New Hampshire court overturns Adam Montgomery murder conviction in Harmony case

A New Hampshire court has stripped away Adam Montgomery’s murder conviction in the Harmony Montgomery case, but left the rest of the verdict standing. The ruling keeps alive a prison sentence built on multiple convictions while sending the murder count back to a lower court, where prosecutors will try again to prove that Harmony was killed even though her body has never been found.

The New Hampshire Supreme Court issued its opinion in State v. Montgomery on June 11, 2026, after hearing oral argument on October 15, 2025. Justices ruled that the murder charge and a separate assault count should not have been tried together because the stronger evidence on the July 2019 assault created a significant risk of prejudice in the jury’s view of the December 7, 2019 killing allegation. The court said that risk violated Montgomery’s right to a fair trial.

The justices reversed the second-degree murder conviction but affirmed the second-degree assault, falsifying physical evidence, witness tampering and abuse of a corpse convictions. Montgomery had been sentenced in 2024 to a minimum of 56 years in prison after a Hillsborough County jury found him guilty. The Attorney General’s Office said after the ruling that it will seek a retrial on the murder count.

The court’s opinion turned on the difference between the proof tied to the two events. The assault evidence included a black eye and Montgomery’s statement that he had “bashed” the child around the house. By contrast, the murder case depended heavily on Kayla Montgomery’s testimony and weaker corroboration, the court said. Justices also noted testimony that Harmony’s body was allegedly stored in multiple places, including a ceiling vent at a homeless shelter and a walk-in freezer at Montgomery’s workplace, before being moved and eventually disposed of.

Harmony was five years old when the first charged abuse occurred in July 2019. She had been in Massachusetts DCF custody since 2014, when she was two months old, and remained there until February 2019, when a Massachusetts juvenile court awarded custody to Adam Montgomery. The family was evicted from Montgomery’s grandmother’s home in Manchester on November 27, 2019, then lived in a car. Investigators believe Harmony was killed in December 2019, and New Hampshire authorities did not declare her missing until December 2021.

The case has kept widening beyond Montgomery’s criminal convictions. A New Hampshire judge declared Harmony legally dead on March 12, 2024, and appointed her biological mother, Crystal Sorey, to administer the estate. Massachusetts child welfare investigators said Harmony’s safety and wellbeing were not prioritized equally with parental rights, and that no assessment was ever completed on Adam Montgomery while DCF was involved. In 2025, New Hampshire agreed to pay Sorey $2.25 million to settle a negligence lawsuit, while retired judge Carol Erskine urged federal authorities to examine whether state child welfare records were falsified. Even with the murder conviction overturned, the case still leaves prosecutors pursuing accountability in the absence of a body and against a record that has already badly damaged public trust.