My partner leaves the interview room telling him he's going to be questioned about a homicide.
And he removes a notebook from his pants pocket, like a small notebook where you can just keep in your back pocket.
And he tears out a piece of paper from that notebook and eats it.
And then he thumbs a couple pages up and tears out another piece of paper.
And he eats it and chews and chews and swallows both of those pieces of paper and then sits down.
I'm Scott Weinberger, investigative journalist and former deputy sheriff.
I'm Anna Siga-Nicolazzi, former New York City homicide prosecutor and host of Investigation.
Discovery's True Conviction.
And this is Anatomy of Murder.
When we talk about the phrase a perfect crime, it's a pretty simple concept.
In the perfect crime, the criminal gets away with what they've done.
But as we know, very few things in life are actually perfect.
And in the scenario where someone thinks they've figured out all the angles and can commit crime without being caught.
Well fortunately, that's usually not the case.
Because there's almost always another angle, something not planned for, something overlooked, a slip of the tongue that could turn everything upside down for the perpetrator.
And today's case will go down all of those roads.
On the afternoon of March 24th, 2016, a 911 call was placed by 34-year-old Cornelius Green.
He reported finding his girlfriend, 30-year-old Jocelyn Peters, dead in her home.
Mark Biondalino, now a 23-year veteran with the St.
Louis Metropolitan Police Department, responded to the call.
It was his first year as a homicide detective.
We're the day shift crew.
It was towards the end of the shift.
I think it was between 330 and 4 when the call came in to the location, which was 4236 West Pine for a shooting, with the victim remaining on the scene.
I was up as the lead investigator and my partner and I were up.
Mark arrived at Jocelyn Peters' apartment complex, which was located in the central west end of the city.
It was a very quiet, very nice neighborhood.
I'd say low crime as far as violent crime.
I think there were 16 total units in this very nice, very secure multi-unit apartment complex.
And when I say very secure, it was...
The owner had it set up.
She was very particular about the keys.
Who had access to it, the keys for the common doors, one in front and one in back.
It was not a through street.
It was a dead end.
It ended in a cul-de-sac and it was a mixture of multifamily dwellings and large single-family residences right there on that block.
At first look, nothing appeared amiss no forced entry into the building or into the victim's apartment.
Her door was left open.
Her boyfriend, Cornelius Green, advised police he'd used the key to get inside and that, to his knowledge, no one else, besides Jocelyn, of course, had a key to her apartment.
Mark and his team went inside.
While it was clear to detectives that she'd been the victim of a crime, nothing at the scene indicated that a struggle had taken place.
There was no furniture knocked over.
There was no ransacking of anywhere in that room or the rest of the apartment.
There didn't look to be any defensive wounds.
Initially, we assumed that she was probably asleep when this occurred.
As investigators looked for clues, they noticed an odd substance all over Jocelyn's bedroom.
There was a large amount of what we initially described as organic matter and that was kind of on the victim, the larger chunks near her, and then kind of splattered about her bed and the nightstand and the wall behind her.
What exactly it was, puzzled investigators, but the substance did not appear to be human remains or anything similar.
While it was clear that Jocelyn had suffered a recent injury, the exact cause of her wounds wasn't obvious.
It was not immediately apparent to the naked eye, even for law enforcement.
There was blood trickled down the side of her face.
But just from looking at it from the naked eye, especially from the doorway, it would just say it was an injury to her head at the time.
You wouldn't have no way of knowing.
Now, it's not uncommon for investigators not to know the exact origin or type of wound initially.
It may take a much closer look or detailed exam.
But it was apparent that Jocelyn Peters had an injury to her face and soon the cause was clear.
There was a wound in her left eye, later determined to be a gunshot wound.
It turned out to be about 10 millimeters in diameter.
Jocelyn had been shot in the face, and that mystery substance scattered around the bedroom?
Turned out to be chunks of potato that was used as a suppression device, a makeshift silencer, so to speak, that the suspect used prior to shooting Ms.
Peters.
I will say it's a bit unusual to come across homemade makeshift suppression devices at crime scenes, like the potato that was used here.
I covered a case here in New York City where the shooter used a plastic bleach bottle as a baffle to muffle a nine millimeter handgun.
And while it was semi-effective, He also happened to leave his DNA on that bleach bottle.
But I will say, all kinds of odd things can be homemade to muffle gunshots.
The potato silencer worked as intended.
Police canvassed the neighborhood for witnesses but came up empty.
There was multiple residents that were interviewed and talked to at the scene.
Nobody had anything of any significant, no calls for shots fired.
An unlocked door, a homemade silencer, a tiny gunshot wound to Jocelyn's left eye and to Mark.
All of it pointed in one direction.
That was an indication of planning this incident and that somebody was going in there with the specific intent to quietly murder Ms.
Peters and then quietly leave that residence.
Mark found additional items in Jocelyn's bed that added to the tragedy.
She appeared to be laying on the bed with a baby shower invitation and a baby book.
Jocelyn was nearly seven months pregnant when she was killed, a fact confirmed at the scene by her boyfriend, Cornelius Green.
She had been working on invitations to her baby shower just before her death.
This would have been Jocelyn's first child, and she had been so excited about the pregnancy.
She knew the baby would be a girl, and she planned to name her Mika Lee.
The case became more tragic and horrible with every new fact that was learned.
However, who had done this and why remained a mystery.
By all accounts, Jocelyn was loved by many with no obvious enemies.
Jocelyn Peters was a third grade teacher at the Mann Elementary School.
She was, for all intents and purposes, an outstanding person in her profession, an outstanding member of the community.
Jocelyn was a star educator.
She'd received a highly prestigious award recognizing her elementary school teaching.
At the time of her death, she was adding certifications onto her master's degree so she could teach more advanced subjects to her students.
Her boyfriend, Cornelius Green, was a middle school principal at a different school.
Soon, Mark learned something else.
Cornelius was married.
While supposedly separated from his wife.
The layered relationship situation quickly got the attention of investigators.
After processing the crime scene, Mark asked Cornelius to sit down with him at the St.
Louis Police Department to get more detailed information.
And that conversation did take place later that day.
My name is Detective Biondo Lino.
This is my partner, Detective Curtis Burr.
This is his house. help get you through this situation, okay?
Mark started by getting background about the couple's relationship.
Cornelia said that he had been seeing Jocelyn for about five years.
They'd met through work when they both taught at the same middle school.
He also said that he'd just gotten back from a trip to Elgin Illinois, which is on the outskirts of Chicago.
When we interviewed Mr Green the night of the murder, he immediately lets us know that he had just gotten back into town and drove straight over to her apartment.
He says, I just arrived back at 2.57 p.m.
But one of the things that stood out is he was very particular.
It was kind of, I'd say, a lead.
He presented Mark with a crumpled ticket that showed he had taken the train to Chicago two days earlier to visit friends.
He said that he hadn't been able to get in touch with Jocelyn that day, so when he returned to St.
Louis, he went straight to her apartment, where he found her dead.
Investigators checked his alibi, and it turned out it was solid.
Surveillance cameras on the trains confirmed that Cornelius had gone to Chicago, but that didn't keep him entirely free of Mark's suspicion.
Obviously, he's the person that discovers there's no forced entry.
It's almost that he's cooperative to a point where he wants to make himself seem more cooperative than he is.
And what I mean is he provides DNA, fingerprints.
He gives us his alibi, which he provides us almost immediately without even being asked.
So it's almost like it's somewhat contrived.
So, while he did appear to be basically cooperative Early at the crime scene, there had been some hesitancy on his part when it came to, one thing, getting permission to search his car.
Here's Mark and another detective following up on it during that police station conversation.
You know, I noticed at the scene, while we were there, you were upset, understandably.
And you got a little jumpy about us looking in your car.
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.
I mean, if you don't have anything to hide.
I respect that, but my problem is that I don't like to feel like a criminal.
Like, why would you get a search warrant?
We would be saying, okay, Cornelius isn't involved in this.
No, I'm not okay.
I'm really, that's why I got mad.
I don't feel like I'm being treated like.
I feel like when you do that, I'm treating you like a criminal.
And I don't want to be treated like that.
You want us to rule you out, right?
How am I being ruled in, sir?
What are you ruling me in for?
Like, I literally haven't been here.
You know what?
When we get to the point at the end of this, you want justice to be served.
You want everything to be laid out there.
So, Scott, it's interesting here, his reaction, right?
Cornelius.
He had been cooperative up until this one thing and now, all of a sudden, he seems argumentative and, dare I say, defensive.
You know, I always refer to it, Anastasia, as the picture of possibilities, right?
I think that's what Mark is doing here to completely eliminate him, or does it open up another possibility?
The Green has established a pretty solid alibi.
He truly was in Chicago while Jocelyn was still alive and while she had obviously stopped answering the phone.
Cell phone records and videos prove that to the detectives.
So does that completely eliminate him, or does it open up at a Sega another possibility?
And for whatever the real reason was for Green's resistance, Mark just wouldn't take no for an answer.
It is always interesting to think about why people react the way that they do.
And certainly when it comes to these sort of dramatic, tragic situations, people react differently.
And again, we don't know his experience as a person and his feelings about the police, whether he's had good experiences or bad, and whether that plays in.
But you know, as you said Scott, at the end of the day, right now, it is this woman who supposedly was very important to him, who's dead.
And he is putting a hand up to investigators when they want to get into his car.
And that is something they will need to look into further.
My gut feeling is there was something related to this murder inside that vehicle at the time and that he didn't want us to take a look inside of that vehicle.
Unbeknownst to Cornelius, Mark had his car towed to the police station in anticipation of getting a search warrant.
While they spoke to him, they had taken out a break, and when they left the room, Cornelius himself began to push the investigation forward.
At some point during the interview, he asked, he wants to call his daughter.
And at that point, we let him take a break.
The rooms are audio-video recorded.
He immediately makes a phone call, and it's not to his daughter.
He calls his wife that he separated from and asks her to meet Philip to give him the key to the vehicle.
Because at that point Mr Green believed his vehicle was still, at the victim's residence, parked on the street.
And then he made a second call.
And that call added a new person potentially into the mix.
It's to Philip Cutler.
This is the first time that he comes into play.
We would have no idea who he was at this point.
Here's a portion of that phone call.
Jocelyn was murdered.
I'm down at the police department.
I'm going to text your number, Steph's number.
Could you call her, get the keys to my car, go get my car from the address I'm about to text you to?
I need that to happen, like, right now.
A St.
Louis middle school principal, Cornelius Green, was being interviewed by police after he found his 30-year-old girlfriend, Jocelyn Peters, dead in her home.
During a break in the interview, he made a flurry of calls to an old friend of his, a man named Philip Cutler.
He also made calls to his estranged wife.
Those calls were recorded on audio and video.
And it certainly seems that Cornelius didn't realize that his words and demeanor were being captured on tape.
He arranged for his wife to meet Cutler and give him the keys to Cornelius's car, so that Cutler could move the car away from the area of the crime scene.
At this point, we're still within the first few hours of being from the scene and trying to piece things together.
So at that point, besides his contrived type alibi and his words, strategic answering to these questions and oddly specific timeframes, it started to weigh a little heavier on us.
And then we also want to speak with whoever he's having to go get his car.
Finding Philip Cutler wouldn't be hard.
Cornelius had given Cutler the address of a meeting place during that call in the station that had been recorded by police.
We had investigators in a marked car go out there and make contact with them.
And then we brought Mr. Cutler back to obviously be interviewed.
My partner goes in and this is the first time he speaks with Mr Cutler and just ask him hey, do you need to use the restroom?
Do you want a glass of water or anything like that?
I don't remember exactly specifically what he said to him, but.
Mr. Cutler asks, can I go?
Or he indicates, what am I here for?
And Detective Herzberg tells him, we need to speak to you regarding a homicide.
Here's a portion of that interview with Philip Cutler.
First time anybody's ever said anything to Mr Cutler related to we need to speak to you about a homicide.
And then he doesn't want any water, doesn't need to use the restroom.
As detectives prepared to interview Cutler.
He waited in the interview room and his every move was being recorded.
He paced the space, almost appearing like a trapped man, before Mark and another detective returned.
Philip Cutler was 36 years old and had been friends with Cornelius Green since the two were in middle school.
He also had a record for felony theft.
Cutler's interview lasted almost two hours.
He told detectives that he'd come into town to visit Cornelius and that he was staying at Cornelius's sister's home.
Cutler persistently denied knowing anything about Jocelyn's murder or where she lived, other than hearing about it from Cornelius over the phone that night.
So detectives then worked to try and establish a timeline.
Cutler had arrived in St.
Louis at about 10.30 p.m.
Monday night, which was two days before Jocelyn was murdered.
Here's another piece of his conversation with detectives.
There's going to be a timeline from like now.
Do you guys hang out?
Do you and Courtney always hang out the next day or what?
Well, he...
I had to leave town.
He went out of town to go on some trip to do something, I forget.
So Cornelius left to go out of town a very short time after his lifelong friend had taken a six-hour bus ride to visit.
But before he went, Cornelius left something behind for Cutler.
Green leaves Cutler his car, the Kia Optima, so he have a car to take his sister, Selena's, to work, because she didn't drive.
The entire time Cutler was in town... never gave her a ride, never gave her a ride to work.
And she indicated that he never even asked.
And those keys to the apartment building were left with that Kia Optima during this time.
So not only does Cutler never use the car to help Cornelius' sister, but by having those keys to the car he also had the keys to Jocelyn's apartment.
Evidence?
Maybe yes, maybe no.
But detectives now needed to look closely to try and find out.
Those things that, when we asked at the time, weren't like big red flags or light bulbs going off, but they were important to set the basis of what happened down the road.
After the interview, Cutler was free to go.
And follow along with me here for a moment.
Mark also spoke with Cornelius's wife that night, whom he supposedly separated from.
It was Cornelius's wife that met with Philip Cutler and had given him the keys to Cornelius's car.
And then when they spoke with her, detectives found out more than they really expected.
Cornelius and Jocelyn Peters.
She was aware of a relationship years back when she had found out about his infidelity.
She had no idea that it was still going on.
And then one of the things that really stuck out and was kind of a theme related to Cornelius, as he lied to her about why he was going to Chicago.
He tells us he's going to visit old friends, which they were and he did.
He tells her he's going to chaperone a school field trip.
And this is a pattern.
He tells various different women he's involved with various different reasons why he's gone.
As police looked deeper, it became clear that Cornelius Green was involved in multiple relationships with other women and that he was apparently lying to them all in different ways.
Mark also spoke with Jocelyn's mother.
Her knowledge and perspective was eye-opening.
The walls around Cornelius Green's story and maybe this case were beginning to crack.
Ms.
Peters was very open with how their relationship was at the time of Jocelyn's death and how it was in the previous years.
And I think with him remaining to be married and not getting a divorce.
It became a point of contention with Jocelyn.
And then we fast forward to the day prior to Jocelyn's murder.
She was upset because...
Green had went out of town and was supposed to be going to finalize his divorce, as he told her, and go into court.
And so she said she was ending it.
She told him she was ending it, ending the relationship, and she was going to move back home with her mother.
The revelations about the state of Jocelyn and Cornelius' relationship were painting a far different picture than Cornelius had given to detectives.
Jocelyn's mom also revealed that Cornelius had called her that day to say that he couldn't reach Jocelyn.
He was coming in from out of town.
He was reaching out to the victim's mother. telling her that he can't get a hold of Jocelyn.
She had talked to her daughter at lunch the previous day and she had told us that she knew that her daughter was done with this and they were fighting.
So she thought in her head, she's probably just ignoring him.
So, just going through the Santa Sega, I'm thinking to myself is Green attempting to get ahead of investigators with respect to potentially a failed relationship?
Is that a potential motive that they would be looking at?
And obviously there's some lying going on here.
There's so many different ways and possibilities you know that have to be looked at here.
One.
So is it just a coincidence that he calls Jocelyn's mom the very same day that she's now going to be found murdered?
Or, like you said, is he starting to set something up for himself, or at least try to?
But also now come to light not just one relationship outside of his marriage, but multiple.
So Again, people can have messy relationship lives, and that doesn't equate to murder, and certainly most of them.
But it is something that needs to be looked at much more closely.
And then there's also Cutler, Scott.
Yeah.
His lifelong friend takes a grueling bus ride to St.
Louis to visit him.
And it's only for a very short period of time.
So they're establishing a timeline.
Right.
Cutler arrives around 1030 at night.
And according to him, he spends the night at Green's sister's house.
So where are they going with this?
And it's just odd, right?
He comes in to visit his friend, but then the friend leaves town and all these things happen while Green's still there.
But you know, detectives clearly were suspicious of Cutler and maybe even Green's story at this point.
But suspicion, as we know, is far from enough.
They continued their investigation after Cutler had left the station.
But Cutler, he didn't stick around town much longer.
The next day, he goes back to Oklahoma.
Cutler left St.
Louis taking an early morning bus out of state.
And as much as the lies and denials or the stories Green told the people in his life.
Cutler's quick departure raised big red flags.
And over the next few weeks, Mark worked to piece together a dizzying web of lies.
And the picture it ultimately painted would be more complex and even darker than anyone would have imagined.
Jocelyn Peters' murderer was still at large.
After Mark Biondalino had completed his initial interviews, he next turned his investigation to forensics.
And there was a wealth of it to go through, and detectives sifted through the pieces, hoping to untangle the truth about the relationship surrounding her boyfriend, Cornelius Green, and from there, what happened to Jocelyn.
It was these small little bricks of building this case.
Mark pulled subpoenas for Green and Cutler's phones.
He also looked for security cameras on and near Jocelyn Street, hoping they may have captured something relevant to the investigation.
And luckily for the case, he found what he was looking for.
The surveillance video was maintained by the Central West End Neighborhood Stabilization Unit.
I reviewed between 12 and 15 hours of surveillance video.
And one of the things that I noticed is a white Kia Optima at 259 in the morning turning onto Jocelyn Peters Street.
And it's there till about between 259 and 347 in the morning, which fits in the timeframe of when this murder occurred for sure.
A white Kia Optima, the car belonging to Cornelius Green that he'd left behind with his friend.
During his interview, Cutler told detectives that he'd never been to Jocelyn's home and didn't even know where she lived.
But with Green out of town, his car being parked by her apartment told a different story.
That was a light bulb or a red light.
Hey, this vehicle's on the scene.
Now, we know Green is in Elgin, Illinois.
Now, Mark also knew Green had lent Cutler his car while he was away.
Cutler claimed that that was because he was asked to drive Green's sister to and from work.
But those trips never happened.
The one trip that was now confirmed was Green's car, now in the possession of Philip Cutler, going to Jocelyn's home in the middle of the night, the very same night that she'd been murdered.
Next from there, investigators turned to the phone data.
We get the information back from Cutler's phone and Green's phone.
The cell tower triangulation on Green's basically puts him where he says in Elgin, Illinois.
Phone records confirm that Green was out of town as he claimed.
So it couldn't have been him who parked the car near Jocelyn's home on the night she was killed.
The Cutler phone. puts him in the area of Miss Peter's apartment.
The night of the murder it had his phone, where the triangulations were good and it was in the area and it was closed 21 meters.
It had him inside the apartment complex.
That was kind of, okay, now we have the car here and we have him here.
So then it's more than just their stories are not matching up.
It is, hey, we have a definite instance of this guy is now leaning towards being a suspect.
As color rose to the top as a potential suspect, Mark also did a deeper dive into Cornelius Green.
Some of the Google searches he'd been doing were especially damning and horrifying.
He was searching how to crush mifepristone or abortion pills, what to do, how you can mask the taste of these certain type of medicines, how to make an abortion pill, things like that.
And those started coming up closer to the point of when she was murdered.
He has ones that he's trying to determine.
Okay, can you take an abortion pill when you're five months pregnant?
And at the same time, he's reaching out to Philip Cutler at the end of February.
You can sense after looking back at it, the time's getting closer to where Cornelius is trying to probably get this abortion pill plan in motion and it's not working.
You know, the digital evidence here is paying huge dividends for the investigators, one that paints a really disturbing picture.
It's a picture that might also be looked at as possible motive, right?
So it's like we know, obviously, unfortunately, that Jocelyn is dead.
But of course, it's like, Why?
Right.
They're not married.
They're together.
We find out that she's pregnant.
But here Scott, you have searches of how to terminate that pregnancy clearly in a way that would seem like someone is doing it without letting the person who is pregnant potentially know.
And again, you know, a search itself doesn't equate putting the handcuffs on someone.
But this picture is just getting darker each piece they find.
Shocking, for sure.
You know, all of these pieces are becoming bricks to building a case, but they were still not enough Anasiga, to form a solid wall.
So Mark kept digging for evidence and building his evidentiary wall.
The next pieces came from Green's cell phone and an exchange between him and Philip Cutler.
And then there's a text and it's probably the most damning text that we've seen between the two where Green texts him and says ask him when he's coming here.
Cutler's like, hey, when do you want me to come there?
And Green says, the week of March 20th.
And then Cutler responds, okay, that'll work.
You're going to be sending me the package.
And then Green just cuts him off on text and says, I'll call you tomorrow.
Mark zeroed in on the mention of a package.
That text was sent on February 29th, not long before Cutler left for St.
Louis.
Mark found that an actual package had been sent to Cutler by Green via UPS.
It traveled from St.
Louis to Oklahoma, where it was signed for by Cutler on March 8th.
It was an envelope and although Mark had its weight and size, he had no way of actually knowing what was inside.
But he did have his suspicions.
Mark believed he had gathered enough evidence to make his move.
This information was put together.
We went to the grand jury and were able to get arrest warrants for Mr. Cutler.
With arrest warrant in hand, Mark arrested Philip Cutler for the murder of Jocelyn Peters in June of 2016.
You know, you have the right to remain silent.
You understand that?
Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law.
Do you understand that?
That's the interview room recording as Mark read Philip Cutler his Miranda rights.
After he arrested him and brought him back to St.
Louis Mark hoped that Cutler would realize he'd been caught and decide to be straightforward during the interview.
And in doing so, hopefully help Mark strengthen his case.
You'd hope someone would have the common sense to say, OK, the gig's up.
I need to come help myself out.
But he was not having any of that.
Two months after 30-year-old Jocelyn Peters was murdered, her boyfriend Cornelius Green's lifelong friend, Philip Cutler, was arrested for the crime.
In the weeks since Jocelyn had been killed, Mark had collected multiple pieces of circumstantial evidence against him.
The investigation had revealed that Green had sent an envelope to Cutler soon before the homicide.
The question remained, what had been inside?
We were going in there and we had no idea what was in that envelope.
We all assumed it was just because how it was packaged, the weight of it, that it was probably currency of some sort.
Cutler was questioned after his arrest.
Mark hoped to finally learn what had been inside the envelope.
And he also hoped to be able to conclusively connect his other prime suspect, Cornelius Green, the victim's boyfriend, to this crime.
And what did he send you?
And we know, so I mean, it's not a big deal.
I know.
How much money did he send you?
I don't remember.
Later in that same interview, Mark questioned Cutler about the money he now admitted that Green had sent to him.
This time around, his I don't remember changed.
It was about $2,500.
$2,500.
What jogged your memory just sitting here thinking, I don't remember?
Was it that Cutler just remembered?
Unlikely.
The more plausible scenario had more to do with some of the evidence Cutler now knew that police were in possession of.
Because in between, the first time he had asked about the envelope's contents and now Mark had informed Cutler that his phone and Green's car were tracked to Jocelyn's apartment the night of the murder and confronted with the cell site evidence placing his phone in Green's car near Jocelyn's apartment the night she was killed well, he had an answer for that too, as ludicrous as it was, instead of just telling us to pound sand and walk out the door.
He admits that that's his phone, but then he goes on to say but his statement as to why his phone would be in that area and why that vehicle would be in that area is that it was stolen.
Someone must have stole that vehicle and they must have driven over there in the same time that Mrs Peters was murdered.
And then they must have drove it back and left his phone, because he's saying his phone was in the car.
A stolen car with a cell phone inside, coupled with all the other bricks of evidence Mark had been piecing together.
Cutler's scenario was sounding too far fetched at best.
But Mark was also building a case against Green and he knew that the evidence needed to be solid.
And the more he dug in, the more pieces of evidence he uncovered.
After Cutler's arrest.
And we're still moving forward with putting together the case related to Mr. Green.
That's when we identify a report that was taken at the Carline school, where he was the principal, related to this theft.
The dance team, fundraisers, they made this report and Mr. Green was there when they made it.
And it was money between January through February that had been taken from their fundraising area.
And he knew where it was at.
And it totaled $2,700.
At that point, we went out and we arrested Mr. Green, unrelated to the murder, on the school theft.
Money taken by a principal from his own school.
Awful.
A similar amount of money sent to his friend that was now under arrest for Jocelyn's murder?
Well, that's evidence.
The wall of evidence against Green was quickly solidifying.
And with each new brick, the scenario became all the more shocking.
As investigators reviewed all of their evidence, some of the smaller oddities started to take on new meaning.
For example, during Cutler's first interview with police.
You see Mr Cutler stand up right after my partner leaves the interview room, telling him he's going to be questioned about a homicide.
And he removes a notebook from his pants pocket.
He tears out a piece of paper from that notebook and eats it, and then he thumbs a couple pages up and tears out another piece of paper and he eats it and chews and chews and swallows both of those pieces of paper and then sits down.
Nobody was watching his screen at that point because he wasn't actively being interviewed, and it was something that was found later.
But it was extremely, extremely damning when it came time to trial.
Eating paper isn't a crime, though unusual to say the least.
But when taken together with the other evidence now gathered the inference that he was trying to hide and destroy whatever was written on those pages, that became clear.
By this point, police had gathered enough evidence to charge Cornelius Green, too.
Cutler, along with Cornelius Green, were ultimately charged with two counts of conspiracy to commit murder.
For various reasons, the case languished.
Ultimately, it was moved to federal court where it was prosecuted.
Cornelius Green didn't go to trial and instead pled guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit murder and one count of murder for hire.
Philip Cutler pled not guilty and went to trial.
He was convicted after the jury deliberated for just over one hour.
Both men were sentenced to two consecutive life terms in prison.
Eight years after the murder, Mark is still bewildered by Cornelius Green and the lack of impact his murder of his pregnant girlfriend seemed to have on him.
Through the history of him being arrested, and even when he was arrested and saying you're being charged with murder, he was more upset that we were charging him with theft that day.
He was just beside himself when we told him he was being charged with theft from the school car lane.
That always stuck in the back of my head how he was more upset with that.
Green's coldness went beyond even what he did to Jocelyn, and it still sticks with Mark to this day.
It pertains to the call he made to Jocelyn's mom after he knew that his friend had completed the agreed-upon task and murdered Jocelyn.
He didn't want to be the one discovered her.
He was coming in from out of town.
He was reaching out to the victim's mother, telling her that he can't get a hold of Jocelyn.
And it was from how she explained it to us.
It was very apparent that he was trying to get this poor lady to go discover her daughter that he had just arranged to have been murdered less than 20 hours ago.
Green's motive?
Apparently he wasn't as estranged from his wife as he'd claimed.
It also seemed that he had another girlfriend, apart from Jocelyn.
It was believed that Green saw Jocelyn and their soon-to-be-born daughter as a threat to his relationships with both those other two women.
I felt like Mr Green was probably feeling like with this baby is born and she's leaving me and I can't control her.
He saw Jocelyn as an obstacle and he answered that self-created scenario by deciding to get rid of his problem not by breakup but by murder.
Kill Jocelyn and in doing so terminate her pregnancy, to keep his wife and his new girlfriend in play.
Callous, cruel, inhumane.
Mark and their team of investigators solved this case and moved on to the next.
But what happened to Jocelyn and the cruelty of it all still stays with him.
To this day just by hearing from families and friends how many people she touched in that short period of time that she taught in the St.
Louis public school system.
It was you know.
It was heartbreaking to that she was a victim of such a heinous crime.
Justice for her is the whole reason we're doing this.
Just based on the dynamics of this investigation.
A school principal on the outside, an upstanding, solid member of the community, who in the end betrayed everyone to carry out his twisted plot.
Mark and his team really needed to keep his approach and conversations with Green close to the vest from the very beginning.
When your prime person of interest is not just the love interest of your victim, but also the one who hired a friend to commit murder, it becomes an intricate puzzle to unravel.
These are fluid situations.
The smallest new piece of information can shift the whole investigation into a completely different direction.
Mark needed to be very systematic and cautious about every minute, detail and reaction, especially as Green's alibi began to unravel.
Now another key piece being able to present a narrowing list of options to Philip Cutler, who saw no path better than saving himself.
Green thought he had crafted the perfect crime and would get away with what he'd done.
Luckily, Mark and his fellow investigators pieced together his plan and followed the trail of evidence that he and Philip Culler had left behind.
Green betrayed many people in his life, but the ultimate betrayal was to Jocelyn.
Whether the two would remain a couple or not wasn't yet clear, but they were soon to be parents to a child, a baby that Jocelyn very much wanted and already loved.
She never got to see her baby's eyes or feel her heartbeat as she held her daughter in her arms.
Today, we remember and lament the loss of both Jocelyn and her soon-to-be-born daughter, Micah Lee.
Tune in next week for another new episode of Anatomy of Murder.
Anatomy of Murder is an AudioChuck original.
Produced and created by Weinberger Media and Fresetti Media.
Ashley Flowers is executive producer.
This episode was written and produced by Morgan Beattie.
Researched by Kate Cooper.
Edited by Ali Sirwa, Megan Hayward, and Philjean Grande.
So, what do you think, Chuck?
Do you approve?
I approve!
