Kimberly Kessler

A summary of discovery documents indicates that bank robbery and 25 years of evading the FBI are new admissions in the bizarre case of a former Butler woman accused of killing a woman in Florida after years of living under aliases in multiple states.

Kimberly Kessler’s case has grown in scope and notoriety in recent months, as it has expanded from a years-long missing persons cold case into a homicide investigation involving a co-worker of Kessler’s who went missing in May.

The case surrounding the disappearance of Joleen Cummings, 34, has seen FBI investigators pouring through a landfill near the Georgia-Florida boarder, police interviewing gas station attendants about Kessler’s appearance and more than a dozen false identities cropping up from Kessler’s life after she left Butler County.

Now new news in the case will likely be reduced to legal documents and court proceedings. Judge Robert Foster of Nassau County’s Fourth Judicial Circuit Court ordered the county’s sheriff department to stop commenting on the case and gave the state attorney’s office guidelines on how to file discovery documents so that their public release can be controlled.

A four-page notice of recent evidence submissions is available on Florida’s court records system, but the actual discovery findings are not yet available. The Butler Eagle filed a formal request Tuesday for those documents and received confirmation that the state attorney’s office is processing the documents and making needed redactions in the coming days.

The notice references submissions alleging that a woman told investigators Kessler had admitted to her that “she used to rob banks and she had 5 aliases.”

Kessler also admitted to two investigators, the notice indicates, that she had been “running from the FBI for 25 years and was wanted in several states.” Police have previously said that Kessler, who remains in jail in Nassau County, Fla., is not cooperating with the investigation.

Physical evidence submitted by investigators includes Cummings’ fingernail, a photograph of Cummings, a plastic tote bin, a receipt for zip ties and a trash bag box. No details about any of those items are included in the summary document.

The state attorney’s office previously released audio of police interviews with two people who encountered Kessler around the time Cummings is thought to have been killed. As previously reported, Kessler entered a gas station dressed in all black after a figure dressed in all black was caught on video parking and leaving Cummings car in a nearby parking lot.

The gas station attendant described seeing a red mark on Kessler’s cheek where it “looked like someone had grabbed her.”