A former principal in Missouri murdered his pregnant girlfriend after repeatedly trying to force her to have an abortion. Now, he’s been given two life sentences after pleading guilty to the crime.
Cornelius Green entered a plea agreement earlier this year, allowing him to escape the possibility of the death penalty. In October of 2015, Green found out his girlfriend, Jocelyn Peters, was pregnant. Green, who was married at the time, was the principal at Carr Lane Visual and Performing Arts Middle School in St. Louis, while Peters taught third grade at Mann Elementary School.
This wasn’t the first time Peters became pregnant with Green’s baby. Previously, she had become pregnant and he convinced her to have an abortion; another time, she became pregnant and suffered a miscarriage. This time, she was adamant that she was going to keep her child.
Prosecutors said that Green “pretended to be planning a life with Jocelyn, a young school teacher, but in reality, Green was juggling multiple women and his lifestyle was about to come crashing down.”
READ: Pregnant woman murdered by lover because she wouldn’t have an abortion
According to the sentencing memorandum, Peters had already named her baby girl Micah Leigh. The record states:
The statutory mandatory minimum sentence for each count to which the defendant pleaded guilty is life in prison. Pursuant to Rule 1l(c)(l)(C), Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, the parties agreed that the defendant should be sentenced to life imprisonment on each count because it is the only sentence that satisfies the statutory aims of punishment set forth in 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a).
Due to the egregious nature of defendant’s offense, the extraordinary harm to the community and other sentencing goals, running the life sentences consecutive to one another is appropriate under the circumstances.
Green began trying to coerce Peters to have an abortion, searching online for how to obtain abortion pills and administer them to her without her knowledge or consent, according to the Department of Justice. He planned to hide the pills in her oatmeal or yogurt. When that didn’t work, he turned to a hitman. He stole $2,500 from his school’s dance team fundraiser and hired Phillip Cutler to kill Peters. She was murdered on March 24th, 2016.
After being informed that the hitman had completed his job, Green tried to get Peters’ mother, Lacey Peters, to check on her.
“The depravity of asking a mother to go find Jocelyn’s body, knowing she was dead, can’t be matched,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Tiffany Becker said. When she wasn’t available, he arranged to “find” her body himself, and then called 911.
“All she ever did was love him, and she loved that baby so much,” Lacey Peters said.
The entire scheme sadly was not discovered until 2022, when both Green and Cutler were arrested.
“This talented, award-winning educator who was described as ‘magical’ would never be there again to greet students on their way into school each morning,” prosecutors said of Peters during Green’s sentencing.
Dr. Nicole Conaway, the principal of Mann Elementary when Peters worked there, said the crime was horrific on numerous levels. “He literally stole from children to pay for killing his own child,” she said.
Conaway said that when Peters’ class learned their teacher had been killed, “I will never forget the pain in their eyes. This trauma will follow them for the rest of their lives.”
