Jocelyn Peters and the Notebook | Full Episode | Forensic Files

♪♪ [ Line beeps ] -This victim resided at an apartment inside the building. Uniformed 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 Biondolino. 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 him, 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. -He identified Philip Cutler, his 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 pick up Mr. Cutler
to conduct an interview. Detective Hertzberg advised him we're going to 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
and 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 material
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 you'd 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. -Had you ever been involved in a case like this before?
-Nothing like this. ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ -Lead homicide detective Mark Biondolino began the investigation into Jocelyn Peters' murder
on March 24, 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. -You 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 is 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.
The 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 3:00 AM and 3:40 AM. 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 Greene, 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, Lacy 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.
-Deirdre 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...
-Lacy had called and she said, "Deirdre, pull over." And I don't remember anything that happened at that point
because I lost it. -Police had given Lacy 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-duplicatable. 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 investigators 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. Biondolino and his team had a lot of questions about the crime scene.
-Had the apartment been ransacked? Had it looked like there had been a struggle?
-Do you see any of that? -Absolutely not. It didn't even remotely look disturbed.
-Jocelyn's cellphone was missing. A single shell casing from a .380-caliber semiautomatic 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 on 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.
-Biondolino 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 think -- I'm no gun expert by any means,
but I think that 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 canvass,
when we, you know, 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 3:00 AM 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.
-Tierrus 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 a sense of urgency
to make sure that she was giving 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
and 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, Lacy, with the news. -Jocelyn was expecting a baby girl
and had named her Micah Leigh. -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 Tierrus 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. -Deirdre 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
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, Lacy, and her aunt Deirdre 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'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 in the world is going on with him?"
-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 potatoes 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 a potato listed in there, you know, ever. So it was just -- 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 Biondolino.
-And 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 2:57 PM
and he had driven to her apartment. -He called 911 at like 3:19 PM. -He had it down to the minute when he called 911?
-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 is your plan?
-There's no smoking gun piece of information. We want to lay out a timeline for him.
Where he was at prior to discovering Miss Peters. We want to get into the weeds with him.
-Biondolino 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.
-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 an 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.
It seems Cornelius didn't realize the camera was still rolling and the microphone was hot.
Then Cornelius called a woman named Stephanie about his car keys. And what does he say to her?
-He indicates to her that he needs her to go meet Phil. Mr. Cutler. 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 Amoco sign by a gas station
that's a well-known marker. -Uniformed police officers stopped Stephanie and Philip Cutler near the Amoco 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.
-Legally separated. That's what I 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 Biondolino and his partner, unaware of what had just happened,
began questioning Cutler, who claimed he'd never met Cornelius's girlfriend, Jocelyn.
-There's a whole slew of things that we can move forward with after interviewing Phillip 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 Johnson'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 Aldi'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. ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ -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. The conversation was cryptic,
but the words spoke volumes to Biondolino. -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 Greene.
-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 Muskogee, 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,
a 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, Biondolino got a warrant for Cutler's arrest.
-We responded to Muskogee, Oklahoma, where he was taken into custody. -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's 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 Peters' 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. 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 2:59 and 3:48 AM, 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 Phillip Cutler, who was here for approximately eight minutes,
also tossed Jocelyn's missing cellphone in this area. So if you want to get rid of something,
this is the place to throw it. -An ideal place. 100%. Yeah. -Phillip 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 Cornelius Green had sent him via the UPS. And Phillip Cutler indicated to us
that he was sent $2,500 in US currency from Cornelius Greene. -In early March 2016,
a police report was filed by Carr 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.
-Biondolino believed the evidence was adding up and Cornelius Green was the common denominator.
-We're fairly conclusive that this money taken from this dance 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 hit man 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'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, Nicole Conaway. -To hear that somebody I knew, especially a fellow principal,
could take advantage of children like that, it's disgusting. It'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's murder. Do you remember your reaction
when you heard he had 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, Deidre? -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 Peters' 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 Joselyn 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 Micah Leigh represented to him. -The investigation also revealed Green
had purchased a .380 semiautomatic 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 Peters' 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. You agree?
-Yeah. He was very respectful. A lot of times when there are, you know, high stakes in a criminal case,
there can be friction with your client. There really wasn't any 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 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 day 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. Philip's 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 Biondolino 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 Jocelyn Peters and the baby she was expecting, Micah Leigh.
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 Tierrus 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 pretends 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. -You could see directly from those windows into their house.

Why did a man eat pages from a notebook when facing questions about the murder of a third grade teacher? "48 Hours" correspondent Anne-Marie Green reports. This episode aired on March 14, 2026. Watch more full episodes of "48 Hours" on Pluto TV.

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Brief Summary

Jocelyn Peters was murdered in 2016; her boyfriend Cornelius Green and accomplice Philip Cutler were later arrested and sentenced for the crime.

Key points

Jocelyn Peters: A Dedicated Teacher. Jocelyn was a passionate educator who cared deeply for her students.
The Alarming Call. Cornelius calls Jocelyn's mother with shocking news about her daughter.
The Mysterious Potato Fragments. Investigators discover potato fragments at the crime scene, leading to a shocking theory.
Cornelius Green's Alibi. Cornelius claims he was in Chicago when Jocelyn was murdered, presenting an Amtrak ticket as proof.
The Cryptic Text Messages. Investigators uncover a suspicious text conversation between Cornelius and Philip Cutler.
Murder for Hire Uncovered. Evidence mounts against Philip Cutler, leading to his arrest for Jocelyn Peters' murder.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

Whatever was on those two sheets of paper he immediately wanted to get rid of.

Mark Biondolino describes a suspect's suspicious behavior.

3:08WatchMar 20, 2026

Tension

75/ 100High tension

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