BOSTON — The Department of Children and Families has asked for a “minor amendment” in a ruling by the state’s highest court to make public the audio recordings and transcripts of a 2019 custody hearing that placed Harmony Montgomery in the care of her father.
The recent filing, signed by Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell and DCF attorney Kristin Braithwaite and filed in the Supreme Judicial Court on May 6, is asking the court to “require the redaction of all names within the audio recordings, including those of all lawyers, social workers, and court personnel.”
The request is being made “due to safety considerations,” the filing states.
On April 23, the highest court in Massachusetts ruled that the public has a right to hear audio recordings from the custody hearing of Harmony Montgomery, the Associated Press reported. The 5-year-old New Hampshire girl was murdered by her father, Adam Montgomery, and vanished in 2019 after being placed in his care.
Adam Montgomery, convicted last year of beating the little girl to death months after gaining custody in February 2019, is appealing his conviction.
“Filmmaker Bill Lichtenstein, with the support of several media outlets including The Associated Press, sued to gain access to recordings of the closed-door custody hearing to better understand how Adam Montgomery got custody of his daughter, despite having a long criminal record,” the Associated Press reported in April.
Typically, family court hearings are sealed out of concerns for privacy.
Lichtenstein says he wants the audio for a documentary about secrecy in Massachusetts’ child protection and juvenile court systems, the Associated Press reported. The court said names of Adam Montgomery’s other children would be redacted from the recordings.
The new DCF court filing alleges that the release of the names of lawyers, social workers, and court personnel involved in the fateful custody hearing will likely result in threats or anger against those individuals.
“In the event of the public release of the names of those professionals involved in the hearing at issue in (the case), it is reasonable to conclude that some amount of said anger or threat will be directed towards said named individuals, given what occurred with the trial judge,” the filing states.
In its April ruling, the Supreme Judicial Court agreed that releasing the audio recordings from the custody hearing “may help to better inform the public both about what happened to this child specifically and whether there are steps the child welfare system generally can take to minimize the possibility of repeating this tragedy.”
In May 2024, Adam Montgomery, then 34, was sentenced to a minimum of 56 years in state prison after he was convicted of second-degree murder and other charges in February 2024 in the death of his young daughter.
Last year, Kayla Montgomery, 33, who has a plea deal with the state and who previously identified her estranged husband as Harmony’s killer, offered gruesome testimony as a key star witness in the trial, saying that her husband violently punched the girl when he flew into a rage on Dec. 7, 2019, shortly before they noticed her lifeless body.
Adam Montgomery later folded the girl’s body into a duffel bag, and he spent the next few weeks moving Harmony’s decaying body by hiding it in a restaurant freezer, in the ceiling of a shelter, in an apartment refrigerator, Kayla Montgomery said.
In their apartment, Adam spent hours dismembering the child’s body so it could fit in a small bag, she testified.
Adam Montgomery attended only one day of his murder trial, and he wasn’t present when jurors returned their verdict.
At his sentencing, Harmony’s mother, Crystal Sorey, didn’t hold back words as her daughter’s father and convicted killer, while wearing a T-shirt, sat nearby and listened.
“I wish you nothing but pain and misery for the rest of your pathetic life,” Sorey said at the time, before adding, “You’re just plain evil.”
Her young daughter’s body has never been found.
This is a developing story. Check back for updates as more information becomes available.
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