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Visit BetterHelp.com slash AOM today to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp, H-E-L-P dot com slash A-O-M. Before we get started today, Scott and I are hoping to do a bit of a survey with all of you. We're always looking for better ways for us to connect. If we were to get out on the road and tour or even start with a meetup, would you come? And if so, what cities would be a great place to start?
So do us a favor and give us your thoughts. Shoot us an email to info at AOMpodcast.com. Or if you have other ideas of ways for us to connect with you, we'd love to hear those too. So please let us know with an email to info at AOMpodcast.com. That's info at AOMpodcast.com. Now on to today's episode. I've worked a lot of homicide cases, but this one, if you just wrote it down or told somebody the story,
You know, they would think it was almost something that's too bizarre to be true. They would almost think, you know, that it's some kind of made-for-TV thing or something. I'm Scott Weinberger, investigative journalist and former deputy sheriff. I'm Anasika Nikolazi, former New York City homicide prosecutor and host of Investigation Discovery's True Conviction. And this is Anatomy of Murder.
Before we get started today, Scott and I just wanted to say we'd love to be more in touch with you and also keep you in the loop with the various things that we're up to by having you follow us on Instagram at Weinberger Media and at Anasika Nicolazzi. People come into our lives all the time, whether it's a friend, a co-worker, a new love interest. Sometimes it's hard to really know if that person is someone you can trust.
What if you learned that someone wasn't who they said they were? What would you do? Would you say something or would you just mind your own business? In today's episode, we're talking about the case of Jolene Cummings, who followed her instincts in that very same scenario, and the tragic result was something no one would have predicted. It was May of 2018 in Fernandina Beach, Florida, the northernmost city on Florida's Atlantic coast.
The city of Fernandina Beach is on Amelia Island. And Amelia Island is actually ranked in one of the top 10 islands in the United States to visit several years. It's a great place to live. We certainly have crime, but it's a nice place. That is Sergeant Wayne Harrington of the Nassau County Sheriff's Office. On May 14th, that office received a report of a missing woman. Her name was Jolene Cummings.
It was Monday morning, and Jolene's mother actually had come to the sheriff's office at around 8 a.m. She said that she hadn't heard from her 34-year-old daughter for a few days and that Jolene wasn't answering her calls or texts. Jolene's mom had even gone to her daughter's home, but no one was there. She was convinced that something wasn't right when she learned that Jolene had never picked up her two children on Saturday evening, and that for Jolene was far from normal.
Jolene's children were her world. She'd been going through a divorce and was in the midst of a custody dispute with her ex. Her mother told police that there was no way she would ever do anything to risk losing her kids.
The actual calendar date and the events surrounding it also raised a lot of red flags about her disappearance. The weekend when Jolene went missing, there were big plans for that weekend. Not only was it Mother's Day, it was also Jolene's birthday. And they had big plans with the family for the whole weekend. And for her not to show up was just very unusual. Jolene's mom said the last time she actually spoke with her daughter Jolene was on that Friday. And it was a normal conversation.
she didn't get the feeling that anything at all was wrong. They had talked about their plans for the upcoming weekend, so there was a lot of excitement. They had some big plans. At the time, Wayne was a detective in the Criminal Investigations Division. He was assigned to Jolene's missing persons case. I didn't necessarily jump to the conclusion that there was foul play, but I knew it was something I needed to get to work on right away because it wasn't a situation where somebody was missing just because they didn't want to be in contact with this person.
The first thing he wanted to do was to try to pinpoint the last time anyone saw or heard from Jolene.
He learned that she was a hairstylist and had worked her shift on Saturday, May 12th. Jolene was last seen at her place of employment, which is Tangle's Hair Salon in Fernandina Beach. She'd been an employee there for quite some time, I think about seven or eight years. She was well-known and well-liked. She had a big clientele there. We did interview co-workers. We interviewed the owner of the salon. We interviewed any of Jolene's customers that had appointments there.
Jolene had helped close the salon that day with another co-worker. She was off Sundays and Mondays, and when told of her disappearance, everybody seemed shocked.
Wayne then went down the list of usual indicators to see what he could learn. He checked Jolene's cell phone account, her social media, and her financial records. What it showed me was there was no activity whatsoever, be it social media, you know, use a debit card, use another phone or anything like that, since Saturday the 12th of May. After that, there was no activity.
Her car was missing too. Her SUV wasn't in the salon's parking lot. It was as if Jolene had vanished right after leaving the salon following her Saturday shift. The detective put out a bolo, also known as be on the lookout, for Jolene Cummings and her SUV. She had a 10
tan Ford SUV that she drove. So we did have her vehicle information. We literally had almost the entire detective unit doing canvases of the area. We created a flyer that had photos of Jolene and Jolene's vehicle, and we peppered those all over the county. So Scott, just on its face, there are multiple things, at least on the surface, that I imagine that any detective would be looking at.
Here we know that she's already having problems with her ex surrounding a potential custody battle. So that is one avenue to go down. Now, the other side of that, Anastasia, would be perhaps the stress of that custody issue may have given her a reason to look for a brief escape, maybe to get her head together so she can reflect on her future. But I have to say, for me, I think that's a lot less likely.
And of course, there is always the possible scenario of foul play at the hands of a stranger. So police would have to continue to dig. The detective next went to Jolene's home. They met her stepfather outside to gain access. He had a spare key and opened the door. What they saw inside brought even more worry.
I noticed there was some disarray in the house. There were some cabinet doors that were hanging by one hinge. There was some holes in the sheetrock walls. There was a couple of holes in a bedroom door. So I was really concerned that something bad had happened at the home. Had Jolene made it home only for something to happen to her there?
Wayne turned his attention to Jolene's soon-to-be ex-husband, Jason Cummings. There was a custody battle for the kids, so obviously the estranged husband is someone that I'm going to want to speak to right away. He learned that Jolene and Jason were married in 2013, and then they had two children together, both boys. Jolene also had a daughter from a previous relationship. But five years after they said, I do, the marriage began to fall apart and they decided to separate.
The kids live with Jolene, but Jason wanted to share custody and the divorce became contentious.
Jolene's mother told police the arguments got even worse when Jason learned that Jolene had moved on and began dating someone else during the separation. And Anasigar, I'm sure you're going to see the same thread here. Investigators are going to have to dig in and to find out really what's going on there. How contentious was this custody battle? And had anybody witnessed anything to give them an indication that things may have turned violent?
And then just hearing that she had been dating someone new. You know, you don't need to still want to stay married to someone to then be jealous over a new love interest in her life.
And so thinking that Jolene's life might well be in danger, Wayne tracked down Jason Cummings as quickly as he could for an interview. He was surprised that almost immediately, Cummings told him that he and Jolene had in fact been fighting. He admitted that, you know, things were not great as far as, you know, they were going through a divorce and there was a custody battle.
Jason Cummings went on to tell the detective that while things might be messy between them, he had nothing to do with Jolene's disappearance. He seemed concerned that she had not come and picked up children. He said that he had tried reaching out to Jolene but kept getting her voicemail. He then called her mom because he was worried. Jason went on to add that he would do anything he could to help find Jolene and to prove that he was not responsible for her disappearance.
He immediately gave me access to his cellular phone, gave written permission for me to do any kind of search of that that needed to be done. He drove his personal vehicle to the sheriff's office. He allowed myself and one of my crime scene technicians to examine his vehicle. Investigators went through the car carefully, but did not find anything inside his car that would suggest he took part in a crime or had anything at all to do with Jolene's disappearance.
We didn't see any obvious evidence in there. We didn't see any indication that the vehicle had recently been cleaned to try to clean up or conceal any evidence. And while someone's cooperation isn't always the be-all, end-all decision to move on to somebody else, it is a pretty good indication to place a pause and to continue to expand your search for suspects. And that's exactly what Wayne thought his next move should be.
As far as the date that Jolene was last seen, Jason gave an alibi for that entire weekend. Wayne felt pretty sure that Jason wasn't involved, but he still wasn't ready to fully take him off the potential suspect list. He was not eliminated as a suspect. We still had to go and verify those alibis. He was a little lower on the suspect list after the interview, but he wasn't off the list and we still had to verify his alibis.
But before Jolene's soon-to-be ex-husband left the interview room, he said something that sent the investigation on an entirely new path. One thing he did say during his interview that really kind of concerned me was he said, look, you know, I've heard about this guy that she is dating and I hear that he is bad news and you need to find him and talk to him.
So Wayne learned that Jolene had a new boyfriend, and the new man in her life was 37-year-old Jason Gee. It also turned out that Jolene's estranged husband was right about needing to find him quickly. When investigators looked into Gee, they saw that he had a criminal record and he was wanted. I did a little background research on him. What I determined was he did have an active arrest warrant for a probation violation.
The probation violation stemmed from a 2017 drug charge, but he also had previous arrests for aggravated battery. And there was more. Not one, but two women had restraining orders against Guy for domestic violence. Wayne then found out that Jolene herself had reported Guy for domestic abuse on May 9th. And that date?
just three days before the last time she's seen, that there's this domestic incident. The information contained in the report now explained the damage that the detective had seen inside Jolene's home. It certainly raises concern that if he did damage to the home, he was known to have a bit of a temper. It was obvious to me from the damage in the home that he did.
As if police weren't suspicious enough about Jason Gee, when they attempted to locate him so they could try to speak with him, he was nowhere to be found and it appeared he had just taken off. So obvious, Anastasia, the question is, was he on the run because he knows he has a warrant for his arrest?
Or is it because he's likely to be the next person that police will want to talk to? And that really is the question for investigators. But the entire time while they're trying to figure out, like the clock is ticking because the number one thing they want to find is Jolene. Yeah, he has just risen to the top of the suspect list and there is a full court press to find him. And police were now concerned that...
that him fleeing had something to do with Jolene's disappearance. The fact that, you know, she was normally a devoted mother that had not showed up to pick up her kids. She was always available, always picked up her phone. There was no activity on social media. All those things gave us probable cause to be able to get a search warrant to start pinging Jason's phone in an attempt to locate him. The hunt was now on to find Jason Gee and Jolene Cummings before it was too late.
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34-year-old Jolene Cummings' new boyfriend, Jason Gee, was now the main person of interest in her disappearance, and investigators knew time was ticking to find him.
Yeah, it was definitely all hands on deck. We had everybody in the patrol units, everybody in the detective unit. We put it out to surrounding agencies that we really needed to locate this person. This is somebody that a lot of us in law enforcement has dealt with in the past. They know his associates, they know his family. So, you know, it was basically, you know, all hands on deck to try to locate him. But we're going to family members' homes, friends' homes. You know, we're beating the bushes everywhere trying to find this guy.
Police caught a big break when they got a phone call from one of Gee's friends who said he knew where Gee was staying, and he was literally trying not to be found. He was hiding out at a friend's house in Hilliard. The friend did allow officers to enter the home, and they found Mr. Gee. He was hiding under some cardboard box in a rear room of the house trying to evade law enforcement. Jolene Cummings was not with him.
But Jason Gee wasn't just walking away. He wasn't charged with anything in relation to Jolene, but he did have the outstanding arrest warrant. So he was taken into custody. And I asked, instead of transporting him immediately to the jail, to bring him to the criminal investigations division so I could attempt to interview him.
Wayne soon sat down with 37-year-old Jason Gee. Mr. Gee, he was disheveled. It was obvious that he had been on the run from us. I think he was kind of visiting people and just hiding out. But he did agree to speak with me. One of the things that really kind of was a red flag to me was the fact that when he was arrested, he didn't have his cell phone.
And I had asked the officers when they contacted me, I said, look, if he's got a phone, make sure that we bring it with him so that I can attempt to get a search warrant to search it. But his phone was not located. When I asked him about a cell phone during the interview, you know, he was kind of evasive. Throughout the interview, Gee was insistent that he hadn't been in hiding because of Jolene.
He told me the only reason that he was evading law enforcement was the fact that he had a felony warrant. It had nothing to do with Jolene going missing, that he was very concerned about Jolene and the fact that, you know, she was missing. Gee did admit to the argument with Jolene at her home on May 9th. He said the two had made up right afterwards and that she had even invited him to join her for her birthday celebration with family on the 13th.
Guy said that Jolene then just suddenly stopped communicating with him, so he thought that she had just changed her mind. He said that when he heard about her disappearance, he figured police would be coming after him, and he didn't want to go back to jail, and that is why he ran. Wayne kept digging to try and test the truth of what Guy was telling him.
I asked him when's the last time he has spoken to her. And his reply was consistent with all the other evidence we had at the time was the last time that he spoke to her was on Saturday the 12th and that he had tried to contact her since then, but was unable to do so.
Even though Wayne was still suspicious of Guy, there was no evidence that proved he was involved in Jolene's disappearance. In fact, the detective still didn't have any actual proof that anything bad had happened to Jolene. So Scott, just talk for a moment. What happens at this point? Everything is pointing to something bad happening, but everything is striking out as far as evidence against any of the quote-unquote usual suspects.
You know, you hope a lead like this, a person who's on the run, could provide a key to finding Jolene, right? So clearing him is a full reset. And also the ex-husband, Jason Cummings, he has been cleared. His alibi was corroborated. So at the moment, it's just back to the drawing board.
So with the investigation now back at square one, Wayne again goes to Tangle's hair salon where Jolene had last been seen. He re-interviewed her co-workers and this time someone said something that piqued his interest. That there was someone at the salon who might have been having a problem with Jolene. There was some concern about her relationship with a co-worker. There was a person who had recently been hired at the salon within the previous couple months.
The new co-worker was a woman named Jennifer Seibert. The detective wanted to speak with her. She wasn't at the salon at the time, so he called her at her home and left a message. But by the next morning, she had already left him a voicemail.
Her message was just kind of bizarre. She called me back and she left me a voice message during the night. And it basically said, look, I'm not that close to Jolene. I don't know where she is. I cannot be involved in a police investigation. She goes into a long explanation of why she can't be contacted by law enforcement and she can't be involved in an investigation because she has an ex who is a computer expert and a stalker and she can't not have her name out there because he will track her down.
The detective's antenna was now squarely up that something didn't seem right, but the reason wasn't yet clear.
It didn't make me think that she was responsible for Jolene's disappearance or whatever. I mean, honestly, it just made me think, you know, is this lady some kind of creep or what's going on? It was just kind of a bizarre message, you know? And for me, she's giving almost every reason why police should talk to her. But before he could even try to decode the odd message from Jolene's co-worker, Jennifer Seibert, he got a call that Jolene's SUV, you know, the one that was missing, had been stolen.
The car had been located. Someone had seen the information about the missing SUV on the news and believed he saw it abandoned in a parking lot. The caller gave police the address.
Her car was found in the parking lot of a Home Depot in Fernandina Beach, which is probably within about two miles of Tangle's Hair Salon. This Home Depot is in a large shopping plaza. It was parked in the father's parking spot away from the Home Depot, way out near the access road. Wayne immediately headed to the location, along with other members of law enforcement, including the crime scene unit. There was no telling what they were about to find, but they didn't find Jolene.
There was nothing of direct evidence around the vehicle. We did search that whole parking lot, whole shopping plaza. We looked in dumpsters. We looked everywhere. Everything around the vehicle was cartographed and measured and documented. The decision was made to move the SUV to a place that it could be thoroughly and forensically searched. We didn't
physically examine a vehicle there. We had a tow truck come and tow the vehicle to the sheriff's office where it could go into evidence bay and be examined in a controlled environment. But it was nothing immediately found near or on her vehicle that gave us any idea where Jolene might be.
But while doing the cursory search there in the parking lot, investigators did notice that there seemed to be rust which told them that the car had been there for a few days. Rust in a matter of days? Here's Wayne to explain something that may not be clear to those of us not familiar with one of the impacts of that Florida climate, humidity.
A car is driven even a short distance. If you apply the brakes on a car, the brake pads are going to come in contact with the rotor. That's what physically stops the vehicle. And immediately when those brake pads touch the rotors, it's going to take off that little bit of surface rust. In the environment where we live here in North Florida, if a car is parked for more than a day or two, it's going to get that rust on it.
While they hadn't found Jolene, investigators were now trying to determine how her car had gotten into that lot. Wayne knew that Home Depot had surveillance cameras in its parking lot and hoped that one of them would show him who had left Jolene's SUV. But unfortunately, the vehicle was too far away to capture anything of value on video.
But investigators were still pressing on. Police then went to all the businesses in the surrounding area and started searching for anyone who had a surveillance camera. It was a long shot, but when they found footage from the nearby credit union, they caught a break. Their camera had captured Jolene's SUV being parked at 1 a.m. on Sunday morning.
So it's kind of one of those things that when we realized that it did capture it, it was like kind of an aha moment. It's like, oh my God, there's a vehicle. And you could see one individual driving
get out of the driver's side door and you could tell just from the size and stature that it was not Jolene. You could not even really tell if it was a male or female, but what you could tell was the person was dressed in all black clothing and you could see the direction that person took when they walked away from the vehicle.
Investigators knew that there was only one business in that direction that would have been open at that hour, the local gas station. I knew from previous investigations that that particular gas station that's in the area has very, very good video. And my hope was, hey, let's go look at the video at the gas station because, you know, if this person walked inside there, it's going to be good enough video. We're probably going to be able to tell who the person is.
And sure enough, when investigators looked through the video from the gas station, they got what they'd been hoping for. And it's their biggest break to date. A clear image of the person who
who had just left Jolene's car. You could see the person actually in Jolene's vehicle was wearing all black. And literally within about two or three minutes of them walking away from Jolene's vehicle, you could see the person walk up to the gas station, walk inside. You could clearly see the features and the face. It's a woman, Jennifer Seibert. Seibert was the co-worker who didn't want to speak with Wayne and had left him that bizarre voicemail message in the middle of the night.
And as investigators look closely at the video, they could see Seibert appear to have scratches on her face. Scott, of course, if you're watching that video right there, I imagine that is giving you like a big double take. For sure. I mean, I want to say boom, right? B-double-O-M. So here we have somebody, a co-worker, who says she's not very close with a victim, yet she failed to tell police that she was driving her car and the night she went missing. And then...
As you said, there's some type of evidence that she may have been in some kind of struggle. You know, I'm talking about the scratches on her face. And for me, there is no doubt here that those facts put together is a reason to confront her, Anna Seeger, as your absolute crime suspect.
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So investigators had a lot of questions for Jennifer Seibert, but one thing was clear. All of a sudden it's like she's starting to become a real suspect in this case. There was no doubt for investigators that the person on camera parking Jolene's SUV and then going into the gas station was her co-worker, Jennifer Seibert.
We actually took still shots from the surveillance video and showed them to the owner of the salon and coworkers and said, "Do you recognize this person?" And every one of them said, "We're 100% sure that's Jennifer Seibert." She always wears dark clothing. She's known to wear these military boots all the time. We're 100% sure that that's who that is.
The owner at Tangle Salon also said that it was Cybert who had closed with Jolene that day when she went missing and that it was Cybert who had never returned to work after Jolene's disappearance. But she did call the salon owner. She told her she was going to quit her job and that she would mail her key to the salon back to the owner.
Well, at that point in time, I knew that I needed to find Jennifer Seibert. The owner gave the detective the address Seibert had given on her job application. When I went to that address to try to locate her, to talk to her,
the address doesn't even exist the street exists but there's no such address on that street the the information provided on her application was false and aniseka this is where this case even gets stranger first we have a co-worker saying that jennifer and jolene didn't get along and there may have been some kind of conflict between them okay check that box and then we have surveillance evidence showing jennifer
In the victim's car the night she went missing, something she never mentioned to police when they spoke on the phone. And that's another check on that box for both of us.
And also, I keep looking to the very beginning, right? She's not there when police come, when everyone already knows that the co-worker's gone. And then she leaves that bizarro voicemail message in the middle of the night, which Wayne said right away. He didn't know anything about any argument between co-workers or any issue between them, but he knew that something didn't feel right. So when you put that together with everything that you just said, Scott, well, that's exactly how Wayne saw it, too. So he went at that point and got a search warrant for Seibert's cell phone, hoping that using that would help track her location. ♪
And I've said this so many times, digital forensics, cell tower stuff. I love this stuff. It's so accurate and so damning if it really gets the person in a specific position at a time and at a date. So in the meantime, he also called the crime lab to do a forensic search of the salon, which actually really could be here.
the crime scene. We knew that Jennifer was the last person that we knew for sure that saw Jolene before she went missing. You know, she's claiming not to be close to Jolene and now she's parking her vehicle in the middle of the night and walking in a gas station with what looks suspiciously like defensive wounds to her face. So at that point in time, I'm like, okay, we know that they were in the salon together. Maybe something happened there. We got to go back and process this place.
Even though there had been nothing apparent to suggest foul play when investigators first took that quick look inside the salon, now that they were doing a deeper dive with the forensic team, they now discovered specks of blood. If this truly is a crime scene, there's got to be more here. In order to do that type of process, you know, they have to use the luminol or the Blue Star and an alternate light source. So what they did was they literally had to
wait till dark and then cover the windows of the salon and then process the whole salon using the Luminol or Blue Star spray. And when they did that, it was bone chilling. I mean, it looked like a Christmas tree. There were marks on the wall, there were marks on the floor. It was so obvious that there had been a huge cleanup. And, you know, all this stuff that's fluorescent, that's blood.
And the amount of blood discovered added up to one heartbreaking conclusion. I knew that this is a homicide scene. I mean, very few people lose this much blood and survive. I mean, the whole salon was from front to back. It looked like there had been one hell of a fight in there and then a massive cleanup effort. In Wayne's mind, Jolene's disappearance was no longer a missing persons case, but now a homicide investigation.
I knew I had to reach out to Jolene's mom and tell her that more than likely Jolene was deceased. All I could basically say was, well, we found what we think is possibly a crime scene at the salon and what we found, it doesn't look good. As everyone was coming to terms with this devastating conclusion, Jennifer Seibert's cell phone was located at a rest stop in a neighboring county.
When police responded to the rest stop, they found Seibert. Her car was parked in an area for large, long-haul trucks, and she was sleeping inside the cab. I did make verbal contact with the person and ordered them to exit a vehicle where I could see their hands.
and Jennifer Seibert exited the vehicle, one of the first things I noticed was that she had band-aids and heavy caked on makeup trying to conceal injuries to her face. - Wayne began to ask her some questions outside of her car. She once again repeated some of the same things she said when she left that voicemail.
I don't know where she's at. She didn't give me an idea where she was going. I don't know what could have happened to her. She and I are not that close. I said, well, you guys work together. She goes, yeah, but we weren't close. I said, have you ever been in her vehicle? Do y'all ever go anywhere together? She says, we've never went anywhere together, and I've never been in her vehicle. Wayne knew she was lying, but hadn't put all the pieces together quite yet. But one crime was apparent, being in possession without permission of Jolene's car.
A judge then signed a warrant for Seibert's arrest for grand theft auto. She's clearly seen parking her vehicle and going into the gas station. So it gave me enough. Jennifer Seibert was arrested and taken into custody. Her car was searched and it proved to be a treasure trove of evidence.
There was a salon kit there that a hairstylist would have. We took a closer look at the items in the salon kit. There was a pair of scissors and there's a screw that connects those two pieces. If you looked in the Phillips head of the screw, there was a dark substance.
I didn't know what it was, but I've seen dry blood enough to know that it looks similar to that. And come to find out, it tested positive for blood. And not only did it test positive for blood, it was confirmed it was Jolene's blood on those scissors. Investigators also found a receipt from a local Walmart, which led them to the chilling conclusion that Jolene Cummings was never coming home.
And the items purchased were elbow length gloves, ammonia, trash bags, and worst of all was a large electric fillet knife. This is somebody living out of their car. They're not having Thanksgiving dinner cutting a turkey. You know, at that point in time, when I saw the cleanup items that were purchased and trash bags, I said, she dismembered Jolene to get rid of the body. She cut her up with that electric knife.
And so while the what was coming much clearer into focus, just listening to what Wayne had said about what his thoughts were about what happened, it's pretty sickening. The evidence against Seibert was mounting and investigators still didn't understand the why. Until Seibert said something on her way to the police station that took this investigation in a direction no one expected.
She says, well, I guess I might as well tell you because when you run my fingerprints, you're going to find out I'm not who I say I am. My name is not Jennifer Seibert. It's Kimberly Kessler. Make today the day you kickstart a new healthy routine. Fuel up with Factor.
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So obviously we have this unexpected, shocking turn in this case. I mean, Kimberly Kessler. Wayne had to scramble to find out everything he knew or could about Kimberly Kessler. And he soon learned a lot. What I found out is that Kimberly Kessler is actually a missing person from Butler, Pennsylvania. She had been reported missing by her mom, but her mom didn't report her missing until
Long after she first disappeared, we found out that she had been living all over the United States. She had been living on the run under several different aliases. She even had a child under a false name. At the station house, detectives sat down with Kessler for an interview, and after being given her Miranda rights, she agreed to speak with them. What follows is actual audio from that interview.
I was born in May of 1968, May 9th. I am 50 years old. I've been running from the FBI for over 25 years. I've been living under this particular alias since 1999. As she spoke, Castro seemed proud of how she had hidden her true identity for so long.
She would talk at great length about her previous identities, her previous jobs. She said that she had worked as a truck driver, she'd worked as a exotic topless dancer, she had talked about having a long-time relationship with a professional bank robber. She loved to speak about herself. I've been cutting hair since I was a kid. I have driven tractor and trailer, which I did in Virginia Beach, Virginia. I also had a real estate license in Arizona.
As the interview progressed, it became clear to Wayne that the only thing that really mattered to Kessler was leading this secret life. And Jolene was seen by her as a threat because she might bring that secret to light. Jolene actually called her out and says...
You're not who you say you are. You're fake. You're phony. I'm going to find out who you really are. That was the reason that Jolene was killed. Every time Jolene's name was brought up during that interview, Kessler became quiet. She completely shut down when asked if she had anything to do at all with Jolene's disappearance. And that's exactly when she ended the interview.
So let me reply this way, and you may not like the answer. I would like legal counsel. It was her right to stop speaking, but police had heard more than enough. You know, Scott, just like hearing about this, I don't even know what movie it is that I'm thinking of, but I don't know if it's like The Sybil or with different personalities or characters. This woman, though, clearly is narcissistic, right? And while I'm no expert in the field of psychology, clearly she does have some personality something going on.
And I was actually thinking of a movie too, but I was thinking the movie Catch Me If You Can with Leonardo DiCaprio, where he's playing all these different people and the FBI is chasing him because he keeps changing his identity. But, you know, I'm sure Wayne was thinking the same thing that we are all thinking.
How far and how deep is this potential imposter murder plot going? And what is the next shoe that's going to drop? And so now, even though Kimberly Kessler would not admit to her crime against Jolene, the evidence against her did keep piling up.
A restaurant near Tangles Salon had an exterior camera pointed towards the back alley and the dumpster. Detectives went through the video from the night Jolene went missing and could not believe when they saw Kessler on camera making multiple trips to the dumpster. You could clearly see her walking out of the back of Tangles and going to the dumpster with heavy garbage bags.
and heaving them into the dumpster. You can also see her exit the rear of the salon with a large plastic blue bin, and she struggles to carry it out to the wood line, and we can see her dump liquid out of the bin into the wood line. We were able to go back and find that bin in the edge of the woods. Not only did it test positive for blood, we found a part of a fingernail in that bin, and we had it tested for DNA, and it come back that it was
Jolene's fingernail. We have to talk about the fact what the surveillance camera reveals is going on here, right? The gravity of what this camera is capturing, what she's doing with these large plastic bins and how she struggles to move what is probably unfortunately parts of a body in and out of this section. So, I mean, the gravity is incredible here and the video that it captured is powerful.
And I think it's just that. It's acknowledging that while we're talking about what's happening in the investigation, that we're talking about seeing video of what is likely someone lugging human remains. And it's not escaping us. And we're sure it's not escaping you. So after gathering that surveillance evidence, investigators had also learned that Kessler owned a storage unit nearby. And they executed a search warrant to see if that unit held any evidence of the crime as well.
We found a lot of strange things. We found all black clothing. We found black socks, black boots, wigs and different things, sunglasses that could be used to conceal identity. When we examined the items closely, like the socks and the boots that were there, they were very consistent with what was shown in the gas station surveillance video. And when we had those examined again, we found Jolene's blood on them.
So that was huge that, you know, we've got her blood on her clothing and it appears to be the same clothing that she's wearing on the night that Jolene has disappeared. Despite the absence of a body, Kimberly Kessler was charged with the first degree murder of Jolene Cummings. Her defense claimed that Kessler was not mentally competent to stand trial and her conduct definitely turned some heads.
She had very bizarre behavior. She would fling feces at the jail guards. She would disrobe. She would chant. She went on a hunger strike. She claimed that the jail was poisoning her food. She got to the point where she was a pretty muscular, large woman at the time that I arrested her. She got down to under 100 pounds on a hunger strike. But even with her behavior, which may relate to some type of mental health issue, nobody was buying that she was legally insane or not competent to stand trial.
She knew exactly what she was doing. I think although she was a quirky, strange person that probably had some, I won't say mental illness, but she was not insane. She may very well have some mental health issues, but she certainly knew the difference between right and wrong. She certainly knew how to try to cover her tracks, how to conceal the crime. She absolutely, in my opinion, was fit for trial. She knew killing somebody was wrong. In December of 2021, Kessler went on trial for the murder of Jolene Cummings.
And then at the end, after only two hours of deliberation, the jury came up with a unanimous verdict. Guilty of first-degree murder and guilty of grand theft auto.
She was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole. The Jolene Cummings case is a case that Wayne will never forget. I've worked a lot of homicide cases, but if you just wrote it down or told somebody the story, they would think it was almost something that's too bizarre to be true. They would almost think that it's some kind of made-for-TV thing or something. He still thinks about what probably happened during Jolene's final moments alive.
As of this recording, Jolene Cummings' body has never been found. Wayne says he will never stop searching for her.
I haven't given up hope. I know it's kind of a long shot. I'm not convinced that all of Jolene's remains went in that dumpster. The dump where the garbage was placed, it's a large landfill up in Georgia. Unfortunately, we were not able to find her, but I'm not sure that Kimberly Kessler will ever have the decency to tell somebody exactly what happened to Jolene's body. But I'm hoping maybe that'll happen or maybe, you know, there was a portion of her that maybe ended up one of those blue bins or ended up somewhere else.
that didn't go in the dumpster. And maybe we'll find that one day because I would like to have the closure for her family and give her a funeral that she deserves. As the state wrapped up its closing arguments, Assistant State Attorney Donna Thurston wanted to make the state's position clear, telling jurors Jolene is dead despite her body never being found. The state says witnesses knew her for years and she would never, never abandon her children.
And then the ADA had one final message for the jurors to deliberate. Quote, considered, committed, concealed. Jennifer Seibert, Kimberly Kessler, or whatever name it is, she did it. What happened to Jolene Cummings is as brutal as it is bizarre. Jolene sensed that something wasn't right with her co-worker Jennifer, and her instinct was very right.
because Jennifer was really Kimberly, who had been living a secret life on the run for years. But how having her identity questioned led Kimberly Kessler to commit such a heinous crime of an innocent person or any person truly shocks the conscience.
Jolene Cummings is incredibly missed by her family and by her children. Kessler effectively destroyed them all that May Day. To Jolene's family, we hope that you all find strength, support, and love in each other and receive it from those around you as you now navigate life without Jolene, your daughter, your mom. ♪
Anatomy of Murder is an AudioChuck original produced and created by Weinberger Media and Frasetti Media. Ashley Flowers is executive producer. This episode was written by Emily Smolar, researched by Kate Cooper, edited by Ali Sirwa, Megan Hayward, and Philjean Grande. So what do you think, Chuck? Do you approve? At Leidos, a brilliant mind is smart, but a brilliant team is smarter.
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