MANCHESTER, N.H. — Crystal Sorey says she worries every day about the possibility she’ll never know what happened to her daughter, Harmony.
“Oh yeah, I worry I’m going to wonder where she is for the rest of my life. I do. I think about it every day,” Sorey said.
Harmony Montgomery’s disappearance, first announced by the Manchester Police Dept. on New Year’s Eve, has garnered national attention, due largely in part to the unusual amount of time before anyone reported Harmony missing. Police said they last saw the little girl in Oct. 2019, during a call for service at a Gilford St. home in Manchester. Since that time, no one can reliably account for Harmony’s whereabouts.
According to court documents, Sorey’s phone call to Manchester Police in Nov. 2021 appeared to be the catalyst that launched a full blown search. Sorey said her concerns for Harmony’s safety prompted her to call DCF and DCYF 27 times, starting in May or June, 2019. She said she’s spent the last several days handing out flyers and spreading the word about her daughter’s disappearance.
“As far as speculating, we need less of that and we need more people coming forward, more people passing flyers out, more people asking questions,” Sorey said.
In an extended interview with Boston 25, Sorey opened up about the investigation into Harmony’s disappearance, the public’s perception of her, and the first time she began worrying about her daughter.
BOSTON 25: Are you encouraged the reward is more than $100,000? That’s a lot of money.
CS: Yeah, I’m blown away. I really appreciate everybody coming forward to donate to try and bring her home. That is just amazing to me.
BOSTON 25: How are you today?
CS: This whole things been tough. People are constantly judging me. I’m under a microscope right now. It’s okay, I don’t have anything to hide. It just hurts that people try to take the focus off my girl, you know? I’m always going to own my mistakes. I’m never going to sit here and say I never played a part in it because I did, I know I did. I messed up. If I never lost here, we’d never be here, either.
BOSTON 25: What do you think people’s perceptions are of you, and do you think it’s fair?
CS: I think their perception of me is [based] solely off how [police] released the [initial] story, saying, ‘Oh we don’t know who reported it, we don’t know why it’s taken so long.’ They do know. They do know who reported it. I reported it to police. I went above and beyond. I tried to reach out to anybody that would listen. I think the public’s opinion of me doesn’t really matter. It doesn’t, it really doesn’t. It’s so amazing that I have a lot of people reaching out to me and supporting me, trying to help in any possible way they can. As far as people judging me, it doesn’t bother me. I know the truth. I know what I did to try and find her and report, report, report, report. I know what I did.
BOSTON 25: When did you first realize something was wrong? When did you first realize Harmony may be in danger?
CS: Well, he [Adam Montgomery] stopped my visits three days before Easter [2019], because of the last FaceTime I had with her. He totally blocked me and everything. I right away had a bad feeling because of how he was acting in the visits, he would sit on top of us basically. I barely could have any privacy with her. FaceTimes, he was muting it, yelling at her, telling her what to say, what not to say. It was all suspicious to me. All of it. The end of May, beginning of June 2019, was the very first time I called DCF in Massachusetts to ask them if there was any transition plan, if they had been checking on her. Massachusetts [DCF] basically never did the transition plan, they never once checked on her. Massachusetts [DCF] is supposed to keep a case open [for six months] after placement to check to make sure you’re doing the right thing. I don’t understand to this day why he was able to just take her and run to New Hampshire. It blows my mind.
BOSTON 25: What was the last FaceTime like during Easter of 2019?
CS: Chaotic, chaotic. He kept muting it. She just looked terrified and lost. Her whole entire body language had shifted in two months of him having her. She went from being my happy, talkative, sassy little girl to a shell of Harmony.
BOSTON 25: Does it break your heart to think about that Facetime?
CS: Every minute, every minute.
BOSTON 25: Because that was the last time you saw her.
CS: Yeah, and I just wish I could have said more to her. I just wish I said to her, no matter what daddy says to you, no matter what he does, I will never stop fighting for you. Never.
BOSTON 25: How do you think this is going to end? Are you worried there’s a possibility you may never know what happened to Harmony?
CS: Oh yeah, I worry that I’m going to wonder where she is for the rest of my life. I do. I think about it every day.
BOSTON 25: Everybody out there who is following this case, the big question is how could two years go by before anything was done about Harmony’s disappearance. What’s your response to that?
CS: My response is when you’re an addict in recovery and you’ve lost custody of your child but you have visitations, they don’t listen to you. They look at you like you’re addict. I felt like they said well, you screwed that up, we don’t really care what you’re saying about her.
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