322. The Murder Salon - The Death of Joleen Cummings

Hey everybody, welcome back to the podcast. This is Murder With My Husband. I'm Pete Moreland and I'm Garrett Moreland, and he's the husband, oh, welcome back. Another Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, depending on when you are listening. I think you're being here. Thank you for watching. Thank you for supporting. And I guess it's officially summer, kind of. Kind of, yeah, schools out by us. Going to an hour out of school for the summer, except Garrett, he got summer school. Yeah, I got a lot going on. I smell like bagels right now. I smell like Ossiago bagels. What do you got? I'm eating sour strips. I mean, recording to the dark need to give Daisy a bath. That's about it. Oh, my to-do list. I mean, there's a lot more, but that's really all I got going on a lot. Yeah. Anyways, thank you for being here. Again, thank you to anyone who has been saying hi to me at bagel shop. My brain's pretty fried. I'm not going to lie. I'm not going to go into any names because I'm fried right now. Brain completely fried. Guys, I'm going to say it again. I hear your names when you tell me. I remember your, if you were to come in again, I would remember your face. Really? Yeah. I want it. I'm good with faces. I'm bad with names. I'm bad at both. I'm sorry. I don't have a shout out to give because it's it's a lot of it is too is I hear you guys names and I'm talking to you and I'm so excited and so thank you so much for saying hi. And then also in two seconds later, I'm helping somebody else at the cashier with a different name and then another name and then yeah, it's just it's a lot of names and again, I'm sorry, but I promise I'm engaged and I hear what you're saying. Be ever coming again. I will remember your face though. That's a hefty promise. No, I'll do. I remember it. I'm pretty good at faces. As far as my 10 seconds goes, I don't like cookies. I'm not really a big fan of cookies and I know that might be controversial, but like give me a piece of cake, give me brownies. Give me cheese cake. Give me candy. Cookies for some reason just doesn't it doesn't really do it for me. Like some people like I love chocolate chip cookies and I'm like, I could probably go my entire life without eating a chocolate chip cookie ever again or any type of cookie. Like I don't know something about cookies just doesn't do it for me. Just fine. I mean, I'm sure a lot of you guys feel the same way about bagels. You're like, I don't care about bagels. Yeah, cookies just doesn't do it for me. How do you feel about that? I love cookies and loves cookies. So she disagrees with me. But yeah, so my sort of choice would be like brownies, cake, cheesecake, regular cake, any type of cake. You love cake. I do like cake. I like cake is something I could go for like the rest of my life without eating. Well, I like like a white cake or like a vanilla cake, not like chocolate cake or like a cheesecake. I like a good cheesecake. I do like brownies. I like candy. I love candy. Yeah, you're a candy boy. Anyways, just figure it out. You guys know that. So your thoughts go ahead. Let me know. But yeah, cookies, not really my thing. So on that note, let's get into today's episode. I think it's human nature to want to have deeper connections with the people in our lives. It's probably why small talk is so painfully uncomfortable. We have this desire or need to relate to others to see ourselves in them to form strong connections and bonds, especially when you see those people day in and day out like co-workers, for example. When you spend so much time in close quarters with someone, it's hard not to ask questions about their lives to want to get to know more about them their past and not everyone is an open book. Some people work hard to keep their stories close to the vest and are willing to do anything to keep the world from knowing too much about them. And I mean anything. So for today's case, we are headed south to Nassau County, Florida to a little area northeast of Jacksonville on the tip of Amelia Island called Bernandina Beach. And it is here on Bernandina Beach right along the shores of the Atlantic coast that 34 year old Jolene Cummings has built her life. And in case you're wondering, yes, Jolene is named after the Dolly Parton song. It's spelled a different way, but her mother and Johnson felt it was fitting for her little girl. Jolene was born in 1984 and she grew up in this area in Florida. She was the kind of girl who always had a large circle of friends, who was always popular and busy. And maybe because she had such a tight-knit community at home, Jolene never really ventured far as she grew up. Instead of taking the traditional route of college, Jolene went to Jacksonville to study cosmology after graduating high school. And it was around then that Jolene met someone she fell in love. The two of them had a daughter together, but the young relationship didn't work out. Still, Jolene did everything she could to be a good mom and work hard for her daughter, which eventually meant getting a job as a hairstylist at a place called the Tangles Hair Salon. In Fernandina Beach. Now, Jolene quickly built a strong client base with how warm and open she was. She was a thriving hairstylist at this point. And as many of us know, hairdressers can quickly feel like therapists or close friends when you spend enough time in their chair. And I don't know if this is like the same for boys, but any type of beauty service, it's almost like that provider. There's this stereotype where they just become an off-duty therapist where they just sit in the chair and talk and you get to know your clients entire lives and their trauma and everything going on. And it literally is just like what they say is they're like off-duty therapists or they're a therapist and a hairstylist. Yeah, I mean, kind of. I mean, I guess guys tend to not believe as an emotional open up. I feel like they're going to a lot of that stuff. Do she a lot of talk about just sports and work and stuff like that? Oh, small talk. Yeah. See, when I go get my hair done, I'm like, let me teach you everything I learned at therapy this week. Okay. Okay. So again, she has this thriving clientele. So things were going well for Jolene professionally and soon her personal life followed in 2012. Jolene reconnected with an old neighborhood friend of hers on social media was this guy named Jason Cummings. And a little while after that, Jolene told him she was looking for a new roommate and Jason was looking for a new roommate too. So these two old friends moved in together and quickly become more than roommates. Jason said one of the main reasons he actually fell in love with Jolene was because she was such a great mom to her daughter. And by 2013, the following year, Jolene and Jason were married. And after this, they added two little boys to the family. Now, unfortunately, again, things didn't last between Jolene and Jason. Cracks began to appear in their marriage and by 2017, four years later, Jolene wanted out her only focus at that point was her kids and her career. And by this point, she had been at this salon for almost five years. But that also meant Jolene didn't really have time for the drama of a divorce. So she and Jason co-parented pretty well as they separated and they went through the divorce. Jason moved out. Jolene was saving up for a new place of her own. And meanwhile, the two shared custody of their sons until the courts came to a final ruling. But in May of 2018, all of these plans for a bright and peaceful future with her kids came to a screeching halt. On Saturday, May 12th, Jolene showed up for her shift at the Tangle's hair salon and she was scheduled to work a full day. She was going to be working until 5 p.m. Now that night, her two sons were staying with their father, Jason. But it was Mother's Day and Jolene's 34th birthday was the following day on May 13th. So the plan was actually for Jolene to meet up with Jason and pick their two young sons up so she could spend the special day with them, even though he technically had custody. So they set a time in a meeting place for after work. It was a grocery store parking lot near her salon. But that afternoon, Jason arrives with the boys and he waits and waits and Jolene never shows up. Now, I do have to say it is not totally unlike Jolene to fill a bit overwhelmed with the job of being a single mom, a provider for three kids. So it does run through people's minds when she doesn't show up that maybe she just decided to give up. to spend the day by herself. But when day turns tonight, and Jason still hasn't heard from Joleen, he decides to call her mother, Anne. And her mom also finds this strange because she hadn't heard from her daughter all day either. And again, it's Mother's Day. It's her birthday the next day. So she's like, I would have at least thought my daughter would call for Mother's Day or at least talk 'cause it's her birthday coming up. But there was nothing. So by the time they wake up on Monday, May 14th, and neither of them still haven't heard from Joleen, and she has these kids that she shares with another man, they call the police. So it is A-O-A-M when her mother Anne files a Missing Persons report with the Fernandina Beach Police Department. And based on the family's level of concern, they actually do start looking into this Missing Mother right away. They do confirm that the last time anyone spoke to Joleen, was when she worked on Saturday the 12th. And that appears to be the last time she used her cell phone too. So it's now the afternoon of the 14th. This is hours after she's been reported missing and police finally go to her house. Now Joleen's stepfather actually has a key. So he's the one who lets police inside and what they find is more than alarming. Items have been knocked off tables and onto the floor inside. Cabinets are ripped off their hinges. Holes have been just punched through walls. There is clearly evidence of a struggle or a fight that happened in this house. In fact, it looks like a domestic disturbance. So who's the first person police immediately want to speak to despite the fact that he was heavily involved in reporting her disappearance? Obviously, Joleen's ex-husband Jason. Now, things weren't necessarily great between the two of them or they probably wouldn't have gotten divorced in the first place, but apparently things had gotten a little bit more contentious by this point. Mainly because the couple was still going through the courts to determine a fair custody agreement for the kids. But when Jason comes in for questioning, he insists he had nothing to do with Joleen's disappearance. He said, yes, I mean, obviously we're getting divorced. We've had our disagreements, but we've been working together as amicably as possible for the sake of the kids, just trying to make this work. He's like, I actually still love her. We just weren't a good match for the long term. He also said it wasn't completely unheard of for Joleen to go a wall for some time without explanation, which again is why they even waited those two days before reporting her missing. In fact, he claimed that those disappearing acts were part of the reason he wanted out of that marriage, because he assumed when she would just go ghost for a little bit that she was sneaking off to be with someone else. Now, after hearing this, police also confirmed that Jason has a pretty solid alibi. On the day Joleen was last seen or heard from, literally all day when she was supposed to be at work, he was with his kids and his parents at his place. So he has two children who can be like, that was home and then his own parents. But it is during this first interview that Jason actually steers police in a new direction, 'cause he's like, listen, I'm not the one you should be looking at for my ex-wife's disappearance. Turns out, Joleen had been seeing someone new. It was another Jason who was referred to as Jason G. So this is her like next love affair, but he's also Jason. - That would be kind of interesting not being with someone, and then your new person, your worth, has the same name as your ex. - Yeah. - Yeah. - I don't know. I don't think it'd be a little weird. So this one is Jason G and this Jason has a criminal history and he does run around with a pretty dangerous crowd. So when police begin looking into Jason G, they find he had an outstanding warrant for violating his probation. And this guy had been arrested plenty of times before from everything to drug offenses, to domestic charges. So knowing this, having seen the state of Joleen's place and the fact that she's still missing, police look into whether there were any reports filed recently between the two. And sure enough, just a few days prior to her disappearance, 911 was called to a domestic violence situation at Joleen's home. Apparently, Jason G had showed up at her house wanting to spend the night, but Joleen told him she thought it was going to cause more problems in her divorce and for her custody arrangement. And when Jason G felt rejected, they got into a fight, handed up destroying her place, the remnants of what police saw in her home when they went to investigate. So they realize, okay, the cops were called because of these two. So they need to get this guy down here for questioning. But the problem is they can't find Jason G. His cell phone's off likely so he can't be tracked and he doesn't have a car registered to him. So running his plates really isn't an option. They do learn that his parents live in the area though. And through his parents, they end up finding Jason hiding out in some friend's bedroom somewhere. And that's when they're able to place Jason G under arrest for that warrant and then drag him to the police station to do an interview in Joleen's missing persons case. - Okay, got it. - Now the fact that this guy was hiding from the police to begin with is not a good look. But he insists he would never do anything to hurt Joleen, which seems strange considering he has some scratches on his hands and wrists that look like they came from fingernails. Though he swears the last time he saw Joleen, was the night that the argument occurred at her house a few days before 1-9-1-1 was called. And he also says he has an alibi too. He says that entire weekend after the fight, he went to Jacksonville for a barbecue at a friend's place and stayed there until Sunday. This was the day of Joleen's birthday and the day after she went missing. So not really buying his story or wanting to trust him. Police book him anyway for violating his probation. They keep him behind bars and they add him to the suspect list for now. But it doesn't take long for them to realize this is an easy alibi to check out and it does. He was nowhere near Joleen or her salon the weekend she disappeared. And with both Jason's now crossed off their list, Lisa are back to square one for now. Now meanwhile, detectives are also at Tangles salon, talking to Joleen's coworkers to see kind of just like, what's up, what's been going on with her life. She's worked here for a long, long time. So these people might know her and I mean, when you're trying to find someone, the best thing to do is dig up their life. And her coworkers say that there was only one other person working at the salon with Joleen that Saturday, May 12th, the day before her birthday. Her name was Jennifer Cybert. Now Jennifer hadn't been working at the salon for very long actually, only a couple months. But other hairdressers at Tangles said, we actually don't really know that much about Jennifer beyond what was kind of on her resume. They said she was a bit cagey about her past. She didn't really open up to them about her personal life. She wasn't the friendliest. It was strange, but they're like, I mean, she's only a couple months old here. Maybe it's just her personality. And she was the only one who was working with Joleen that day. What's even stranger though, is what Jennifer did when she saw the police at the salon talking to people. So they noticed that Jennifer pulls into the parking lot that day for her shift. But as soon as she sees that detectives are there interviewing coworkers, she immediately gets back in her car and doesn't come inside. It's interesting, okay. And everyone, I mean, the coworkers are like, well, that's who last worked with her. And now she's not coming inside. Instead, Jennifer texts her boss at the salon saying, hey, I quit. She'll mail her back the salon key and they can put Jennifer's check in the mail. - That's, people are so stupid. - I know. - Like, people are so stupid, okay. - So at this point, people are a little like, what is going on? Her boss texts her back and is like, is everything okay? Like, this is so out of the blue. Why are you randomly just quitting? And Jennifer tells her, it's because an ex of mine, she's like, I'm terrified for my life. I can't be involved with anything having to do with the police. So because like, we have a coworker who's missing and they're like asking around this salon, I don't wanna be here. Like, I don't wanna talk to police because I'm scared of this ex. I'm not sure that makes sense to me, but okay. - So naturally, detectives are like, hey, we need to get a hold of this woman because she was the only other person working and now she's acting weird. And after they do, Jennifer tells them she wants to help but she can't be part of the investigation because again, it might put. her life in danger. She explains it further to police saying her ex is a stalker and a computer expert who will track her down and find her if her name is written on any police report. So she's like, I can't have like my name on any file anywhere. But this reeks of suspicion, detectives are certain this isn't the full story. They think there's something Jennifer isn't telling them. Now, unfortunately, there is no security footage inside the salon that can queue them into what might have happened that day. There's only one camera above the desk and it's not even hooked up. But things become a bit clearer the following day on May 15th because that is when officers get a call that Jolene's car has now been found. Okay, that's a big deal. The huge deal. Where? Where's this car? Her beige 2006 Ford expedition was in a parking lot near a home depot in Uly, Florida. This was about seven miles away. It's not far from the salon. I always expect these cars to be extremely far away. And I feel like they're always within 10 miles, but you're just weird. Now, when police get to the car, they don't find anything too out of the ordinary. There's no blood or signs of a struggle inside the vehicle. So they decide to start canvassing the area like maybe why is it parked here? And police find a credit union whose cameras face the parking lot. Now, what those cameras show is that on May 13th, the early morning hours of Jolene's birthday, her car pulled into that parking lot around 117 a.m. This was seven hours after Jolene's shift would have ended at tangles on Saturday. But in this footage, it is not Jolene who gets out of Jolene's car. It's another shadowy figure that's a different height and size. Now, they walk off screen in the direction of a convenience store. And another camera shows that same person who appears to be a woman speaking with a clerk who is on break outside and then they go into the convenience store. And so when police check footage from inside this convenience store, it clearly reveals who this mystery person is, the one who dropped Jolene's car in the parking lot. And of course, it's Jennifer Cybert. She's dressed in all black with combat boots and she appears to be overly chatty with the cashier there. So next detectives are like, "Hey, we need to track down this employee from the convenience store." And when they talk to this employee, they say they remember Jennifer clearly from that day. That night she came in and said she had been out drinking with some friends and she seemed rather scared or nervous about something. She asked if they could just call a cab for her. So they do. And a few minutes later, the cab shows up and she darts off and gets into the passenger seat. They said she didn't really seem to have a purse or a phone and even weirder. Jennifer told the store employee that she needed the cab because she didn't have enough money to pay for gas. But then she prepaid for the taxi using a credit card and she apparently had scratch marks all over her face. So now they track down the taxi driver to find out, okay, where did you take Jennifer after this convenience store? And he says he dropped her off at a strip mall, but he wasn't sure what business she was there for. However, in this strip mall was the tangles hair salon. After that, he said Jennifer got out of the cab, got into a small black car and drove off. Now, obviously, after discovering Jolene's car, police realized they have a big problem on their hands because they go to Jennifer's address, the one that the salon had for her from her employment paperwork. When they arrive, they realize this address doesn't even exist. It's a fake. So now police start to wonder who is Jennifer and what if Jolene was starting to catch on to this kind of suspicious coworker? What if she realized Jennifer had something to hide? Which, according to some of the people who worked and went to tangles, might have been the case. When police speak with witnesses who knew both Jennifer and Jolene, they said there was actually some tension between the two of them that everyone who worked at the salon was friendly and close, but Jennifer never opened up to any of them. She mostly shut them out. Like I said, she was standoffish. She was KG and Jolene was apparently suspicious and pushy about this. She told one coworker that Jennifer was, quote, not the person that she says she is. She also hinted that she was going to look more into her background. And friends of Jolene said she gets an idea about something. She is like a dog with a bone. She's not going to give up till she gets answers. So this whole theory of like maybe she learned something she didn't was because of just this past gossip that him in going on. When police spoke to the employees at the salon, Jennifer had worked at B4 tangles. Again, they're now trying to unravel Jennifer's life. The people there say the same thing. Jennifer's behavior was strange. She was KG and she also had these fits of rage. When she got fired from that last salon, she threw her keys at her boss left around 3 p.m. Got into her car and then sat there until the salon closed at 9 p.m. Her former boss was so sketched out about this. The fact that Jennifer just wouldn't leave. She actually thought Jennifer was waiting to follow her home. So there's just all these bizarre little details that are starting to add up to detectives, which is why they decide there's one place they need to search for clues. And that's at the salon where Jennifer and Jolene were working alone. That Saturday, May 12th, the day Jolene was last seen or heard from. Now, when police had first scanned the salon, they didn't find much, but now they're back and they're looking and they find something in the break room. Along the bottom of the sink is what appears to be diluted blood. And so detectives call their forensic unit out there. And when they come in and spray the place with lumenol, the honestly entire salon lights up. There's blood on the walls, the cabinets in the sink drain on a sign and display stand around a vacuum cleaner on the floor, which was clearly wiped up using a mop. And while I said there was no surveillance cameras inside the salon, there was one pointing at a dumpster near the salon. So sure enough, when police pulled that footage, they see Jennifer on the evening of May 12th, growing out a white trash bag. They assume to be Jennifer's belongings or even her body. So they haven't even gone to Jennifer yet. They're trying to really get answers to this case and they're doing a good job so far. So like, why question the way they're investigating? They're trying to do it with before even having to question her. They decide to end up searching landfills in Georgia, hoping to find this trash that was thrown out by Jennifer. And while reports say they found a few items of interest, there's no sign of Jolene's body detectives do, however, discover that Jennifer actually had a storage locker that she rented. And when they search it, they find a pair of boots, a sock, and a pair of scissors, all with blood on them. And they also discover a fingernail in this storage unit. And they later confirm this fingernail belongs to Jolene. So obviously, at this point, police feel pretty confident that they know who did this. The only thing is they can't find Jennifer. Luckily, they do have a correct phone number for her. It was the one she'd given to this lawn. So they start by trying to track down her cell phone. And they also do put a blow out for her and her black key a soul. And in the meantime, they scan every rest stop beach and campsite in the area with a bathroom thinking maybe she's hiding away somewhere that has access to those facilities. And then on Wednesday, May 16th, police get an updated alert that her phone pinged an area about 75 miles south of the salon near St. August. So detectives and two FBI agents head out to this rest area. And sure enough, they find a key a soul parked between two giant trucks. So I mean, this manhunt, they now have basically found the car. So they carefully approach it and there's Jennifer lying down inside. When they finally get her out of her car and get her talking, she insists she has no idea where Jolyn is. She has nothing to do with her disappearance. But obviously, police, like I said, have done a bunch of investigating before even talking to her. So they know this isn't true and also Jolene's face tells a different story because she has claw marks all over her face and band-aids trying to cover them up. She's also got scratches all over her hands, arms and thighs as well as a chunk of hair missing from her head. I mean everything about this screams this woman was in a really bad fight but her excuses she was riding a bike and crashed headfirst into a tree. Kind of crazy sometimes it's really who you least expect. Yeah especially considering she had this like 911 called domestic violence situation before like a couple days before this that's so like that would be your number one everyone would be like one plus one equals two and now we're at the coworker. Yeah it's not that's crazy. Now obviously none of this really matters. Police already have a warrant for her arrest. One for Grand Theft Auto for taking Jolene's vehicle because they know for 100% surety she's the one who left it in the parking lot. So Jennifer is arrested and taken to their station for questioning but what's strange is her behavior like she doesn't really seem stressed. During the interrogation she's calm she's cool she's collected and then just a few minutes in she drops a bomb on detectives okay so they bring her in they're like hey we we know you had something to do with this what's going on and she says well to start my name is an actually Jennifer cybert she says quote I'm ready to go back to being myself Kimberly Li Tesla and from there she starts telling them these stories she claims ex-boyfriend is wanted by the FBI because he robbed banks and she used to be a topless dancer that she used to be married she has a son but she's been running from her life for the past 20 25 years trying to leave all of that behind and meanwhile police are looking into this like off camera to see if any of this is true and they do find that this woman has been using 18 different aliases she has lived in 30 different cities across 14 states for the last bit of her life many of the ID cards for those aliases have been found inside her kias like she kept them so who is Jennifer cybert then turns out Kimberly had stolen the identity of a 13-year-old girl who was killed in a car crash and buried in butler pennsylvania where Kimberly was originally from so she's like how this girl died in a car crash in my hometown oh I'm gonna I'm gonna take right identity but obviously they're not even there to unravel Jennifer or Kimberly's twisted past and why she's even doing this they're there to confirm that she murdered joling comings but when that becomes the topic of conversation around our two of the interrogation Kimberly's demeanor changes like she's opened up being like this is my life I'm not even who I say I am then they're like K what about what about jolene and she's like nope I'm refusing to talk I need a lawyer now at the moment they have her in custody for grand theft auto charges but if she's not going to confess to murder they're going to need as much evidence as they can to indict her on those charges because unfortunately the one thing they don't have is a body so detectives keep digging and that includes now looking into Kimberly now remember Kimberly and Jennifer are the same person I'm gonna call her Kimberly because that's her real name they look into Kimberly's computer and phone history and what they find is less than 10 days before jolene went missing on May 4th Kimberly had made some incriminating searches 10 days before the disappearance she googled on her phone how to tie a turn a kit bro they're kind of people that just google this stuff on their phone she also searched for how to inject someone with something also coworker guilty of murder missing person body not found you know pretty soon what's going to happen instead is people are going to start taking chat dpt oh it's going to come out yeah it's going to happen it's going to it's going to happen and it's not just going to be like in the sense of murder it's going to also be to like prove where their head was at the time like it's going to be almost used as a personal journal I think I could see that like at trial where they're going to be like well we can like prove where they're like frame of mind was because look at their look at their conversations I wonder the legalities behind that like what's going to I know right yeah it'll be interesting yeah so the search is just get worse after this they escalate to how long does it take for a body to decay and how to dismember a body now if you're the number one suspect for a murder and these are the search how to dismember a body is your on your on your computer and then after Jolene went missing she searched for Jolene's name 457 times in two days oh my god obviously waiting to she wants to be involved she wants to know where the investigation is at are they on to her like has she been found okay including search terms like quote Jolene Cummings no body no crime there it is in writing on May 5th a week before the murder they also found Kimberly bought large zip ties from a boating supply store and around the same time a bunch of trash bags an electric knife and a bottle of ammonia from a wall marked now as police like discover this it's becoming abundantly clear that this wasn't just like a fight at the salon that day this wasn't a spur of the moment decision this murder was carefully orchestrated and intentional so despite not having a body the state attorney's office feels like they have more than enough to move forward with charges and finally on September 7th 2018 almost five months after Jolene's death Kimberly Kessler is charged with first degree murder um just an announcement to hop in here the easy is really sick we're not sure what's going on so Peyton is going to finish the rest of this case keep listening um I'm just trying to figure out what's going on with the easy because something is not right thanks everybody or girl just not feel good I don't think she has a tummy ache okay so they move forward with the charges on September 7th 2018 she is charged with first degree murder in 2019 DNA analysis confirms the blood on Kimberly's boots and sock and the blood in the salon wore a match for Jolene Cummings but the question still on everyone's mind is why Kimberly never really gave a motive herself which only left police and prosecutors with one viable theory Jolene was getting dangerously close to uncovering Jennifer Slash Kimberly's true identity it was clear the two didn't get along they would yell at each other and when Jolene started talking about unraveling Kimberly's secrets exposing her for who she truly was I guess that was enough to set Kimberly off but it didn't explain why she would go to such great lengths to hide that past especially when she confessed to police who she was almost right away then again maybe there doesn't need to be much more than that because what Kimberly did while she was in custody made everyone believe she was living with a pretty serious mental health condition in July 2019 a judge even declared that Kimberly was too mentally incompetent to stand trial she was being sent to a Florida state hospital for treatment this was based on the evaluations of doctors who had seen her behavior while she had been incarcerated and it had been pretty disturbing for example at one point Kimberly dropped from 170 pounds down to 80 pounds in jail while she was on a hunger strike another time she ripped her clothes off she got completely naked she started smearing feces on herself growing it at the guards she accused jail officials of trying to poison her she was later put on suicide watch it was then that her attorneys were like we don't even know if this woman can cooperate in her own defense however months later there's another trial to redetermin her competency after she's been in the hospital a psychologist tells the court that Kimberly's quote strategic and intelligent claimed it was totally possible for someone to have a mental health disorder and still be competent to stand trial this time the judge agrees Kimberly was actually more than able to understand the charges she was facing and the crime she committed so much so she was able to manipulate the people around her into thinking otherwise so the trial goes forward though ultimately Kimberly had to watch the proceedings from a remote video link this was after she came into the courtroom previously strapped to a chair yelling that the public defender was Jolene's cousin she was being treated unfairly by the way this is not like he had no relation to Jolene so that December 2021 jury selection was over Kimberly's trial began but i mean with all of the evidence stacked against her deliberating only took an hour the jury found Kimberly Kessler guilty of first degree murder and grand theft auto for taking Jolene's car She was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. And then, Jolene's family is left to pick up the pieces of that loss, including her ex-husband Jason, who was forced to move after facing such media scrutiny in the case. He and his sons relocated, looking for a fresh start. Jason has said that even though they were going through their own issues at the time he still misses and loves Jolene, that she taught him how to be a better dad, the family often visits the bench dedicated to Jolene in Buchanan Park in Hilliard near her home. Without her remains, it's one of the few places they have to feel close to her. Obviously, the hope is that one day this will change, you know, when they can find Jolene, they can lay her to rest. That way, they can have what every family deserves, a place that holds all of her, a place to grieve, a place to maintain. That meaningful connection, but unless Kimberly Kessler is ready to say what actually happened that day with Jolene, we might not ever see that reality. And that is the case of Jolene Cummings. I'm sorry Garrett had to dip out, but thank you guys so much for listening to today's episode. And I will see you with another one. I love it, and he hates it. Goodbye. [Music]