A 5-year-old was murdered by her father. Her fateful custody hearing will be made public

The public has a right to hear audio recordings from the custody hearing of Harmony Montgomery, a 5-year-old New Hampshire girl who was murdered by her father and vanished in 2019 after being placed in his care, the highest court in Massachusetts ruled Wednesday.

The father, Adam Montgomery, was found guilty in her death last year and sentenced to 56 years in prison on murder and other charges. Police believe Harmony Montgomery was killed nearly two years before she was reported missing in 2021. Her body was never found.

An independent review in 2022 found the Massachusetts child protection system failed to prioritize the girl’s needs. Harmony Montgomery suffered from a ripple effect of “miscalculations of risk and unequal weight placed on parents’ rights versus a child’s wellbeing,” said Maria Mossaides, head of Massachusetts’ Office of the Child Advocate.

Harmony Montgomery wasn’t made a priority in her own legal case, the report said, as neither the judge nor the attorneys put her medical, behavioral and educational needs or safety at the forefront of custody discussions. The report also said they did not enforce requirements that govern the placement of children from one state into another.

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. Normally, family court hearings are sealed due to privacy concerns.

Lichtenstein says he wants the audio for a documentary about secrecy in Massachusetts’ child protection and juvenile court systems.

The state Supreme Judicial Court agreed that releasing the audio, “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.”

The court said names of Adam Montgomery’s other children would be redacted from the recordings.

Lichtenstein said the decision “brings sunlight to these vital issues.”

“A significant impediment to protecting children in the Massachusetts foster court and juvenile court systems has been their absolute unconditional secrecy,” he said in a statement.

The attorney general’s office declined to comment on the ruling, a spokesperson said. The Massachusetts Department of Children and Families did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment.

Adam Montgomery’s estranged wife, Kayla Montgomery, testified that her family had been evicted right before Thanksgiving in 2019 and were living in a car. Adam Montgomery punched Harmony Montgomery at several stop lights as they drove from a methadone clinic to a fast food restaurant because he was angry that the child was having bathroom accidents in the car, she said.

After that, she said she handed food to the children in the car without checking on Harmony and that the couple later discovered she was dead after the car broke down. She testified that her husband put the body in a duffel bag. She described various places where the girl’s body was hidden, including the trunk of a car, a cooler, a ceiling vent at a homeless center and the walk-in freezer at her husband’s workplace.