WILKES-BARRE – Adult-film producer Grant Roy excused himself from the dinner table to use the restroom.

Once inside, Roy called investigators, who told him to continue talking with Harlow Cuadra and Joseph Kerekes.

Investigators were recording their conversation at the Crabcatchers Cafe outside San Diego through a receiver placed on Roy’s belt buckle.

Roy and his business partner, Sean Lockhart, had agreed to cooperate with investigators probing the death of gay pornographic movie producer Bryan Kocis, 44, in Dallas Township in January 2007.

Cuadra, 27, and Kerekes, 35, were suspects in Kocis’ murder when Roy and Lockhart invited them to San Diego in April 2007 to discuss filming movies together.

Unbeknown to Cuadra and Kerekes, investigators recorded their conversations at the cafe and at a nude beach outside San Diego.

Three weeks after investigators alleged Cuadra and Kerekes made several “admissions” to the homicide, they were charged with Kocis’ murder in May 2007.

Kerekes pleaded guilty in December to second-degree murder and was sentenced to life in prison without parole.

Assistant district attorneys Michael Melnick, Shannon Crake and Allyson Kacmarski on Monday played the Crabcatchers recording to the jury deciding the fate of Cuadra, who faces the death penalty if convicted of first-degree homicide.

His trial before Judge Peter Paul Olszewski Jr. is in its second week.

For more than three hours, the jury listened and read the 184-page transcript of the Crabcatchers conversation on the trial’s fifth day of testimony. Most of the conversation involved Roy and Kerekes, who was pressuring Roy into filming several scenes involving Lockhart and Cuadra.

Roy was reluctant to begin filming, telling Kerekes and Cuadra he wanted to think about their plan. Kerekes discussed ways to pay Roy and Lockhart royalty fees under the table to avoid paying Kocis’ company.

Cuadra discussed losing his filming equipment that was seized when authorities searched his and Kerekes’ Virginia Beach home on Feb. 10, 2007.

When Roy excused himself from the dinner table to use the restroom, he used a cell phone to call investigators. After he returned to the table, Roy changed the conversation’s topic to the fallout on their business due to Kocis’ death.

“My career is ruined, now I … once everyone wanted to work with me, and everyone wanted to be involved with me, and now no one wants to touch me,” said Lockhart, according to the transcript.

Kerekes apologized to Roy and Lockhart “for hurting you guys and messing things up; I really do, I messed up our lives too,” the transcript says.

In an attempt to settle the concerns of Roy and Lockhart, Kerekes told them, according to the transcript, that authorities in Pennsylvania put the investigation “on the back burner.”

At one point during the conversation, Roy asked Kerekes, “Did he suffer. Or was it quick? Sean’s wondering.”

Kerekes responded, “I don’t know nothing about … ha, ha, ha,” the transcript says.

Lockhart testified on Friday that Cuadra told him after dinner, “Don’t worry, it was quick; he went quick.”

Cuadra’s alleged comment to Lockhart wasn’t recorded.

After Roy and Lockhart departed, Lockhart told Roy that “Harlow said some stuff to me,” according to the transcript.

Prosecutors are expected to play to the jury today the recorded conversation the four men had at the nude beach.

Also on Monday, testimony from two hotel representatives alleged Cuadra stayed at the Hilton Norfolk Airport, Norfolk, Va., hotel from Jan. 30 to Feb. 2, 2007, and at the Springhill Suites by Marriott in Norfolk from Feb. 2 to Feb. 10, 2007.

Crake said the hotels are minutes from Cuadra’s home.