Kimberly Kessler

Former Butler resident Kimberly Kessler was found guilty Thursday of the first-degree murder of her coworker, Joleen Cummings, 34, in 2018 in Nassau County, Fla.

The jury brought back the guilty verdict Thursday afternoon, which also concluded that Kessler is guilty of grand theft auto, for which she was arrested in 2018 for using Cummings' vehicle. The trial was livestreamed over YouTube by First Coast News.

In the video, Kessler declined to be present to hear the verdict.

A press conference followed the verdict, during which Nassau County Sheriff Bill Leeper said the investigating officers were able to solve the case due to DNA evidence left behind by Cummings.

“It has been a long three-and-a-half years,” Leeper said at the conference. “When we initially got the call of a missing person and started investigating, the things we were finding out to me were just shocking that something like this would happen in our community.”

Leeper said that after researching the case for years, he suspects that Kessler is a repeat offender.

“I don't believe this is her first murder,” Leeper said. “She is evil, she is evil in the flesh and as soon as she is sentenced, I want her out of our jail because we are fed up with her crap.”

Nassau County District Attorney Melissa Nelson said at the press conference that Kessler's sentence hearing will begin next month.

“This is not a death case, it's not a capital case,” she said. “We expect that she will be sentenced to mandatory life in prison at the sentence hearing.”

Cummings, an employee of Tangles Hair Salon in Fernandina Beach, where Kessler also worked, was last seen alive May 12, 2018, and was reported missing two days later.

Police found Cummings' vehicle in a Home Depot parking lot May 13, 2018, and when viewing surveillance footage from the store, they saw a “figure dressed in black” park and exit the vehicle that same day, according to the affidavit.

A short time later, police said Kessler, who was using the alias Jennifer Marie Sybert at the time, is seen on surveillance footage entering a nearby shopping center and taking a taxi to Tangles, documents said.

Leeper held a news conference in May 2018, during which he said his department had evidence indicating that Cummings was no longer alive.

Kessler was arrested at a rest stop in St. John's County, Fla., in September 2018, on a charge of first-degree murder, but denied ever using Cummings' vehicle, according to documents.

At that time, police were investigating the disappearance of Cummings.

Kessler left Butler County in 2004 and has since lived in various states under as many as 18 aliases, according to police. She was reported missing from Butler in 2004 under “suspicious circumstances.”