[Warning: Potentially Triggering Content]
Police are kicking the search for Harmony Montgomery into high gear.
According to reports, law enforcement officials swarmed a home in Manchester, New Hampshire, on Tuesday, where the missing 8-year-old’s father and stepmother, Adam and Kayla, once lived. Footage from local news station WCVB shows feds unloading a refrigerator and rolling it towards the home — which indicates that this case has taken a rather morbid turn.
Why? Because a move like this is usually used to “maintain biological evidence, a former FBI agent Jennifer Coffindaffer told The Sun, adding:
“If they found a body or body parts in a freeze, law enforcement would want to maintain the level of decomposition. I have a really creepy feeling about this. It’s not good.”
While Manchester police have kept relatively tight-lipped about any big changes in their search, only telling The Sun the home on Union Street is “the focus of the investigation,” Harmony’s mom, Crystal Sorey, believes it’s no longer a rescue mission.
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Speaking to Boston 25, Crystal said investigators are “looking for a body,” sharing:
“This is rough. I know in my heart this is no longer a rescue mission. They’re looking for a body.”
WMUR9 reported that officials started scouring the area Monday night, before investigators went to the scene early Tuesday morning, focusing on a second-floor apartment. Amid the ongoing search, authorities put up a privacy tent, while the Manchester Fire Department set up an incident tent in the back of the building. Large, white piping was also reportedly put into the building.
As we reported, police became aware of Harmony’s disappearance in 2021, two years after she was last seen alive in October 2019. According to the Massachusetts Department of Children and Families (DCF), Harmony spent much of her young life in both her mother’s care and DCF. She was placed in her father’s custody in 2019.
Harmony’s father has not been charged with the child’s disappearance; however, he’s being held on charges of felony second-degree assault stemming from an alleged attack against Harmony in 2019. Adam is also facing a misdemeanor charge of interference with custody and two misdemeanor counts of endangering the welfare of a child.
After Adam’s brother, Michael, told police that Adam was physically abusive to Harmony and gave her a black eye, a detective spoke to Adam’s uncle Kevin, who said that Adam told him in July 2019 that he [Adam] “bashed her [Harmony] around the house,” according to court documents. The uncle also said Adam spanked his daughter, ordered her to stand in the corner for hours, and forced her to scrub a toilet with her toothbrush.
We’ll keep you updated as this awful story develops.
[Image via Manchester PD/CBS Boston]
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