Massachusetts
Volunteers comb Massachusetts sea towns for remains of little girl ‘butchered’ by inmate father
Volunteers searched several communities on the North Shore of Massachusetts Saturday as they hunted for the remains of Harmony Montgomery, the little girl who was brutally beaten to death by her father in 2019.
Crews combed the 600-acre Rumney Marsh Reservation as they tried to find Harmony Montgomery’s body, the location of which her killer dad has refused to reveal.
“That’s the acceptance I’ve had to come to terms with in my grief — just accepting the fact that he’s never going to do the right thing for her,” Crystal Sorey, Harmony’s heartbroken mom, told WCVB 5 in Boston.
Harmony’s dad, 34-year-old Adam Montgomery, was sentenced to 45 years to life in prison in May for murdering the 5-year-old girl, then hiding her body in a tote bag, a cooler and a freezer at the restaurant at which he worked.
Eventually, he disposed of her remains — but he’s never said where.
Prosecutors even offered him a lighter sentence that would have cut his jail time by 21 years in return for the information. But Adam Montgomery remained mum.
“I’ve had a lot of dreams and this area has been in my dreams,” Sorey said Saturday, according to the outlet.
“It’s like looking for a needle in a haystack, right?” added volunteer Thomas Seretta.
“I just wish that monster would have shared some dignity to help put her to rest,” said Susan Vandecasteele, who was also helping comb the area.
Authorities had narrowed their search to a 106-mile route between Manchester and the Tobin Bridge in Boston that Adam Montgomery had driven in a rented U-Haul in March 2020, according to the station.
“Harmony’s remains are likely somewhere along this route,” Senior Assistant Attorney General Ben Agati said.
Sorey plans to organize monthly searches as she continues to look for her vanished daughter. She encouraged anyone with information to call the case tip line at 603-932-8997.
“There’s no reason to be afraid anymore,” she told the network. “Even if you think it’s the tiniest of information, it can help in a huge way.”
At his trial, prosecutors said Adam Montgomery beat the girl to death in a fit of rage because she had bathroom accidents in their car. Then he went for fast food and did drugs — all while ignoring her final cries as she died in the backseat, the court was told.
Afterward, he lugged her decomposing body to the restaurant each day and left it in the freezer, keeping it next to food.
Eventually, he threw out the little girl “like yesterday’s trash,” prosecutors said.
During Adam Montgomery’s sentencing, Agati told Judge Amy Messer that Harmony’s family would get much-needed closure if her dad would reveal where he left the little girl’s body.
But Adam — who has maintained his innocence — refused to answer.
So Agati said the killer’s inability to repent was “yet another reason” why Judge Messer should throw the book at him.
The court sent him to jail for 45 years to life, a sentence to run consecutively to the decades-long term he was already serving for weapons charges.
“In light of the egregious nature of the crimes of which you have been convicted in this case, and taking into consideration your extremely violent criminal history, the court finds the only way to do this is to keep you off the streets,” the judge said.
Harmony disappeared in 2019, but cops didn’t learn about the disappearance until two years later.
Massachusetts
Two Massachusetts events raising money for critical ALS care
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Massachusetts
Stopping in Massachusetts, Vice President Harris promises “we’re going to fight”
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WATCH: Harris pledges to defend reproductive rights at campaign event in Massachusetts
PITTSFIELD, Mass. (AP) — Vice President Kamala Harris used her first fundraiser since becoming the Democrats’ likely White House nominee to excoriate the Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump as determined to roll back Americans’ freedoms.
Watch Harris’ remarks in the player above.
Harris traveled to Pittsfield, Massachusetts, on Saturday where she was expected to raise more than $1.4 million, her campaign announced, from an audience of hundreds at the Colonial Theatre. That would be $1 million-plus more than the original goal set for the event before President Joe Biden dropped out of the race.
She told an excited group of supporters that she entered the race as an “underdog,” while expressing confidence that her surging campaign could defeat Trump.
“I will fight to move our nation forward,” Harris said. “Donald Trump intends to take our country backwards.”
WATCH: Brooks and Capehart on Harris’ appeal and the new race for the White House
Harris also poked at Trump, and his running mate Sen. JD Vance, for lobbing peculiar attacks at her and other Democrats. The vice president appeared to be alluding to a 2021 interview with Vance in which he slammed some prominent Democrats without biological children, including Harris, as “childless cat ladies” with “no direct stake” in America.
“You may have noticed Donald Trump has been resorting to some wild lies about my record and some of what he and his running mate are saying, it is just plain weird,” Harris said. “I mean that’s the box you put that in, right?”
Harris’ branding the Republican ticket as “weird” appears to be part of a concerted effort by her campaign to spotlight some of Trump and Vance’s rhetoric as questionable. Earlier this week, the Harris campaign on the social media site X called Vance “weird and creepy” for some of his stances on women’s reproductive rights. Trump, meanwhile, has raised the fictional serial killer Hannibal Lecter from the film “Silence of the Lambs” in stump speeches.
“These guys are just weird,” Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, a Democrat who is on Harris’ shortlist for vice president, said in an MSNBC interview earlier this week. “They’re running for He-man women-haters club or something.”
Supporters for the fundraiser included musician James Taylor and many of the state’s Democratic heavyweights, including Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Ed Markey, former Gov. Deval Patrick and Rep. Richie Neal.
Harris took in more than $100 million in donations in the first 48 hours after Biden quit the race, a presidential record, and aides said she has continued to raise money at a steady clip.
“This is a people-powered campaign,” Harris said. “And we have momentum.”
Harris, a former prosecutor in her home state of California, also derided Trump for his legal troubles. She noted his recent conviction on 34 counts of falsifying business records in New York, a jury finding the former president of being liable for sexual abusing advice columnist E. Jean Carroll in 1996, and a $25 million settlement paid to attendees of the now-defunct real estate seminar called Trump University.
WATCH: Harris courts key voting blocs as Trump shifts strategy following Biden’s exit
“I’ve been dealing with people like him my entire career,” Harris said. She added, “So in this campaign, and I say in all seriousness, I will proudly put my record against his any day.”
Harris began her remarks with praise for Biden, who opted to end his reelection bid and endorse Harris last weekend after his campaign fell into a tailspin following his disastrous June 27 debate performance against Trump.
She called Biden’s legacy of accomplishment over the past three and a half years “unmatched in modern history.”
Trump denigrated Harris as a “radical left lunatic” who wants to defund the police during a keynote address at a bitcoin conference in Nashville on Saturday.
He said she was worse than Biden but was probably his second preference for a candidate to run against after Biden.
Trump told the crowd of bitcoin supporters that he would embrace the cryptocurrency more than the Biden-Harris administration has and vowed to “replace the Biden-Harris economic stagnation” with an economic boom.
The vice president told supporters at her Massachusetts fundraiser that her economic agenda would sharply contrast with Trump’s, who she claimed is squarely focused on lowering tax rates for wealthy Americans and improving the bottom lines of corporations.
“Building up the middle class will be the defining goal of my presidency,” Harris said. She added, “Let us make no mistake, this campaign is not just about us versus Donald Trump. Our campaign has always been about two very different visions for our nation.”
Associated Press writer Ali Swenson in New York contributed to this report.
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