KANSAS CITY, Missouri (CNN) -- A Kansas woman charged with killing a pregnant woman and cutting the unborn child from her womb is scheduled to appear before a federal judge Monday, but authorities have not yet decided where her case will be heard.<br /><br />U.S. Magistrate Judge Sarah Hays is scheduled to hold a hearing Monday morning to decide which court will get the case against Lisa Montgomery, said Don Ledford, a spokesman for the U.S. attorney's office in Kansas City. Montgomery, 36, of Melvern, Kansas, will make an initial appearance afterward to hear the charges against her.<br /><br />Montgomery is accused of strangling 23-year-old Bobbie Joe Stinnett at Stinnett's home in Skidmore, Missouri, and cutting the 8-month-old fetus out of her womb. Montgomery was being held in the Wyandotte County jail in Kansas City, Kansas, late Sunday, and faces a federal charge of kidnapping resulting in death.<br /><br />The charge carries possible sentences of life in prison or death if she is convicted. But Todd Graves, U.S. attorney for the western district of Missouri, said his office had not decided whether to seek the death penalty.<br /><br />"It's way too early to make that determination," he said.<br /><br />The baby, named Victoria Jo, was recovered, and her father joined her at a Topeka, Kansas, hospital after Montgomery was arrested Friday night.<br /><br />Melvern residents said Saturday that Montgomery and her husband showed the infant to people in their Kansas town. The Rev. Mike Wheatly, a local pastor, said he and others -- including Montgomery's husband, Kevin -- believed Lisa Montgomery was pregnant and due in December.<br /><br />Kevin Montgomery has not been charged in connection with the case.<br /><br />The Montgomerys said they had named the baby Abigail, Wheatley said. He said Montgomery told him she had given birth to the child at a Topeka birthing center.<br /><br />"We felt betrayed. We were angry," Wheatley said. "But most of all, we're very, very, very sad."<br /><br />Stinnett's mother found her daughter dead in a pool of blood in her home Thursday afternoon and called 911, saying it looked "as though her daughter's stomach had exploded," according to an FBI affidavit filed in support of the charges. Crime scene investigators later determined her womb had been cut laterally, the baby removed and the umbilical cord cut, the affidavit states.<br /><br />The crime shocked Skidmore, a town of about 300 people, with some residents shuttering their doors, saying they no longer felt safe.<br /><br />"It's very hard for me to accept this," Nodaway County Sheriff Ben Espey told reporters. "Nobody here could ever perceive this taking place -- to have a fetus taken out of someone's womb and then doing an Amber Alert to try to find a child."<br /><br />Once in custody, the affidavit alleges, Montgomery "confessed to having strangled Stinnett and removing the fetus. Lisa Montgomery further admitted the baby she had was Stinnett's baby and that she had lied to her husband about giving birth to a child."<br /><br />Espey and Graves said Montgomery had a miscarriage at some point this year, although they would not say how recently it occurred. Espey said the pregnancy was six months along when the miscarriage occurred.
