CONCORD, N.H. — The estranged wife of a New Hampshire man convicted of killing his 5-year-old daughter and moving the body for months was released on parole Thursday, more than a year after she was sentenced to prison for lying about where she was when the child was born. was last seen.
Kayla Montgomery, 33, is expected to be released in May, days before her husband is scheduled to be sentenced. She was ordered to complete mandatory prison programs related to substance abuse treatment and to have an approved home plan. She will be under intensive supervision for at least several months.
She should have opened her mouth so authorities could find the girl and know what happened to her, she told the three-member panel of the New Hampshire Adult Parole Board during her hearing at the state prison for women.
“I didn’t tell the truth about where I was at that time,” Montgomery said. “And because I couldn’t cooperate with the detectives, I became completely involved in the situation and if I had been honest from the beginning, they could have done their job sooner.”
Harmony Montgomery’s case has exposed weaknesses in child protection systems and prompted calls to prioritize the welfare of children over parents in custody cases. Harmony Montgomery was moved between the homes of her mother and her foster parents several times before Adam Montgomery, her father, gained custody in 2019 and moved to New Hampshire.
Michelle Raftery, a foster parent from Harmony Montgomery, attended Kayla’s hearing and cried when she heard the parole board’s decision. She declined to comment afterward.
Kayla Montgomery was a key witness against her husband last month during his two-week trial on manslaughter and other charges in his daughter’s death.
Authorities believe Harmony Montgomery was murdered on December 7, 2019, but the child was not reported missing for almost two years afterward. Her body has not been found.
Kayla Montgomery, her stepmother, has lost her parental rights to her own four children, three of whom were fathered by Adam Montgomery. She said she had appealed to get them back.
She was sometimes in tears as she answered the board’s questions about how she had made mistakes by not completing one treatment program and breaking the rules of another program by pretending to take her medication.
Ultimately, she was allowed to participate in the program again. “I’ve actually been working on myself,” she said.
Board member Tricia Thompson noted that Kayla Montgomery would come under a lot of pressure in the community to keep herself together and not lie.
“Once you tell it, you’re defeated because you can’t keep up,” Thompson said.
“All I can do is take it day by day,” Kayla Montgomery said.
Kayla Montgomery pleaded guilty in 2022 to two counts of perjury for lying during grand jury testimony about working at a donut shop on Nov. 30, 2019, the day she said she last saw Harmony. She was sentenced to at least 18 months in prison and agreed to cooperate with prosecutors in their case against Adam.
In return, prosecutors dropped charges that Kayla also lied to health officials about having the child in her care to collect welfare payments and that she had received stolen firearms.
Kayla Montgomery had testified that her family, including her two young sons with Adam Montgomery, had been evicted from their home just before Thanksgiving in 2019 and were living in a car. She said Adam Montgomery punched Harmony Montgomery at several stoplights on Dec. 7 as they drove from a methadone clinic to a fast-food restaurant because he was angry that the child had had a bathroom accident in the car.
She then said she handed food to the children in the car without checking on Harmony Montgomery and that the couple later discovered she was dead after the car broke down. She testified that her husband placed the body in a duffel bag. She described several places where the girl’s body was hidden, including the trunk of a car, a cooler, a center ceiling fan for the homeless and the walk-in freezer at her husband’s workplace.
During Adam Montgomery’s trial, his lawyers suggested that Kayla continued to lie to protect herself. They said their client did not kill Harmony, and that Kayla Montgomery was the last person to see the child alive.
Kayla Montgomery testified that she did not come forward about the child’s death because she was afraid of her husband. She said Adam Montgomery suspected she was going to go to the police, so he started hitting her and giving her black eyes, she said. She eventually walked away from him in March 2021.
Last year, Kayla Montgomery testified against her husband in an unrelated case in which he was convicted of gun theft. He was sentenced to more than 30 years in prison, taking some time to proclaim his innocence in his daughter’s death.