Crime & Safety
State May Seek Death For Former Middle School Principal, Hitman
Cornelius Green and Phillip Cutler may get the death penalty for the murder of Jocelyn Peters, Green's pregnant girlfriend.
ST. LOUIS, MO — Cornelius Green is accused of hiring Phillip Cutler to murder his seven-months-pregnant girlfriend, Jocelyn Peters, in March 2016 after she was found shot in her apartment. Green was principal at Carr Lane Visual and Performing Arts Middle School at the time, and prosecutors say the unborn child was his. Peters was a third-grade teacher at Mann Elementary School in the Tower Grove South community of St. Louis.
“She was a very great schoolteacher,” Peters' mother told the Post-Dispatch last year. “She was real nice, happy go lucky, a big believer in education.”
According to documents obtained by Fox 2, prosecutors called the murder "wantonly vile" and "inhuman," saying that it meets the requirements for a capital case. If Green and Cutler are convicted of first-degree murder, the state will seek the death penalty.
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