The two women apparently talked on the phone several times after they were arrested in connection with the death of a teenage boy and charged with burying his body in their backyard in Brownstown.

The question, Felina M. Billetdeaux's attorney asked this morning in Lancaster County Court, is whether she knew those telephone calls from the prison to Steva Hagelgans were being recorded and monitored by prosecutors.

Billetdeaux, 23, is charged with criminal homicide, abuse of a corpse and tampering with evidence for allegedly beating 17-year-old Jonathan Moyer to death with a baseball bat in March 2003.

After Moyer's death, police said Billetdeaux and Hagelgans, her roommate at the time, allegedly dug a grave behind their Brownstown home and buried the body in the backyard.

Both women eventually pleaded guilty, but Billetdeaux changed her mind and is now preparing to take her case to trial.

Today's hearing before Judge David Ashworth was to resolve two issues — whether the conversations were recorded legally and whether her statements to state police can be used against her in trial.

This morning, Assistant District Attorney Todd E. Brown began questioning Joanne Resh, a county detective, about the process by which phone calls are recorded in Lancaster County Prison.

Resh testified that notices were posted in 2007 that conversations would be monitored and recorded.

Resh brought nine discs of Billetdeaux's recorded phone calls into court. By late this morning, she had not testified to the dates of the calls, whether they were made before or after the notice was posted. Testimony in the pre-trial hearing is scheduled to continue through Thursday.

Prior to the start of this morning's hearing, defense attorneys Herbert M. Crystle and William Brought indicated to the judge their concerns about statements their client made to police and in telephone calls.

Billetdeaux, now 23, has been held in Lancaster County Prison since her arrest in April 2005.

State police have said Billetdeaux, Hagelgans and Moyer were involved in a love triangle.

Things turned deadly when Hagelgans told Billetdeaux that she was pregnant after having a secret affair with Moyer, police said.

Hagelgans' announcement on March 19, 2003, led to an argument inside the small apartment the girls shared at the rear of 35 E. Main St., Brownstown and Billetdeaux struck Moyer in the head with an aluminum softball bat, police said.

The fatal blow left a large gash on the right side of Moyer's head. The girls wrapped Moyer's head in a plastic bag and kept the body in a closet for about a month, police said.

The two females told friends that Moyer had gone to Florida, and while his body was in the house they had said the smell was from a leaky sewage pipe.

The teenagers dug a grave in a yard behind the house, wrapped the decomposed body in a brown plastic tarpaulin and carried it to the hole using a wheelbarrow.

The body remained there until Hagelgans went to police on April 11, 2005.

Investigators dug up the skeletal remains. The body was swathed in a sheet, blanket and tarpaulin. The clothes and jewelry Moyer was wearing when he was killed were still with the skeleton.

Hagelgans, who gave birth in late 2003 to Moyer's daughter and then had a second child to another man in May 2006, was charged as a juvenile because she was 16 years old at the time of the murder.

She was charged with hindering apprehension, abuse of a corpse, tampering with physical evidence and obstruction of justice. She was sentenced to six months in a Westmoreland County juvenile detention center but was scheduled to be released no later than last October when she turned 21.

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