Ex-Missouri principal admits to murder-for-hire plot of teacher who was pregnant with his child
A school principal admitted he hired a hitman to kill a teacher he was having an affair with after discovering she was pregnant with his child, allegedly using school funds to pay for the murder.
Cornelius Green, the former principal of Carr Lane Visual and Performing Arts Middle School in St. Louis, Mo., pleaded guilty Wednesday to one count of murder-for-hire and one count of conspiracy to commit murder-for-hire for the 2016 killing of Jocelyn Peters, according to Law & Crime.
The St. Louis Circuit Attorney’s Office agreed to dismiss state murder charges if he was sentenced to life in prison on the federal charges.
His plea deal assured the sadistic former educator would not face the death penalty for his crimes.
Green had started an “ongoing romantic relationship” with Peters while he was married to another woman in late 2015, according to court documents.
Peters, a third-grade teacher at Horace Mann Elementary School in St. Louis, soon became pregnant with Green’s child.
Green enlisted his childhood friend Phillip J. Cutler in February 2016 to pull off the hit, knowing the pregnancy could jeopardize his marriage and possibly his career.
On Feb. 29, 2016, Green sent Cutler a text message asking him to come from Oklahoma to Missouri at the end of March, to which Cutler responded, “Ok, that will work, u gonna b sending the pacge (sic),” according to court records obtained by Law & Crime.
He had paid Culter $2,500, funds which he allegedly stole from the middle school, to finalize the deal.
The former principal allegedly used the address of his school as the return address for the package containing the cash, according to Law & Crime.
“It was further part of the conspiracy that on or about March 8, 2016, in Oklahoma, Cutler received the package sent by Green, accepting the cash in exchange for his planned killing of Peters and her unborn child,” prosecutors wrote in the indictment.
Cutler then traveled to St. Louis from Oklahoma and stayed at Green’s house on March 21, 2016.
Green left the following day on an Amtrack train to Chicago to create an alibi, allowing Cutler to pull off the killing while he was out of state.
Cutler, using Green’s car, drove to Peter’s apartment in St. Louis on March 24 and used a key provided by the former principal to enter her home.
The hitman shot Peters with a .38 caliber firearm in the head, using a potato as a silencer to muffle the sound of the shot” while she was in bed, prosecutors wrote.
Peters was 27 weeks pregnant when she was murdered.
After Culter had pulled off the hit, Green purchased an Amtrak ticket back to St. Louis “so there would be verification that he was in Chicago at the time of the murder.”
Once he returned to St. Louis, Green went to Peters’ apartment and called 911 to report she was shot — “falsely pretending that he had no knowledge of the circumstances leading her death,” according to court documents.
The plot unraveled after video surveillance near the apartment caught Green’s car on Peter’s street at around 3 a.m. on March 24, which was “within the range of time of death of the victims,” according to the documents obtained by The Washington Post in 2016.
“Historical Precision Location Information obtained from Cutler’s cell phone provider shows that his phone was near the victim’s apartment at that time,” the documents say.
Green will appear in the Eastern District of Missouri on June 5 for his sentencing hearing.
Cutler, who also was federally charged with murder for hire conspiracy and murder for hire, pleaded not guilty to all charges against him. His trial is slated to start on March 11.
