A former Missouri middle school principal pleaded guilty to charges related to a murder-for-hire plot he orchestrated against a woman, with whom he was having an affair, after she became pregnant.
Cornelius Green, the married principal of Carr Lane Visual Performing Arts School in St. Louis, admitted to paying a friend $2,500 to kill Jocelyn Peters and “their unborn child,” reports the Daily Mail.
Peters, a 30-year-old teacher at the nearby Mann Elementary school, was 27 weeks along in her pregnancy when Green’s childhood friend, Phillip Cutler, allegedly entered her apartment with keys provided by Green and shot her in the head on March 24, 2016.
An indictment obtained by NBC News alleges that Cutler killed Peters as she laid in bed, using a “potato as a silencer to muffle the sound of the shot.”
Court documents viewed by First Alert 4 say Green was romantically involved with multiple other women as well.
Later that day, Green “went to Peters’ apartment and called 911 to report she was shot,” the local outlet reported.
The former principal’s plea agreement states that Green also admitted that the $2,500 he paid Cutler was stolen from his school.
“Green expects to be sentenced to life in prison for murder-for-hire and conspiracy to commit murder-for-hire,” People reported. “If he is sentenced to life, state prosecutors will drop murder charges against him, for which he could have faced the death penalty.”
Cutler was also charged for his involvement, with his trial to begin on March 11.
Soon after Peters was discovered dead, Mann Elementary School principal Nicole Conaway dedicated a memorial garden in the teacher’s honor.
“She was someone who cared deeply about children, not only about their learning, but about who they were in making them into better people,” Conaway told Fox 2 Now at the time.
“I know that our family wasn’t the only person in St. Louis that loved my daughter,” Peters mother, Lacey Peters, said at the dedication ceremony for the garden.
