The father of Harmony Montgomery denied murdering the five-year-old as he was sentenced to decades in prison on firearms charges.
“I love my daughter unconditionally and I didn’t kill her,” claimed Adam Montgomery as he appeared in New Hampshire’s Hillsboro Superior Court in an orange jumpsuit and handcuffs.
Montgomery, 33, is facing a second-degree murder charge over the death of his daughter, who was last seen alive in December 2019. He faced a judge after being found guilty in June of a string of weapons charges and took the chance to profess his innocence over Harmony’s killing.
“So, I understand that I was found guilty by a jury, and I’m not here to dispute that at all,” he told the court on Monday.
“The only consideration that I have is for you not to consider anything as it relates to the case regarding my daughter, Harmony.
“I didn’t kill my daughter, Harmony, and I look forward to my upcoming trial to refute those offensive claims.”
And he added: “You probably won’t believe me when I tell you that I didn’t wake up one morning and chose to become an addict. I don’t want to be an addict, and I will spend my time in prison realizing it to the best of my ability to change things about myself.”
The judge handed down a sentence that could see Montgomery behind bars until 2099.
FILE - A man walks past the ‘missing child’ poster for Harmony Montgomery on Thursday, 5 May, 2022, in Manchester, New Hampshire— (Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.)
New Hampshire’s state Attorney General John Formella announced last August that investigators had reached the conclusion that the youngster was killed in early December 2019.
The assessment by prosecutors came months after they searched an apartment where Adam Montgomery and her stepmother Kayla Montgomery, had previously lived.
When Harmony disappeared she was in the legal custody of her father, who has been indicted on an assault charge that he hit the youngster in the face in July 2019.
Harmony was only reported missing in November 2021, two years after she disappeared and her body has never been found.
Prosecutors claim that Montgomery killed his daughter by repeatedly hitting her his the head with his fist.
He is set to go on trial for her murder in November, and last October pleaded not guilty to charges of second-degree murder, falsifying physical evidence and abuse of a corpse.
Kayla Montgomery, Adam Montgomery’s estranged wife, is serving an 18-month prison sentence after she pleaded guilty to lying to a grand jury about her whereabouts when she last saw Harmony.
