By DAMIEN FISHER, InDepthNH.org
MANCHESTER – The state’s only eye witness to Harmony Montgomery’s violent death testified Friday that she is telling the truth, this time.
Wearing a red, prison sweatsuit on the stand in the Hillsborough Superior Court — North in Manchester, Kayla Montgomery told jurors about Adam Montgomery’s brutal assault that killed the five-year-old girl.
“Adam was getting really angry from Harmony peeing in the car, and he repetitively kept punching her on the way to Burger King,” she testified. “And there were a couple of red lights, and when at red lights he would, like, go over the driver’s seat in between the passenger seat, and he was just punching her repetitively in the head.”
Kayla Montgomery, Harmony’s step-mother, is still serving a prison sentence for perjuring herself in front of a grand jury. That was back when she claimed she didn’t know what happened to Harmony in December of 2019. Kayla Montgomery’s current story, that Adam Montgomery killed the child in a fit of rage when the family was homeless and living in their car, is the basis for the second-degree murder charge against the father.
But Caroline Smith, one of Adam Montgomery’s defense attorneys, prodded Kayla Montgomery’s decision to change her story and blame her now ex-husband.
For more than a year, Kayla Montgomery told investigators she didn’t know what happened to Harmony after Adam Montgomery allegedly brought the child to her birth mother, Crystal Sorey, in November of 2019. It’s the same story Adam Montgomery told police.
Sorey is the person who reported Harmony missing to police in December of 2020. She lost custody of Harmony when the girl was an infant. After years in foster care, Harmony was ordered reunited with her father, a criminal and a drug abuser, by a Massachusetts family court judge.
Kayla Montgomery testified Adam Montgomery used physical violence and terror to keep her from telling the truth, that he killed Harmony and then kept her corpse in a bag for months until he disposed of it in an unknown location and manner.
Once the investigation started, police started ratcheting up pressure on Kayla Montgomery. She was charged with theft for alleged welfare fraud and ordered held in jail. Desperately wanting to get back to her two young sons she had with Adam Montgomery, Kayla Montgomery decided to seek a deal with the New Hampshire Attorney General’s Office.
Kayla Montgomery wrote out a note in her jail cell about what she wanted from prosecutors in exchange for her information that would “betray” Adam Montgomery. Smith, read the note with Kayla Montgomery during the cross examination. Kayla Montgomery wanted custody of her sons, mental health care, drug rehabilitation care, and immunity for “everything.”
Smith, though, also drew attention to Kayla Montgomery’s written desire for time alone with Adam Montgomery, writing that she wanted an embrace, a kiss, or a chance to make love one more time with her allegedly abusive husband.
“You wanted one last time alone with him,” Smith said. “What you didn’t write is that you wanted protection from Adam. What you didn’t write is that you were afraid of Adam.”
Prosecutors have already shown jurors photos of Kayla Montgomery’s bruised and battered face after a beating she allegedly took from Adam Montgomery.
After Kayla Montgomery wrote that note and told jail officials she wanted to talk to prosecutors, she heard nothing from the New Hampshire Attorney General’s Office. Instead of a meeting to discuss a deal, Kayla Montgomery was served a subpoena to testify before a grand jury.
During that testimony Kayla Montgomery stuck to the story that Harmony went to live with her mother when the family was evicted from their Manchester apartment in November of 2019. She acknowledged during Smith’s cross examination that she lied multiple times during that testimony, and was eventually convicted of perjury.
But Smith pointed out the perjury charges stemming from that grand jury testimony were for lies about Kayla Montgomery’s job at a Dunkin Donuts, and not lies about Harmony’s death. Kayla Montgomery told jurors she was employed at a Dunkin Donuts and was working a shift on one of the key days in the case, when in fact she had already been fired for theft.
Adam Montgomery was not in court for Friday’s trial session, and he has not appeared in person since the trial started this week. He is admitting that he abused Harmony’s corpse when he tried to cover up her death, but denies he killed the child. His attorneys claim Harmony died several hours before the alleged murder, while she was alone with Kayla Montgomery and her two step-brothers. One step-brother was two months old, and the other a toddler, when Harmony died.