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Lawyers prosecuting Angel Ray Montoya for the alleged murder of his girlfriend’s 3-year-old daughter will have to persuade jurors to trust the girl’s mother, a woman who lied repeatedly to investigators to deflect blame from Montoya.

A credibility issue with a main witness is only one of the challenges prosecutors vowed to overcome during Thursday’s opening arguments in Denver District Court.

They say Montoya, 26, strangled Neveah Gallegos in 2007 while babysitting and then sought help from mother Miriam Gallegos to conceal the crime.

Gallegos, 24, is serving 12 years in prison after she admitted telling authorities Neveah had been kidnapped so Montoya would have time to hide the girl’s body.

Denver Chief Deputy District Attorney Michelle Amico warned jurors that Gallegos’ reaction to her daughter’s death, such as helping stuff Neveah’s body into a trash bag, might disgust them.

“You will get to judge her credibility. You may have a hard time believing a lot of what comes out of her mouth,” Amico told the jury. “But what she says is corroborated by all the other evidence.”

Montoya faces up to life in prison for murder and a second charge of child abuse causing death.

His public defender, Sarah Welton, urged jurors to consider what benefit Gallegos, who was offered a plea deal, might get for testifying against Montoya.

She also pointed out other soft spots in the state’s case against her client. She said the Denver Coroner’s Office found Neveah had a ruptured intestine from a blow to the stomach and bruising around her neck but couldn’t say with confidence what killed her.

Prosecutors found an expert in another state who opined that Neveah had been strangled.

Welton characterized the girl’s death as a tragedy and the actions Montoya and Gallegos took afterward as inexplicable but immaterial.

“What we are here to determine is what happened, if anything, to Neveah,” Weldon said. “We as a society think, ‘How could this happen?’ We look for someone to blame.”

The prosecution also warned jurors that they do not have a witness who ever saw Montoya, who had a history of child abuse, strike Neveah but maintained that all evidence pointed to him nonetheless.

Amico painted Montoya as a manipulator bent on covering his tracks. An hour after Neveah died, he called Gallegos at work and asked her to come home.

Montoya had the couple’s song, “Always and Forever,” playing when Gallegos arrived to find her daughter dead, Amico said.

“He said, ‘They’re going to blame both of us. . . . If you love me, you’ll think of me too,’ ” Amico said. “Quite sadly, quite pathetically, that was all it took.”