State rests in Adam Montgomery murder trial

MANCHESTER, NH – The state on Tuesday rested its case against Adam Montgomery, after playing a recording of a call he made from the Valley Street jail saying investigators wasted taxpayers’ dollars in conducting searches and following up on tips from “nut jobs.”

Montgomery, 34, is accused of killing his 5-year-old daughter Harmony in a fit of rage after she peed herself in the car the family was living in on Dec. 7, 2019.

Defense attorneys, if they choose, will present their case beginning Wednesday morning in Hillsborough County Superior Court North. If not, closing arguments will take place after which deliberations will begin.

After the jury left for the day, the defense moved to dismiss three charges against Montgomery: second-degree murder, second-degree assault and witness tampering. Judge Amy Messer denied the motions.

As has been his practice since the trial began, Montgomery chose not to appear in court, the ninth day of his trial.

He appeared on the first day of jury selection which took 1 ½ days, so some of the 17 members of the jury – 3 men and 14 women – have never seen him.

Tuesday, however, they heard his voice in that recorded telephone call he made to an unnamed individual from the Valley Street jail where he was held pre-trial.  Now, he is detained in the New Hampshire State Prison where he is serving a decades-long sentence for being an armed career criminal and on weapon offenses.

Manchester Police Capt. Matthew Larochelle, who helped oversee the search for Harmony, was the state’s final witness.  He testified to following up on leads, particularly one out of Surprise, Arizona, where someone had said they had seen Harmony.

Larochelle identified Montgomery’s voice on the jail recording.  Montgomery had called someone and was complaining about the state having “bombarded” defense attorneys with discovery which he thought then numbered about 5,000 pages.

“You’re just gonna chase down people that call in from Arizona and say I’ve seen that child out here at this restaurant and they’re going to fly out to that restaurant to get video surveillance?” he said.

He complained about various tips police received.

“But dude, my friend who died who was cool with Adam but you don’t even know what your friend’s name was. What the fuck dude, like?” Montgomery said.  He referred to some of the tips as being “outlandish,” and said it seemed to be “going to an extent that, like, it’s, fantasy almost.”

He said “they wasted their time” and said it was a “waste of taxpayer money.”

The first witness Tuesday was Douglas Small, 85, grandfather of Kelsey Small, Adam Montgomery’s girlfriend who died in March of 2022.  Her death was not suspicious, authorities have said.

Douglas Small testified Adam and Kelsey stayed at his home in Maine for several weeks. He said on Nov. 11, 2021, he picked up Kelsey and Adam in Rochester, N.H.  They stayed with him two different times.

In late 2021, he lent Kelsey his Pontiac Grand Prix so they could drive back to Manchester.  That was the car the two were sleeping in on Dec. 30, 2021, when police spoke to Montgomery about Harmony’s whereabouts.

Small also said that at one time, about four police detectives came to search a one-room schoolhouse on a property he owns in Maine.  He said at that time he did not know why they wanted to search it.

Also testifying was Massachusetts State Trooper Bryan Hernandez, a detective with the Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office. He was the liaison between Mass. State Police and Manchester police beginning in September 2022 in the disappearance of Harmony Montgomery.

He testified about toll records that showed a U-Haul with Arizona license plates, that prosecutors say Adam Montgomery used in disposing of his daughter’s body, driving back and forth over the Tobin Bridge in Boston on March 4, 2020.  The tolls were not paid.

Hernandez also described various searches for Harmony’s remains that law enforcement carried out near the Tobin Bridge in Revere and Saugus, Mass.  The Special Emergency Response Team (SERT) conducted air and land searches, and used dive teams.

He said more than 30 law enforcement officers searched the Rumney Marsh in Revere twice –    on Sept. 18, 2022 and again on April 7, 2023 – for eight hours each day.   Harmony’s body was never found.

Rebecca Maines, a convicted felon who is presently in the New Hampshire State Prison for Women on a parole violation but who has pending drug charges, was the third witness.

Maines described Adam Montgomery has having been her best friend.  She also was a friend of Kelsey Small’s.

Maines said in a 2021 conversation with Adam, he told her he dropped Harmony off to her mother, Crystal Sorey, at a rest area in 2019.  He said Sorey wouldn’t let him see Harmony, and that he had been trying to see her for some time.

Maines said he also told her that before she went to live with Sorey, Harmony was constantly wetting her pants.

“He would put her in the corner in her soiled pants,” she said.  “But when she got in the car, she would have an accident but it was on purpose.”  He said he sent her back to Sorey because she “continuously shit her pants.”

Maines testified Adam told her about an incident in which he struck Harmony.  Adam was in the bathroom and when he came out, he saw “Harmony with her hands over the baby’s mouth and nose, and the baby was not breathing and turning blue. He said he saw red and just backhanded her,” she said.

Adam, Maines testified, also told her he hated Harmony because she reminded him of her mother.

Montgomery is charged with second-degree murder; second-degree assault, for blackening her eye in July 2019; abuse of a corpse; falsifying physical evidence; and witness tampering.

Prosecutors say Montgomery beat Harmony to death on Dec. 7, 2019, and then hid her body in a bag.  As the family moved about the city, he allegedly stored the body in a cooler; then in the ceiling of a family shelter where they lived.  When neighbors complained about a stench coming from their room, Montgomery took it with him daily to a downtown restaurant where he worked and stored it in a walk-in cooler on a shelf with the condiments.  He then would take the bag back home with him.

When the family moved to a Union Street apartment, the body went with them and was stored in the fridge, prosecutors said.   Kayla Montgomery, his estranged wife, testified that one day he spent hours in the bathroom thawing it and compressing it to make it easier to dispose of on a later trip in March 2020 into Massachusetts.

Authorities were unaware the 5-year-old was missing for more than two years until Sorey reported in late 2021 to the state Division of Children, Youth and Families, that she hadn’t seen her daughter since April of 2019. Sorey lost custody of Harmony while she was in rehab for a substance abuse problem.

Kayla Montgomery said it took Adam, who had a violent past, four years before a Massachusetts judge granted him custody.  Harmony lived with them for only 10 months before she died.