Main image: the empty chair reserved for defendant Adam Montgomery, who never showed up for testimony, in the murder trial of Harmony Montgomery (via Law&Crime). Inset: Adam Montgomery appears in a booking photo (Manchester Police Department).
Adam Montgomery, 33, the father of Harmony Montgomery, 5, was convicted of her murder in New Hampshire on Thursday.
Proceedings in the trial began in earnest on the morning of Feb. 7; closing arguments were done late in the day on Feb. 21. Hillsborough County jurors spent just shy of seven hours deliberating before turning in the slip of paper that contained the convicted man’s fate.
The career criminal, who did not attend his murder trial, and is already serving a 32-year-plus sentence for unrelated gun charges, did not return to hear the jury’s verdict in the years-long case.
Montgomery was also convicted on one count each of assault in the second degree, witness tampering, abuse of a corpse, and falsifying physical evidence for the gruesome and threatening months that followed his daughter’s violent death.
The since-convicted killer has been behind bars since January 2022 for attacking his daughter and interfering with her mother’s custody of the still-missing child. He has since been charged, tried, and convicted of several gun-related crimes. Seemingly the lone suspect, he was charged with Harmony’s murder in October 2022.
Montgomery consistently maintained his innocence.
“I did not kill my daughter, Harmony,” Montgomery said when being sentenced for the firearms charges in August 2023. “I could have had a meaningful life, but I blew that opportunity through drugs. But I loved my daughter unconditionally and I did not kill her.”
Police believe Harmony was killed on Dec. 7, 2019 — the product of her father’s rage after a series of “bathroom accidents” inside the Chrysler Sebring the Montgomerys begrudgingly called home. The family of five had been evicted the day before Thanksgiving that year.
And, then, for years, nothing. Until December 2021.
Harmony’s disappearance slowly made its way onto law enforcement’s radar after an alarm was raised by her biological mother, Crystal Sorey, who lost and regained custody of her daughter due to substance abuse problems throughout the girl’s too-short life.
On the first day of his trial, after previously pleading not guilty to all of the charges, the defendant accepted culpability for the abuse of a corpse and falsifying physical evidence charges – pinning his daughter’s death on his estranged wife, Kayla Montgomery, 33.
“Adam is not an innocent,” defense attorney Jamie Brooks said during opening statements. “He and Kayla covered up Harmony’s death. He’s not an innocent here. He and Kayla moved Harmony’s body from place to place to keep it hidden. And Adam is not an innocent here. He and Kayla put her body in a shower to wash her remains of the fluids of decomposition and then permanently hid her remains.”
Hopes were raised when Harmony’s father, by way of an attorney, took responsibility for hiding her remains but her body has yet to be found.
Last week, Kayla Montgomery testified that her husband did, in fact, kill his daughter inside their car after she had an accident – by repeatedly punching her in the head at various stop lights on the way from a methadone clinic – with the death blow coming in the parking lot of a Burger King.
“That assault never happened, did it?” defense attorney Caroline Smith asked the star witness on cross-examination.
“Yes, it did,” Kayla Montgomery replied.
The defense argued Harmony died several days before – offering a narrative in which the husband “stood by” his wife after he returned home from work one night to find the girl’s “cold, lifeless body” behind the apartment complex where they had been parking their car since being kicked out of their house.
Additionally, the defense sought to paint Kayla Montgomery as a serial perjurer who could not be trusted to tell the truth.
In grand jury testimony during the investigation into Harmony’s death and disappearance, Kayla Montgomery lied about working a shift at Dunkin’ Donuts on the last day she claimed to have seen her stepdaughter alive. Employment records later showed that claim to be false. Kayla Montgomery later admitted to perjury in exchange for a plea deal in which prosecutors dropped various other charges against her in exchange for her testimony against her estranged husband.
A defense effort to have Kayla Montgomery’s testimony stricken from the record was denied by Judge Amy Messer on Tuesday.
Sentencing in the case is likely to be held “sometime after April 1st,” the judge said, after conferring with state and defense counsel. The exact date will be scheduled pending the completion of an upcoming trial that Messer will soon begin overseeing.
And, while Montgomery did not attend his own trial, the state will motion to compel his presence for sentencing, a prosecutor said.
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