Adam Montgomery’s Defense Says Kayla Killed Harmony — Not Him

**SPEAKER_1** (0:01)
This is Hidden Killers Live with Tony Brueski and Robin Drake.

**Tony Brueski** (0:08)
New Hampshire says it's going to retry Adam Montgomery for murder, but the retrial is not going to look like the first trial. The assault evidence, the prosecution's strongest material, the stuff multiple witness could testify to, out. What's left is a murder case built on the testimony of one woman, Kayla Montgomery, Adam's estranged wife, who went to prison for lying to the grand jury investigating Harmony's disappearance before cutting a cooperation deal. Bob Motta, Defense Attorney, is with us with an assessment on whether Kayla can carry a murder conviction on her own. That's the question the entire retrial is going to be running on. I guess let's start here on Kayla. I get it. They're going to want to point the finger there, but she had already cut the deal to testify against, and I'm sure she'll be testifying against here with her own words, and she's going to be butchered by the defense for not being a reliable witness and cutting her 50 different ways in terms of her credibility. But at the end of the day, if you're truly wanting justice for Harmony, and if you're going to point the finger at Kayla, and let's say Kayla is the one that's responsible for her death, for going to play the cards that direction allegedly.
If she's already cut a deal, and she's the one who actually did this, and he's the one who was participating in the cover-up for all those years, for that time period, could there even be justice if she's already cut a deal?

**Bob Motta** (1:40)
Yeah, I mean, there could be. Look, at the end of the day, they're going to have to impanel a new jury. And I think most people in that area have probably heard of the case. So Adam Montgomery is not going to be a mystery. The facts of the case aren't going to be a mystery.
Harmony is not going to be a mystery to most of these jurors. And in terms of rehabilitating a potential juror who may admit that they have some kind of bias coming into the case, it's as simple as a judge saying, look, I understand that you may feel a certain way right now, but are you able to follow the law? And if that juror says, yeah, I'm able to put that aside and I'm able to follow the law and put that bias aside, the judge is going to say, okay, well, you're rehabilitated. So theoretically, they could have a bunch of jurors that know exactly what the hell was going on in this case, even without them. And they're not, look, and don't get me wrong, they're not allowed, assuming that the assault evidence is not going to be allowed in, they're not allowed to apply what they know outside of that trial to the way that their thought process works, but that's not reality. Like the law, I like to call it a legal fiction. It's that thing where, you know, I always use the term, you can't unring a bell, you know, you can pull a skunk out of the jury box, but the smell remains. And it's that concept, because that's how the human mind works, as much as they may say, okay, well, I'm not going to consider that, subconsciously, they're considering it. You know, as defense attorneys, you know this about jurors, because they're human beings.
So ultimately, if you're stripping this case down to kind of just its core, you're looking at a no-body homicide built on the word of one cooperating witness who has a perjury conviction. And that's the case at its core. You know, no confession, there's no remains, no eyewitness, who also isn't a suspect. But when you look at like, how can the prosecution rehabilitate a witness like Kayla?
You lean into her, you know, you don't hide the warts, you put them out there on the front end. You know, you talk about, look, Kayla's got issues, you know, and I'm talking about if you're the prosecution, you front it. You don't sit there and try to pretend it doesn't exist because that's gonna bite you in the ass. And you have her on direct, you say, you have her admitting, yes, I lied. And yes, I went to prison for it. And yes, I have a deal. And here is why you should believe me anyway. You know, so you have to turn her into somebody that the jury can trust, you know, because you know who's not going to testify is Adam Montgomery. Right. So in that situation, you're gonna have all of the facts that can come in, in terms of them doing all the insane shit that they were doing, dragging this poor, deceased little beautiful girl around in a bag and putting her up in ceilings and all the disgusting shit that they were doing.