A 64-year-old New York woman found dead Tuesday alongside her daughter and four grandchildren is now suspected of being “involved” in the mass deaths, according to authorities.
The bodies of Harper Harmon, 13, Hudson Harmon, 11, and twins Gavin Harmon and Gracelynn Harmon, both 10, were found Tuesday alongside the body of their mother, Sarah Myers, 44, inside their grandmother Amy Steadman’s home, the Mechanicville Police Department said in a press release.
The children’s father said he had been planning to pick his children up for the summer on July 1.
“I spent thousands of dollars trying just to get access to them, trying to get any record for them at all, any parenting plan, just anything. I got nothing other than these four beautiful kids — they’re gone,” Brady Harmon told local CBS affiliate WRGB. “I feel the two monsters that are responsible are the ones who took them from me.”
Mechanicville Chief of Police William Rabbitt told reporters at a Thursday press conference that officers had responded to a welfare check at Steadman’s home after neighbors grew concerned from not seeing her.
Rabbitt noted that sharp-force injuries to one of the children and evidence found inside Steadman’s apartment, such as bottles of prescription and over-the-counter medicines, indicated “intentional poisoning.”
The deaths are still under investigation, but Rabbitt said “evidence recovered during the investigation, including a handwritten note and other circumstantial evidence, strongly suggests that Amy Steadman was involved in the deaths.”
Harmon, who lives in Utah, told WRGB that he and Steadman’s daughter, Myers, had been married for years and had lived together until 2019, when she left for upstate New York and took the kids with her without notice.
He filed for divorce a year later, but has been fighting for visitation. He told WNYT he last saw his children in person in November of 2019. He had planned to fly to the East Coast to pick up his children and bring them back to Utah for the summer.
“She destroyed my life. She destroyed my family. All of us are now trying to figure out what happened,” Harmon said of Myers to The Times Union.