Adam Montgomery was convicted last year of murdering his daughter and sentenced to 56 years in prison.
BOSTON (WBZ NewsRadio) — The Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts ruled on Wednesday that a journalist can have access to audio recordings from two custody hearings of Harmony Montgomery.
Five-year-old Harmony Montgomery of New Hampshire went missing in 2019 after her father, Adam Montgomery, was awarded custody of her. Nearly two years passed before authorities were made aware of her disappearance.
Adam Montgomery, a Massachusetts resident, was convicted last year of murdering his daughter and sentenced to 56 years in prison. Harmony Montgomery's body was never found.
In 2022, Massachusetts' Office of the Child Advocate found that the state failed to protect Harmony by awarding her father custody. Adam Montgomery already had a criminal record prior to gaining custody of his daughter.
Custody hearings are usually kept sealed to protect the privacy of those involved, but filmmaker Bill Lichtenstein requested access to audio recordings from two 2019 custody hearings so he could use them in a documentary about the child welfare system.
A lower court judge denied Lichtenstein access to the recordings, but the Wednesday opinion said the SJC was vacating that ruling because Lichtenstein "has demonstrated good cause for the release of those recordings for him to use in the documentary."
"Releasing these recordings to the journalist for purposes of the documentary he proposes 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 opinion stated.
The opinion stipulates that Lichtenstein may not release the audio recordings until his documentary comes out.