A New York grandmother has been named as a suspect in one of the most devastating family tragedies to rock upstate New York in recent memory.
Mechanicville Police Chief William Rabbitt confirmed at a press conference on Thursday, June 25, that 64-year-old Amy Steadman is suspected of the “intentional poisoning” of her own daughter and four grandchildren, all of whom were found dead inside an apartment building on Harris Avenue.
The victims were identified as Sarah Myers, 44, and her four children: Harper Harmon, 13; Hudson Harmon, 11; and 10-year-old twins Gavin and Gracelynn Harmon. All five were found by officers responding to a neighbor’s welfare check on Tuesday, June 23, and police say the bodies had been there for what they described as “an extended period of time.”
The Call That Changed Everything
It was a neighbor’s worry that cracked the case open. Officers arrived at the Harris Avenue apartment complex just before 6:30 p.m. on Tuesday after residents grew concerned that they had not seen the family in days.
When officers could not reach Steadman directly, building management let them inside. Upon entering, they found six people deceased. The conditions inside were so severe that, according to Chief Rabbitt, officers could not immediately identify the victims. Formal identifications were only possible after autopsies were conducted the following day, Wednesday, June 24.
Steadman lived in the apartment where the bodies were discovered, while Myers and her four children occupied a separate unit within the same building. Police say all six ended up in the same space, and right now, authorities are not saying much about exactly how that happened.
Rabbitt was direct about the limits of what he could share, noting that the authorship and contents of a handwritten note found in the apartment could not be disclosed while the investigation remains active.
What Police Found Inside the Apartment
What investigators did find painted a deeply troubling picture. Chief Rabbitt told reporters that evidence recovered from inside the apartment pointed strongly toward “intentional poisoning,”including a large quantity of both prescription and over-the-counter medications.
“We will say that there is recovered evidence inside the apartment to indicate intentional poisoning to include numerous persons and over the counter medications,” Rabbitt said during the press conference, per People magazine.
He also confirmed that a handwritten note, along with other circumstantial evidence, “strongly suggests that Amy Steadman was involved in the deaths.”
There was one more layer to the physical evidence that stopped reporters cold. The chief disclosed that one of the children suffered what he described as “fatal sharp force injuries,” though he was careful to say that the official causes and manners of death for all six remain pending full toxicology results and medical examiner review.
He also confirmed that investigators found no evidence of any outside individual’s involvement and that there is no known threat to the public. Mechanicville is a small, tight city about 20 minutes north of Albany, and Rabbitt acknowledged the weight of that at the press conference, saying the community “cannot comprehend the loss of six lives under such heartbreaking circumstances.”
A Dad, a Custody Battle, and Five Days Too Late
If there is one thread in this story that cuts the deepest, it belongs to Brady Harmon. The father of the four children, who lives in Salt Lake City, Utah, told WNYT that he had not seen his kids in person since November 2019 and that he had been fighting in court for six years just to get access to them.
He was days away from that reunion. According to CBS6, Harmon had secured a court order allowing the children to spend two months with him each summer, from July 1 to September 1, and he had been counting down to that date. He was planning to fly to New York on June 30.
Court documents obtained by outlets show that Myers and Harmon were married in December 2015 in Salt Lake City, separated in 2019, and finalized their divorce in 2020. A judge granted both parties joint legal custody, with Myers holding sole physical custody during the school year and Harmon receiving uninterrupted summer custody beginning in 2025.
Despite that court order, Harmon told the Daily Gazette that Myers had refused to honor the custody arrangement. He also said he recently learned from Mechanicville police that Saratoga County Child Protective Services had been called to the home multiple times, though he said Myers had never shared any related documents with him.
His words to WNYT were raw and unfiltered. “I went through everything I could. Everything that my lawyers could do, everything. I just never thought that someone would go and do this,” Harmon said.
He described the feeling of being that close to reuniting with his children, only to have the ground yanked out: “You get down to almost the finish line, just absolutely cut your legs out from underneath you, and the only thing left to do is crawl across the finish line to bring the remains home.”
He told CBS6 that instead of planning for their summer together, he was now planning their funerals, and that transporting the bodies back to Utah posed its own painful complications, given the condition they were found in.
A Community Left Searching for Answers
The neighborhood on Harris Avenue is feeling the weight. Neighbors who spoke to CBS6 described Steadman as friendly, known around the complex, and kind to children in the building.
Relatives of Myers reached out to CBS6 and asked the public to hold off on rushing to conclusions while the investigation is still ongoing. The investigation remains active, with toxicology tests and full medical examiner reports still pending. No motive has been publicly disclosed, and Rabbitt made clear that formal determinations of responsibility will only come after all findings have been reviewed and completed.
For a father who spent six and a half years and thousands of dollars just for the legal right to spend a summer with his kids, the wait for those answers is something no court order can fix.
