20/20 - The After Show: The Final Cut

Episode Date: November 24, 2025

New details from exclusive interviews in the case of Kimberly Kessler, the woman living under multiple false identities found guilty of murdering her salon co-worker after investigators suspect she threatened to expose her truth. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Hi there, everybody. Welcome to 2020, The After Show. I'm Deborah Roberts, and as always, I am so happy to see you all today and for you to hear us today. We're going to bring you really some exclusive details to our reporting of our most recent 2020 episode called the final cut. You'll understand that play on words in a second, but it is almost like a psychological thriller. There were secret identities that reveal double lives, but it's a true story that centers around the death of a 34-year-old mom and a hairdresser by the name of Jolene Cummings. Jolene was popular in her area of work. She was a hairstylist, and she had dreams of opening

her own salon. She had clients who called her a herapist, a little play on therapist because she loved to talk to them about their lives and help them try to solve their problems. But on May 13th, 2018, Mother's Day, which also happened to be Jolene's birthday, she didn't show up to pick up her children from her ex-husband, which was out of character for her. Nobody heard from her. Her mother didn't hear from her. It was very strange. And nobody knew where she was, of course, except the person who was responsible for her disappearance. I worked on this story. I traveled down to Florida

and spoke with a number of people involved, including women who had worked and been at the hair salon where Jolene had worked for years. Also, I worked alongside a producer, Karen Schiffman, who is here today. Hey, Karen. Hi, Deborah.

Karen is going to bring us some of the details here. Karen, you and I have worked together on a lot of stories. We've never had a chance to do this. This is so weird. I'm so, so, so used to just listening to you and not contributing.

Well, you always bring not only your bubbly vibe, which I think folks will hear in your voice and see in your face, but you also bring a passion and, you know, just really a lot of smarts about the deep dive into these stories. And you and I have covered a lot of stories together. But this one, I think, more than anything I've ever heard. I mean, as I said before, double identities or in this case, many, many multiple identities and, you know, chaos and in a past and a background with a woman. who nobody actually knew anything about when she came to town in Florida. Tell me about just backing up in the beginning of hearing about this story. It was so intriguing. Two women at a hair salon and things go terribly badly. How did you even, how did this get on your radar? Yeah, you know, one of our colleagues, Abby, actually pitched this story. And it had been pitched a couple times when we weren't sure exactly how to do it.

And then it came back up again and we said, you know what, we really do have to dive into this. Because there's so much here, right? when you set out to do these stories, what are we looking for? We're looking for people, right? And this is their lives that we're talking about. And in this case, right, real people and real tragedy and real trauma. And in this story in particular, the people are just unbelievable. You've got this mom, Jolene, who is so loved everybody that we talked to,

who talked about, you know, what an amazing mom she is, how she was working so hard to, you know, do a good job for her kids and really, like you were saying, the ambitions of having her own salon. And that's admirable, right? We all know somebody a little bit like Jolene. She also had this great spunk tour that people would talk about, you know, this idea that if she saw you and she thought there was something up, she wasn't going to all back. She was going to look at you and go, you fake, I know you fake. I'm going to figure it out.

So that to me was, I, you know, I heard about that and I thought, okay, this is interesting. This is a smart girl who was on to something. What was she on to? Then you find out about her coworker Kimberly Kessler. And my mind is blown. Yeah. Because like you were saying, 18 aliases from 1999 on, this woman is changing her name. She's changing her identities.

And so that in itself is just fascinating. It was intriguing. It was intriguing. When I was going through the details, as I often am at home, and my husband hears me talking about the story, he was so fascinated because it's rare that you find two women who are at odds in something this horrific. Let's set the scene, though, and talk about Jolene, because at the core of this story is a victim, a mom of three children who didn't come home one day.

Jolene lived in this small town just across the Georgia line. I grew up in Georgia and I was very intrigued by the fact that it was sort of a southern small town. And that was one of the things that we did notice when we started digging into this. It wasn't like a cookie cutter, beautiful setting. But as you said, by all accounts, she was, you know, a good mom, cared a lot about her kids. And then she wound up going to beauty school and made her way to this salon. She was. I think, you know, we talked to Anne extensively.

Her mother. Anne Johnson, really just such a sweet woman. When we originally reached out to her, she said, I love my daughter so much. I have to be her voice. I have to do this. And, you know, Jolene's goal was to, you know, give her kids a good life too.

Yeah, and she, like a lot of hairdressers, she loved doing these glamour shots and there are lots of pretty pictures of her. Yeah, absolutely. So you could see that this was a woman who did still have a lot of spunk and a lot of pride in her life. Yeah, 100%. And all ever been said that.

So you started digging into this and you, you know, found you talked to hairdressers who had worked alongside her. Of course, we wound up talking to her mom. And when the story first happened and she turned up missing, her mother knew something was off right away. But police initially began doing what they always do, which is they zero in on the person's love life. She had an ex-husband and she had a boyfriend who was kind of an ex-boyfriend who had a criminal history. And that was something that they really initially thought, you know, would solve the case for them. Yeah, absolutely. I think, what we learned with this story is you scratch the surface and you get a nugget. You scratch a little more,

you get another nugget. And every time you hit one of these nuggets, you're like, oh, this is it. I know this is where this is headed. And in this case, it wasn't, which was so incredible. So they first start honing in exactly what you said, right? They always go to the ex-husband. She did have a difficult relationship with the ex-husband. But, you know, talking to everybody, they said that they really sort of had it mended. They had an amicable relationship for the kids. They bring him in for interrogation. And they notice scratches on him. And how is that? not a red flag. The husband? Yeah, I'm Jason Cummings. And so they quickly find out, oh, it's from welding. So now the first time you hear that, you're like, oh, really, you get a scratch

market like from welding, but okay, all right, I'm willing to accept that at face value. They end up being able to clear him fairly quickly. He's got solid alibis. And then they go, and then he says to them, there's another Jason you should be looking at. So we have Jason Cummings, number one, the ex-husband. Now we've got the boyfriend, Jason G. He does have a little bit of a past. The bottom line is they look into him and they see right before she had gone missing. They had actually had a domestic violence call out. Jason G. had gone to the house. They got into a fight.

He got into a fight with Jolene. Jolene didn't want him to spend the night. She was trying to be above board. She knew that Jason Cummings, the ex-husband, didn't want Jason G there with the kids around. So she said, you've got to go, you got to go. So it doesn't really look good. They bring him in. What do they find on his arm?

More scratches. Okay? These scratches. And by the way, when you listen to this interrogation, he's like all over the place. He's like, his head is down on the table. They ask him what the scratches are. He tells them it's from a dog. But it sounds suspect.

Right. I mean, really, you're an investigator. You're listening to that. What are you thinking? You're like, I've got to look into this guy a little bit more. So, you know, push him to the side a little bit. But he ends up having an alibi that checks out too. Police clear her ex-husband and they clear her boyfriend or ex-boyfriend.

And they are still investigating. they finally decide that they want to know more about her work environment. They go to Tangles, the hair salon, they talk to some of the employees, and they start to realize that, you know, they want to look in closer at Jolene's orbit. They talk to some of her coworkers, and they learned that there was a co-worker, a new woman in town, a new woman at the hair salon by the name of Jennifer Seibert, who didn't really seem to get along with Jolene and was an odd bird for everybody else. And, you know, you think about Southern beauty salons, and I grew up in small town, Georgia.

And, you know, you think about steel magnolias, right? Dali Parton, who, by the way, had a song called Jolene. And this Jolene was actually, her mother said, named for that song. That's right. You think about that little beauty salon, Truby's beauty salon, and it's small, and everybody's gossipy, and they know everybody's business. And presumably, this was a hair salon a little like that, except Jennifer Seibert was just a little strange. So they do learn a little bit about her.

background in her history, right? Right. Exactly. That's when some of the co-workers are talking about how there were confrontations between the two of them. And Jolene would actually say in front of some of the clients, something's off about her. I can't quite put my finger on it. Something's off and I'm going to find out. And everybody that we spoke to, whether it was Britney Sway, one of her closest friends from cosmetology school or even her mom said Jolene was on to people. If she sensed that something was off, she was going to find out exactly what it was. to confirm whatever suspicion she had. I spoke with one of her former clients who did talk about that, too, that Jolene was that type.

You know, she was spunky enough, and she said that if something, she'd call you, she'd call you on your stuff. Exactly. So if she thought something was odd. So I can see how the two of them might have had some problems. Police are sort of suspecting that something is off here, but they don't have really any idea. And then they get this surveillance video. They're trying to find cyber because they want to know more about her story.

Exactly. And they can't find her. They get a tip that somebody spotted Jolene. car in the parking lot of the Home Depot. And they go immediately to try and investigate. But even before that, right, investigators had gone back to tangles to try to just see if there was something that they had missed. And that's when they start walking through. And Detective David Douglas starts going in the back. He sees this little brown ring on the pattern tile in the back near where the bathroom is. Because they've got a woman who's completely disappeared and they're trying to decide, is she possibly

around? Does she run off or could something have happened? So they're looking for the potential of blood in the salon. Oh yeah. They think that something's up. So when he sees that and he sees that little droplet, that ring, that's when he calls over Harrington and says, we've got to investigate. So then they loom in all the place. And it lights up. I mean, there is just blood everywhere. And at that point, they realized this isn't a small fight that happened here. This is a homicide that happened here. And they want to talk to cyber. They can't find her. They eventually do locate her. She's in her car. And she starts telling them these stories. and she doesn't really ask them why they're asking her questions.

She doesn't ask what they want from her other than she's sort of reporting bizarre stories. She at least gives up the idea that she doesn't get along with Jolene. They know that. But then she kind of gives them these distracting stories about bedbugs and all of this. But at the very least, they've now connected her to Jolene's vehicle. They see the speaker get out of the car. They've got that on surveillance tape. They follow that.

There's another surveillance camera that's by the gate gas station. And they capture yet another surveillance video of that same person walking in. And that's when Harrington's hair stands up on the back of his neck because he knows the face of the woman that is standing there in front of that cashier in that gas station. It's Jennifer Seibert, the person he thinks is Jennifer Seibert. So he goes, bam, now we've got to go find her. So they start talking to her. Right.

And then they are also looking at the dumpster at Tangles? Yeah, they bring her in for the interrogation. But they've also seen the surveillance tape in the back of Tangles, which is where they see that same person, Jennifer Seibart, dumping bags. So this woman is looking very suspicious. Well, it just gets stranger and stranger. And nobody would believe when they begin digging into her past, nobody would believe what they begin to dig up.

So Karen, don't go anywhere because you've got more details about interviews that we conducted and people closest to her to find out who this woman is and what her life was all about. That's coming up next. Don't go anywhere. Two rings surrounded by a steel cage. Games, November 29th at 7 Eastern on the ESPN app. It started with a phone call in the early hours of the morning.

9-1-1. What is the address to your emergency? A terrified woman tells the operator she's been kidnapped, assaulted, and that she's trapped in her room with her attacker. He's fallen asleep, so she quietly and ever so carefully finds his phone and calls for help. Is there any way you can get out of the building? I don't know without waking him, and I'm scared. This 911 call began an investigation that would turn the town of Ashland into a crime scene. We've got something big going on here.

The first thing you hit my mind is a monster. A new series from ABC Audio and 2020, The Hand in the Window. Out now, wherever you listen to podcasts. Welcome back to 2020 The After Show. I am sitting here with Karen Schiffman, one of our veteran producers and bookers here, who usually doesn't want to come on camera to talk about anything, but here we are today. So thank you for taking the time to do this. But we are taking a look at our latest 2020 story.

We titled It The Final Cut. This is something that happened in a hair salon. It is the story of the disappearance of Jolene Cummings and a woman in her life by the name Jennifer Cybert, who was the newest employee at the salon. At this point, when police begin questioning Cybert, they have seen blood in the salon, they are losing all confidence that they're going to find Jolene alive. I think that's very fair to say.

That is very fair to say. They've got her in there. They've got her in the interrogation room. And they think that they've got Jennifer Seibert in the interrogation room. Now, I want you to imagine that you are Wayne Harrington, the seasoned detective, and you go in, and you're all ready to talk to Jennifer Seibert. And then she drops a bombshell on you and tells you she's actually not Jennifer Seibert.

What, I mean. Yeah, yeah. Right? That's not even her real name. So in her address that she had put on her application doesn't exist. Everything's fake. And this is like right out the gate when she sits down. She tells them this.

She doesn't even hold back. She's already let it, you know, kind of dropped a hint with somebody in the car when she's driving to the jail. And she's here and there, oh, well, my name's not really Jennifer Seiberd. It's actually Kimberly Lee Kessler. Sounds like my mom stuttered. Kimberly Lee, Lee, Kessler. Then she starts talking about how Kessler, it's like the whiskey that they make somewhere,

and she's not even sure if they make it anymore. So she's doing that whole diversionary thing all over again, right out the get. Right? Instead of focusing on what she's there to talk about, she's distracting them. She's got these fake names. She's got all these insane stories. I mean, if I'm Wayne Harrington and I'm sitting there listening to this, yeah, you would be losing your mind.

Right. I mean, you just cannot believe this is happening. But they do have to believe what's happening, and she's telling them this, and they decide to call her mother. At a certain point, she stops talking, and now they've got to try to sort out fact from fiction, and they call her mother, and they are once again blown away by what they find out. Right. So they're not even sure it's her mother, because they're not even sure that this Kimberly Kessler is Kimberly Kessler. And she's already told them a host of insane stories at this point, right? She's told them about how she dated a guy who was a bank robber, who was wanted by the FBI, and she hid him out in her apartment. And that, she says, is the beginning of it all.

She talks to them about how she had taken off and she was a truck driver. She was a stripper. She was living in Arizona. She talks about how she had a son at one point. Which they were not sure whether to believe her not, but it turned out to be true. Exactly. And she's got all these fake IDs and everything, Karen. How is she able to do this over the course of years?

They start to learn over years she's been faking IDs all over. Oh, yeah. I mean, since way back, right? I mean, we're not going to give criminals a handbook for how to do it. but she had a passport. She had a what looked to be a legitimate U.S. passport with her name, with Jennifer Seiber, with a passport number, all the documents. She had a fake real estate license.

She had cosmetology license. She had, you know, all of these things that she had managed to doctor up over the years. And we found out over the course of this that she was getting these names off of tombstones and from deceased people. We talked to one of her ex-boyfriends, man by the name of Tom Sims, who she knew when she was in Butler, Pennsylvania. And he took us all the way back to the mid-90s and said, you know, her father had died of a heart attack, and she had lost her driver's license.

That was the first problem where she was already dropping hints to him. Oh, I should get a new name. I should try to become somebody. So she said, please do me a favor. Drive me to the cemetery because I want to go visit my father's tombstone. Thompson's a nice guy. Oh, okay, I'm going to take you over there. They go there, and he realizes she's looking at every other grave site, looking at names of people.

But they never see her dad's tombstone. They never make it to his grave. Years later, after all of this comes to light, the FBI call. And they tell him about this, you know, what they had discovered in all these aliases. And he goes, that was my light bulb moment. I realized that was the precursor. She was going around trying to figure out how to get these names. How did he come up with other names?

It was absolutely the most bizarre thing. Crazy. One of the things that, you know, you had to dig and dig and dig to help us not only understand the story, but to find these different people. And we had exclusive interviews with two FBI agents who were on the case. They told you a lot about this story in her background as well. They did. It is so hard to get the FBI to come on the show. They wanted to do it so badly. And then the government shut down. And they were impacted. So they felt really bad about the whole thing, but they were very generous with the information that they shared. And what I loved understanding from them was they were involved with this investigation from basically day two because they have satellite offices all over the country. So they have positioned themselves where if local law enforcement needs help, they're there. And that's what they were doing in this case. They were helping run a lot of the background checks on a lot of these names. I mean, this is the whole list of all of her 18 aliases and the 30-some places that she had lived in. So they were tracking that down. Charity Rose, Detective Charity Rose from NASA, police was really sort of

running the lead on that, but they really helped support her in that. The other thing that they were involved in was getting back the DNA. So when the police were trying to determine if this Jennifer Seibert is actually Kimberly Kessler and they called the woman that they believed was the real Kimberly Kessler's mother, one of the ways that they were able to confirm that was with the help of the FBI and getting that DNA match. And they were able to confirm that it was her mother. Yeah, it was a match. So they began to, the more they're digging, the deeper this is growing.

And they are finding out all kinds of things. They also find an ex-boyfriend of hers, a man by the name of Tom Sims, who was just blown away by what he learned. He always thought something was up because they had a volatile relationship. Oh my gosh. Poor Tom Sims. He was the nicest man. I called him and he said that, you know, this was a very good.

a very long time ago. It was a very difficult place in his life. He had never come forward before. He had not done an interview. Ours was the first. So I'm really grateful to him for shedding light on what she was like as a younger woman. And his family kept trying to tell him, like he really got to get away from this woman. The things that are happening here are not normal. But, you know, he describes himself as being young and in love. He actually thought he was in love with her or that it was some semblance of love. And he, you know, says he was young and naive, and he didn't know. He said it started really innocently. They ran into each other at a bar, hadn't seen each other for a number of years. They started dating. And before he knew

it, they would go out to a party. There would be a girl, maybe at a party, and Kimberly would get frustrated, and they would end up in some sort of a fight. They would come home, and Tom describes how they would come home, and she would then take it out on him and start yelling at him. And it escalated from there. Yeah, no, he had a really compelling and very tragic story. I did. I thought to tell about that. Another interview that didn't make it into the program was a former landlord of Kimberly Kessler's, and you got a little bit more insight into her behavior. You know, the police were so generous. They shared with us all of their evidence files. And in that, we were able to find that Detective Charity Rose had actually tracked down one of Kimberly's

landlords from Rochester, Minnesota. And he was a physician, a psychiatrist, actually. And he had an apartment, you know, that they were just renting out. And Kimberly had gone to church. She was just passing through town and she just found this church that it happened to be one that he and his wife went to. And she mentioned while she was there, she was looking for a place to say. He suggested, you know, you could rent from me. She caused him so much grief, according to what he told police. He feared by the end of it, like serious repercussions for his professional life. She accused him of stalking her. She accused him of going into the house and peeing all over her sleeping bags. She didn't want to have any furniture. He offered her furniture. She wanted to live in this

just very sparse environment. And she was just making his life absolute. She had a trail of chaos and mayhem in her life. And police were quickly able to discover this. And at a certain point, it was pretty clear to them that something had happened. They had seen the surveillance video. They started to put this all together. Investigators really began to make a case that she clearly had killed Jolene. They didn't find any remains. They searched and searched. They did see her on the surveillance tape, throwing these garbage bags in the garbage bin. Again, on the surveillance tape, almost surveilling the place to see if the garbage had been taken out. They searched landfills. They never found anything. They found a small fingernail they thought belonged to

Jolene. It's really heartbreaking. You know, the FBI, they led the lead on that search for the landfill. They were out there for days on end in 117 degree heat. You know, they were covered in ice pox and all sorts of things trying to find her. And at the end of the day, they came up with nothing. But in the woods right behind where that dumpster was, Nassau Police did find like a blue rubber made bin. In that, there was blood from Jeline that they found. And like you said, there was a tiny piece of an acrylic fingernail. Which they connected it to Jolene. So they were convinced that she was killed. They didn't have the body. Prosecutors had to go to court without a body, but they were convinced that they could make

the case that Kimberly was very suspicious, that Jolene was on to her, that she knew something was happening. They took this case to court, and I think they were not prepared for what they were going to find. They knew that they had this woman with a very bizarre background, but then she's disruptive in the courtroom. She shows erratic behavior. She goes on a hunger strike in the jail. to jailers who talked about her throwing feces at them. I mean, just really showing all the behavior of somebody who was not fit to stand trial. That delayed the trial for a while. There was a lot of talk about whether she was competent to stand trial, but ultimately, they concluded that she was. She had lost a tremendous amount of weight, but she was convicted

in this case. And even at the very end, Karen, I mean, she still couldn't come into the courtroom. I mean, for sentencing, she would continue to show this disruptive behavior. It was just Absolutely the strangest thing I have ever, I think, encountered in a report. No, it really was. And I remember when you interviewed Beth Smith, the jailer, and she was telling you about her antics every single day and just how she was terrorizing everyone that was there in the prison with her. And then, I mean, until the absolute end, they all believe she was putting on a show. I think it was Beth that told you at one point, too, right, that there was a book that she had read about how to how to behave this way. So crazy, crazy like a fox.

Yeah, that's the big question. That's the big question. Did she have some mental illness or did she just sort of learn how to create this mental illness? Well, she was convicted and there was justice in some ways, I guess, for Jolene Cummings family, but, you know, they didn't have her remains. They didn't have a body to bury. They were able to create a memorial service for her, but a very, very difficult time. Her mother was still tearing up, you know, with us, just talking about her and barely,

able to contain herself, I guess even just talking about the memories. It was so difficult and still remains that way with them. I mean, you've spoken to her fairly recently. Yeah, it's true. She actually shared that really beautiful video that I think is in the show when they did that service and saying amazing grace for her. And it's just you see that there's still such an outpouring of love for Jolene. Her mom does not want her to be forgotten. She wants her children to carry on and know that they had an incredible mother and that, you know, anything they can do to honor their honor her memory. Well, they certainly have done that.

And if nothing else, I think they will think about her in that way. And we left the audience thinking about this woman to a loss that a family not only has, but a community has and her friends and just a really, really terrible, terrible story. Well, when we come back, we want to talk a little bit more, not only just about the end of this, but also what does constitute a mental illness or multiple personality? or someone being unfit to stay in trial. We're going to talk to an expert who can shed a little light on that when we come back. Give it up for Chicago.

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Terms apply. Welcome back to 2020, The After Show. You have been hearing some pretty disturbing details about a story we just covered. Karen Shipman, our producer is here. We've been talking about the case of Kimberly Kessler and Jolene Cummings. Jolene Cummings, a 34-year-old mom who was murdered and her body never found. But it was a very, very surprising case. Her coworker was charged in her murder and convicted. And we talked a lot about Kimberly Kessler in the courtroom and acting out and disruptive behavior and she had to be

taken out of the courtroom. And there were questions about whether she was fit to stand trial. So much of that played a part in our story. I want to bring in emergency psychiatrist, Dr. Adjua Smalls, Monta, who has sat with us before here and talked to us about some of our stories. So welcome. Thank you. Always great to talk to you, especially to help us break down some of the medical issues. Obviously, you had no part in this story. You don't know these characters. You didn't treat Kimberly Kessler. But when you heard about this woman who just displayed this really bizarre behavior, starving herself, disrupting the courtroom, throwing feet. at her jailers. What comes to mind for you when you hear this kind of behavior? So, of course,

anyone would think is somebody in their right in mind when they display this behavior? And that was a question for the judge, for the defense, for even though the prosecution. And so they wanted to know, is she fit to stand trial? And that's a good question to ask, anyone can order that evaluation. And then a psychiatrist or a psychologist would do that evaluation. And when we're trying to determine whether someone is fit to stand trial. It is whether they are having a mental illness that is going to affect the way that they are able to understand the court hearings, what the proceedings are. And the other standard that we're looking at is whether they are able to reasonably assist an attorney in the defense. In their defense. And so obviously people

thought after an evaluation that she was able to do this and that her ability to do so was not compromised by a mental illness. The jailers told me that they were convinced that she was very clever, you know, that she was, you know, clever like a fox, and that she almost studied this type of behavior to know how to present herself as someone who was having some kind of a mental breakdown, if you were, the hunger strike, all the different ways that she presented herself to them. And she was in jail for quite a while while she was awaiting this trial. How do you know? How do you know? They are convinced that they saw a woman who was conniving. and cunning. And you see people, I'm sure, oftentimes, who you have to make a determination

about. How do you know who's right there? Because she still will maintain that she was not treated fairly in court. And she did that even until the very end, before her sentencing. And that, you know, almost like conspiracies were going on around her. How can you be certain? So when we're evaluating whether a person has a mental illness, we have criteria. We know how mental illnesses present. So there are clear patterns of behavior. And while people can study them and try to mimic them, with becoming a doctor, with becoming a psychologist, you get to know the nuances of these different behaviors. So as someone is pretending to maybe hear voices, I can ask them certain questions to explain a little bit more. And as you're delving in a little bit fast,

a little bit more, really learn that maybe they're making this up or it's not quite what they're describing. There are also psychological tests that you can do and how people score based on someone that would have a mental illness or someone that is maybe feigning a mental illness can help you determine what is happening. I have seen many patients that have displayed the behavior that you're describing and have concluded they don't have a mental illness that is causing them to do this behavior. It can just be them acting out. And I can't again say what happened in Ms. Kessler's case. don't know her, never examined her. But obviously, many people did observe her behavior. And you're seeing a lot of times whether this behavior is under volitional control. That's usually a

key giveaway. And that's what those jailers were convinced of. The thing that really, I think, captivated us and just sort of blew our mind, pardon, the expression was the 18 aliases. I mean, when police discovered that this woman had invented and reinvented herself over the course of time. Multiple personality disorder or conniving criminal? I mean, that's the way prosecutors described her. What's the difference between those two things? Yeah. So let's first talk about multiple personality disorder now called dissociative identity disorder. And with that, people have two distinct personalities, at least two, maybe even more personality states, identity states. and those identities really have separate personalities and experiences.

That can often be, have periods of amnesia or the person doesn't remember personal details about themselves. They may also have periods of time where they just don't remember what has happened in the more recent time period. And DID, as we call it, often comes out of a history of trauma, early childhood trauma, usually physical, emotional, or sexual abuse. and people, we believe, have these different identities that are created as a way to protect ourselves as children to get through those traumas. So when somebody has dissociative identity disorder, they aren't necessarily aware that they are having these different identities or sometimes alters come out and people will describe it to them.

They don't have a memory of it. Now, some people as they go through treatment might have a little bit more awareness. But when you're talking about someone that has, that is creating many different aliases, that is something that they are doing intentionally to mislead someone and trying, they have a specific motive. Usually people are doing this as teenagers, as adults, and they have a full consciousness and memory of what they're doing. And for the case that we're describing today, it sounds like Ms. Kessler might have had

more full awareness of what she was doing. doing. One thing in dissociative identity disorder is that these personalities can come out at any time and people are not aware of it. Other people around them will tell them. But when somebody is trying to create an alias, they're usually trying to hide another identity very meticulously, very carefully, and other people will not know about that. And I think there are some details in the story that show other people didn't know about these aliases. You had to really dig deep. But with dissociative identity disorder, all of those different personalities are more evident to so many people around. Right. Karen, when we talk about the trauma, and we talked a lot about this in our piece,

the family, we meet Ann Johnson in the piece, Jolene's mom. And this has been a very, very difficult time for this family, even now, and particularly because they never were able to put everything to rest. They never had a body to bury. And that was very tough. And we talk about that. And Anne told me how she has sort of tried to find some peace with that in her own way, but yet she still holds on to the hope that one day she might be able to have some remains to bury. What's the latest you've heard from the family and how they're doing? Jolene leaves behind three children.

How, you know, Anne seems to be coping fairly well, but what about the rest of the family? I think I talked to Anne fairly recently, and she is determined to not give up on making sure that Jolene's voice is heard one way or another. She is instilled in her eldest, in Jolene's eldest daughter, that it's for her to keep fighting for justice for Jolene. I think the most poignant and sort of really upsetting thing that Anne said was there is no part of Jolene that she has except for that little fingernail that they found. And she can't even get that. That's still with the police. So it's, it's tough for her. It's a tragic, yeah. It's a tragic story. I mean, I think they felt some relief to be able to talk about it.

They obviously put this part behind them, this criminal part behind them, but still a family suffering. Well, Karen, this is such a great story. I mean, as much as this kind of a story can be a good story to tell, but it certainly was an intriguing story. So thanks for your help on it. And Dr. Smalls, your perspective is always so helpful. Thank you.

Thank you both so much for being a part of this podcast. That's going to be it for this particular podcast. but we hope that you will continue to follow us on 2020. You can catch our latest episodes on Friday nights, of course, on ABC, and of course you can stream episodes like this one anytime on Disney Plus and Hulu. Thanks again for being here. This is the season for all your holiday favorites, like a very Jonas Christmas movie and Home Alone on Disney Plus.

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