When the verdict was read aloud in a packed New Hampshire courtroom this week, there was no cheering, no tears — only a heavy, suffocating silence.
Adam Montgomery, a father once hailed by neighbors as devoted and quiet, now stood convicted of killing the man who had raped his five-year-old daughter.
For the judge, the question was simple: the law had been broken.
For the family, it was more complicated.
For the public — divided between outrage and empathy — it was something far deeper.
Was Adam Montgomery a monster… or a father who did what many parents say they might have done in his place
The Crime That Shook a Small City
In December 2019, Manchester, New Hampshire, was a quiet winter town — the kind of place where people know one another’s cars, not their secrets.
But everything changed when Harmony, Adam’s five-year-old daughter, was reported missing. Her bright smile had once lit up the halls of the local elementary school; now, her photo was taped to lampposts and pinned to supermarket bulletin boards.
When investigators began to dig, they uncovered not just the story of a missing child — but the outlines of a horror. Evidence pointed to a neighbor, a man in his late 20s, who had previously been charged with sexual assault. He had been seen near Harmony days before she vanished. Detectives later recovered forensic evidence suggesting that Harmony had been sexually assaulted in a nearby abandoned building.
