to get his story and the mother's story, then they're able to lean on the wife, Kayla Montgomery. And that's who finally that's where they start getting answers. Now, granted, Adam Montgomery's wife, Kayla Montgomery, who was the stepmother to Harmony Montgomery. Keep that in mind here.

The stepmother is the one that actually starts shedding little pieces of truth as to what happened now we're going to have to speed dial this to get into the story because there's so much forensically that i we have to get into joe but the story is this best we can tell from everything that has been able to prove out uh in in a forensic lab at this point harmony montgomery was in the back seat of the car. It was a Chrysler Sebring and Kayla Montgomery, the stepmom, Adam Montgomery, the dad are there in the front seat. Now, there are two other children involved. Kayla and Kayla Montgomery and Adam Montgomery have two boys at this point. They actually have another child. They actually have three children together and not at this time though, just the two boys. I don't know if the two boys were in the car or not, Joe kind of not.

It's immaterial to the story at the moment, but they were involved later on. So you've got Adam Montgomery driving the car, Kayla Montgomery in the passenger seat in the back, Harmony Montgomery, Harmony had an accident. As we mentioned, she is a special girl and has some special needs.

She allegedly had an accident in the car. And according to Kayla Montgomery, they had she and Adam had just scored some heroin and they were on their way to Burger King. I don't know if they had used the heroin at this point or not, but they had just they I'm assuming they did because otherwise it wouldn't be in the story. But when Adam is driving the car and he attacks Harmony, she's in the backseat. He's in the front seat driving. He attacks her for having an accident. And he beats her about the face. Not once.

It's like you're driving on the road. He hits her. Not once, not twice, but three different times. He beats his five-year-old special needs daughter who can't see out of one eye. And he beats her so bad that the last time he hits her, he tells Kayla, the step-mom, I think I really hurt her this time. I think I did something. That's when he crushed her face with his bare hands, his fist.

He hit a five-year-old special needs girl in the backseat of the car while he's driving so hard that he knew he had killed her. And they continued on to Burger King. Yep. That's, you know, where they were headed. And you know, what's key in that statement, Dave, to me, if I'm trying to figure this out forensically and trying to understand the trauma and it's that quote, it's not so much, I think I really hurt her. It's, I think I really hurt her this time, which implies that this is an ongoing issue. And as we find out, he has been known to strike this child specifically for this reason, for soiling herself.

And let's just break it down. And look, little kids, you don't have to have special needs issues. It's compounded, potty training and all that. And just so that we can paint the picture, this guy can do no better for his kid than to provide a domicile in a Chrysler product. That's the domicile, okay? And the child probably from moment to moment

doesn't know where they're going to go. When's the next time I'm going to be able to go potty? And she's faced with that decision. And can you imagine, and I've tried to think about this legitimately from this perspective, because it's this kind of learned or responsive behavior that she's going to have when you see people that have been abused as a result, particularly when they're being struck. If there is a long line, all the abuser has to do, it doesn't even take a motion. You can turn and glare at them. And particularly with a child,

a five-year-old child, and it gets their attention very, very quickly. And she can, this is the thing, and this is what breaks my heart about it. This child who is forced to live in this Chrysler product is, is living in this small space. And just so you know, the Sebring is a two door car. It's not a four door. It's a cramped space. She's occupying the back seat.

She's, there is an awareness of fear. It just kind of permeates this environment. And all he has to do is turn around. And so what does she do? Oops, you know, I teetheed on myself or whatever it was. However they became aware, maybe it was a smell. I have no idea.

But when we think about this, I hurt her this time. When you're at autopsy and you're trying to understand trauma to anyone, but let's just think about harmony. There'll never be an opportunity to do an autopsy, I doubt, to be very seriously. But you look at this progression of trauma where a child is initially struck, that heals, and then you strike them again, and you have these kind of overlapping, maybe focal areas of hemorrhage throughout the body. That's one of the reasons when I instruct police officers, and particularly

those that work crimes against children, we have a chart that we use where i teach them about contusions and bruises and that sort of thing because you can you can learn a lot it's almost like the rings of a tree in a horrific way but depending upon what the status of a contusion is you can get an idea that there has been a progression uh not so much a progression as like a continued series of abuses. Then they could find out. See, one of the things the police found during their investigation was that in July of 2019, during that summer, that Adam Montgomery had admitted to family members that he hit Harmony so hard in the face that he blackened her eye. And rather than tell them that she fell down or hit it, he actually told them, I hit her.

And so when police were investigating and talking to family to corroborate some of the things they were being told, family said, yeah, he hit her so hard. It blackened her eye. They, you'd be able to figure that out. If you had the opportunity to look at her later to find out if this was a regular pattern of abuse. Yeah. And you know that I'm glad you brought up the blackened eye because it troubles me.

When you have, and if anybody's ever broken their nose, for instance, or seen someone that has had some kind of plastic surgery, say a rhinoplasty or something like that, they'll have bilateral blackened eyes. And one of the reasons is that there's a fracturing that's going on. And the floor of the skull is very thin. It's when you get behind the eyes, that area is, and I've had forensic pathologists describe it as, as eggshell-like. And so if you, and I've seen this done, you can actually take a skull and a flashlight, and if you can position it just right, and there's some dissection that has to go on, but just trust me with this, you can shine a flashlight up through the floor of the skull, and it is translucent almost. That's how thin that bone is, and so how much more so for a five-year-old if you're dealing with repeated strikes. Now, maybe her orbits weren't fractured. Maybe she had a fractured nose, but that's still the skull. And the family's recognizing this. And what's really troubling is I've seen images of Harmony. She always wears

glasses. And when she was little, have you ever seen kids that are very young? And I know that people in the audience will have, you might have children like this that have had to wear glasses since they were like babies. They'll have these kind of plastic rubberized glasses that kind of wrap, they're almost like goggles. Every image I have seen of her, with the exception of one that looked like

some kind of school picture or portrait, she's always got glasses on. If you strike that child in the head, you're not only striking her like that, but you're also driving those frames into her eye and the surrounding area. And here's another thing. What was the status of her glasses? I know that seems benign, but we're talking about care. Did she even have glasses at that point, or did he not care enough to supply her with those or make it happen? She wasn't going to a doctor. So was this poor blind child who had limited sight, obviously, did she even still own a pair of glasses? Or did she sit back there in that back seat,

alone, terrified, and habitually left in the dark? What do you love in life? A relaxing getaway? Spending time with friends? Whatever life looks like, vaccinations keep you healthy so everyone can keep doing what they love. Vaccinate and protect yourself and others. Visit health.nsw.gov.au forward slash vaccination info.

Who, when, where, how? You never get an answer to why. You never do. And it escapes me. I can't get an answer. None of us can get an answer to why you can try it but i think dave for for our moments together right now i i'd like to try to understand what i really would that's the burning question what what became of her i think i think you can and

that's joe i didn't think it was possible. When we first started looking into this missing girl, what are we going to find? Because the dad who actually knows what happened is not cooperating. He's a liar. You know, we know all this. And now we have a lot more information

that they have been able to verify. And that's why I wanted to add, this is, I'm going to be honest, friends, if you've ever wondered what you can learn where I thought we'll never know what happened to to harmony i think forensically the story is told because after he says i think i heard her this time they continued on they went to burger king they ended up back at the colonial apartment complex where a friend of theirs lived. They were staying in their car in that parking lot.

They stayed there for 20 minutes. Now, in that time period, they heard Harmony struggling, moaning, breathing labored, but it did stop. And at some point, they decide, let's go somewhere else. By the way, they haven't checked on Harmony. They take off in the Chrysler Sebring, and they're out on the road when the car breaks down. It breaks down at an intersection, and they have to get it out of the road. They're going to have to get it towed. Well, that's when they find out she's dead.

That's the first time they bother to check on harmony montgomery and they've heard her struggling to breathe they heard her moaning they heard it all stop and now they find out she's dead so what does this dear old dad do he goes to the back trunk and he gets a bag an under armor bag black and white dumps out all the clothing in it and he goes and he puts harmony montgomery's lifeless body into the armor under armor bag. And they now walk back to the apartment complex. Once they're there, a friend that who lives in the apartment complex,

who then decides to let them stay in his Audi in the parking lot for a couple of days, not letting him in their apartment. Okay. Think about that. This is the friend. Right. The friend knows them.

Well, I'll let you stay out here in the parking lot in your car. You ain't coming in my apartment. Now, Adam Montgomery is carrying the lifeless body of his five-year-old special needs daughter in a bag over his shoulder. The friend comes, they get the rest of the stuff out of the car. They end up staying in the Audi for a couple of days with Harmony's body. Now, after a couple of days, Kayla Montgomery, Adam's wife, contacts her mother, Christine. Can we come and stay with you?

We're really out on it. We got a problem. You know, the car's in the shop. And her mom says, sure, you can come and stay with me for a little while. This is where they first transfer Harmony's body from the bag to a cooler or not. I say or not, Joe, because I was looking at the story. As they were able to find forensic evidence on everything else, they never found anything forensically in that cooler linking back to Harmony Montgomery,

but they did find others. After a couple of weeks with mom, they into a uh a half like a halfway house for families in need and they have a room there and it's a place that allows families that are going through a tough time to gather themselves together and to rent their own you know save up rent your own place which is what they did so after three weeks with mom they leave and move into this fits center and they take Harmony's body. Now, it's back in the bag again. It's back in the Under Armour bag, the black and white bag.

Harmony's dead body now for three and a half weeks or so. Three and a half weeks. And they take the body, and they put it in the ceiling tiles of their room. At some point, they notice fluid leaking out of the bag, the Under Armour bag. And so dad wraps it in a trash bag. They end up double wrapping it. The smell starts getting out. They're there for 53 days in this room before they're able to move into an apartment.

And in that time period, there were people who complained of an odd smell. Right, right. And in the ceiling, it's going to get into the HVAC system probably, and it will travel or permeate. And it doesn't necessarily have to get into the air handler itself. It can kind of permeate, you know, because if you've got like an acoustic ceiling, there's not a big difference. You can move, if you're in that space, you can move from one area to another, and certainly you're not going to prevent smell. But if it's sealed in a plastic garbage bag, can the odor of the decomposition get out of that? It all depends on the nature of the sealed bags, And yes, and if you have fluid that

is leaking out, that's what's referred to as purge fluid. It happens, and it's a very interesting mix of fluids that decomposing bodies produce. And it's a mixture of blood. You've got cytoplasm. The cells are breaking down. It's an interesting mix. And even you can have liquefied fat sometimes, the adipose tissue in bodies. So you get this, this, you know, I've heard people describe that that fluid, um, is,

had one friend that used to, uh, uh, refer to it as the most evil substance known to man. And it, the interesting thing about it is even for people that work in the morgue and that go out on scenes and handle these cases, once you get this fluid on your clothing, you better not wear anything that you really value because it's ruined. It's ruined. You literally have to trash it. And the smell will actually permeate your hair as well. Uh, uh, I can go into a story, uh, from years ago that involved this, but, and I will at some point in time, not in this episode, but just suffice it to say, I, I was around this odor to the point, uh, with a,

a ton of bodies. There were a big accident that had happened. And I wound up having to shave my hair and my mustache because it was there and I couldn't get rid of the smell. So yeah, the fact that people would smell this and it's rather recognizable and it's something that's identifiable very easily, but can I back up just for a second, Dave? I, I, I got to tell you, man, um, that, that image that you painted when Harmony was struck, I think that it's important for people to understand what she, what I think she was going through at that point in time. As she is struck, and according to what this wife has said, and this is where this information is coming from, if she's struck about the head, my thought is that this is blunt force trauma that has impacted the brain. Probably something has been ruptured or torn, uh, and not just vessels, but maybe the structure of the brain itself.

And what I'm thinking is maybe even, um, the, the lower part of the brain where the brainstem is that controls our autonomic functions, her body was beginning to shut down. And how it begins to shut down is that our skull obviously is very, very rigid. And so if somebody sustains head trauma and they're in a clinical setting, one of the things that has been done for many years is that you can actually create what they refer to as a burr hole in the skull. And you put a monitor, you can drop a monitor into that area and keep track of the intracranial pressure. Because the slightest amount of pressure is going to cause your brain,

a non-clinical way to put it, to malfunction. And so what's happening is you're hearing her struggle to breathe. Her brain is swelling is what's happening. Her brain is swelling. And if they had ever had an opportunity to see Harmony's body and examine her brain, you would see that the brain first off weighs more than it should. It's highly congested. There might be rips and tears in it. You're going to have big focal areas of hemorrhage. And that's what she went through at that moment in time. We don't know how much previous trauma may have impacted this as well. It may have been the pervert, depending upon how frequently he was hitting her. This may have been the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back because the brain is so very fragile.

He knew enough, Joe, that he went too far this time. He knew that. He knew the last hit because he said something right then. I think I really hurt her this time. Yeah, this time. And you can't, you can't unhear that. And that's going to echo in my ears, Dave. And what bothers me is that we hear that.

That's what we're told by Kayla Montgomery, the stepmother. And I'm thinking just about two years later, two years after he does this, when police are asking him about his daughter and he's lying. And he has the temerity to say if i'm not under arrest i'm leaving i don't have to talk to you and it's like but two years earlier you killed this innocent five-year-old girl with your fist and now you know the cops don't know that they probably suspect something bad has happened but they don't know they're just dude tell us where your daughter is make up a story that's feasible we'll believe you and but here's my question joe because i wondered how is it possible if we don't have a body how do you prove a murder how can you say she's missing how can you say that that harmony montgomery is dead based on

to be honest with you uh we get a lot of our information from kayla montgomery adam montgomery's wife at the time who has been twice now convicted of perjury on, in this case, two times. Okay. They caught her lying to the grand jury twice in this case about Harmony Montgomery. So if she's already in jail because she's a liar and the information we have comes from this, how are they going to prove? Look, how would you prove that Harmony Montgomery was in a bag in the ceiling tiles

at this halfway house thing, the home between the home? How would you find that? Yeah, I think that it's going to be, it will be an uphill battle for the prosecutor. First off, that's going to be the major point of contention. And just so that everybody understands, you know, Adam Montgomery has been charged with second degree homicide. He's not, his trial is upcoming. And as a result of some of the revelations that came out in the past few days, I felt like we were compelled to, about this case. He's been charged. He has not been convicted. When he goes to trial, though, and these cases always happen where you're absent mortal remains, the defense attorney is going to

make hay with this. So what are you left with? Well, whatever biological samples they have recovered, obviously from the ceiling i think she was her body may have been placed in a vent for a while and of course we've got this this cooler freezer uh hey let's back up the vent yeah they found fingerprints joe yes the story that kayla um montgomery told about them putting her in the vent and having to take her down, take her body down to wrap it up in another bag. There were other things done to, according to Kayla Montgomery, other things done, including. Including opening that bag in the bathroom. Maybe dismembering.

There were he's alleged. I. He's alleged. I got to say alleged. But the forensic people are working on the stories of Kayla Montgomery trying to figure out what happened, knowing they were taking everything with a grain of salt. But as you do that, though, Joe, you're looking for real-life stuff, and you find it. You find their fingerprints in the vent.

You find their fingerprints. Yes. You find it. Right. Let me tell you how. You start finding that evidence. Doesn't that say, well, then let's follow the rest of fingerprint. Yes. You find it. Right. Let me tell you how. You start finding that evidence. Doesn't that say, well, then let's follow the rest of this. Okay.

I got to tell you, you pointed this out because we were talking about, you were talking about the thoroughness of the police department. Not only were Montgomery's and Kayla's prints found. Who else did you say? I want everybody to hear this. Who else? Who else? What other person found those prints? I want everybody to hear this. Who else? Who else? What other person? They found those prints.

I couldn't figure out. How are you possibly going to convict a man of killing his daughter when you don't have the body? It's because they have a story and they're verifying the story. So when they got to this place, they went to the, you're talking out years later now. Years later. You're talking, it was two years after the fact when they're out there in the vent where kayla montgomery said adam montgomery stored his dead baby his five-year-old daughter in a bag and so they dusted it for prints they cut out the sheet rock they cut out the vent and they brought it back to the lab and tested they were able to get every fingerprint on there

and match them up to either there are 10 different uh identifiable ring you know uh fingerprints or palm prints and they it's adam montgomery they got it they got all of his fingers um they got kayla montgomery but they had one they couldn't identify and it was a finger they could not figure it wasn't adam and it wasn't kayla so who is? They traced it back to the guy who did the original sheet work in the building. That's how thorough they were that they were able to pull. Now, the fact that,

that that was still there, that somebody that actually did the sheet rock, his fingerprint was still there. That's amazing. It is. And it goes to the pristine nature of, of those prints. What,

what that, what I mean by that is that no one else it can be at least stated or there's a probability that no one else had access to that area that it's a protected area um and if and we don't know what else may have been found up there but when you think about the pristine nature of those prints, and they've been preserved for all of this time, can you imagine what kind of surprise this guy hanging sheetrock may have had when they go to talk to him or they reach out to him and they say,

yeah, your prints have been found and we're looking into this case. I think that what this really says, though, is that the police have been so very thorough and painstaking with this case, trying to collect every bit of information. I want to go back to something that you had mentioned just a moment ago though because look this is the reality of it's what we talk about on body bags and i'm not going to sugarcoat this but there is evidence that he had gone out and um had purchased a diamond bladed saw along with lime i think there were a couple of purchases of lime. And remember when Harmony's body, according to Kayla, was initially covered up, they were using this Under Armour bag. Now, if I remember correctly, she had stated that at some point in time, Adam Montgomery went into the bathroom with the body, which by this

time had been down for a protracted period of time. Am I or am I not correct in stating that this woman stated that she saw the body in the bathroom with him? The second time that he was in the bathroom with Harmony's body, the first time that he was in there six or seven hours, she didn't know what was going on, but she heard the water running. It was the second time that he was in there with her body. And she, it had been a long time, Joe, and that's why I wonder about decomposition.

But she said she could still recognize that it was Harmony's body. Yeah, and would be recognizable is hard to fathom. It would be, it's dependent upon how well the body was preserved and if it was in a, um, a cool enough environment to facilitate this. The one problem with this is that she has been migrated around so many times, but back to what have may have occurred with her body, um, is that according to what the police believe, her body was actually moved into what's referred to as a maternity bag. And this maternity bag is not, if you think about the Under Armour bag, if you go to the gym to work out, you see people that actually, I'm not talking about a backpack, I'm actually talking about like a gym bag.

It's robust, it's big, and you could fit a small five-year-old child in that. But how, how are you going to take a much smaller bag and place her into that? And I think that that, you know, we have to think about, well, if she was dismembered and she was dismembered in that location, if in fact that did occur, she could have been placed into a smaller bag or maybe a couple of other ones to, in order to make her, to make her mortal remains more portable. I hate to say that. Oh my God, that makes me sick to my back teeth. But that's, that's what, what I'm thinking, because you have to begin to put yourself into a perpetrator's mind, as horrible as that is, to think how can I draw the least amount of attention to myself? What do I have to do in order to remove this child from this environment and without making much of a mess.

I'm fascinated by this bathroom, Dave, and how extensively it was taken apart. Because if a dismemberment took place in there, it would be rife, unless it was thoroughly, thoroughly cleaned, it would be rife with all kinds of trace evidence, including down at a molecular level with DNA. Even if it's years later? I think that possibly. And if you hear water running, one of the great things about when you're processing a scene in a bathroom is that you always, always should take apart the bathtub and the

laboratory sink and take those drain traps out. Um, and if you take the drain traps out and trust me, people that work in forensics know what they're doing. Um, and people that are doing this in a hurry and not paying attention, they always miss something.

So not just the traps, which is the curve part of the pipe that, you know, we don't see. If you look under your sink, you'll see what I'm talking about, a drain trap. But also around the ring in the tub drain, you can also find elements in there as well. Yeah, I think that it could be a possibility. And look, going back, nothing's off the table here. When you think about that they were able to recover these prints

and they did such a thorough job with that. But here's where, you know, we kind of, you know, unfortunately we lose harmony at this point because, you know, her, her story, I think is going to end somewhere, probably in Massachusetts, as far as her remains go, because he, you know, he had, if I'm not mistaken, he had rented a truck. He had rented actually like a van and they, they have videography, uh, and photos of this truck passing, you know, passing by CCTV cameras. And you can clearly see, you can read the plates. I think it was a U-Haul, um, there, and I'll never forget in the back windows, the truck, it says, there's a sign in the back of the window that says, rent me on this van that had been rented by him.

And they can't track down exactly where he went. But I do have a colleague that believes that there is a likelihood he may have wound up in Revere, Massachusetts, and may have wound up going to the saltwater marshes there. That's speculative. I don't know that that's the case. But if that happened, and if he disposed of her remains out there, it doesn't matter how many holes you dig in the ground, dude. You go to a saltwater marsh, first off, the child...

Harmony's remains, all that's left of her after these weeks, months of being migrated and moved around. Her final resting place was in potentially this dirty, filthy saltwater marsh. Now you've got this little girl's body that's going to be subjected to this harsh environment, all of the animal life that is in there, and also tidal flow. And we're talking about, this is no, you know, you're not talking about a pond out on your grandpa's farm.

We're talking about a saltwater marsh. And so what does saltwater marsh lead to? Well, it leads to open ocean. I don't know that any remnant will ever be found of Harmony. And I don't know if there is enough justice in the world for Harmony. But I can say this in closing today. Adam Montgomery is charged with second-degree murder in her case. But I can tell you this.

Harmony was failed. She was failed by a system. By a system that we're all too familiar with. A system that turned their back on her. The most defenseless among us. They turn a blind eye.

And until that changes, until punitive measures are taken against these individuals that lose track of these children, that don't have a full awareness of where they are at all times, this is going to happen again, again, and again. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan, and this is Body Pass. This is an iHeart Podcast.