The Final Cut

Speaker 1 I am so excited for this spa day. Candles lit, music on, hot tub warm and ready.

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Speaker 3 What a beautiful picture. Now the Dolly Parton song comes to mind when I hear Jolene.

Speaker 4 Jolene, Jolene.

Speaker 3 Did that have any impact on your naming her?

Speaker 10 It was because of that song.

Speaker 3 Something's not right.

Speaker 10 Jolene's not answering. Not hearing from Jolene on Mother's Day?

Speaker 11 On her birthday?

Speaker 12 She started doing her little Eugenie acts.

Speaker 13 And I thought she was just seeing somebody else.

Speaker 14 Urgent search for a missing mother in Nassau County.

Speaker 13 What do you think happened to Joe while she's hanging out in these bad dudes, bad crowds?

Speaker 16 Sounds like she had trouble kind of with figuring out men.

Speaker 17 She did. She did.
First thought was the boyfriend, you know, had done something.

Speaker 13 And this is your opportunity here to clear your name and you're acting like this jackass. I said, that had nothing to do with Jolene being missing.
I love it. I'm missing.

Speaker 3 At some point, Jolene confides in you. Some thoughts, some suspicions.

Speaker 5 It is the actual moment where we perceive we are looking at something more sinister. Who is that figure that walks across in the darkness?

Speaker 19 You can see them walk around a building just as I did, and then they go ahead and enter the building.

Speaker 17 No one had any idea how truly unhinged that she was.

Speaker 19 When I saw the video, hair on the back of my neck stand-up moment.

Speaker 3 Nestled on the tip of Amelia Island sits North Florida's Fernandina Beach.

Speaker 3 With its shrimp boats bobbing in the harbor next to oak-shaded streets, both tourists and locals come to savor the island life.

Speaker 6 I would describe Fernandina Beach as a small area that a lot of people come to visit. It's very welcoming.

Speaker 21 It's kind of like a hippie beach town.

Speaker 16 We have a shrimp drop where we have a big lit up shrimp

Speaker 16 and they drop it just like they do New Year's at the ball with the ball.

Speaker 21 You have all the pirate ships. There's even Pippi Longstocking's houses down in Old Town.

Speaker 3 That house was made famous in the 1988 film The New Adventures of Pippi Longstocking based on the children's book.

Speaker 15 Hello, look, Pippi!

Speaker 22 Our crime rate in Nashville County is very low when you compare to our surrounding areas.

Speaker 3 But on Mother's Day in May of 2018, Jolene Cummings, a single mom of three, never arrives to pick up her children from her ex-husband, Jason Cummings.

Speaker 3 Evening is now falling over northern Florida, and Jolene's two young sons are waiting in a grocery store parking lot with their dad.

Speaker 3 The minutes tick by, but their mom never arrives to pick them up.

Speaker 21 And it was her birthday and it was Mother's Day weekend. She always wanted to spend that time with her kids.

Speaker 3 What were her plans as far as you knew?

Speaker 10 It would have been the first time that she would have been able to celebrate Mother's Day and her birthday with the boys and she would be at my house.

Speaker 3 Why in the world would this mom suddenly disappear on such a big day?

Speaker 3 Those close to her say that as a young working single mother, Jolene would often feel overwhelmed and take off, making time for herself. Might she have just gone off and

Speaker 3 done something without telling you?

Speaker 10 Has Jolene gone off in the past? Oh, yes. Have I been able to contact her? Yes.

Speaker 17 Did you have a feeling?

Speaker 10 Yeah.

Speaker 10 Yeah, not hearing from Jolene on Mother's Day, on her birthday?

Speaker 4 Yes.

Speaker 10 I had this gut-wrenching feeling all day. And I told my husband, I need to call this in.
He said, no, Ann, wait till tomorrow. So at 8 o'clock on Monday morning I called.

Speaker 19 8.08 a.m. Ann Johnson contacted the sheriff's office and reported that her adult daughter, Jolene Cummings, was missing.

Speaker 19 She stated that no one had heard from Jolene for at least two days.

Speaker 19 I was named the lead investigator on this case. It was urgent to me from the start.

Speaker 19 While it's certainly not uncommon for an adult to, you know, go missing or take off for a couple days, there were some things that really concerned Miss Johnson about it.

Speaker 27 Her daughter would have spent Saturday at the Tangles hair salon where she had worked for six years.

Speaker 28 So, Tangles is a salon that's right on the edge of Yoli and Fernandina Beach.

Speaker 4 It's in a shopping center.

Speaker 28 There are multiple chairs, multiple stylists working there day in and day out.

Speaker 15 Hi ladies. Hey, hey.
I'm Deborah. I'm Brittany.

Speaker 29 Brittany, nice to meet you.

Speaker 29 Hey, Jill.

Speaker 15 Nice to meet you.

Speaker 17 She was my hairdresser.

Speaker 7 That's how we met.

Speaker 3 Somebody said that she was kind of a therapist. Yeah.
Like a therapist, but doing hair.

Speaker 7 Yeah, absolutely, because she would always give you the best advice.

Speaker 3 Now, what was she like as a mom? Because on the one hand, she had this creative career, but then she was also a pretty young mom.

Speaker 21 She was there to support them. I think she grew up and she didn't get to do the things that other kids got to do sometimes.

Speaker 21 So she really wanted to make sure her daughter did everything that she didn't get to do.

Speaker 10 Those boys and her daughter were just the love of her life. The place that she was living in was my brother-in-law's.
It wasn't the best, but she was saving to move.

Speaker 19 I wanted to go to Jolene's home to find out where she lived and to see if there were any clues there, anything there that might give me an idea where she might be.

Speaker 19 Jolene's stepfather gave me access to the home. When I went inside,

Speaker 19 there were cabinets that were hanging by one hinge.

Speaker 19 It appeared as if somebody had actually punched and kicked holes in the wall. This evidence was very worrisome for a person who's gone missing.

Speaker 3 It's clearly a disturbing and and suspicious scene and there's one person investigators want to talk to, Jolene's ex-husband, Jason Cummings.

Speaker 5 Anytime someone goes missing, you have a list of people that you probably want to talk to. Exes are always at the top of that list.

Speaker 4 Jason and Jolene had had somewhat of a rocky relationship.

Speaker 19 There was an injunction in place between Jolene and her ex-husband, a no-violence injunction that said there'd be no violence between the two individuals.

Speaker 19 Jason was, he made it obvious that there was, it was contentious about custody of kids, that the court had not decided yet.

Speaker 3 Texts between the former couple reveal a volatile relationship, with Jolene once writing, these kids have seen and heard enough, and Jason responding, see you in court, Jolene.

Speaker 3 And in another text, Jason writes, I hate you, and tomorrow you will hate me. I promise that.

Speaker 10 They still had an amical relationship. They worked together for the love of the children.

Speaker 22 We wanted to talk to him, see if he knows anything, knows about where she may be or has seen her.

Speaker 19 I made contact with Jason Cummings via phone. I scheduled him to come in the next morning to do an interview with the sheriff's office.

Speaker 3 It's now Tuesday, two days since Jolene was last seen. And her ex-husband, Jason Cummings, is sitting in the Nassau County Sheriff's Office with Detective Harrington.

Speaker 3 Telling him how Jolene's happy exterior hid a darker side of her personality.

Speaker 13 She's angry most of the time,

Speaker 13 but she's also happy as she's the type of woman that wouldn't let you know. You could see it on her face, but she wouldn't tell you

Speaker 18 what was wrong.

Speaker 27 When Jason Cummings is answering these questions, he did let police know that it wasn't uncommon for Jolene to sometimes disappear without explanation.

Speaker 13 But I was like, look, you need to get it together.

Speaker 32 This right here is the reason why I left her, because she would disappear for a few days. She started doing her little Eugenie acts.

Speaker 13 And I thought she was just seeing somebody else.

Speaker 27 Jason Cummings let police know that he had an alibi for the day that Jolene went missing. He was with the kids and he had his parents that he was around who could verify that.

Speaker 13 And where did you go with that when you left the? Kids ate, we all ate.

Speaker 13 Granny and Papa, while they were getting ready for church, me and the kids went out there and there were the force, you know.

Speaker 3 The dad of Jolene's two youngest kids then steers investigators in a completely different direction, mentioning somebody else close to his ex-wife.

Speaker 19 He said, if you're going to look at anybody, you need to look at this new guy she's dating. He's not a good guy.

Speaker 12 She's hanging out in this bad dude, bad crowd.

Speaker 3 Now the Dolly Parton song comes to mind when I hear Jolene. Did that have any impact on your naming her?

Speaker 10 Yeah it was because of that song.

Speaker 4 Jolene, Jolene, Jolene.

Speaker 10 Dolly Parton's song is J-O-L-E-N-E.

Speaker 10 And I found the J-O-L-E-E-N, which meant pretty, that fit her because when she was born, she had the eyes of green her hair was auburn.

Speaker 14 Urgent search for a missing mother in Nassau County.

Speaker 33 Our Julia Janie is live at the state attorney's office.

Speaker 27 At the time of Jolene Cummings' disappearance, I was an investigative reporter for First Coast News, the ABC affiliate there in Jacksonville. The mother of Jolene Cummings, who said she's heartbroken.

Speaker 3 We will continue to search for Jolene.

Speaker 30 We have searched for her utilizing all of our resources, including canines, horses, and boats.

Speaker 7 People are talking about it like crazy.

Speaker 34 They're asking questions.

Speaker 10 They're wanting answers.

Speaker 3 So days go by, nothing.

Speaker 3 What are you thinking?

Speaker 10 It was the most horrible time of my life. I was searching.
Friends were searching. My husband was searching with me.

Speaker 29 Constant alerts on the news and she was being searched for. People were asked to keep an eye out for Jolene's vehicle.

Speaker 34 Those with any information about where Cummings is is urged to call the Nassau County Sheriff's Office.

Speaker 3 What did you think?

Speaker 21 I just stopped. I was frozen.
I didn't know what to think.

Speaker 17 I thought that this can't be, this is not my Jolene. This has to be somebody else.
And then I went online to look it up and sure enough, it was her picture. And it just, I just had a sinking feeling.

Speaker 11 Now detectives are ready to interview their very first person of interest.

Speaker 11 And that would be Jolene's ex-husband, Jason Cummings. These two had a volatile relationship.

Speaker 13 What do you think, Evan LaJolen?

Speaker 13 Me personally, I hope that she's no one to be found. And now she's got all this attention on her, she's probably scared.

Speaker 13 Is that your hope? Or is that your thought?

Speaker 13 What is my hope?

Speaker 3 But while he's in the hot seat, Cummings tells Detective Harrington that he should be looking at another Jason in Jolene's life.

Speaker 13 I just know his first name's Jason. I've never met him.
I've got text messages from other people saying he's bad dudes.

Speaker 19 When I asked him about, you know, why he was so concerned about this person, he just said that he had a criminal history.

Speaker 19 He was very concerned about Jolene and more specifically being around a type of person like that.

Speaker 13 I hope that she'll pop up any minute and say, hey, you're here. I hope we're spending a lot of time.

Speaker 13 for you know no reason. I thought she's hanging out and these bad dudes, bad crowd.
She shouldn't be doing this crap.

Speaker 27 After police completed their questioning,

Speaker 27 Jason Cummings was able to leave the Nassau County Sheriff's Office.

Speaker 5 After checking out Jason Cummings' alibis, he was cleared of any wrongdoing.

Speaker 5 The next person of interest that we wanted to look at is her current boyfriend, who she had broken up with, Jason G.

Speaker 21 When Jolene had gone missing, I had heard that she had had a boyfriend who was not the best of news.

Speaker 3 It sounds like while she might have been bright and airy, she had trouble with figuring out men.

Speaker 17 She did. She did.

Speaker 17 She had been married and divorced.

Speaker 17 A boyfriend, I believe he's had kind of

Speaker 17 some trouble with the law.

Speaker 4 A record.

Speaker 4 Yes.

Speaker 9 Yeah.

Speaker 10 Jolene also liked the underdog.

Speaker 10 Irrelevant with her past was?

Speaker 21 Jolene wanted to fix people.

Speaker 21 I think that's really why she dated him.

Speaker 19 Jason Gee had an outstanding warrant from Nassau County. As a matter of fact, it was a felony warrant for violation of probation, and he was wanted by the Nassau County Sheriff's Office.

Speaker 22 He wasn't a stranger to law enforcement.

Speaker 19 He had previously had arrests for drug offenses, for domestic.

Speaker 11 Jason G was in fact convicted of several drug offenses, but not that alleged domestic violence charge. That was dropped.

Speaker 6 There was a report also with Jolene and Jason G getting into an altercation, a domestic violence situation at their home a couple days prior to this.

Speaker 19 Jason G had come over to the house and had wanted to spend the night with Jolene. Jolene was concerned it would cause problems with her divorce.

Speaker 19 Jason G got very angry to the point that he started destroying items in the house.

Speaker 11 For investigators, Jolene's allegations explain all that physical damage they saw inside her home.

Speaker 27 Next on their list, police are really eager to talk to Jason G, but he is nowhere to be found.

Speaker 19 We had a difficult time. We looked, it took a little while to track Jason G down.

Speaker 19 It appeared from, you know, trying to check his cell phone that he was only turning it on occasionally when he needed to and that he was turning it off so that he couldn't be tracked.

Speaker 19 I don't think he was staying in one location very long.

Speaker 5 He didn't have a means of transportation, so we knew he was probably in the Hilliard area. However, his parents lived in Jacksonville on the north side.

Speaker 19 With all that, we did get a warrant to try to locate him by pinging his phone.

Speaker 19 He was found hiding under a bunch of cardboard boxes in a bedroom. So it was very, very suspicious to us.
You know, he was a prime suspect when we did the interview.

Speaker 13 Jason.

Speaker 27 When the interrogation of Jason G starts, it begins with the detective keeping his tone pretty calm, his demeanor pretty calm.

Speaker 13 Can we go just kind of back to the beginning and tell me, you know, you know, how you guys got together, where you met?

Speaker 13 A little over a year ago. What school did we never know each other, but I went over to

Speaker 13 party, and we, I mean, just got together and just clear it.

Speaker 11 But now cops are ready to take off the kit gloves. The temperature inside of that interrogation room heats up.

Speaker 13 Hi, Mal. I just found out about Joe Lee being missing yesterday.

Speaker 13 I would never heard him.

Speaker 11 But it's time up for Jason G.

Speaker 11 Detectives see something that makes them wonder whether he had gone one step too far.

Speaker 13 You got some scratches on your wrist and everything.

Speaker 19 To me, they looked a lot like fingernail scratches, which really, really concerned me.

Speaker 13 This is your opportunity here to clear your name, and you're acting like a jackass.

Speaker 11 So things aren't looking so good for Jason G.

Speaker 11 But then, a new piece of evidence emerges that just deepens this mystery.

Speaker 5 We want to know who is that figure that walks across in the darkness.

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Speaker 3 Mother of three Jolene Cummings has seemingly vanished from her North Florida town, setting off alarm bells within the small community.

Speaker 21 The hairdresser community was really just completely in shock. Watching Jolene's disappearance play out on TV, it was stressful.

Speaker 7 She never showed up to pick up her kids yesterday on Mother's Day.

Speaker 34 Cummings was last seen leaving work at the Tangles hair salon on Saturday, around 5 p.m.

Speaker 3 Florida's Nassau County Sheriff's investigators are racing against the clock to figure out what happened to the hairdresser.

Speaker 3 Remember, they've got her ex-boyfriend Jason G under arrest in an unrelated case, and he's being interrogated.

Speaker 19 When we find Jason G and he's brought in for the interview, I mean, we're really looking at him as, you know, this is probably our suspect.

Speaker 6 You know, you always want to give someone the benefit of a doubt just because of their history, but with everything involved, it just seemed like a pretty good suspect to look at at the time.

Speaker 13 Do me a favor, let me

Speaker 13 hold your hands up like this.

Speaker 19 He had marks on his hands and his arms. To me, they looked a lot like fingernail scratches, which really, really concerned me.

Speaker 13 You got some

Speaker 13 scratches on your wrists and everything. Tell me, tell Tell me about those.

Speaker 13 Dog played with it.

Speaker 27 They are really looking closely to see, could this have been a struggle with a person?

Speaker 13 I got one there from the devil branches that my dad had happened like a week ago.

Speaker 3 Detective Harrington asks about that alleged domestic violence incident and the disturbing scene at Jolene's home.

Speaker 19 He stated that the last time he saw Jolene was when he was at the house and the altercation occurred.

Speaker 13 And I went over there to see what was in the house.

Speaker 13 There were some cabinets broken, there were some holes and stuff. Did that happen that night? I slammed the cabinets shut up when we were arguing.
And

Speaker 13 what about there's holes in the door? She actually took a hammer through the hand door.

Speaker 32 And we were arguing.

Speaker 12 That was four or five months ago.

Speaker 11 During the interrogation, Jason G tells the detectives that he lost his phone. Now, that's a red flag for detectives.

Speaker 11 They're thinking, oh, come on, who doesn't have their phone with them all the time these days?

Speaker 13 It's not for you to come clean and tell us what you did. I didn't do nothing with it.
Then where's your phone? It's at my cousin's or my dad's. Well, I'm doing this.
What is it?

Speaker 27 Jason G has an answer for why he doesn't have his cell phone because he's actually been trying to run from police and doesn't want them to ping his phone because of that outstanding parole violation warrant.

Speaker 32 I told you, the reason I was

Speaker 13 going to say, ever since I've had this warning, I've had my battery taken off my phone. I had nothing to do with this.
I didn't even call you all.

Speaker 13 I told y'all, y'all can call my cousin and my daddy will tell you where I've been at in the past three days.

Speaker 27 Jason G says that he has an alibi for where he was. And not just for the day that Jolene went missing, but the entire weekend.

Speaker 19 He had stated he was having a barbecue down in North Jacksonville.

Speaker 13 I went to sleep. I slept till about 10 or 11.

Speaker 18 We went back over there and hold out the rest of the day.

Speaker 13 They stayed there till Sunday. Sunday, I went home Sunday night.

Speaker 11 Maybe Jason G does come across as volatile, a little rough around the edges. But Detective Harrington notices that when G talks about Jolene, he's calmer.
His voice softens.

Speaker 12 I wouldn't hurt her.

Speaker 13 I wouldn't cause any harm or any discomfort.

Speaker 13 Tried to get off of her.

Speaker 13 Then I texted her Sunday morning and told her happy mothers and happy birthday. I gotta tell you,

Speaker 13 I'm not buying what you're telling me.

Speaker 4 I'm gonna believe you,

Speaker 13 but I'm telling you the truth, man.

Speaker 18 I had nothing to do with Jolene being missing.

Speaker 13 I love her. I miss her.
I want her to be okay.

Speaker 19 He no way convinced me after the interview that he was innocent, but in the back of my mind, I did think he seemed like he really was concerned about Jolene's well-being and whereabouts.

Speaker 3 Police take more pictures and then book G on the probation violation charge, but he's still only a suspect in Jolene's disappearance.

Speaker 27 In the Nassau County Sheriff's Office, they take the approach of getting the public involved. They start putting out the flyers with her picture on it.

Speaker 5 Press release was stating that Jolene Cummings was missing. It also described her vehicle, a gold tan in color Ford expedition with a tag number.

Speaker 19 It was sent out to local news media. We just want to saturate the area.

Speaker 40 Now at 11, a renewed push in the search for a missing local mother.

Speaker 8 The Nassau County Sheriff's Department put out a Facebook post asking anyone with information about her whereabouts.

Speaker 11 Investigators have put out a bolo. Now that's cops big for be on the lookout for.

Speaker 11 And guess what? One observant tipster calls in to say he thinks that he's seen an SUV just like Jolene's sitting in a local Home Depot parking lot.

Speaker 19 The day after we put the bolo out, I got a call from a citizen that thought he had seen it here in the parking lot.

Speaker 19 We responded here immediately and did determine by both TAG and VIN that it was indeed Jolene's vehicle. One of the first things I noticed was that the driver's door was unlocked.

Speaker 19 All the other doors were locked. Just looking at it from outside, I didn't notice anything obvious.
I didn't notice any blood, any damage.

Speaker 19 Once we located the vehicle outside the Home Depot, I instructed several detectives to start canvassing the area to see if there was any video surveillance.

Speaker 5 There is a Vi-Star credit union that I had worked off duty at. I knew that their cameras faced in that direction.

Speaker 3 That credit union surveillance camera captures investigative gold and leads to the second big break in the case.

Speaker 5 When we looked at the camera angles, we determined that at shortly after 1 a.m.

Speaker 5 on Sunday morning, the vehicle comes up the approach road off of State Road 200 from the direction of the salon and is immediately pulled into the parking area.

Speaker 5 You cannot see who's driving it at that point in time. And then you can see a figure emerge and walk across the screen towards the right.

Speaker 3 Everyone is hoping that it's Jolene getting out of that car.

Speaker 3 Then, a minute later, a figure is visible in the doorway of a nearby convenience store.

Speaker 19 It was kind of like that hair on the back of my neck stand-up moment because I was like, this is who I'm looking for.

Speaker 3 Hairdresser and mom Jolene Cummings has been missing for three days now, and Florida's Nassau County Sheriff's detectives are working several leads.

Speaker 3 One of them is Jolene's ex-boyfriend, Jason G, who tells police he's got an alibi. He says he was at a barbecue all weekend.

Speaker 5 Jason told us where he had been and who he'd been with, but his story checked out. He ultimately was clear.

Speaker 11 Now that Jolene's former boyfriend and her ex-husband are cleared, they're out of the picture, police are laser focused on that Home Depot parking lot footage.

Speaker 11 It's the shadowy image, a person emerging from the area near Jolene's SUV.

Speaker 5 We want to know who is that figure that walks across in the darkness.

Speaker 27 Once Jolene's vehicle is discovered, police look through it to see if there are any clues as to her whereabouts.

Speaker 41 Breaking developments in the case of a missing Nassau County mother last seen on Saturday when she left her job at a hair salon. Today, her vehicle found in the parking lot of a Home Depot.

Speaker 3 Earlier that day, investigators visited Jolene's workplace, Tangle Salon, where one of her co-workers, they've been told, was the last person to see Jolene the night before Mother's Day.

Speaker 5 You always want to know in a missing person's case, the last person to see the victim. And that was an individual, a co-worker by the name of Jennifer Seibert.

Speaker 42 Hey, Lil Chica.

Speaker 27 Jennifer Seibert had been working at the Tangles hair salon for a couple of months. Jennifer Seibert did come with this air of mystery.

Speaker 19 And they didn't have a whole lot of background information on her, other than what was on her application.

Speaker 3 What did you know of her?

Speaker 17 I didn't know anything of her. She was just a newcomer.

Speaker 11 Now, the very moment that investigators arrive at the salon to ask questions, Jennifer Seibert pulls up into the parking lot for her shift. But then she does something rather suspicious.

Speaker 19 When Ms. Seibert learned that there was a detective there at the business, she immediately leaves the parking lot and does not come back to go to work.

Speaker 6 At that moment, we're thinking, why would she not want to

Speaker 6 tell us anything about her coworker?

Speaker 23 Why would she not?

Speaker 19 Honestly, at the time, I think it was more of a red flag to you than me. It was kind of a red flag, but she kind of was like,

Speaker 19 That's really, really strange.

Speaker 27 Jennifer Seibert even tells her boss to not bother to keep her check there, that she should just mail it to a forwarding address.

Speaker 11 Seibert also sends a text with an explanation for why she bolted. She claims she was fearful of an ex-partner.
She even writes, my ex is terrible. When it comes to him, I fear for my life.

Speaker 5 Jennifer Seibert was not eager to speak to us.

Speaker 5 and left a long, rambling telephone message telling us why she wanted to help, but she couldn't be a part of this investigation, basically because her life was in danger.

Speaker 27 From the moment that police see the vehicle of Jolene Cummings parked in that parking lot, they are canvassing the area. They really want to know who got out of that car when it was parked.

Speaker 19 Once we observed a surveillance video with the person exiting, we could tell which direction they walked in.

Speaker 19 The only place that would have probably been open at that time would have been this convenience store.

Speaker 19 The first camera that I picked the person up on would have been here

Speaker 19 and you could see them walk around a building just as I did.

Speaker 19 Then they walk down and they actually stop here for a minute and address the clerk that's standing outside on a break and then they go ahead and enter the building.

Speaker 3 The video from inside the convenience store is a big break. Who is it that walks in?

Speaker 19 When I saw that, it was kind of like that hair on the back of my neck stand-up moment because I was like, this is who I'm looking for.

Speaker 5 The person who walks through the front door is Jennifer Seibert.

Speaker 27 And she's dressed in all black. She's got on combat boots and she seems really chatty with the attendant while she's there.

Speaker 6 I conducted an interview with a store employee who was working there as well. There was a female that came into the store the other night right here.

Speaker 44 Yes, she said something about how she was out with a couple of friends drinking. When I tried to go back inside to go back to working, she like wanted me to stay around.

Speaker 6 He said that she was acting as if she was nervous or scared about something. She asked him to call a taxicab for her.

Speaker 19 We were able to capture videos of it as it actually shows the taxicab pull up. It pulls into a spot just over here in front of the store.

Speaker 19 You could see her enter the vehicle in the front passenger seat.

Speaker 19 and you could see the cab pull away.

Speaker 5 We were able to not only determine who the cab driver was, but interview him.

Speaker 45 What do you recall about that person? She was dressed in like a black workout outfit. She had black hair, had it up in a bun on her head.

Speaker 45 She didn't appear to have a purse or anything.

Speaker 19 What stood out to me and the cab driver was that Jennifer Seiburn had stated that She'd been out with friends and didn't have enough money for gas, but yet she had prepaid for the cab ride on a credit card.

Speaker 45 I found that kind of odd because if a person's prepaying $20 on a credit card, they should be able to give somebody $5 worth of gas and get a ride.

Speaker 27 The location that the cab driver was asked to take Jennifer Seibert was of interest to detectives because it wasn't exactly where she worked, the Tangle Salon, but it was in the same shopping center.

Speaker 19 He dropped her off by a small black vehicle, which we knew that was what Jennifer Seibert owned and drove every day to work.

Speaker 5 At that point in time, our number one priority is to find Jennifer Seibert, who is now purposely evading us.

Speaker 11 But there's just one major problem. Police can't find Seibert.
The address on her Tangle's job application isn't even real.

Speaker 5 I went to that location and what I discovered is that it is a non-existent address. It's a fake address.
This is the fake address that Jennifer Seibert has given in her application for employment.

Speaker 39 Just nothing here.

Speaker 5 There's no residences, nothing.

Speaker 5 And it became apparent to me that this was something amiss.

Speaker 3 Where is Jennifer Seibert? Investigators race to find her. Will they also find Jolene?

Speaker 46 Cummings has not been seen since Mother's Day weekend. Investigative reporter Julia Jenae joins us now with more.
Julia.

Speaker 27 Heather, that video that was released shows the missing SUV of Cummings being driven what appears to be Jennifer Cyber.

Speaker 27 So once they look at that video, who walks through the doors of Gate gas station but Jennifer Cyber? And she's dressed in all black.

Speaker 3 But so far, police have had no luck tracking down the mysterious woman.

Speaker 3 Small hair salons are known to be warm, friendly places, but at Tangles in northern Florida, the newest employee, Jennifer Seibert, didn't exactly fit in.

Speaker 17 Everyone would talk with each other.

Speaker 17 It was just a very cozy, friendly environment to be in.

Speaker 3 So all the hairdressers seemed to get along.

Speaker 3 And then all of a sudden there was a new woman.

Speaker 17 So I never really got to know her well.

Speaker 17 She was kind of standoffish.

Speaker 28 Within a few weeks of Jennifer being there, they started to notice things that they thought were off about Jennifer, just the way she acted. She could never really give an address of where she lived.

Speaker 19 Jolene had a lot of concern about Jennifer Seibert's background. I did an interview with Ashley Nunley, who Jolene had styled her hair the day before she went missing.

Speaker 47 She goes, because there's something just weird. Jolene says she started wearing wigs when she first started.

Speaker 47 Jolene says she was going to look up her name and figure out what the heck was going on with her.

Speaker 21 Knowing Jolene, she's not going to leave something alone until she gets an answer that she can believe.

Speaker 11 It turns out that questions about Jennifer Seibert's background, her behavior, also dogged her at a previous beauty salon where she worked in nearby Yuli.

Speaker 16 She definitely had extremes in behavior. She would be so upbeat, or if she was mad, it was almost like seething mad.

Speaker 16 If she would get mad at a client, I would see her sit there and grip the back of the chair and like white knuckle it.

Speaker 48 My stylists were complaining that they did not want to work with her.

Speaker 48 I did find a reason to fire her. She had all her stuff packed,

Speaker 31 leaving.

Speaker 48 So I followed her out the front door. and asked her for the keys back and she took them off her keyring and she threw them at me.

Speaker 48 That was three o'clock in the afternoon, nine o'clock at night. She was still sitting in her car in the parking lot.

Speaker 4 That

Speaker 48 was a little bit creepy and I actually did make sure that no one was following me home. She didn't follow me home.

Speaker 5 The last known place that Jolene Cummings had been seen was Tangle's hair salon. We made a determination, you know, we need to go back to the salon.

Speaker 19 To the naked eye, there wasn't a whole lot out of place.

Speaker 5 Traditionally, Jolene Cummings sat in the break room at the very back by the bathroom. I was looking with my flashlight at the edge of the sink, which was perfectly clean.

Speaker 5 And as I looked down, I saw what looked to me to be a dilute blood ring.

Speaker 19 So we had our crime scene unit go back and do a forensic examination of the entire salon.

Speaker 19 with what's called either blue star or luminol, which creates a chemical reaction with blood and it will fluoresce or glow. Basically, the whole salon lit up.

Speaker 19 There was blood everywhere that was obviously had been cleaned up. You could see mop marks on the floor and blood.

Speaker 27 Now the police have this disturbing discovery of the blood spatter inside of the salon. The search for Jennifer Seibert, it becomes much more urgent.

Speaker 19 She basically went to number one on the radar that we got to find out where she is. We did have a phone number for her that was provided on her application.
So we started pinging that phone.

Speaker 19 Started looking at like beach areas where they had the showers, rest stops, different places where somebody who might not have a permanent place to live might be.

Speaker 5 On Wednesday, we got an updated ping that said that she was in a rest area in St. Johns County, roughly 35 miles south, closer to St.
Augustine.

Speaker 19 Six detectives and myself and the two FBI agents went to the northbound rest stop in St. Johns County.

Speaker 5 The rest area was under construction and it was just confusion, dark, semis roaring around.

Speaker 6 When I came to the rest area on the northbound side, I saw a black Kia soul sitting between two semi-trucks. I called another detective and told him, hey, I believe this is Jennifer Seibert's car.

Speaker 5 There was exhaust vapor coming out of the tailpipe of the vehicle, so I knew it was running.

Speaker 19 I was a little worried about approaching the vehicle because I didn't know who was in the vehicle, if they had a weapon.

Speaker 5 I had my flashlight. I then observed an individual who was laying down in the back of the vehicle get up and slither through the two front seats and drop into the driver's seat.

Speaker 5 I remember repeatedly stating, do not put the vehicle in drive.

Speaker 5 She had her driver's license ready. It was Jennifer Cyberk.

Speaker 19 Once Jennifer got out of the vehicle, I identified myself to her and told her that I was investigating Jolene's disappearance. She reiterated to me that she had no idea where Jolene was at.

Speaker 19 At that point in time, I asked her, I says, you've never been in her vehicle, you have no reason to drive her vehicle? And she answered no.

Speaker 19 I knew that she was lying to me because I had her on surveillance video. parking Jolene's vehicle near the Home Depot in Ulin.

Speaker 11 Detective Harrington is heading out to a local judge's home. He's got to get an arrest warrant for Grand Theft Auto for Jolene's SUV.

Speaker 11 But somebody has to keep an eye on Jennifer Cyber to make sure she does not bolt.

Speaker 5 My captain informed me, he says, I want you to keep her occupied. You are not to interrogate her.
Just talk to her. Where would you shower?

Speaker 4 At the gym.

Speaker 50 I'm going to take a break from body pump and just stick with the psychoplasts for a while.

Speaker 5 And the curious thing to me was she never once asked, what is this about?

Speaker 5 She never once asked, am I free to leave?

Speaker 5 Mosquito is a problem at rest areas?

Speaker 49 Oh my goodness. I just,

Speaker 49 when the mosquito bites me, it just takes probably almost an entire month for that one mosquito bite to heal.

Speaker 11 But it's not mosquito bites on Sebert's face that are getting the attention of detectives.

Speaker 19 She had claw marks on her face. She had band-aids on her face.
It looked like to me that she had been in one hell of a fight.

Speaker 27 Back at the station, she appears oddly relaxed and in a good mood when she's talking to officers, not the suspect of this intense missing person search.

Speaker 5 She was very open, communicative, actually laughing, joking.

Speaker 51 Feels hurt in it.

Speaker 52 No, they feel great. You can put them on tider if you want.

Speaker 15 Whatever you want to do.

Speaker 3 But nobody could have guessed what would turn up in Seibert's background and just how entangled her past was.

Speaker 4 It was bigger than I imagined.

Speaker 5 It was like flipping a switch.

Speaker 27 This is a woman who was reported missing by her own mother decades before this happened in 2004.

Speaker 52 I had two IDs at the time. I had myself and then my other ID.

Speaker 11 And once detectives start digging into the background of this woman, they discover she's not at all who she she claims to be on a number of levels.

Speaker 11 In fact, she had been using up to 18 different aliases and had lived in over 30 cities.

Speaker 17 No one had any idea how truly just unhinged that she

Speaker 17 was.

Speaker 3 And there's more surveillance video of Jennifer Seibert, but will it reveal the fate of missing hairstylist Jolene Cummings?

Speaker 53 Do you think it was a conspiracy or a lone gunman?

Speaker 40 To me, it's a much bigger story than the Kennedy murder.

Speaker 3 Is this mystery ever going to get solved?

Speaker 37 Who killed JFK Monday night on ABC?

Speaker 19 This was the most bizarre.

Speaker 29 Very diabolic.

Speaker 20 Truly unhinged.

Speaker 21 Watching Jolene's disappearance play out on TV was stressful.

Speaker 14 Missing mother Nassau County.

Speaker 5 Jolene Cummings was dangerously close to discovering that Jennifer Cyber was not Jennifer Cyber.

Speaker 28 Jolene said, there's something going on with her. I'm going to find out.

Speaker 19 She had stolen the dead child's information and created a false identity.

Speaker 38 She took that name out of the cemetery.

Speaker 22 She had 17 different names. She lived in 14 states.

Speaker 3 How do you even like wrap your mind around that?

Speaker 38 She was an angel one second and then getting in a fight with somebody the next.

Speaker 28 Definitely not a normal thing for a person to go and buy a carving knife in the evening of a random Friday night.

Speaker 54 My God, what is she up to?

Speaker 3 You think she's done this before?

Speaker 10 There is no doubt in my mind.

Speaker 19 She's saying that she's Kimberly Kessler, but how do we know what the truth is?

Speaker 10 Well, it was her birthday and it was Mother's Day.

Speaker 10 And I wanted her to be reminded that she was my special blessing on a Mother's Day, a gift that no other could compete.

Speaker 10 And then text her that Saturday and, hey, did you get the angel?

Speaker 3 And that was the last text.

Speaker 3 Ann Johnson's daughter, 34-year-old Jolene Cummings, has been missing for four days now, and police have found no sign of the hairstylist.

Speaker 3 They've questioned and cleared both her ex-husband and former boyfriend in her disappearance.

Speaker 22 Crime scene detectives went to Tango Salon to look a little closer.

Speaker 5 You could see that there had been a struggle and smears of blood all over the salon.

Speaker 22 Now we know there must have been a big fight in that salon.

Speaker 5 You always want to know in a missing person's case, the last person to see the victim, and that was a co-worker by the name of Jennifer Seibert.

Speaker 3 Jennifer Seibert became the focus of the investigation after she was spotted on surveillance footage, abandoning Jolene's vehicle in a parking lot, and then walking into a convenience store to call for a taxi.

Speaker 3 Detectives managed to track her down and arrest her.

Speaker 55 The charge you were arrested on is a grand theft auto charge. You knew that, correct?

Speaker 52 Yes.

Speaker 55 You're not charged with anything else, okay?

Speaker 15 But

Speaker 53 something

Speaker 12 happened to Joene.

Speaker 11 Right out of the gate, Jennifer Seibert sits down in this interrogation room and she drops this mind twister on detectives. She tells them that her name isn't actually Jennifer Seibert.

Speaker 52 My fingerprints they come up as Kimberly Lee Kessler. So I would prefer to be called Kim.
The last time I got picked up was back in 1999 and I bonded out.

Speaker 55 So you've actually kind of got a, you know, you've got a history under that name.

Speaker 52 I'm ready to go back to being myself. Kimberly Lee Kessler.
It's kind of a silly middle name, isn't it? It's like my mom stuttered.

Speaker 6 So right now we were taking in who is Kimberly Kessler at this point.

Speaker 52 15 years old. Looks are deceiving.

Speaker 52 I do. I have a a son.
That's what got me. Brennan in 1999.
Child Protective Services snatched him while I was at work from the babysitter and that really sent me over the edge.

Speaker 11 Then there's this next shocking moment where she tells detectives that she dated someone who was wanted by the FBI.

Speaker 52 He robbed banks. I was working as a

Speaker 52 topless dancer and he was with me whenever he called somebody and I said the FBI is looking for you and he's like oh my god and then he tells me everything.

Speaker 50 Oh, I've robbed these bags.

Speaker 52 So I'm like, you what? And I hid him in my apartment. And that was like kind of almost the beginning.

Speaker 19 She loved to brag about her past. And she was very proud of that.

Speaker 22 She had been running for the past 20, 25 years and didn't want to be found.

Speaker 19 It's a bombshell, but is it true?

Speaker 55 Are you okay if I ask if I asked my crime medalist to run the name?

Speaker 52 Do it, please. You'll see my mug.
I'll look a lot younger than her.

Speaker 51 And then thinner, too. I'm going to be 200 pounds.

Speaker 22 Well, it's unusual when someone that is a person of interest is just joking around, acting like nothing's wrong, nothing's going on.

Speaker 19 During the interview, I kind of wanted to let her talk as much as she wanted to, but at some point in time, I knew I had to ask her about Jolene.

Speaker 55 Did you guys ever hang out after? Did you ever go anywhere together?

Speaker 55 Does she ever allow to use your car?

Speaker 41 No.

Speaker 19 Her demeanor changed. She became evasive.

Speaker 52 You accused me the other night of,

Speaker 3 you know, like, where's Jolene at?

Speaker 52 So, and, and I do not know where she is.

Speaker 55 I think you know where Jolene is. We're going to find out what happened.
You can help me do that.

Speaker 17 No, I cannot.

Speaker 52 Whatever fury may come. So let me reply this way, and you may not like the answer.
I would like legal counsel.

Speaker 3 With Jennifer Seibert now refusing to talk, it's up to investigators to determine fact from fiction.

Speaker 19 Who is she, really? I mean, she's she's saying that she's Kimberly Kessler, but how do we know what the truth is? I mean, she's obviously very complex.

Speaker 27 When they researched her background, they found out she was actually someone who had been reported as a missing person decades before in 2004 by her own mother in Butler, Pennsylvania.

Speaker 3 So detectives call Connie Kessler, who they believe to be Kimberly's mother, hoping to learn more.

Speaker 6 We do have someone that is claiming to to be Kimberly Kessler

Speaker 6 and that is your daughter, is that correct? Yes.

Speaker 42 The last time I heard from her would be 2004 and it was on an answering machine.

Speaker 6 She's been having trouble with her boss and then there was no way to get back in touch with her.

Speaker 57 So all we could do is wait.

Speaker 3 Detectives are quickly discovering that the woman they have in custody, claiming to be Kimberly Kessler, has used a host of different aliases over the years, seemingly random names.

Speaker 3 But Connie Kessler adds yet another twist to this increasingly strange story, explaining how her daughter had allegedly picked one of those names.

Speaker 42 She went to visit her dad at

Speaker 42 a cemetery. She picked a name off

Speaker 57 a little girl that died near her father.

Speaker 6 Do you know the name she picked?

Speaker 42 Yeah,

Speaker 42 it was Pamela being clever.

Speaker 22 She could be anybody. So we conduct a DNA test.

Speaker 6 The FBI actually took a DNA out of Kimberly Kessler's mother's home, and it came back that it was a match, that she was Kimberly Kessler.

Speaker 11 Well, if that's the case, then who exactly is Jennifer Seibert? And once again, Detective Rose discovers there was an absolutely chilling answer to that question.

Speaker 6 Found a little girl named Jennifer Seibert, who was 13 years old, who had been killed in a car accident in in Germany. However, she was buried in Butler, Pennsylvania.

Speaker 6 And then NCIS confirmed the social security number of Jennifer Seibert.

Speaker 6 And that's when we realized...

Speaker 19 She had stolen the dead child's information and created a false identity.

Speaker 5 The night when I told her you're under arrest for grand theft auto, she almost smiled as if to say, is that all? all?

Speaker 3 Police are just scratching the surface in their search for a missing mom, and now they're about to dig up a tangled tale of chaos beyond what they could have ever imagined.

Speaker 56 I saw something about stabbing you in the leg. Can you tell me about that?

Speaker 38 In hindsight, I

Speaker 38 should have ran.

Speaker 37 Audiences and top critics are celebrating. Rental Family is the perfect feel-good movie of the year.

Speaker 4 What do you need me for?

Speaker 2 We need a talking white guy.

Speaker 37 Academy Award winner Brendan Fraser delivers a masterful performance.

Speaker 39 This girl needs a father.

Speaker 58 I hate you. She hates me.
It's with being a parent. Yes.

Speaker 37 In this tender and funny film about the importance of connection.

Speaker 4 This is amazing. It's cool, but it's fake.

Speaker 39 Sometimes it's okay to pretend.

Speaker 2 Rental Family, now playing Molney in theaters.

Speaker 37 Ready to PG13, may be inappropriate for children under 13.

Speaker 59 It started with a phone call in the early hours of the morning.

Speaker 57 911, what is the address to your emergency?

Speaker 59 A terrified woman tells the operator she's been kidnapped, assaulted, and that she's trapped in a room with her attacker.

Speaker 59 He's fallen asleep, so she quietly and ever so carefully finds his phone and calls for help.

Speaker 15 Is there any way you can get out of the building?

Speaker 12 I don't know without waking him. I'm scared.

Speaker 59 This 911 call began an investigation that would turn the town of Ashland into a crime scene.

Speaker 54 We've got something big going on here.

Speaker 39 The first thing to hit my mind is a monster.

Speaker 59 A new series from ABC Audio and 2020, The Hand in the Window. Out now, wherever you listen to podcasts.

Speaker 3 With Jolene Cummings still missing, police are learning more about the woman they've got in custody. Turns out her name isn't Jennifer Seibert, it's actually Kimberly Kessler.

Speaker 3 And the more they unravel, the more complicated her past becomes.

Speaker 22 Come to find out she had 17 different names. She lived in 14 states.
Very unusual for someone to have that track record and is not running from something.

Speaker 6 During the next couple weeks, I conducted several audio interviews.

Speaker 61 We had to try to figure out who we actually had in our jail. So we're just trying to get whatever information we can.

Speaker 6 We discovered a husband. She had been married.
When I spoke to him, he said, I met her in Arizona. She was stripping during that time.

Speaker 61 Well, I can tell you, she's a master of disguises. She wears a lot of wigs and changes her look a lot.

Speaker 6 He knew her as Melissa McKernan.

Speaker 6 So he was kind of shocked whenever we told him, hey, you know, this is not Melissa McKernan. Her true name was Kimberly Kessler.
Oh, hell no.

Speaker 61 I was like, he doesn't even have a real name on his chest.

Speaker 11 But going back to the 1980s, Kimberly Kessler was just this small town girl living in Butler County, Pennsylvania.

Speaker 26 Kimmy, you know, that's what they called her. Short-haired, short-haired, tall boy, cute little young lady.

Speaker 56 So you did know her.

Speaker 57 I guess she knew me. She was good friends with a cousin of mine.

Speaker 26 The girls would all ride horses and not together. I met her a few times through, the girls.

Speaker 57 I guess she had like a little schoolgirl crush on me or something.

Speaker 6 She has a past with other people from high school.

Speaker 38 Kim was a year behind me in high school. I was class of 85, she was class of 86.

Speaker 38 She was a cheerleader, you know.

Speaker 3 Tom Sims hadn't seen her for years while he'd been in the Army. And then one day, their paths crossed again.

Speaker 22 I stopped in the bar to have a beer, and she was working.

Speaker 4 She was blonde and fit and beautiful.

Speaker 38 And we went out for drinks, and

Speaker 15 yeah.

Speaker 3 They eventually end up dating. and living together.

Speaker 56 Can you tell me some more about her? She's got a handful.

Speaker 38 She wasn't a friendly person, always

Speaker 23 scheming.

Speaker 38 She was an angel one second and then

Speaker 38 getting in a fight with somebody the next.

Speaker 56 Was that a normal thing for her, like acting out and being violent?

Speaker 57 Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 38 One of her moods got me with a state knife.

Speaker 56 I saw something about stabbing you in the leg. No, she stabbed me in the chest.
She bit my dad in the leg. She bit your dad in the leg?

Speaker 56 Yes.

Speaker 37 She attacked him, bit him on the leg.

Speaker 38 Oh, you should have seen it. It was a huge bite mark.
It was the day after she hit me with the iron beats off a gas stove. She grabbed off, you know, the burner and

Speaker 22 hit me upside the head with it.

Speaker 38 I think she already had her escape planned because she was gone after that. Gone.

Speaker 3 Tom Sims says police came to the house for each violent incident when Kessler stabbed him, when she bit his father, when she struck him with that iron grill. But he never pressed charges against her.

Speaker 35 I probably should have.

Speaker 23 Young and naive.

Speaker 11 But about a year later, in 1990, Kessler was back and she wants to catch up. Sims would later tell police about a troubling conversation that he says he had with her.

Speaker 57 We had a cat.

Speaker 57 His name was Malcolm. That cat and I were very attached.
She was the greatest cat in the world. I asked her, where's my cat?

Speaker 57 And she's like, well, I couldn't take him with me, so I had to kill him.

Speaker 56 Did she say how she did that?

Speaker 56 She shot him with a shotgun.

Speaker 38 I saw no empathy. I was absolutely sick to my stomach.

Speaker 38 And then she disappeared again.

Speaker 3 Kessler has never responded to those allegations.

Speaker 3 But while Sims only knew her as Kimberly Kessler, there are plenty of others who knew her by entirely different names, including Sergeant Jim Walters back in Virginia Beach in 1999.

Speaker 54 I knew it wasn't Christina Brooks that I was talking to, but that was the name she gave me.

Speaker 29 It was a very...

Speaker 29 Very bizarre situation in Virginia Beach. She lived with the father of her child,

Speaker 29 and a neighbor saw her digging in the yard with with the kid in the hole and she said it was a grave that she was digging and she was acting very bizarrely so the neighbor called the child welfare services and they came and took the child

Speaker 54 on August the 3rd 1999 I received a call that there was a disorderly suspicious person

Speaker 54 at social services and we spoke real quickly and I asked her to leave.

Speaker 43 That's when we followed followed Christina Brooks out

Speaker 43 and stopped her on the other side of the bus stop.

Speaker 3 Sergeant Walters says he's never forgotten what he says he discovered in her purse.

Speaker 54 A Smith Wesson 357 Magnum, a taser, and a roll of duct tape. We call it a kidnap kit.

Speaker 3 Sergeant Walters arrests Christina Brooks for carrying a concealed weapon without a permit.

Speaker 54 Found out later that she was released on her recognizance and of course,

Speaker 4 gone.

Speaker 54 It gave me chills. My God, what is she up to?

Speaker 3 Turns out she was up to a lot. Remember that childhood friend, David Trempis? By 2018, he was living in San Antonio when he says he got a message on Facebook from a woman in Florida.

Speaker 24 I got a friend request from Amia Stone, you know, and I accepted it.

Speaker 6 She told David Trempis

Speaker 6 that she wanted to help him out. He was kind of going through a custody battle with his child.

Speaker 26 She was just real persistent. I told her, well, if I ever come down to Florida, I'd meet you.
And the very next day, bam, she was here.

Speaker 26 She just got there overnight.

Speaker 24 That was kind of freaky in itself. I decided, I'll meet you at the water burger in town.

Speaker 26 She come walking up. She had that big black curly wig on and, you know, down over her eyes.
And, you know, it was just out of place.

Speaker 24 And she had a scar on her face.

Speaker 11 David Trumpis tell police that Mia Stone claims she got the scar when her ex-husband tried to run her over. And now she wanted to move to Texas and marry Trumpus.

Speaker 26 But she wanted to move in with me.

Speaker 24 That's why she was up here. You know, and I just kind of played it cool and said it was great to meet you.

Speaker 4 And then, well, I got the hell out of there.

Speaker 26 It's time to go.

Speaker 3 About a week later, Jolene Cummings goes missing. Not long after, Trumpus says he got a call from the sheriff's office in Florida asking if he knew a woman named Mia Stone.

Speaker 56 She also goes by the name, there's like 18 names, Mia Stone, Jennifer Cyber. Her true name is Kimberly Kessler.

Speaker 57 That girl's name's really Kim Kessler.

Speaker 15 Yes, sir.

Speaker 57 She never led on to that. Her real name was Kim Kessler.

Speaker 3 So investigators are left to wonder, had Jolene figured out Kessler's grand deception?

Speaker 20 No one had any idea how truly evil she was.

Speaker 3 And had Kessler retaliated by doing the unthinkable.

Speaker 3 When Jennifer Seibert first arrived in Fernandina Beach in 2018, no one had a clue about her trail of chaos and red flags over the years.

Speaker 10 Let me tell you what, Jolene was very inquisitive, very intuitive, and when she said someone's fake, it's like, you're putting on an act or you're not who you say you are.

Speaker 11 So was Jolene on the verge of discovering the real story about the woman now known as Kimberly Kessler?

Speaker 10 I believe 100% that Jolene was going to check to see who she was.

Speaker 3 Investigators uncovered text messages Jolene had sent about the new employee, suggesting there was something off about her that she couldn't quite put her finger on.

Speaker 3 Did you get a vibe between the two of them when she was in the salon?

Speaker 17 Yeah, Kimberly was kind of standoffish and there was definitely some tension between them.

Speaker 5 Well, the theory is that Jolene Cummings was dangerously close to discovering, number one, that Jennifer Seibert was not Jennifer Seibert, and number two, who she might really be.

Speaker 28 Towards the end, it had gotten contentious to the point that they would yell at one another in front of clients.

Speaker 28 And there had been a fight in particular where the argument ended and Jolene looked at her client and said, there's something going on with her. I'm going to find out.

Speaker 5 I think that pushed Kim Kessler, Jennifer Seibert, over the edge.

Speaker 51 Just stand up and bend over a little bit for me.

Speaker 3 With Kessler in custody, detectives begin searching her phone.

Speaker 28 Her phone was definitely an insight into where her mind was leading up to the moment that Jolene went missing. Jolene goes missing on May 12th.

Speaker 28 We see Kimberly Kessler's search history starts to shift from recipes and stores and the normal things to

Speaker 28 how long does it take for a body to decay?

Speaker 4 How to hide the evidence of a crime.

Speaker 4 It was very weird what she was searching.

Speaker 23 You know, no body, no crime.

Speaker 22 How to dismember a body.

Speaker 20 No one had any idea how truly evil she was, how truly unhinged that she was.

Speaker 5 We're here in the alley behind Tangle's hair salon, or what used to be Tangle's hair salon. This was the back door to the salon.

Speaker 3 And it's in that alley where detectives find another huge clue.

Speaker 31 We have video surveillance from two different sources and the dumpster behind us is visible in several of those videos.

Speaker 28 The surveillance video shows Kimberly Kessler taking numerous large trash bags that are pretty full and pretty heavy based on the way that she's got to swing them into the dumpster behind the salon.

Speaker 31 Her duties were not to carry out the trash, which was picked up Monday mornings. So it was unusual that after hours, she would still be here.

Speaker 11 Once detectives start piecing things together from inside of the Tangle salon and looking at the alley outside, they start to develop a theory that Jolene Cummings may have been dismembered and discarded in that very dumpster.

Speaker 19 They processed the whole place and there was so much blood there that nobody was going to survive that.

Speaker 11 Investigators scan that surveillance tape hoping for more clues and boy did they get one. They see Kessler driving by Tangles as though she's checking to see if the dumpsters had been empty.

Speaker 6 We discovered that the local waste company had actually picked up the dumpster for disposal and at this point she no longer drove by.

Speaker 3 Police learned that the contents were taken to a landfill in Georgia, about 25 miles away from Nassau County.

Speaker 22 The FBI took the lead on actually searching the landfill.

Speaker 11 The FBI Jacksonville team has been working around the clock in support.

Speaker 19 This landfill is absolutely enormous.

Speaker 19 We knew it was going to be a needle in a haystack, but we knew we had to try to search and see what evidence or if Jolene herself was in that dump.

Speaker 19 It was 117 degrees, so it was miserable, but you know, it had to be done.

Speaker 21 It was gut-wrenching. I mean, I was in tears to know that you could be thrown away like trash when you were an amazing person.

Speaker 3 But after nearly a week of combing through the landfill in scorching temperatures every day with no positive results, law enforcement called off the search.

Speaker 10 Sheriff Leafer, he didn't have to say anything. His face said it all.
It was a face of disappointment, of grief that we didn't find her.

Speaker 3 Inside,

Speaker 10 this had to just be

Speaker 3 your worst nightmare.

Speaker 10 It's a nightmare that no parent, no one

Speaker 10 that has a loved one should ever have to endure.

Speaker 10 The not knowing

Speaker 10 was the worst.

Speaker 27 Despite not having a body or finding the remains of Jolene Cummings, the state attorney's office decides they are going forward with charges of murder against Kimberly Kessler along with Grand Theft Auto.

Speaker 28 At the point that I'm coming into the case, I am focused on justice for Jolene.

Speaker 3 With prosecutors now preparing to try Kimberly Kessler for first-degree murder, she's going to undergo yet another transformation.

Speaker 63 Jordan Beard is Jolene Cummings' cousin.

Speaker 3 And with behavior like that, is she actually fit to stand trial for Jolene's murder?

Speaker 11 Kimberly Kessler has been charged with the murder of Jolene Cummings. And while she's being held, let's just say she isn't exactly a model inmate.

Speaker 3 So Jennifer Seibert was brought here and she's booked and held in this area.

Speaker 3 What was she like as an inmate?

Speaker 29 She was hateful, mean.

Speaker 48 She did not like us. She would do the craziest things.
She actually ripped her smock off, completely got naked, started smearing feces all over herself, and it just went from there.

Speaker 48 She then decided it was a great idea to throw it at us. So we were in there dunking, diving, trying to get away from it.

Speaker 19 At a point in time during their incarceration, she began a hunger strike, went from 170 pounds to down around 80 pounds.

Speaker 11 But her bizarre behavior didn't stop there.

Speaker 63 Jordan Beard is Jolene Cummings' cousin.

Speaker 11 At pretrial hearings, Kessler would disrupt the proceedings, yelling about her representation, yelling about her treatment and change.

Speaker 63 Jordan Beard is Jolene Cummings' cousin.

Speaker 19 Her contention was that one of her defense attorneys was cousins with Jolene Cummings.

Speaker 18 Jordan Beard is Jolene's cousin.

Speaker 3 But Judge James H. Daniel rules that this is false.

Speaker 2 There was no relationship

Speaker 37 between Jordan Beard and Jolene Cummings or anyone in Jolene Cummings' family.

Speaker 11 Kimberly Castler now has to watch the proceedings on a video feed from jail. And because of all that seemingly unhinged behavior, she's declared mentally incompetent to stand trial.

Speaker 29 We had a hearing to determine whether she was mentally competent to proceed to a trial, and we presented evidence to show that she was delusional, she was mentally ill.

Speaker 27 Kimberly Kessler had a lot of strange tendencies and prosecutors did not believe it. They felt that she was putting on an act in order to avoid having to face the charges against her.

Speaker 62 I actually went over there one day while she's not eating and I wanted to talk to her and I determined right then that she was putting on an act trying to let everybody think she's crazy.

Speaker 27 As time goes by, more hearings are held to make a determination as to whether Kimberly Kessler is competent to stand trial.

Speaker 7 The judge is now weighing whether murder suspect Kimberly Kessler is mentally competent and whether she'll need to be force-fed.

Speaker 27 At these hearings for competency, there was a psychiatrist who testified as to whether or not Kimberly Kessler could be a part of her defense and ultimately be competent to stand trial.

Speaker 15 If you have found Ms. Kessler intelligent and strategic, or some of the things that she does are very intentional, what I mean is that her behavior is something that is thought out and organized.

Speaker 11 Even Kessler's jailers were brought to the stand to say that they believed she was completely rational.

Speaker 15 Was Ms. Kessler capable of communicating her thoughts and her needs to you?

Speaker 29 Yes, ma'am.

Speaker 33 A high-profile murder suspect is competent to stand trial that's according to doctors at a florida hospital i felt like she was choosing to do this for whatever reason and it was not the product of some mental health disorder

Speaker 3 finally after three long years jolene cummings' family is in the courtroom about to get their chance at justice

Speaker 33 Kimberly Kessler, a former coworker of missing Nassau County mother Jolene Cummings, is charged with first-degree premeditated murder.

Speaker 29 The trial was very much anticipated. Jolene's mother was very popular.
She knew a lot of people, and a lot of people supported her. And it was a very tragic and traumatic situation for her.

Speaker 29 And the news covered it pretty relentlessly.

Speaker 27 I refuse.

Speaker 27 Just as this trial begins, it's almost immediate that Kimberly Kessler starts having her typical outbursts in the courtroom.

Speaker 15 I refuse to cover defenders last night.

Speaker 15 They appointed Jordan Beard, Jolene Plemmy's cousin, as my public defender. They appointed Jolene Plemmy's cousin as my public defender.
What? You don't want the public to know that?

Speaker 15 She will be downstairs as she's been through the proceedings thus far.

Speaker 2 There are critical stages in a proceeding where a defendant has to be present. Trial would be certainly one of them.

Speaker 2 However, it's also my job to make sure that the state has the the ability to prosecute a case.

Speaker 27 The judge decides to excuse Kimberly Kessler from the proceedings, and now there's the opportunity for the state to actually get started with their opening statement.

Speaker 15 The following evidence will establish premeditation beyond a reasonable doubt. Premeditation that the defendant planned Jolene Cummings' death.

Speaker 15 But as Jolene Cummings made plans for the next day of her life, the defendant had planned Jomain's death.

Speaker 11 Prosecutors are about to present the heart of what they insist is a pre-planned murder case. Video of a shopping trip and what Kessler is buying will chill you to the bone.

Speaker 53 Live at the Nassau County Courthouse, Shanice said, Cummings' body was never found, but the state still plans to try and prove that case.

Speaker 27 The prosecution begins laying out their case, and it relies heavily on circumstantial evidence and surveillance video.

Speaker 15 CSU used luminol to find evidence of the defendant's cleanup of Jolene Cummings' blood.

Speaker 4 The Luminol will glow blue to indicate the presence of blood.

Speaker 15 You will see the evidence of blood from the stylus chair mat nearest the reception desk through the salon to the restroom near the back door.

Speaker 3 Prosecutors argue that after spending hours cleaning the bloody crime scene, Kimberly Kessler, known at the time as Jennifer Seibert, went to Walmart to buy a set of items that paint a truly macabre picture.

Speaker 15 The Walmart video and receipt, which are evidence that at 8.57 p.m., the defendant used her credit card.

Speaker 28 There is an overhead shot of Jennifer Seibert in this dark shirt, her hair pulled up into this bun. And what's most interesting is that you can see specifically what Jennifer Seibert is scanning.

Speaker 4 She's scanning a large bottle of ammonia.

Speaker 4 She's scanning rubber gloves.

Speaker 28 She's scanning a large box of outdoor style trash bags.

Speaker 28 And she's scanning an electric carving knife.

Speaker 19 This is not Thanksgiving. What is she buying this knife for? And I'm like, oh my god, she dismembered her.

Speaker 27 Prosecutors say that this evidence ties into what they found behind the Tangles salon.

Speaker 64 What are we looking at here? That is company testimony. She was robbed for the carving found.

Speaker 23 In my opinion, Jolene was dismembered in that salon.

Speaker 28 Her body was then disposed of through trash bags, through different things that Kimberly Kessler ended up throwing in a dumpster.

Speaker 27 Prosecutors allege that there was this blue storage bin.

Speaker 27 And inside of that bin, there was even more crucial evidence.

Speaker 28 Later on, she can be seen taking a blue rubber maid out. Ultimately, that tub was found by detectives, and inside of that was Jolene's blood, as well as a fingernail.

Speaker 11 Why would Kessler kill Jolene? Well, prosecutors believe it was because Jolene was on to Kessler's games.

Speaker 11 In fact, a Tangles employee took the stand with some telling testimony, what she heard on the day of the murder.

Speaker 15 Do you remember Jolene Cummings telling the defendant, you're fake?

Speaker 15 You fake, yes. I remember told You faithful right

Speaker 64 here.

Speaker 28 Jennifer Seibert didn't want to be found out as Kimberly Kessler. That's what it appeared based on the timing of the comment that Jolene made and when this murder happens.

Speaker 11 But the defense insists there is no evidence of premeditation in this case, and that's what's required for a first-degree murder conviction.

Speaker 15 I certainly can't believe that that is evidence of conflict, of violent conflict.

Speaker 15 But what the state is not offering you, what they have absolutely no proof of, are the questions that you need to decide this case.

Speaker 15 Who started the fight?

Speaker 25 There's nothing to counter the theory that this had been a mutual combat, a fight. I mean, a physical fight between two women that ended up in one of the women dying.

Speaker 29 And that's just not first-degree murder.

Speaker 27 The prosecution believed that they had beyond a reasonable doubt enough evidence to prove that this was first-degree murder.

Speaker 15 We can see from her words, her internet searches, she had spent at least a couple weeks so far

Speaker 15 remeditating the death of Joe McCumby.

Speaker 15 From her internet searches,

Speaker 15 It's obvious that she intended to kill her. That's all the evidence you need to find the defendant's premeditation beyond a reasonable workout.

Speaker 27 With closing arguments done, Kimberly Kessler's fate rests in the hands of the jury.

Speaker 40 Breaking it noon, the jury has been dismissed to begin deliberations on the murder trial of Kimberly Kessler.

Speaker 28 It had been about two hours, maybe two and a half hours, and we got a call. Let's have the jury's back with a verdict.

Speaker 15 All right.

Speaker 15 Everybody who's happy, welcome back. Ladies and gentlemen.

Speaker 15 And I'm the clerk to please public verdicts.

Speaker 4 I think Anne was relieved.

Speaker 4 It brought her some closure.

Speaker 28 It was

Speaker 4 an emotional moment.

Speaker 10 It's been a long three years.

Speaker 10 We miss Jolene every second of the day.

Speaker 3 Jolene's family feels they finally found justice. But with Kimberly Kessler's trail of deception in Mayhem, police have a lingering question.
Could there be more victims out there?

Speaker 39 I believe she's running from something.

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Speaker 7 This is gonna be catastrophic. We're fighting for our marriages, and the girls are just putting us through hell.

Speaker 2 They make everything about themselves. I can't.

Speaker 25 Hopefully, this doesn't end in a bloodbath.

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Speaker 3 It's a tale of two women, Jolene Cummings, hairdresser and mom, who disappeared on Mother's Day never to be found, and Kimberly Kessler, also a mom, who spent years crafting multiple identities and was convicted of murdering Jolene.

Speaker 3 Now, Kessler is about to be sentenced. Jordan Beard is Jolene Cummings' cousin.

Speaker 3 And like so many times at trial, Kimberly Kessler disrupts the proceedings and is taken out of the courtroom.

Speaker 3 Before handing down his sentence, the judge hears a victim impact statement from Jolene's mom, Ann Johnson.

Speaker 15 When my brother's daughter was murdered, Claudius died. Our family has struggled with me.
Some sort of style is right since.

Speaker 15 This court will adjudicate Kimberly Jasper, the defendant, also known as Jennifer Marie Seyler,

Speaker 15 guilty, sentenced her to life in prison.

Speaker 3 She's also sentenced to five years for grand theft auto of Jolene's vehicle, which she'll serve concurrently.

Speaker 34 Kimberly Kessler leaving the Nassau County Jail in this white van, a deputy, was seen doing a rock-on hand gesture before her departure Friday morning.

Speaker 22 We're going to celebrate.

Speaker 4 We're going to celebrate her homegoing because her new home.

Speaker 22 for the rest of her life and until she takes her last breath is going to be Florida State Prison.

Speaker 3 What was it like for all of you when she finally was transferred after her guilty verdict?

Speaker 48 Oh my goodness. We were so happy that she was gone.
She ended up getting shipped out to prison quite quickly afterwards. We did celebrate.
We had a cake. There's a picture of us.

Speaker 3 Are you relieved that this chapter's over?

Speaker 48 Absolutely. I'd never want to have to deal with that woman again.

Speaker 27 With all of the strange happenings that seem to surround Kimberly Kessler, there's this notion among some that is there some other unsolved case out there.

Speaker 22 With the information that we obtain, the number of aliases, the number of cities, the number of states, I believe she's running from something.

Speaker 28 That's going to be law enforcement's job to follow up and to see if there were other people that could have been victimized by Kimberly Kessler.

Speaker 28 There could always be a new connection to something that wasn't seen before.

Speaker 3 Remember Sergeant Jim Walters, who knew Kessler as Christina Brooke back in Virginia Beach? He recently handed over information about her to cold case investigators there.

Speaker 54 I told the deputy chief the information that I had on Kimberly Kessler, and he said, I've got four or five unsolved homicides around that area around that time.

Speaker 54 The cold case squad. would be really interested in this information.

Speaker 3 As investigators keep an eye out for other cases that could possibly be linked to Kessler, Jolene's mom, Ann Johnson, is focused on her daughter's memory.

Speaker 3 Will you continue to want to search for Jolene?

Speaker 10 Oh, I'll always have the hope to search for Jolene.

Speaker 19 Occasionally, we will get calls for unidentified remains. And anytime we get that kind of call, you know, I always have hopes that maybe it might be her.

Speaker 3 What is the world missing not having her in it?

Speaker 17 She was beautiful inside and out, and again, she was first and foremost a mom.

Speaker 17 And she was a great, great friend, great listener.

Speaker 3 How do you want her to be remembered?

Speaker 10 As the bright shining star that she was.

Speaker 19 Lord, guide us in these next few moments in Jesus' name.

Speaker 10 I had a private ceremony. It was a beautiful, small service.

Speaker 3 Even with no remains to bury, Jolene's loved ones remember her to the tune of amazing grace. Oh, ma sing grace,

Speaker 3 how sweet

Speaker 3 the sound.

Speaker 10 There was music at the gravesite. There was a headstone.
And then my grandson asked me, Emma, why is there a headstone when mama's not there?

Speaker 10 I said, this marks that your mother lived here on earth, that she needs to be remembered. And who knows, God's will, maybe we'll have something to put there.

Speaker 10 It's the only thing we have to live for, right?

Speaker 10 It's the hope.

Speaker 10 Without hope, what do we have? And when

Speaker 10 we first

Speaker 10 begun,

Speaker 3 Jolene's mom, Ann, telling me, David, that she hasn't given up on the hope of possibly finding her daughter's remains with the hope of having a true burial after all these years.

Speaker 26 It's hope for her.

Speaker 35 Kimberly Kessler has filed two appeals since her murder conviction. Both were denied.
Her life sentence carries no possibility of parole. That is our program for tonight.
Thanks for watching.

Speaker 35 I'm David Muir.

Speaker 3 And I'm Deborah Roberts from All of Us at 2020 and ABC News. Good night.

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