Sarah Myers, 44, told the father of her four children that they had “a little stomach bug, throwing up”
in a message sent at
1:03 p.m. on June 10 via AppClose
, the court-ordered co-parenting app.
Myers messaged Harmon asking to reschedule their call, saying “The kids have gotten a little stomach bug, throwing up,”
and
Harmon agreed and told Myers that he hoped the kids felt better
.
That same morning,
Sarah Myers had instructed Amy Steadman that the medications should be administered between 10:30 a.m. and noon so they could be finished before a scheduled telephone call at 6 p.m. with the children’s father
, according to Mechanicville police.
Sarah Myers, 44, and her 64-year-old mother Amy Steadman “conspired in carrying out the murders of the four children on June 10 before taking their own lives,” Mechanicville police chief William Rabbitt said Tuesday
.
The children who died were
Harper, 13, Hudson, 11, and Gracelynn, 10, who were poisoned, while Gavin Harmon, 10, was knifed trying to defend himself
.
As the children failed to respond in the manner that Steadman and Myers had anticipated, one of the women messaged the other saying: “It’s not working. We need another option,”
Rabbitt disclosed.
Gracelynn experienced pain in her stomach, writing, “Why would you do that? You both won’t let me puke,” while another message from Steadman read, “Gracie is aware.”
Investigators combed through Steadman’s internet history where they found several sickening searches, including medication reactions, with later searches including “Where is the most fatal place to be stabbed,” which produced results about a specific artery as well as the neck
.
The shared messages show three recorded video calls between Harmon and his children on May 31, June 3 and June 7, with June 7 being the last time he spoke to his children before Myers and Steadman murdered them
.
Harmon had been planning on flying to New York from Utah to pick the children up on June 30, sharing the flight information with Myers over AppClose on June 3
.
“I knew my kids were murdered,” Harmon told News10 on Tuesday. “And then I know those two are the ones that did it.”
“My kids suffered,” Harmon told WRGB. “To poison them and also to stab them – there’s a special place in hell for people like that.”
“I cannot understand what would go through those sick, sadistic, twisted minds to carry out this horrendous, spiteful act on harming my children because I have access to them for 60 days,” Harmon told The US Sun
.
“I wish there was something else I could have done legally,” Harmon told the outlet. “But I went through every, every thing I could, every thing that my lawyers could do, everything, you know. I just never thought that someone would go and do this.”
Brady Harmon has categorically denied the allegations, and Rabbitt revealed police could independently verify the claims, with Harmon previously claiming Steadman didn’t want him to see his children
.
The bodies were discovered on June 23 after they weren’t seen for over a week
.
On June 13, the Mechanicville Police Department was asked to conduct a wellness check by Brady Harmon, and an officer knocked on the door of Apartment F-1, where Myers lived with the kids, but got no response, though a neighbor told the officer they had recently seen the kids and they appeared to be in good health
.
In the viral moment that triggered investigations into the case, the text exchange revealed how completely deceptive Myers’s message was to Harmon. The innocuous explanation of a stomach bug masked the reality that Steadman and Myers were administering medication cocktails to the children at that very moment, with the timing carefully calculated to ensure the children would be dead before their scheduled call with their father at 6 p.m.
The planning had begun on
June 5
, when
text messages contained discussions regarding obtaining medications, where the murders would occur, how those medications would be administered, how the children would be brought together, what they would be told, and how suspicion could be avoided
.
In her letter, Steadman allegedly took responsibility for the killings, claiming she felt it was the only way to protect her grandchildren from alleged abuse in Utah
.
“Amy and Sarah consistently portrayed these murders as a way of protecting the children. Whatever they believed justified their actions, the murder of four children can not be described as protection,” said Mechanicville Police Chief William Rabbitt
.
At 2:27 p.m. on June 11, Harmon messaged Myers asking, “Are the kiddos feeling better?”
Harmon had not seen his four children in person since November 2019, but had a court-approved 60-day summer visit scheduled to begin June 30.