Six bodies, a grandmother, her adult daughter, and four children ages 10 to 13, were found decomposing inside an apartment in Mechanicville, New York, after a neighbor called police for a welfare check. Investigators now say a handwritten note and other evidence point to the grandmother, Amy Steadman, as the person responsible for the deaths of the other five before she herself died.
Mechanicville Police Chief Bill Rabbitt laid out the preliminary findings at a Thursday press conference, two days after officers forced their way into Steadman's home. The bodies were so badly decomposed that responding officers could not immediately identify them. Rabbitt said the victims had been dead "for an extended period of time" before the neighbor, who had not seen Steadman in several days, placed the call around 6:20 p.m. Tuesday.
The dead include Steadman's daughter Sarah Myers, 44, and Myers's four children: Harper Harmon, 13; Hudson Harmon, 11; and 10-year-old twins Gavin and Gracelynn. The children's father, Brady Harmon, lives in Utah. He had just been granted two-month custody of all four kids, a period set to begin the following Wednesday. He had not seen his children in person since 2019.
Chief Rabbitt told reporters that investigators recovered prescription and over-the-counter medications from inside the apartment, describing the evidence as consistent with "intentional poisoning." He also disclosed that at least one child had been stabbed, though he did not identify which child or provide further detail on the weapon used.
As the New York Post reported, sources told Channel 13 (WNYT) that the children were injected with drugs and that syringes were found at the scene. Those details have not been confirmed by police on the record. Rabbitt was careful to note that toxicology results and medical reviews remain pending.
"Evidence recovered during the investigation, including a handwritten note, and other circumstantial evidence, strongly suggests that Amy Steadman was involved in the deaths."
That was Rabbitt's measured phrasing at the press conference. He added that investigators "believe these deaths occurred entirely within the apartment and found no evidence indicating the involvement of any outside individual."
The contents of the handwritten note have not been made public. Rabbitt said final determinations about responsibility would come only after all investigative findings are complete, calling the process one that would take "a considerable amount of time to get right."
Brady Harmon learned what happened when police knocked on his door in Utah. He had been preparing for his children's arrival, the first in-person visit since 2019. Instead, he got the worst news a parent can receive.
Harmon spoke to the Times Union, and his words carry the weight of a man blindsided by something no custody order could have prevented. He accused his former partner of keeping the children from him over the years, allowing only occasional FaceTime calls.
"I went from, 'I'm seeing my kids' to 'I'll never see my kids again.'"
He told the Times Union he wants to bury all four children in Utah, as far from their mother as possible. "I want them as far away as possible from their mother," Harmon said. When asked whether he believed the grandmother was responsible, his answer was blunt: "Hope to h***."
Harmon also offered a line that captures the helplessness of a father who spent years fighting for access to his own kids: "Things happen, but nothing like this."
Unnamed sources cited by WNYT described a possible motive: Steadman had allegedly grown resentful after Harmon was granted the two-month custody period. The timing is difficult to ignore. The children were supposed to leave for Utah within days. Instead, they never left the apartment alive.
A neighbor described Steadman and Myers to the Times Union as "inseparable" and "like best friends," as Breitbart reported. That characterization makes the scene inside the apartment even harder to reconcile. If the evidence holds, Steadman killed the person closest to her along with four children she helped raise.
The case shares a grim pattern with other recent domestic tragedies in which custody disputes or family breakdowns preceded lethal violence. In Florida, a Doral real estate agent, her estranged ex, and two young daughters were found dead in a suspected murder-suicide. The common thread is a family member who decides that if they cannot control the outcome, no one will survive it.
Mechanicville is a small city in Saratoga County, the kind of place where neighbors notice when someone goes quiet for a few days. That is exactly what prompted the welfare check. Chief Rabbitt acknowledged the toll on the community at his press conference.
"Mechanicville is a close-knit city. Many residents knew the family involved, have children and grandchildren of their own, or simply cannot comprehend the loss of six lives under such heartbreaking circumstances."
Steadman was 64 years old. Whether her own death resulted from the same poisoning, self-administered, has not been publicly confirmed. Police have not disclosed her cause of death separately from the broader investigation.
The case recalls other instances where family members turned lethal force inward. In Louisiana, a mother was killed in an apparent murder-suicide weeks before a custody hearing, another case where the legal system's attempt to resolve a family dispute arrived too late to save lives.
Several critical questions remain open. Police have not identified which specific child was stabbed. They have not disclosed the medications found or whether any were prescribed to Steadman, Myers, or the children. The court or authority that granted Harmon custody has not been named, and the circumstances of that ruling, contested or agreed upon, are unclear.
The estimated time of death has not been released. Officers noted the advanced decomposition, which suggests the deaths may have occurred well before Tuesday's welfare check. That gap raises its own questions about how long the family went unnoticed and whether any system, school, medical, social services, had reason to check on four children during that window.
In Plant City, Florida, a shooting spree left a baby, a toddler, a mother, and a grandmother dead across two scenes, a reminder that these mass-casualty family killings are not isolated anomalies. They recur with disturbing regularity, often preceded by warning signs that only become visible in retrospect.
In California, a Canoga Park father shot his twin sons and turned the gun on himself, another case where a parent facing a custody shift chose destruction over separation.
Brady Harmon did everything the legal system asked. He petitioned for custody. He waited. He won. A court granted him two months with his four children, children he had not held since 2019. He was days away from seeing them again.
The system gave him a piece of paper. It could not give him his kids.
That is the bitter reality at the center of this case. Courts can issue orders. They cannot enforce safety in real time. They cannot predict that a grandmother will allegedly reach for a bottle of pills, a syringe, and a knife rather than let four children board a plane to Utah.
Rabbitt's caution about final determinations is appropriate. Toxicology will take time. But the handwritten note, the medications, the decomposition, and the absence of any outside suspect all point in one direction. If the evidence confirms what police have already described, this was not a tragedy that simply happened. It was a choice, made by someone who decided that losing control of four children's lives was worse than ending them.
Four children are dead. Their father never got to say goodbye. And the woman who allegedly killed them made sure no court order would ever bring them home.
