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Harmony Montgomery’s biological mother Crystal Sorey choked up as she branded Adam Montgomery a “coward” for not even daring to turn up to hear his guilty verdict being read out in his murder trial.
On Thursday, Harmony’s 34-year-old father was found guilty of second-degree murder and other charges in connection to her December 2019 killing.
Ms Sorey and other family members attended the verdict, while Montgomery did not. He has failed to show up at the trial at all, other than on the first day of jury selection.
Speaking to reporters outside the courtroom moments after jurors convicted Montgomery on all charges, Ms Sorey remarked on Montgomery’s absence: “He’s a coward.”
Asked if she had a message for him, she said, “I hope that what he did plays over in his mind every single waking moment that he lives on this earth. And I hope he never falls asleep without seeing her beautiful face.”
“That’s all he cared about was control — everything in his life. She wasn’t anything to him,” she added.
Breaking down, she said she didn’t want her daughter to be remembered by her father’s name.
“She’s no longer Harmony Mongtomery, she’s Harmony Renee,”she said, explaining that both she and Harmony shared the same middle name. “She’s no longer a Montgomery.”
Ms Sorey said that it had been hard to hear the gruesome details about the little girl’s murder during the trial.
“I’ve heard it so much over the last four years but it was a lot different hearing it from their mouths,” she said about the witnesses, including Montgomery’s estranged wife Kayla Montgomery.
Harmony Montgomery’s mother speaks out after sentencing
(WFLA)
Kayla testified that her husband repeatedly punched Harmony in the head on the morning of 7 December 2019, because the girl had wet herself in their car, where the family was living after being evicted from their home.
After beating her to death, they drove to a fast food restaurant.
She testified that they later discovered that Harmony was dead, before revealing all the places that her husband then hid the body – including in a ceiling vent at a homeless shelter and the walk-in freezer at his workplace.
“Adam did some very very bad things but he did not kill his daughter,” defence attorney Caroline Smith had claimed to jurors.
She also called Kayla’s testimony into doubt.
“Can you put your trust for one of the most important decisions of your life, in Kayla?” she asked. “The police know that she is a liar, the state knows that she is a liar. She was charged with perjury for lying to a grand jury.”
The jury believed Kayla’s story and convicted Montgomery on all counts.
Four years after Harmony’s death, her body has still not been found.
“It’s not over. It’s not going to be over til she’s found,” Ms Sorey said outside the court, adding that the family and police are still looking for her body.
Harmony is “here with me. She’s the one that keeps me strong every day,” she added.
Harmony was five years old when she died. She had been removed from Ms Sorey’s custody three times in the first four years of her life due to her substance abuse issues.
Montgomery was incarcerated when she was born. After spending just 40 hours with his daughter, he was awarded custody and moved her out of state. Ms Sorey told reporters on Thursday that she is now five years clean.
Although Harmony disappeared in late November or early December 2019, nobody looked for her until September 2021, when a close friend of Ms Sorey contacted authorities and said no one had seen Harmony in two years.