48 Hours - Jocelyn Peters and the Notebook

Episode Date: March 16, 2026

Why did a man eat pages from a notebook when facing questions about the murder of a third grade teacher? To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The police department is let me help you. I just got home and the door was open and I walk in and I think she had my girlfriend's inside. Where was she sat at? It looked like the head. Did you see who it did it? I don't know. I can't go in there.

This victim resided at an apartment inside the building. Uniform officers had already been there. The first thing we do is we're going to go in and we're going to see where our victim is. My name is Mark Beondelino. I'm a retired homicide detective from the city of St. Louis, and I investigated the murder of Jocelyn Peters from March 24, 2016. This isn't someone who would accidentally leave a door open. She was responsible. One of the most responsible people. I knew it just didn't make sense. She was a strong force, fierce advocate for children, loved them dearly, and everyone was going to succeed in her classroom.

She always wanted to do the next best thing. In her free time, she was always checking out what she could do differently to meet the kids' needs. What programs there were out there? There are only three to four full-time arts teachers at the middle school level. She'd bust into my office, hey, I need you to come to my classroom today.

I've got some magic going on, and you need to come and see it. The kids were learning, and she cared about each one of them, and whatever they needed. She gave that to them. First person that we're going to speak to is the person that discovered her. And this is Cornelius Green.

Correct. She truly, truly fell in love with them, honestly, and we all did. He was a principal. He was kind. He was generous. I mean, he was very attentive to her needs. He voluntarily goes down to the police headquarters. You were in Chicago since Tuesday? Yes, sir. And then you come back today at 257 p.m.

This is my got to Amtrak at 257. How did you get today, a train station? My brother drove me over there. You're Philip? Yeah. He identified Philip Cutler as brother, was the person who was transporting Mr. Green to the Amtrak station, picking him up

when he arrived back in town. Other investigators from the homicide unit were able to go out and, and pick up Mr. Culler to conduct an interview. Detective Hersberg advised him, we're gonna speak to you regarding this homicide that occurred today. After hearing the word homicide, he stands up,

he lets out a big sigh, and then he reaches into his back pocket and retrieves a notebook. He thumbs through several pages, tears out a piece of paper, and then he immediately puts it into his mouth begins chewing it. Whatever was on those two sheets of paper, he immediately wanted to get rid of. There's another sort of loose end in this case too. Yes. We identified immediately

organic materials, splattered about in the headboard and around her pillow and then along the floor. What did that turn out to be? We identified that as being fragments from a potato, like what you think like a baked potato. This case is baffling. My name is Tiffany Becker. I'm a retired Assistant United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Missouri. I couldn't believe the depravity of the crime itself.

Hey, do you ever been involved in a case like this before? Nothing like this. Ann Marie Green reports. Jocelyn Peters in the notebook. Lead homicide detective Mark Beondolino began investigation into Jocelyn Peters murder on March 24th, 2016. Since then, he has remained connected to the case, even though he's now retired from the St. Louis Missouri Police Department.

I think you have a responsibility to do that. He wanted to see it to the end. You got to see it to the end. If you're working in homicide, you're not just going to let it fall by the wayside. We took a drive to the city's central West End neighborhood. nestled among the historic homes is Jocelyn Peters' apartment building. Her apartment's right up there. Yeah, it's the second floor balcony, you see, that's directly in front of us.

Is it easy to access that apartment? From the outside, absolutely not. I mean, it's a tremendous distance from the ground up to that balcony. Jocelyn Peters lived in apartment 201. A 30-year-old third-grade teacher had been murdered in the middle of the night while she was sleeping in her bed. Authorities believe she was killed between 3 a.m. and 3.40 a.m.

How do you get inside the building? So this is the front foyer entryway to the apartment complex. You'd have to use your key to get in through that front foyer and then go up the stairs directly at the top of the banister of the staircase. Jocelyn's boyfriend, Cornelius Green,

had been in Chicago for three days. When he returned to St. Louis on Thursday, March 24th, he told investigators he drove his car, a white Kia Optima, straight to her place. Jocelyn's mother, Lacey Peters, says she received an alarming call from Cornelius soon after. When he called me, he told me that he went to go check on her, and she was on the floor. Deidre Peters, Jocelyn's aunt, says she had heard something was wrong with her niece. She immediately began driving towards her apartment, but before she could get there. Lacey had called and she said, Diedra pull over.

And I don't remember anything that happened at that point because I lost it. Police had given Lacey news no mother wants to hear. Jocelyn, her eldest daughter, was dead. I just remember just crying and just screaming, just couldn't be. True. Authorities say there were no signs of forced entry at Jocelyn's apartment. The wood door at the main entrance appeared secure and sturdy. The landlord was hyper secure over who had keys and what type of keys are used to get into that building. The keys were non-deplicable. They're unable to be duplicated. If you took it to a locksmith, they're not allowed to make a copy for you,

or they could lose their certification. It was no surprise to investigate. that Cornelius had keys to Jocelyn's place. While they didn't live together, they had been in an intimate relationship for five years. Jocelyn was seven months pregnant, and Cornelius was the father. Jocelyn felt that he'd make a wonderful father. In Jocelyn's home,

investigators discovered a guest list, as well as invitations inspired by Alice in Wonderland for her upcoming baby shower. Beyond Alino and his team had a lot of questions about the crime scene. Had the department been ransacked, had it looked like there'd been a struggle. Do you see any of that? Absolutely not. It didn't even remotely look disturbed. Jocelyn's cell phone was missing.

A single shell casing from a 380 caliber semi-automatic pistol was discovered on the floor near the nightstand. From my investigative standpoint, we saw that she was laying on her side, head facing the headboard, She had an apparent wound to her eye. And there was something investigators had never seen before. Potato fragments splattered in the bedroom. Splattered about in the headboard, pieces of it on the victim around her head and around her pillow and around behind where her head was. They soon had a theory. We believe the potato was used as a makeshift suppression silencer to,

silence the sound of the firearm being fired. Beyond Alino showed us how authorities believe the killer used it. I would imagine that the shooter would have the gun. I'm right-handed, so he'd be holding the gun in his right hand, and he'd have to put that potato out over the barrel of the gun. What's the risk? How dangerous is that? I mean, I think I'm no gun expert by any means, but I think it falls in that category of extremely dangerous,

and extremely risky. Can a potato work as a silencer? I believe it did in this scenario, and I say that because when we did our canvas, when we looked for calls for service in the area around the time of this murder, nobody ever indicated or made a call that they'd heard a gunshot.

Whoever killed Jocelyn Peters may have silenced the gunshot in her apartment, but outside, surveillance cameras on the street were recording. Shortly after 3 a.m., on the day of the murder, one of the cameras captured an image of a white sedan. The vehicle was eerily similar to Cornelius Green's car, a white Kia Optima. When Jocelyn Peters graduated from college, she knew she wanted to be a teacher. We were going to be both teaching third grade, and so there were things that we had to figure out.

Tierra's Tucker first met Jocelyn when they started teaching. at Mann Elementary. Why do you think teaching was so important to her? Jocelyn, I think that she felt this sense of urgency to make sure that she was given back to students. Jocelyn knew a quality education would be a game changer for kids, and she wasn't afraid to tackle thorny issues facing St. Louis Public Schools. 80% of elementary schools do not employ full-time art, music, or physical

education teachers. She was always checking out what she could do differently to meet the kids' needs. Nicole Conaway, the former principal at Mann Elementary School, had met Cornelius Green, a middle school principal at a work retreat. She had been looking to hire a third-grade teacher, and Cornelius recommended Jocelyn. He called me and said, I have a candidate for you. She's great. At the time, she had no idea Cornelius was in a relationship with Jocelyn.

I brought her in and interviewed her, and about 15, 20 minutes in, I said, could you please step in the hallway while we talk about you? So I brought her back in and I offered her the job in that moment. 15 minutes in? She was a bright light. She always has been. She talked about how she wanted to be invested in care for children and she wanted to teach them. In 2014, Jocelyn Peters received one of the most prestigious honors for educators. in St. Louis. She was awarded the Pettus Excellence Award for the district.

What is that recognizing? It's recognizing excellence in the classroom. We were very proud of her. By the spring of 2016, she was also fulfilling some personal dreams. She surprised her mother, Lacey, with the news. Jocelyn was expecting a baby girl and had named her Micah Lee. We were all very excited for her. And the father to be Cornelius Green appeared to be a good match for Jocelyn.

Cornelius was in a fraternity and she was active in her sorority. And like Jocelyn, he was an award-winning educator. According to her family, he seemed smitten from the start. He actively pursued her. He started giving her flowers and gifts and was very persistent. Jocelyn's friend Tierras also noticed how attentive he was. Jocelyn and I, we ran a 5K a couple of times, and he was at the 5K. So he seemed really supportive in that way.

How did she talk about the relationship? What were her hopes and dreams for it? I know that Jocelyn wanted to be married and that she wanted a family, and I recall her and him, like, going to go look at houses. But Jocelyn, she says, had grown frustrated with Cornelius during the process. He didn't like any of the houses. No. Deidre picked up on Jocelyn's annoyance as well.

How come he's not actively looking like I'm looking? How come he's not wanting this as much as I'm wanting this? Jocelyn was ready to be a homeowner. After all, her career was thriving. She was expecting a baby, and in January she had turned 30 years old. She booked a belated birthday cruise to the Bahamas to celebrate during spring break.

break and invited her family and Cornelius. I think when we started to see little changes is when we were on our vacation. Jocelyn's mother, Lacey, and her Aunt Deidre, say Cornelius, who was usually the life of the party, seemed different. He was just distant. I mean, he was not attentive to her needs. I mean, she's pregnant. She's just looking very uncomfortable.

He's not trying to ensure that she. She's eating. He's not trying to help her walking. Even to look him in his face, he looked empty. The whole time on the cruise, we're saying, what the world is going on with them. A week after the cruise, Jocelyn Peters was dead. Investigators knew the crime scene held some intriguing clues. In addition to the potato fragments discovered in her bedroom, authorities found a bag of potato.

on the dining room table. She's seven months pregnant. She has a menu, you know, like a chalk menu, a weekly menu. Yeah, she was being very careful with her diet. Very careful with her diet in her refrigerator, fruits, vegetables. It wasn't junk food. It was wholesome. Yeah.

All of the menus, lunch, breakfast dinner that she had lined up, there wasn't potato listed in there, you know, ever. So it just was odd. They would soon learn that Jocelyn had planned to go to the supermarket, two days before Cornelius traveled to Chicago. She's telling him she's going grocery shopping. He's adamant. Wait for me.

I'll meet you there at the grocery store. Cornelius Green told investigators at the crime scene that he had been in Chicago when Jocelyn was murdered and that he could prove it to investigators. He goes, I wasn't here. I just came here straight from the Amtrak station. shows him an Amtrak ticket almost immediately. Lead investigator Mark Beondolino.

And then he was very oddly specific on what time he got off the Amtrak. In fact, this security footage from the St. Louis train station shows Cornelius Green, with luggage in tow, returning on Thursday, March 24, 2016, approximately 12 hours after Jocelyn was murdered. Cornelius told authorities his train had arrived, at 257 p.m. and he had driven to her apartment. He called 911 at like 319 p.m. He had it down to the minute.

To the minute, yeah. It was inherently obvious that he wanted detectives to know, I wasn't anywhere around here when this happened. Detectives drove him from the crime scene to headquarters to answer more questions. So before you walk into that interview room with Cornelius Green, what What is your plan?

There's no smoking gun piece of information. We want to lay out a timeline for him. How you doing? Where he was at prior to discovering Miss Peters. I have to sit right there. We want to get into the weeds with him. And you said you were calling her this morning. You didn't get in contact with her?

The phone kept on straight to voice, ma'am. And that's her cell phone. Beyond Alino says Cornelius was respectful, but standoffish in the interview. room. And when Cornelius was questioned about his car, a 2013 white Kia Optima, he appeared agitated. Would you like to give us consent to look in your car so we can just rule out that there's anything in there or do we need to get a search warrant? I just don't understand why. Put yourself in our shoes. You know, I mean, if you don't have

anything to hide. You know, I respect that, but my problem is that I don't like to feel like I'm feel like a criminal. Like, why would you get a search warrant for him? He was adamant that he didn't want us to have anything to do with seeing whatever was in his car or having access to that car. Cornelius explained to investigators that he had loaned his car while he was away to a man named Philip Cutler who had been visiting from Oklahoma. He identifies Philip Cutler as an individual who came into town. First he says it's his brother, later identifies him as a close childhood friend.

Cutler was originally from St. Louis. There was obvious amount of trust going on between those two individuals. Cutler was identified as the person who was transporting Mr. Green to the Amtrak station, picking him up from the Amtrak station when he arrived back in town. Investigators say once Cutler dropped the car off with Cornelius, the two went their separate ways. Cornelius was questioned for two hours. Before he left the police station, he made a call to Philip Cutler. Hello.

Hey. It seems Cornelius didn't realize the camera was still rolling and the microphone was hot. I'm down at the police department. Go get my car from the address. I'm about to text you to. I need that to happen like right now. Thank you. Then Cornelius called a woman named Stephanie about his car keys.

Hey, are you at home? And what does he say to her? He indicates to her that he needs her to go meet Phil, Mr. Cutler. He's going to meet him with you. He doesn't go into details as to why. He identifies a place where she can go to meet Philip Cutler. There's a huge amico sign by a gas station that's a well-known marker. Uniform police officers stopped Stephanie and Philip Cutler near the Amico station

and took them to police headquarters for questioning. As it turns out, Stephanie had known Cutler for years. He was a groomsman in her wedding. to Cornelius Green. When did you all find out that he indeed had a wife? Jocelyn told me. Early on? She did, but they were divorced.

Well, not divorced, but they were separated. Literally separated. That's the one was told. Stephanie and Cornelius had a young daughter, but had not been living together for several years. Stephanie was questioned briefly and released, but investigators wanted to know more from Philip Cutler. Minutes before his interview started, Cutler, alone in the interview room, had done something completely bizarre.

Authorities had not witnessed Cutler's odd behavior in real time, so, beyond Lino and his partner, unaware of what had just happened, began questioning Cutler, who claimed he'd never met Cornelius's girlfriend, Jocelyn. Did you know where his girlfriend resided? And you've never been over anywhere where she lived or anything like that? Not known. There's a whole slew of things that we can move forward with after interviewing Philip Cutler. Investigators didn't have enough evidence to arrest Cutler. He was free to leave. But before he left the interview room,

Cutler gave investigators an important piece of information. He gives us his phone number. Cutler allowed investigators to glance at some of his text messages, but he didn't give them consent to examine his phone. Five days after Jocelyn's murder, Cornelius went to police headquarters and gave investigators access to his phone. He also provided them with a written statement.

He basically started from, he went over to Jocelyn's house on the 20th. They went grocery shopping. And he specifically mentions that they had baked potato for dinner. It was very vague, but it was very specific to mention potatoes. It raised the hairs on my neck when I read it. Investigators had learned Jocelyn and Cornelius went to an Aldi supermarket on Sunday, March 20th, four days before her murder.

And we go to that Alde's, and we obtain the... surveillance video. The camera had captured video of a couple with a grocery cart. Perched prominently on top of it was a big bag of potatoes. Authorities say that couple is Jocelyn and Cornelius. And we see Cornelius and Jocelyn pushing out a cart of groceries with a 10-pound bag of russet potatoes on it days before she's murdered. It stands out. The potato shopping was curious but not.

strong evidence. That would come soon. Examination of the data on Green and Cutler's phones would expose a text conversation between them, almost a month before Jocelyn's murder. When you coming here? When do you want me to come there? Week of March 20th. For years, Gone South has been a podcast about crime in the American South, but for our new season, we're widening the lens. Through deeply reported narrative-driven stories. We're digging into the myths, scandals, and power structures that still shape the South, and in a lot of ways, the country itself. Follow and listen to Gone South Season 5, an Odyssey podcast.

Available now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your shows. Investigators hoped a closer look at Cornelius Green's phone and Philip Cutler's phone number would provide new leads, and they were not disappointed. We dumped the phone, for lack of a better term. And tell me what you find out. There was quite a lot in Cornelius' phone. An examination of Cornelius Green's digital history had revealed a curious text message chain with Philip Cutler.

When you coming here? When do you want me to come there? Spring break, March 18th to the 22nd, week of March 20th. Okay, that'll work. You're going to be sending the package? The conversation was cryptic, but the word spoke volumes to Beondolino. To us as investigators, we're looking at this after the murder of Jocelyn Peters. That's a quid pro quo to us, an agreement that looks like has been made between Cutler and Green.

That text was written less than a month before Jocelyn was murdered. He's getting something from Cornelius for coming into town. You don't know what that is? We don't know what it is. So we look into how did he get it? We know Cutler is in a Muscogee, Oklahoma, and Green is from St. Louis. I reach out to contacts the United States Postal Service, FedEx, UPS. You know, we have contacts we can reach out to them.

His contacts delivered. Well, sure enough, UPS package was mailed from Cornelius Green, from here in St. Louis to Philip Cutler's address in Muskogee, Oklahoma. What's in the package? We don't know what's in the package. It's an envelope, it's several ounces, and it is $48 charged to be shipped there overnight and had to be signed for. Philip Cutler had signed for the package a few weeks before Jocelyn's murder. Authorities didn't find Cutler's DNA or fingerprints inside her apartment,

but the circumstantial evidence against him was mounting. In June 2016, Vyondelino got a warrant for Cutler's arrest. We responded to Muscogee, Oklahoma, where he was taken into custody. You have the right to have a lawyer and have him or her with you while you're being questioned. Do you understand that? Yes. Tell me about him being taken into custody and then questioned. Yeah, it's laid out on the table to him.

We advised him that he is under arrest and he is going to be charged with the murder of Jocelyn Peters and her unborn child. Investigators confirmed the car seen on the security. video around the time of Jocelyn Peter's murder was indeed Cornelius Green's white Kia Optima. Green, who was out of town, had loaned Cutler the car, but Cutler claimed he wasn't driving it that night. Okay, nobody had access to that car. Yeah, somebody could have stole it then. Nobody stole it.

Hey, they stole it and then gave it back to put it in the same spot. Is that you tell me? Hold on, hold on a second. I was just using the car to do what I needed to do while I was doing. And we know you were using it to you. That was it. Okay. I wasn't in the car.

All right. After his police interview, Cutler was transported from Muskogee, Oklahoma, back to St. Louis, where he was held in custody in the city jail. Investigators also secured a search warrant for Cutler's Google account and his phone. And you get a whole lot of information from that phone. Absolutely. We get a tremendous amount of very specific location data as in relation. to Philip Cutler.

It had provided a digital path to Jocelyn's address on the day she was murdered. The Google location history showed he was actually on that street. And at some point during that evening, between the 259 and 348 a.m. There was a ping that shows directly in that apartment. And we believe at that time in Jocelyn Peters' apartment.

When you see his phone pinging inside her apartment, I mean, as an investigator, does it get any better than that? No, I think as far as with what we have here, that is, for lack of a better term, that's our electronic eyewitness. That's it right there. That Google location data delivered yet another clue. A few hours after the murder, Cutler's phone was on the move. Authorities say it ended up here at North Riverfront Park. It's a stone's throw from the banks of the Mississippi River and 10 miles from Jocelyn's building.

What leads you down towards this way? Well, the reason we thought he came out here was to discard evidence from the murder. Specifically, we believe this is where he would have discarded this murder weapon. Investigators believe Philip Cutler, who was here for approximately eight minutes, also tossed Jocelyn's missing cell phone in this area. So if you want to get rid of something, this is the place to throw it. Oh, an ideal place. 100%.

Yeah. Philip Cutler, who had been down on his luck before Jocelyn's murder, revealed a lot more after his arrest. When we interviewed Mr. Cutler, we questioned him about a package that Cornios Green had sent him via the UPS. And Philip Cutler indicated us that he was sent $2,500 in U.S. currency from Cornetis Green. In early March 2016, a police report was filed by Car Lane Middle School. There had been a theft of cash raised by students on the dance team. And according to investigators, Cornelius Green, who was the principal, had access to those funds.

It was approximately three separate thefts that ended up totaling $2,700. Beyond Alino believed the evidence was adding up, and Cornelius Green, Green was the common denominator. We're fairly conclusive that this money taken from the stance team is the same cash that was mailed to Philip Cutler to murder Jocelyn Peters. He's stealing from his school. Yes. To give money to a hitman to kill his girlfriend.

Correct. $2,500. $2,500, yeah. I mean, how cheap is a life? It tells you what he thinks about, you know, a human life. life's worth and it's pretty disgusting. In August 2016, Cornelius Green was arrested for theft. He was visibly more upset than I think he'd been throughout this entire investigation,

that he was being arrested for theft. Green posted bail and was removed from his position as school principal. Jocelyn's former principal, Jocelyn's former principal, Nicole Conaway. To hear that somebody I knew, especially a fellow principal, could take advantage of children like that. It's disgusting. That's absolutely disgusting.

Two months later, in October 2016, Cornelius Green was arrested and charged with the murders of his girlfriend, Jocelyn Peters, and the baby they were expecting. Shortly after that, Green's wife filed for divorce. Investigators say she was not involved in Jocelyn Jocelyn's murder. Do you remember your reaction when you heard he'd been arrested? I was happy, but I had said some words I don't think I could say on TV.

Mm-hmm. And how about you, D, D'Jra? It was bittersweet. Didn't feel like it was justice only because it took so long. That's because the homicide docket at the St. Louis Circuit Attorney's Office was backlogged, and the Jocelyn Peters murder case slowed to a crawl for years. Then, in 2022, the U.S. Attorney's Office reviewed the evidence. We looked at it because it is a classic federal case.

It's a murder-for-hire case. Assistant U.S. attorney Tiffany Becker, now retired, prosecuted the case. Here we had the interstate nexus of Philip Cutler coming down to St. Louis to commit the murder. But not only that, we had Cornelius mailing a package to Oklahoma filled with money. That was the for-hire prong of the crime. School friends, Cornelius Green and Philip Cutler would be co-defendants in a federal courtroom. But a surprise twist two weeks before their murder trial would change the direction of this case. When Assistant U.S. Attorney Tiffany Becker was preparing for

trial, she wanted the jury to hear about Cornelius Green and Jocelyn Peter's relationship before the murder. I think it had increasingly been tense between the two of them, with the sore spot in the relationship being the fact that Cornelius had not gotten the divorce he had promised Jocelyn he would. I think Jocelyn finally was realizing maybe this was never going to happen. Jocelyn, who was seven months pregnant, didn't know it, but Cornelius Green had searched the internet for ways to terminate a pregnancy.

Through his searches, he's looking at how to obtain medications, how to conceal that within oatmeal or yogurt or juice, how to make your own capsules. Those searches continue and appear to be fruitless for him because Jocelyn is still pregnant. There's no concrete evidence Cornelius Green put those internet searches into motion, but Becker believes Cornelius wanted out. I believe he wanted to not be involved with Jocelyn anymore and didn't want a financial obligation that Michael Lee represented to. The investigation also revealed Green had purchased a 380 semi-automatic pistol a few years before the murder. That weapon has never been found.

But it was the same caliber as the shell casing discovered in Jocelyn Peter's bedroom. Bill and I are federal attorneys. In a way, we act as special public defenders in the matter. Attorneys Nick Williams and Bill Marsh would represent Cornelius Green at trial. What was he like when you met him, Cornelius Green? He's an intelligent person. He's got family support. He is someone who listens to what you have to say.

Bill, you're nodding along, Heepry? Yeah, he was very respectful. A lot of times when there are high stakes in a criminal case, there can be friction with your client. There really was intending with Cornelius. Cornelius had maintained his innocence throughout his eight years in custody. When we get involved in a case,

part of our job is to identify the strengths and the weaknesses of the prosecution. This is a case that involved a lot of circumstantial evidence. But the defense faced a big challenge. Before the U.S. Attorney's Office decided to take the case, state prosecutors had charged both men with murder and were seeking the death penalty. There's a phrase in the world of capital litigation,

death is different. And when we're advising someone at any time, it's a capital case, it's going to be different advice. than it might be if it were not a death penalty case. On February 28, 2024, eight years after Jocelyn Peters' murder and two weeks before his trial, Green pleaded guilty to federal charges.

Green pled guilty as part of a plea agreement. He's pleading guilty to the two counts that he was charged with on the federal level. Again, conspiracy to commit murder and the murder itself. that he paid Mr. Cutler to kill his pregnant girlfriend? It was part of the factual basis made, yes. It was a difficult day, but at the end of the day, I think he knew that it was in his best interest to do that.

And I think he also knew it was in the family's best interest, both his and Jocelyn's family. After Green pleaded guilty, the state dismissed its murder case along with the theft charges. But his co-defendant Philip Cutler wanted his statement, in court. He faced the same federal charges. You know, his defense sort of tried to argue that really Philip Cutler was nothing more than a pawn in Cornelius Green's elaborate chess game, that Cornelius Green is a master manipulator and he's the victim. Well, that was clearly false.

He met with Cornelius. The text messages do not lie. Phillips' location information and the vehicle being there at the time of the crime, do not lie. You don't think he was manipulated by Cornelius into this? No, I think he wanted money desperately because he was in such dire straits, and he had loyalty to his friend. Investigator Mark Beondolino was in the courtroom. There were no cameras permitted at trial. What was his demeanor like at the trial?

It ranged from sleeping at times. He showed a lack of remorse. and a lack of credibility. Cutler took the stand in his own defense, and he told the jury what he claims was written on those notepad pages he swallowed. He said it was a person's name and number that he was buying weed from.

The jury didn't seem to buy Cutler's testimony. Their verdict, guilty. Philip Cutler and Cornelius Green were sentenced to two consecutive life terms for the murders of John. Jocelyn Peters and the baby she was expecting, Micah Lee. Tiffany Becker says she was relieved for the Peters family. So happy that the closure that they deserved came to be

and so happy that Jocelyn's death was avenged and Micah's. Jocelyn's friend Tiras Tucker still has a lot of unanswered questions. What would you say to Cornelius if you had an opportunity to speak to him? Part of me wants to know why. Like, just why? He's a monster, and he's the worst kind of monster, because he presents to be something else. Jocelyn's family will always remember her

as the third grade teacher with a vibrant spirit. I know Jocelyn is living everlasting life. Her and Micah are growing together, and they're with other loved ones. God had a bigger plan, so maybe she was called on to teach the other angels, to educate, to inspire. Jocelyn Peters students dedicated a bench at the school to honor her memory.