Editor’s note: Some of the details in the story below and the video player above may be disturbing for readers.
In New Hampshire on Monday, the Adam Montgomery trial picked back up with more testimony from the prosecution's star witness.
Adam Montgomery, 34, is accused of killing his 5-year-old daughter Harmony in 2019.
On Friday, Kayla Montgomery -- Adam Montgomery's estranged wife and Harmony's stepmom -- testified about how Adam killed his daughter. Kayla originally withheld information from prosecutors because she said Adam threatened to kill her.
The defense, however, argues that Kayla is the one who really killed Harmony.
Defense attorneys began the morning Monday trying to poke holes in Kayla's story, asking about the period of time when Adam, Kayla, Harmony and Kayla's two young sons were living in a car, subsisting on a diet consisting of tortilla wraps, bananas, peanut butter and baby food and formula. That's the time period when Kayla said Adam beat his daughter to death.
Kayla was also asked about Dec. 7, 2019, the exact day she said Harmony died after Adam beat her while in the car.
She was specifically asked about a trip to Burger King for food shortly after Adam had struck Harmony repeatedly. She testified that she fed her two sons food from Burger King, and handed a croissant sandwich to Harmony, but never checked to see if she was eating it.
After eating, Kayla said she and Adam went and did some drugs at a local apartment complex. Kayla said at no point did she call 911 or check on Harmony's well being.
Later, Kayla testified that Adam tried to kill himself soon after attempting to dismember Harmony's body. But she said she talked him out of it, telling him their two remaining children needed him.
At redirect, prosecutors asked Kayla about an argument she had with Adam after he hit Harmony.
"He was abusive -- in all ways, physical, emotional and mentally," she said of Adam. "He thought that I was telling on him or cheating on him or trying to kill him. He wanted me to tell him who I was cheating on him with or if I was working with the cops and I kept saying that I didn't and he kept hitting me anyway. And I started telling him that I did even though I wasn't, and he kept hitting me."
Asked if she still loves Adam, Kayla replied, "I still care about him, because he's the father of my children. He was my best friend. It's been hard for me to just let go." When asked why she stayed with Adam, she said, "Because I was scared, and I still cared about him. I was scared of what would happen. I didn't want anybody getting in trouble... for some reason I still cared about him."
Around 2:20 p.m., prosecutors asked Kayla if she was aware of something that happened during opening statements. She replied that she was.
"How were you aware?" defense attorney Caroline Smith countered.
"I was told by my lawyer," she replied.
At that point, attorneys for both sides approached the bench for a conference with the judge. The proceedings resumed again after a longer-than-expected break, with Kayla acknowledging that she understood that the defense's opening argument pointed the finger at her.
Eventually, Smith asked Montgomery if she was "saying that a child was beaten to death beside you, looking like pure evil, and you continued on with your life with Adam."
Kayla replied, "Yeah, but it wasn't okay. It was abusive."
The lawyer went on to suggest that Kayla wouldn't approve of abusive behavior, and the woman replied, "Well I was taking it when I shouldn't have. It took a while to just leave him, it's really hard."
After Kayla Montgomery was excused from the stand, two other witnesses were called, both acquaintances of the Montgomery family who spoke about times they interacted with them, including whether they saw Harmony.
Kayla testified that Harmony, whose body has not been found, died in a car the family was living in after getting evicted. It was the third day of Adam Montgomery's murder trial in Manchester, which he hasn't been attending.
Kayla said Harmony was potty trained, but had begun having frequent accidents. She testified that her husband punched Harmony in the head after two such accidents in the car.
He later covered Harmony with a blanket as the child cried, moaned and eventually went silent, the stepmother said. Their car broke down soon afterward and Adam put Harmony's body in the duffel bag, she said.
“He, like, folded her in half and put her in the duffel bag,” she said.
Adam Montgomery is charged with second-degree murder, assault and witness tampering. In opening statements Thursday, his lawyers acknowledged he was guilty of two other charges — falsifying evidence and abusing a corpse.
But they said he did not kill Harmony and repeatedly suggested Kayla was lying to protect herself.
“Only she knows the truth,” public defender James T. Brooks told the jury on Thursday. “And only she has benefitted from all the lies she has told.”
Prosecutors asked Kayla to look at jurors Friday as she told them she did not kill the girl. Under cross examination, she acknowledged that she similarly looked at grand jurors in May 2022 and falsely told them she didn't know what had happened to her stepdaughter.
“So, looking at jurors while you’re lying doesn’t change the lie, right?" Smith, the defense attorney, said.
“Right,” said Kayla, who is serving an 18-month prison sentence after pleading guilty to perjury for lying during grand jury testimony about where she was when Harmony was last seen.
Under questioning by Smith, she acknowledged at least a dozen other false statements.
“You said the last time you saw Harmony, she was happy,” Smith said. “You had no problem with lying to the grand jury.”
Police didn't learn that Harmony was missing until December 2021, nearly two years after she was last seen alive.
Kayla said she put her arm up to stop her husband from hitting Harmony on Dec. 7, but that “he gave me this look that was like, evil, his crazy eyes.”
“I was scared," she said.
She also testified that her husband told her he had struck Harmony after she saw the girl with a black eye in July 2019.
The duffel bag made it from the trunk of a friend's car to a hallway cooler near an apartment where Kayla's mother lived, and then to a ceiling vent in a shelter where the family stayed for about six weeks.
Eventually, Harmony's remains began to smell, and Adam moved them into trash bags which he put into a large tote bag, Kayla testified. She said she put the bag in a stroller and took it to a restaurant where her husband worked, and he put it in the freezer. He later moved the bag to the refrigerator of an apartment where they were staying in Manchester.
Adam talked about dismembering Harmony and bought tools and lime, she testified.
She said he put the body in the bathtub and turned on the shower to thaw it, and asked her to help him cut off Harmony's clothes, which she did.
She left the room soon after that. “I couldn't be there anymore. I couldn't handle it. I didn't want to see anything,” she said.
Kayla Montgomery said her husband drove away with Harmony's remains in a rental truck in March 2020, and that he didn't say where he was going. Not long after that, he started to suspect that she might go to the police, so he began punching her, giving her black eyes, she said. She eventually ran away from him in March 2021.
Kayla also was a prosecution witness last year in an unrelated case in which her husband was convicted of gun theft charges. He was sentenced to over 30 years in prison, taking a moment to proclaim his innocence in his daughter’s death.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
