Middle School Principal Who Hired Friend To Kill Pregnant Teacher Is Sentenced

A former middle school principal in St. Louis who hired a friend to kill a teacher who was pregnant with his child was ordered to serve two consecutive life sentences in federal prison, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Missouri announced Tuesday.

Cornelius Green, 42, pleaded guilty in February to conspiracy to commit murder-for-hire and murder-for-hire in the 2016 deaths of 30-year-old Jocelyn Peters, who was 31 weeks pregnant, and the fetus, named Micah Leigh.

In his plea agreement, Green acknowledged he hired a childhood friend, Phillip Cutler of Oklahoma, to kill Peters, a teacher at Mann Elementary School in St. Louis who was in a romantic relationship with Green. Before her death, Peters believed that Green was divorcing his wife and was unaware that he was also in relationships with several other women, prosecutors said.

According to a sentencing memorandum, Peters was determined to keep the baby after she had previously had a pregnancy loss and then terminated a second pregnancy at “Green’s urging.”

During this time, Green was researching ways to hide abortion pills in oatmeal, according to the memorandum. Prosecutors said when that plan failed, he called Cutler, who “was financially down on his luck and needed money,” to plot the killings.

According to prosecutors, Green, a principal at Carr Lane Visual and Performing Arts Middle School in St. Louis, took money from a school dance team’s fundraiser to pay Cutler for his hitman services. Detectives found evidence that the two planned the killing over a series of phone calls and that Green sent Cutler a package that contained $2,500 in cash.

“He literally stole from children to pay for killing his own child,” Nicole Conaway, who was