Post Mortem | Jocelyn Peters and the Notebook

>> Welcome to Post-Mortem. I'm 48 hours correspondent Natalie Morales filling in as host today to speak with Anne Marie Green about her report on the murder of Jocelyn Peters. So on March 24, 2016, Jocelyn's boyfriend,

Cornelius Green called the St. Louis Police Department to report that Jocelyn had been shot in her apartment.

Now, this story features details that I had never encountered

in another 48 hours episode,

“including a key suspect eating pages out of a notebook”

and fragments of a potato that were found at the crime scene. We're going to discuss all of that and more, but first Anne Marie Green, thanks for joining us. >> Natalie, I was great to be here, and you know, I always like doing post-Mortem with you.

So it's fantastic. >> Thank you. I love doing it with you as well, and this one is such an intriguing case. I mean, I got to remind our viewers first though,

if you haven't watched or listened to our 48 hours episode,

Jocelyn Peters on the notebook,

just go check it out right now, then come back for a conversation. Jocelyn Peters was a 30-year-old, beloved elementary school teacher. She was in a relationship with a school principle,

Cornelius Green, for five years. In fact, they were expecting a child together, Jocelyn was seven months pregnant when she was killed in her home. Well, now investigators did find a shell casing on the floor. No weapon, though, was recovered.

Jocelyn's phone was also missing, and they did find something else that was really bizarre and Marie. >> They did. They found potato fragments in the bedroom. And what they really believe is that it was used as a silencer.

And it's not just the potato fragments in the bedroom. As you saw in the hour, Jocelyn was really kind of focused on her health. And she chronicled everything she ate throughout this pregnancy. Potatoes, not on the list. But there's a big bag of potatoes in the house.

Later on, what you find out is that Cornelius and Jocelyn went shopping, shortly before she was killed. And one of the things they bought was potatoes.

“And the reason that it's kind of so important is it gives you an indication”

of the level of pre-planning for this, right? She just didn't just happen to have potatoes. There was something very, very deliberate about purchasing those potatoes that day. And potatoes as a silencer.

I mean, I had never even heard of that before.

Where did that idea even come from? I mean, when I first heard of it, it reminded me of some like 1940s, like talking gangster movie or talking to the column talkies. Yeah, you know what I mean? It probably worked because no one in the apartment heard the gunshots, right?

But also, it's actually, you know, come up in movies and television before. In fact, they mentioned one particular movie during the trial on the 1992 film South Central. They use a silencer, a potato as a silencer. And I know the lead detective on the case actually did a demo for you. I mean, this had to be extremely dangerous, by the way, right?

I did not appreciate how dangerous it was until he sort of showed me how it would work.

“Because I think in my mind, I just thought, oh, you just stick the potato on the end, right?”

But you can't, or right, you have a gun sort of full of potato. So you have to kind of hold it. So you can imagine, Natalie, you're holding this gun at the end of the gun. Where the bullet is coming out, you're holding a potato. If you move your hand in any direction by mistake, you're going to shoot your hand off.

It's extremely dangerous. It does not sound like a good idea at all. Well, police quickly zeroed in on Jocelyn's boyfriend at the time, Cornelius Green. After surveillance cameras picked up images of a white sedan that appeared to look like the car that he drove. That was a Kia Optima.

That was around 3 AM that the surveillance cameras picked up that image. Turns out, though, Cornelius had an alibi. He was in Chicago at the time that Jocelyn was murdered. But we learned that he had loaned his car to his friend named Philip Cutler. Now, before I get into, you know, how we find out about that,

I should talk about his trip to Chicago. He visited friends of his or a couple, 48 hours did reach out to them. They were not interested in participating in this process, according to the prosecution. He was there for a couple of days, and they did think it was sort of a little odd. And that is behavior was a little odd during that time.

You know, it's a quick turnaround. He comes right back, but how we learn that he's lent his car is because, while he's sitting in the interrogation room in the police station, he makes a phone call. And he calls Cutler and asks Cutler to pick up the car.

Video and audio, so I guess he just forgot that in those interrogation rooms,

the cameras are always rolling.

“So he also called his wife, and I, yes, we're talking about his wife,”

because he was still married at the time, his wife Stephanie, and talked about his car keys and asked her to then meet Cutler. No, police bring Cutler in. That's when we see another bizarre thing happen on camera. He was caught on camera eating pages from his notebook.

So from what I gather, you know, Philip Cutler is brought to this room, but he's not told why he's there. An officer at one point comes to the door, opens the door, and that's when Philip Cutler says, "Do you know how long, how long I'm going to be here?"

And the officer says, "Well, it's a homicide investigation." So, you know, I'm paraphrasing these things take time. It is after that, that he starts flipping through his notebook and stuff these pieces in his mouth.

And I guess investigators at the time did not see that video

in real time as we saw it as the viewers. You know, these, I guess I didn't really kind of realize this, but I guess once you're in this room, the cameras are rolling, there's audio there sound. But, you know, the officers or the investigators are,

you know, getting their questions together, getting their paperwork, they're not watching the entire time. And so, when they go back into the room, they didn't know to ask him about these papers until much later. What did they think when they saw that?

Just like the rest of us, they wanted to know what was on, you know, those papers. I know later on, Cutler argued that what was on those papers, it was like the phone number to like a guy that he bought marijuana from. But what we do know is once he realized it was a homicide investigation,

he felt the need to get rid of those Hs. Well, Cutler also claims he did not know Jostland Peters,

“but he did provide police with a key piece of information”

that would become crucial, and that was his phone number.

Yeah, exactly. And then later on, Cornelius gives them access to his actual phone. And so, then what you see as they go through the phone, and then they have the phone number is a really important series of text messages between the two, right?

And I'm just going to read out what's said. Green asked Cutler, when are you coming here? Cutler says, when do you want me to come there? Spring break, March 18th to the 22nd. The week of March 20th is what Green says.

Cutler says, okay, that will work. You got to remember, like, you know, Cutler lives in Oklahoma. These guys are friends for when they were little kids, but they're not hanging out together on a regular basis. Cutler then says, you're going to be sending the package.

Now, investigators are like, what package? What are they looking for? And they look at every possible way that a package could be sent from St. Louis to Oklahoma, and go through all the list.

Could it be UPS? Could it be the postal service until they find a package that was delivered to Cutler? Of course, they don't know what's in it. But they know it's got the dimensions of maybe a letter

or something a little heavier. Well, it turns out that package contained about $2,500 and Cutler had signed for it. Cutler's phone location, by the way, was also placed at the scene of the crime.

And that's when, after all of that is put together, he is then arrested. Right. Well, let's talk about Cornelius Green. Now, Jocelyn's friend called him in the hour, a monster. And he's the worst kind of monster, because he presents

to be something else. I mean, that really struck me hearing that language. Because on paper, he's a school principal. He seems to have everything going for him, but we learn everything else around him is just all of facade.

Right, Emory? The best word, Natalie. I literally was about to say facade. It's all image. No substance.

“I mean, I think he was a good principal.”

People seem to like him as a principal. The prosecutor described him as an enigma, because he has no criminal record. There's a sort of a history of violence or any of that. And yes, we learned that he was married.

He also had a daughter, too. Do we know if his wife was aware at all about Jocelyn and vice versa? He had not been living with his wife in child for several years. According to Jocelyn's family, he told Jocelyn that they were legally separated.

His wife, now, now, ex-wife, she filed for divorce later, to Stephanie knew about Jocelyn, but thought that they had broken up. But here's the thing. There were so many other women.

Tiffany Becker about what she has to say about all of this. We know that he was involved sexually, not only with his ex-wife, off and on, obviously Jocelyn,

“but then he had a relationship with another woman.”

She would believe that she was going to marry him and that they were going to get a house and build a family together. And there were multiple other individuals. We identified during the examination of his text messages

that showed he was juggling all of these relationships at that time. Somehow, he was successful with the ladies. He absolutely was really good at showing different people, I guess, a different face. Yeah, and just to think about Jocelyn,

I mean, she's seven months pregnant, thinking that eventually she might marry the guy, that all she wants is to set up a house with him and to, you know, really just have a solid relationship and start for her baby girl.

I should say Natalie, one of the things that Jocelyn's family set to us is that they felt that he was successful at juggling all these women because he deliberately chose women who were career-oriented and they would be too busy to be going through his text messages, ask them who's this girl that they were just really focused

in women, so they were not going to be checking up on him to see what he was up to.

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allegedly stole $2,700 from his own school's dance team that shows you the kind of desperation and the level of depravity that he was capable of. Yeah, I mean, he didn't have the money to send to Philip Colors.

The allegation is that he stole it from his own school. Nicole Conneway, the principal of Adjozland School, said he literally stole from children to pay for killing his own child. So the way he was caught is they were kind of holding this money

in a box, in a room, basically.

Like a big closet or whatever, not that it wasn't in a bank account. According to police reports, someone saw him go in. And he was just one of a couple of people who went into the room. But when the police were called to do the investigation, they're questioning the teacher who was saying,

I don't know if this money's gone, he's right there. That's her boss. You know, it's very difficult for her to say, "Well, the only other person that went into the room was this guy, my boss."

So it's very uncomfortable situation. But eventually, you know, he is identified as the person who stole the money. I should say he was arrested, but those charges were later dismissed after Cornelius pleaded guilty to the federal charges.

First he was charged at the state level,

but then everything moved over to the federal court. So then those theft charges were dismissed. And I just keep going back to $2,500. I mean, that was how much he valued Jocelyn's life. It's just horrendous.

I absolutely, and not just her life, but you know, you have a child that's coming. And the lead detective Mark Biondalino, I talked to him about it. He thought it was absolutely disgusting.

And that guy, you know, he spent a career doing homicide in St. Louis. So he's seen a lot of things. Biondalino actually said that he seems like more upset about being charged with a theft than what ended up happening

too much later, which was him being charged with murder.

“And going back to, I mean, what was the motive in all of this?”

Well, you know, prosecutors and investigators think the motive was the pregnancy. He already had a child with his wife. He did not want to have another child. He just didn't want the financial responsibility.

And you can see that almost, you know, from the beginning of the pregnancy with Jocelyn, he starts to Google searches to figure out ways to terminate this pregnancy. This is heartbreaking in so many different ways.

But when you talk to Jocelyn's friends and family,

She loved children. She had a good job. You know, if he wanted to be an idiot about this, she would have gone on with her life. So that's, yeah, it's terrible.

And what was the nature of Jocelyn and Cornelius's relationship then at the time of the murder? Because we hear they go on this cruise together. And it seems like things are okay.

“I think like the only red flag before that cruise”

that her friends and family talked about. We mentioned it in the hour. Is she was like ready to build, right? So she's like time, you know, get out of the department. Let's move into a house.

And he was all enthusiastic about searching for houses.

But then he always found like a reason why this house

just wasn't perfect. And it was starting to feel deliberate. Not that he was picky. Not that he wanted nothing but the best. But it just started to feel like he really was using it as a

stall tactic. But on the cruise, Jocelyn's aunt says he looked distracted. And by then, I mean, based on the text messages, he's already planned this whole thing out, right? Jocelyn is not going to see another birthday.

It's just horrific, you know, just thinking if she had possibly moved out just a little bit earlier. Because I know she was making plans to do that. Yes, she comes from an amazing family. They are so supportive of each other.

“And her mom Lacy had Jocelyn's old bedroom already.”

She saved money. She improved the bathroom in the house. Like the plan was, Jocelyn, you come move in. And then you will be surrounded by a village. And this child with that will have all the love and support that they

need. Well, unfortunately, you know, we find out a week later. She ends up dead. So color was arrested and charged with Jocelyn's murder in June of 2016.

And then green was arrested and charged with Jocelyn's murder in October of 2016. Both men were held in the city jail for six years.

While they were waiting there, then they were finally

dead on federal charges in 2022. And Marie, why did it take so long? I know. Now, we've done cases that drag on and on often. It's because the defendant is working the system.

They fire their lawyers. You know, something along those lines. In this case, it's just because St. Louis has such a tremendous backlog, which is like bonkers to me. And eventually what ends up happening is federal prosecutors take a look at the

case. And because it crosses state lines, it actually works really well as a federal case. And the thinking is that it'll be processed. They'll get to trial much faster. It still takes, you know, a couple more years.

But it does get to trial faster. But green though ended up taking a plea deal. He does. He waits until the very, very end. Like, or right before he's going to go to trial.

But the state charges came with the death penalty. And so he ultimately decides that he's going to take a deal with the federal case. The state charges are dropped, including that theft charge. And he agrees to certain facts in the case.

Like, you always do when there's a plea, right?

But his codependent cutler does not. He wants to go to trial. But I got to tell you, he did himself no favors. Several people told this that he was literally sleeping in court.

“And when I asked, are you sure he wasn't just resting his eyes?”

Blinking for a very long time? He, now he was snoring. So they knew he was sleeping. So I'm sure that didn't help at all. You can imagine what the jury thinks about that,

especially when you consider that, you know, here he is charged with killing a pregnant woman. Right. Seven months pregnant at the time as well. Right.

So, cutler's found guilty, Philip Cutler and Cornelius Greene, they're both sentenced to two consecutive lifetimes for the murders of Jocelyn Peters and for the murders of Michael Lee or Baby. And Cutler's appeals so far have been denied.

And how did Jocelyn's family react to that verdict? So certainly there was relief, but without Cornelius going to trial, it leaves sort of a ton of unanswered questions. We're just guessing as to why he did this.

Why he took this most extreme route to solve what he thought was a problem. But the ripple effects continue today. Jocelyn's aunt learned of her murder while she was driving on the highway

to this day she cannot drive on the highway. And Jocelyn's former principal Nicole Connoe could not go back into the classroom after this. And now she actually works as a consultant. So she's still in education,

but you know, looking at the faces in those classrooms if you're too much of Jocelyn. And you got to, you know, consider how her mom was handling all of this as well.

And she shared something beautiful that Jocelyn

“will leave behind kind of an educational legacy.”

And I want to play a clip.

She was a type of teacher that always came very early

because she had to greet each and every student every day. Education was just so important to her. And the kids, learning to use always saying the first time you travel throughout the world is a reading a book.

She was the presence in the room, but I'll see in one word. She was that person. She was that person. So, you know, the St. Louis school district

“is deals with a lot of challenges in the classroom”

and the kids have challenges outside the classroom

and they bring into the classroom. It really takes a special person to take on this vocation. My mom is a retired school teacher. I'm just going to say she was an excellent teacher. And what I learned watching her was

teaching is not something you do. It's who you are. This was Jocelyn. And you can only imagine, you know, the ripple effect on the kids as well.

You know, we can all remember certainly

“that one teacher that had that impact on our lives.”

I imagine Jocelyn Peters, was that teacher to the kids that she taught that she left a mark on them. I absolutely believe that. And it's a pity.

I would have loved to have seen the impact that she would have had on that city if she was allowed to live the life that she hoped and dreamed for. Well, Ann Marie, thank you once again

for another great episode of 48 hours. Thank you, Natalie. And thanks to all the teachers out there. If you like this episode, please rate and review on Apple Podcasts

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