Adam Montgomery has been sentenced to 45 years to life in prison for murdering his daughter Harmony Montgomery, 5, who went missing in 2021.
A father who murdered his five-year-old daughter refused a final chance to reveal where her body is, in exchange for a lesser jail sentence.
Adam Montgomery, 34, was sentenced to 45 years to life in prison on Thursday afternoon for killing his child Harmony Montgomery, who was last seen in 2019 and reported missing in 2021.
Prosecutors said that Montgomery murdered his daughter and put her body in the trunk of his car, in a homeless shelter ceiling vent, and in the walk-in freezer of a restaurant he worked at. The dad disposed her body in March 2020.
A prosecutor offered to reduce the ask to 35 years to life if Montgomery confessed ‘where to recover’ Montgomery’s remains.
But the convicted father did not say anything.
‘How can the minimum (sentencing) ever apply… when she died in the car while he ate his food?’ stated the prosecutor at Hillsborough Superior Court in New Hampshire.
‘How could the minimum ever apply when he could tell investigators where her body is right now… so she can be laid to rest.’
The prosecutor continued, according to CBS News: ‘There is nothing minimal about the crimes that he is being convicted for today.
‘He has just yet shown you again in this courtroom and for anybody else that he is heartless, immoral, selfish and an unapologetic murderer of his own child.’
Montgomery’s defense lawyer, Caroline Smith, labeled the state’s offer a ‘stunt’.
Smith insisted that Montgomery’s silence to the offer did not reflect he was not remorseful and that it violated his constitutional right against self-incriminating himself.
‘Mr Montgomery does not have to express remorse here where he has maintained his innocence,’ said Smith.
The defense attorney argued that her client could not offer an ‘appropriate’ sentence since he has maintained he is innocent, and asked that he instead be given rehabilitation.
Montgomery’s estranged wife, Kayla Montgomery, had testified that her family including her two sons with him were evicted before Thanksgiving in 2019 and were living in a car. She claimed that he punched Harmony as they drove to a fast food restaurant because she peed in the vehicle, and that it killed her.
In February, Montgomery was found guilty of second-degree murder in Harmony’s death. In addition, he was found guilty of second-degree assault, abuse of a corpse, falsifying physical evidence and witness tampering, court documents showed.
Before Montgomery was sentenced, Harmony’s birth mother, Crystal Sorey sobbed and shook as she called him a ‘the monster who murdered by baby’ and ‘just plain evil’.
‘Did she cry for me? Did she scream? Did she beg you to stop?’ said Sorey. ‘I’ll never know.’
Sorey told Montgomery: ‘She had a life worth living, unlike your own, and it bothered you to her core that she was nothing like you and everything like me.’
The mother vowed to ‘look for her ’til the end of my days’.
Montgomery is currently serving a minimum 32.5-year sentence on gun charges unrelated to his daughter’s murder.
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