ST. LOUIS — An Oklahoma man on Tuesday was convicted of murdering a pregnant St. Louis middle school teacher in 2016.
The jury took just over an hour to convict Phillip Cutler of murder-for-hire and conspiracy to commit murder-for-hire in the shooting death of Jocelyn Peters. The trial began in federal court on March 11.
Cutler is scheduled to be sentenced at 11 a.m. June 18 before United States District Judge Ronnie White.
Cutler was the childhood friend of Cornelius Green, a principal at Carr Lane Visual and Performing Arts Middle School. Green had an affair with Peters, a teacher at Horace Mann Elementary School, a St. Louis Public School.
Green pleaded guilty in February to murder-for-hire and conspiracy to commit murder-for-hire charges, and is scheduled to be sentenced June 5.
Cutler opted instead to go to trial.
According to Green's plea agreement, Green paid Cutler $2,500 he stole from the middle school where he worked to murder Peters and her unborn child inside her Central West End apartment in March 2016.
Peters, 30, was more than 27 weeks pregnant with her and Green's child.
On Feb. 29, about three weeks before Peters' murder, Green sent a text message to Cutler, asking him to come to St. Louis the week of March 20.
"Ok, that will work, u gonna b sending the pacge?" Cutler responded, according to the plea agreement.
A week later, Green sent a UPS package containing money to Cutler, who lived in Oklahoma. Green stole the money from the school where he worked and used the school's address as the return address on the package.
On March 21, three days before Peters was murdered, Cutler traveled to St. Louis and stayed with Green and his sister for the next several nights.
The next day, Green and Cutler drove to the Gateway Transportation Center in downtown St. Louis, where Green boarded an Amtrak train to Chicago. He left behind a set of keys to his car and to Peters' apartment.
Green traveled to Chicago so he'd have an alibi for his girlfriend's murder, prosecutors said.
In the early morning hours of March 24, Cutler drove to Peters' apartment on West Pine Street and found her in her bed. He fatally shot her in the head with a .380-caliber gun, using a potato to muffle the sound of the shot.
Cutler then called Green to tell him that his girlfriend was dead. Green was legally married to another woman and involved in multiple romantic relationships with other women at the time of Peters' murder.
At about 6:40 a.m., Green bought an Amtrak ticket to return to St. Louis. When he arrived in St. Louis, he went directly to Peters' apartment and called 911, pretending he had no knowledge of her murder.
If Green is sentenced to life in prison on the federal charges, the St. Louis Circuit Attorney's Office will drop state charges of two counts of first-degree murder, two counts of armed criminal action and one count of burglary, according to the plea agreement. The state charges carried the possibility of the death penalty.
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