A Florida judge has determined for a second time this year that a former Butler County woman is competent to stand trial for a charge of murder, despite reports that she has been on suicide watch in jail and gone on “hunger strikes.”

Kimberly Kessler, also known as Jennifer Marie Sybert, is accused of the first-degree murder of Joleen Cummings, with whom she worked at a hair salon in Nassau County, Fla. Kessler, investigators believe, is the last person to see Cummings alive on May 12, 2018.

The following day, Mother's Day, Cummings, a 34-year-old mother of three, failed to pick up her children. She was reported missing two days later after not showing up for work at Tangles Hair Salon in Fernandina Beach.

Cummings' body has still not been found.

Kessler grew up in Butler County and attended South Butler County School District schools. She was reported missing in Butler County in 2004 and lived under multiple aliases in 14 states before her arrest.

On Tuesday, Nassau County Judge James Daniel ruled Kessler was competent to stand trial for first-degree murder, reaffirming a decision he made March 24. The decision reversed his finding last year that she was unfit for trial. Daniel made the most recent decision after “a lengthy competency hearing on Feb. 28.”

In Daniel's order, he outlined Kessler's behavior, which included bouts of starvation, over the past two years under incarceration. Daniel also noted that Kessler has “communicated open hostility towards her attorneys from the Public Defender's Office.”

Her public defender, Thomas Townsend, declined to comment.

The judge said this hostility has gone on continually.

“She has continued to refuse to meet or interact with her appointed counsel to prepare her defense,” Daniel wrote, adding that she “has directed profanity and verbal abuse towards them with no provocation. She has refused to meet with their investigator and their expert in his efforts to perform a psychological evaluation.”

Daniel wrote that Kessler's periods of starvation were nothing new for her, noting that since her arrest she would go through stages of not eating. He ultimately agreed with a doctor who monitored her on an almost daily basis for around three months that Kessler had a personality disorder that did not prevent her from understanding the charges against her, moving her case closer to trial.

Daniel cites the doctor's findings.

“Before her arrest, (Kessler) was able to perform higher-level functions like maintaining a bank account, renting a vehicle, earning regular income, using a prepaid credit card ... persons with an untreated mental illness such as delusional disorder typically cannot act in this manner,” Daniel's order notes.

Daniel also writes that throughout Kessler's incarceration at Nassau County Jail and other places, she would intermittently refuse food and medical services.

As a result, authorities would take her to Shands Hospital for medical treatment “where she would often binge eat multiple sandwiches or other food,” according to Daniel.

This process repeated several times, according to Daniel's order.

In total, Kessler had been taken to “the hospital over 30 times to have her medically checked, where she would, on most trips, consume a large amount of food.”

She's also described as “engaging in an escalating pattern of abusive and volatile behavior,” Daniel wrote, which included being hostile and verbally abusive to jail and medical staff.

Daniel also noted that she has lost weight, going from 190 pounds when she was first jailed in 2018 to 74 pounds at one point.

Daniel said that the jail's staff warned Kessler that her behavior put her at risk of organ failure, and when they asked her why she was starving herself Kessler gave several excuses. She said she believed the staff wanted to poison her, and at another point she said she was trying to kill herself — telling them she wouldn't eat until she's “brought out in a body bag.”

Kessler's case now moves toward trial with the next court appearance set Nov. 5. She also faces a grand theft auto case in a related matter.