The trial against the father accused of killing 5-year-old Harmony Montgomery continued Tuesday.
Adam Montgomery's mother-in-law testified Tuesday in the Harmony Montgomery murder trial.
Christina Lubin, the mother of Adam's estranged wife Kayla Montgomery, testified that she met Harmony only once, shortly after Thanksgiving of 2019 at her home after her daughter and her family had been evicted from their apartment on Gilford Street. She said they came to stay with her for a longer period of time later that month, but Harmony wasn't with them.
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"I picked them up at my sister's place," she said. "They had nowhere to go."
She said they had some bags with them, but she didn't remember what exactly.
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Lubin said she often left money for her daughter and her family inside a red cooler in the hallway of her apartment, which she identified in court on Tuesday. Kayla Montgomery told investigators that Harmony's body was kept in a red cooler the entire time they stayed with her mother, until the end of December 2019.
Lubin also testified about various tools she keeps at her home that she uses to refurbish and flip furniture, including a table saw, a circular saw, a band saw and a mitre saw.
When asked by defense attorney Caroline Smith about when she met Harmony, Lubin said the little girl was wearing glasses and had pigtails in her hair. She said Harmony didn't talk much, "and they were there very briefly." She said she looked healthy, but didn't talk much while she was there.
Jurors also heard Tuesday from Adam Montgomery's friend Anthony Bodero. He told jurors he provided Adam's family with a car to stay in temporarily after they were evicted from their apartment and their own car died. Adam is accused of killing his 5-year-old daughter Harmony in December of 2019.
Bodero said he saw Adam "every few days" back in 2019 and has also known Adam's estranged wife Kayla Montgomery for over a decade.
He said he first met Adam Montgomery in 2019 through a friend when he needed someone to drive him to court. When they arrived to pick him up, Harmony and Kayla's two young boys were in the car.
"The last time I saw Harmony was the second and last time I ever saw her, and that was about three weeks to a month after the August incident. I saw her with them where they resided at."
Bodero said he regularly sold drugs to both Adam and Kayla back in 2019. He said he sold heroin and crack to them "whenever I had any available." He said they would pay in either cash or food stamps.
Prosecutors asked him about the period after Thanksgiving weekend in 2019, when Bodero said they approached him and said they had no place to live and he told them they could stay in his vehicle for two days. He said Adam, Kayla and their two young boys were there, but there was no sign of Harmony.
Bodero said he rarely saw Adam and Kayla during those two days, but they were always together. He told prosecutors he gave them leftover Thanksgiving dinner one day and gave them a Domino's pizza on the second night.
Defense attorneys tried to cast doubt on Bodero's testimony for the prosecution by highlighting his criminal record and history of selling drugs.
Tuesday's testimony began with Manchester police Officer Neil Penttinen on the stand. He testified about two crashes he responded to on Nov. 29 and Dec. 2, 2019 where Adam Montgomery was one of the drivers.
The second witness to testify on Tuesday was Matthew Gendron, a former coworker of Adam and his estranged wife Kayla Montgomery at the Dunkin' on Beech Street in Manchester. He testified that he was Facebook friends with both of them and would initiate conversations with them "every week or so."
On Dec. 8, 2019 -- the day after prosecutors say Harmony was killed -- Gendron said he was no longer working at Dunkin' when he received a series of Facebook messages after midnight from Adam saying, "Hey need help asap please need a jump and jumper cables asap."
"I need a jump," he said again a short time later. "My car died we been sleeping in our car and the batterie [sic] just died."
Gendron responded that he didn't have jumper cables, and received another message saying, "This is kayla will you bring me to a store to get them ill give you gas money we will literally die tonight." Gendron said Adam and Kayla shared the Facebook account.
Gendron told Kayla he had just gotten home from work and had to get up early the next morning, and asked them what was open at that hour and where they were.
The conversation continued, with Kayla referencing several places that might be open. She then apologized, saying she knew Gendron had to wake up early.
"It's ok try to have a good night," Gendron said, to which Kayla responded, "Im gonna try can we die in this weather?" Kayla then said she had found someone with jumper cables, but Gendron said he didn't really want to drive over and jump the car that late at night and suggested calling AAA or another 24-hour roadside assistance service.
The final message from Kayla received at 1:53 a.m. said they didn't have insurance that would provide access to roadside assistance but told him not to worry about it.
Gendron also testified that he was not aware that Adam and Kayla were living in a car until that night.
The third witness to testify on Tuesday was Aaron Sweeney, a longtime Manchester resident.
In 2019, Sweeney said he worked for Auto City towing. And on Dec. 7, 2019, around 12:52 p.m., he said he towed a disabled 2010 Chrysler Sebring belonging to Adam Montgomery from the corner of Webster and Elm streets in Manchester. Sweeney said he first towed the car to a nearby gas station so the people in the car could retrieve some belongings from the vehicle. He said he remembered two men getting some items out of the car and putting them into another car.
He said he didn't remember what items the men took out of the car. Once they were finished, he said he brought the car back to his company's tow lot.
The day's fourth witness was Joseph Tucker, who works at Catholic Medical Center as the cybersecurity manager but previously worked for the Manchester Police Department from 2015 until 2022.
In January of 2022, he said he was asked to assist police with a search of Adam Montgomery's 2010 Chrysler Sebring, which had been in a junkyard for years. That included collecting evidence like photos and blood samples. He said a pink toothbrush was among the items recovered from the trunk of the vehicle.
Prosecutors had the actual toothbrush -- an electric children's Trolls toothbrush -- in court Tuesday, and had Tucker display it for the jurors.
After Tucker, Manchester police Sgt. Brian O'Leary took the stand. He worked in the detective squad for nine years, up until 2022. As part of that squad, he said he was involved in the investigation into the disappearance of Harmony Montgomery. He was also involved in the same search of the Sebring that Tucker had been involved in back in January of 2022.
He testified about the use of the BLUESTAR test, used to check for the presence of blood. The blood visualizing agent was used by police in the search of the car. Four positive swabs were located in the trunk of the vehicle, which were sent to the New Hampshire State Police Forensic Laboratory.
Manchester police Detective Ryan Heile, a 10-year veteran of the department, also testified Tuesday, answering questions mostly about how he was part of the team analyzing evidence from the Harmony Montgomery case.
Around 3:30 p.m. Tuesday, jurors heard from Katie Lynn Swango, who works at the New Hampshire State Police Forensic Laboratory. She testified about DNA tests she ran on the pink Trolls toothbrush found in the trunk of Adam Montgomery's Sebring, which matched both Adam Montgomery and Crystal Sorey, Harmony's mother.
"Everything lined up perfectly as if it could have been from a child made by those two people," Swango said. She also said the gender of the child was female.
Defendant's wife says she still cares about him
On Monday, Harmony's stepmother Kayla Montgomery finished her testimony. Adam's defense team is arguing Kayla is the one who killed the 5-year-old girl, which Kayla has denied.
Last week, Kayla testified that Adam beat Harmony to death after a bathroom accident in the car in December of 2019. While on the stand Monday, Kayla was asked if she still loved her estranged husband, and said she still cares about him despite the horrors she said she witnessed.
Kayla Montgomery has been the star witness against her husband, Adam, who is facing second-degree murder and other charges in the death of his daughter, Harmony. Authorities believe the girl was killed on Dec. 7, 2019, but that she wasn’t reported missing for nearly two years after that. The girl's body has not been found.
As the trial got underway in Manchester last week, defense attorneys acknowledged Adam Montgomery is guilty of falsifying evidence and abusing a corpse. But they said he did not kill Harmony and have instead suggested the girl actually died on Dec. 6 while alone with her stepmother, Kayla.
“That assault never happened, did it?” Smith, the defense attorney, said after Kayla Montgomery again testified that her husband repeatedly punched Harmony in the head because the girl had wet herself.
“Yes, it did,” said Kayla. She also denied the defense team's theory when prosecutor Christopher Knowles directly asked her, “Did Harmony die in the middle of the night alone with you when the defendant wasn’t even there?” “No,” she answered.
The family, including the couple’s two young boys, had been evicted and were living in a car at the time. According to Kayla, Adam punched Harmony at several stop lights as they drove from a methadone clinic to a fast food restaurant the morning of Dec. 7.
She showed little emotion Monday, answering questions about handing food to the children without checking on Harmony, the subsequent discovery that the girl was dead and all the places she said the body was hid, including a homeless center ceiling vent and the walk-in freezer at her husband’s workplace. But she later cried and wiped her face with tissues when asked whether she still loves Adam.
“I still care about him because he’s the father of my children,” she said. “He was my best friend. It’s been hard for me to just let go.”
Knowles then showed her a large photograph of her own faced, bruised with injuries she said Montgomery had inflicted and asked why she stayed with him.
“I was scared, and I still cared about him,” she said, giving a similar answer when Knowles showed her a large image of Harmony and asked, “Why stay with someone who did what he did to a helpless girl like this?”
Kayla Montgomery 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. She was not given immunity, but acknowledged to Smith that she hasn’t faced further consequences for inconsistencies in her various statements to police or prosecutors.
“By that agreement, you were supposed to only tell the truth, and your story changed a lot,” said Smith, suggesting Kayla has continued to lie to protect herself. “And at the grand jury, you were always supposed to tell the truth, and you lied.”
Adam Montgomery has not been attending his trial. He was convicted last year in an unrelated case involving gun theft and was sentenced to over 30 years in prison.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
