MANCHESTER, NH — Kayla Montgomery took the stand Monday morning and testified that her husband stole a rifle and a shotgun from a friend’s home in the fall of 2019 and stored them in the attic of their home.
Montgomery, 32, serving a 3 ½ to 7-year prison sentence for lying to a grand jury investigating the disappearance and presumed death of her step-daughter Harmony, teared up when she initially took the stand in Hillsborough County Superior Court Northern District. On Monday, she said she lied because she was scared. She did not elaborate and neither the prosecutor nor the defense asked her to explain.
“It’s a lot,” she said, wiping her eye with a tissue, after New Hampshire Assistant Attorney General Chris Knowles asked her if it was difficult to be there.
Under a plea agreement, charges of welfare fraud and receiving stolen property – that same rifle and shotgun – were dropped against Kayla as long as she testifies truthfully against her estranged husband, Adam Montgomery. She has filed for a divorce.
It was the third day of testimony in the case against Adam Montgomery, charged with two counts each of being an armed career criminal, theft by unauthorized taking and receiving stolen property. He is accused of stealing a Mossberg 12-gauge shotgun and a Stag Arms AR-15 rifle from Chris Frain in October 2019.
He also is charged with second-degree murder in the death of Harmony, whose body investigators have yet to find. That trial is slated for later this year.
The current charges are unrelated to the disappearance of his 5-year-old daughter and her presumed death.
The defense maintains Montgomery did not steal the guns, that Frain’s wife Kimberly traded them to Ismael “Ish” Garcia in exchange for drugs. Montgomery, defense attorney Caroline Smith said in her opening statement, was helping Garcia out by shopping the guns around.
Kayla Montgomery, however, testified Montgomery admitted to her that he stole the guns. He stored them in the attic of their then home at 77 Gilford St., she said.
The night the guns went missing from the Frains’ Russell Street home, Adam went over to their home about 10 or 11 p.m. When he returned home about 20 minutes later, he told his wife the door to the Frains’ home was wide open and Kimberly Frain was passed out on the couch.
“He woke her up and she was freaking out about the guns being missing,” she said.
Later, however, Kayla Montgomery said Adam told her he took them. He told her while Kim Frain was passed out, he took the guns and put them in his car. Then he woke up Frain.
She and Adam were friends with the Frains, and did drugs with Kimberly.
Kayla Montgomery was upset about the guns because she said she didn’t like them, Adam stole them from friends and she didn’t want them in the house.
“He just took them,” she said. “He could have given them back after they realized they were gone.”
In October 2019, Kayla Montgomery said Adam would be home with the kids while she worked 6 a.m. to 2 p.m. at Dunkin’ Donuts. At night, when the kids were sleeping, they got high on heroin, crack and weed.
It took her going to jail to get sober, she said.
Kayla Montgomery said after the guns were stolen she remembered seeing Mike (Reed), “Ish” (Ismael Garcia) and Manny checking out the guns at her house. They knew the Frains’ guns were missing but, she said, they didn’t know those were the guns.
“I know Kim was freaking out because she was trying to figure out who took them before Chris came home,” Montgomery said. Chris Frain worked out of town doing construction and would come home on the weekends or whenever the job ended.
Around that time, she said a friend of Adam’s who she knew as Kevin O’Leary, but whose real name is Kevin LaBelle, looked at the guns.
Later, she remembered getting in a fight with Adam because he was leaving the house at night with one of the guns. “I tried to take it from him,” she said. She was concerned that he would get in trouble for having it because he is a felon.
He left the house with the gun. “I remember him and Kevin talking about going up behind Rock Rimmon to shoot it off,” she said.
On Friday, LaBelle testified he bought the shotgun from Adam for $250 but later sold it back to him for 1 ½ grams of cocaine. Adam, he said, then sold the shotgun to someone else. LaBelle also said he went with Adam to Rock Rimmon where LaBelle fired the shotgun once.
Smith, in cross-examining Montgomery, tried to show that Montgomery, who was indicted on gun offenses, had obtained information in her own criminal case through discovery about who said what about the guns and what they were saying about her.
What Montgomery told police, Smith said, was consistent with what she read in discovery.
Montgomery, however, said she didn’t read all of the discovery material and that her attorney had highlighted some points which she did read.
Mike Sullivan testified on Friday that Adam Montgomery came over to his house in the fall of 2019. He got out of the car and was carrying an assault rifle. It was covered by a sheet but the stock and barrel were exposed.
“I said, ‘No! No!’” Sullivan testified. “It was daylight. He was like Rambo coming up my driveway.”
Adam Montgomery, he said, was offering the rifle as a trade for drugs. Sullivan, however, didn’t have any drugs. Montgomery told him it was OK, he could get rid of it and a guy was coming over.
Sullivan told him to move his car out of his driveway and Montgomery did, but parked it close by. A guy drove up – he said he didn’t know his first or last name, and he didn’t care – and Montgomery sold him the assault rifle for cash and drugs.
