Detectives, along with Adam Montgomery’s drug dealer and mother-in-law, testify at murder trial

MANCHESTER, NH – Kayla Montgomery’s mother testified Tuesday to meeting Harmony Montgomery only once, after Thanksgiving 2019, when the family of five were evicted from their home at 55 Gilford St.

About two weeks later, Christina Lubin said when Kayla, Adam and their two sons arrived to stay with her for about two weeks, Harmony wasn’t with them.

The state maintains Adam, 34, beat 5-year-old Harmony to death in the back seat of the family car they were living in on Dec. 7, 2019, 10 days after they were evicted. The child had infuriated her father by wetting and pooping her pants in the car.

He is accused of covering up the murder by taking his daughter’s body with him as the family moved from place to place until finally getting rid of it in March 2020, on a trip to Massachusetts. Her remains have never been found.

The first place he stored Harmony’s body was in a Duffel bag that he then placed in a red and white cooler in a common hallway in Lubin’s apartment building, according to Kayla Montgomery’s testimony. It remained there the entire time the family stayed with her mother, she said.

Senior Assistant Attorney General Benjamin Agati in front of Lubin and in view of the jury, wore latex gloves as he used scissors to cut the brown paper from the top of a large package.

He then had Lubin look inside.

She identified the contents as her red and white cooler, the one she kept in the common hallway. She used it to store food for basketball games and occasionally to leave money for Kayla inside it under a piece of cardboard.

She said investigators took the cooler from her home and while they didn’t say why, she had a “suspicion.”

Lubin, who said she earns a living upcycling and recycling every piece of furniture she can get her hands on, was asked about various tools she uses in refurbishing furniture. She listed a number of saws including a table saw, band saw, miter saw and circular saw. Lubin said she did not own a grinder.

Prosecutors contend Adam Montgomery cut up Harmony’s body while the family was living in an apartment on Union Street.
Under cross-examination, Public Defender Caroline Smith asked Lubin what Harmony looked like when she first met her. She described her as healthy, with glasses and she remembered her hair was in pigtails. She said Harmony didn’t talk much.

Anthony Bodero, 50, Adam and Kayla’s friend and drug dealer, also testified. He said he let the Montgomerys sleep in his car for two nights after their car died, which he thought occurred around Thanksgiving weekend. Prosecutors said that was on Dec. 7, 2019, the day Harmony was murdered.

He said the two boys were with them but Harmony was not.

Bodero has known Kayla since 2013 and Adam since August of 2019 when he drove him to Rockingham County Superior Court in Brentwood for a court hearing for a charge of driving without a license. That hearing also involved a drug charge which, under cross-examination, he said he didn’t recall.

He admitted he was convicted of various drug offenses and that when he testified before the grand jury on March 21, 2022, he lied when he was asked if he sold drugs.

Bodero, testifying under immunity, said he sold heroin and crack in 2019 to both Adam and Kayla whenever he had any available. Sometimes they paid in cash, other times with food stamps. He would give them half the value.

He said he never employed Adam to sell drugs or hired him in any capacity.

Bodero said it was Thanksgiving weekend that he let Adam, Kayla and their sons stay in his car. He said he brought them leftovers one night and a pizza the following night.

The first night, the battery died on the car because Kayla didn’t know how to drive a shift and didn’t put the car in neutral so it drained the battery, Bodero testified.

Smith, in her cross-examination, focused on Bodero’s criminal record in an attempt to discredit his testimony.

Bodero said he didn’t know what Adam and Kayla’s living arrangements were before he let them sleep in his car. Kayla Montgomery, however, testified they were living out of their car for about 10 days in the parking lot of Colonial Village, where Bodero lived at the time. Bodero, she said, stopped by often and Harmony would wave to him and he would wave back.

“I never saw Harmony,” he said under cross-examination by Smith. “How can I wave to somebody who wasn’t in the car?”

At one point, Bodero appeared frustrated by Smith’s questioning.

“It’s not the way you are making it sound,” he said. He said he wanted to help the prosecution find “who killed that little girl.”

Matthew Gendron who worked with both Adam and Kayla at the Dunkin’ Donuts on Beech Street, testified he received Facebook messages from Adam around midnight on Dec. 8, 2019, saying he needed help “asap,” that he needed a jump and jumper cables.
Adam said in the messages that his car had died, that they had been sleeping in it and the battery died. Gendron message back that he didn’t have jumper cables. He then received a message from Kayla asking if he would bring her to a store to get them. She said she would give him gas money.

“We will literally die tonight,” she wrote from the Facebook account she shared with Adam.

Gendron said he had to get up early in the morning for work and asked what was open. Kayla apologized and Gendron said it was OK and for her to try and have a good night. “I’m gonna try can we die in this weather” she messaged back. But then she said she found someone with jumper cables.

In the end, Kimberly Frain, another friend, arrived with jumper cables and Kayla and the two boys got into her car to get warm.
Current and former Manchester police officers also took the stand on Tuesday in Hillsborough County Superior Court North, testifying about the searches they conducted of Montgomery’s Sebring and Bodero’s 2010 Audi.

Former Manchester police detective Joseph Tucker, now the cybersecurity manager at Catholic Medical Center, searched Montgomery’s car after it was found at a junkyard, more than two years after Harmony went missing. Doors and tires on the car were missing and it was filled with auto parts.

Tucker used BLUESTAR, a chemical, to test for the presence of blood in the trunk.

“We sprayed the BLUESTAR, the lights went off,” he said. “You see the areas that reacted, and then we took a photograph.” Detectives took samples of the area.

Sgt. Brian O’Leary said there were four positive results which were sent to the NH State Police Forensic Lab for testing.

In the Sebring’s trunk, Tucker said they also found a pink Trolls battery-operated toothbrush. He took the toothbrush out of an evidence bag, got off the stand and then walked slowly in front of the jury panel to show it to them.

The final witness of the day was Katie Swango, a forensic biologist with the NH State Police Forensic Lab.

She compared DNA samples from Adam Montgomery and Crystal Sorey, Harmony’s biological mother, with DNA she obtained from bristles from the Trolls toothbrush.

Swango said the toothbrush contained DNA that was at least 100 sextillion – that’s with 21 zeroes – more likely to be Harmony’s DNA than some random person.