JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – Friday marked two years since a St. Johns County father of four was shot and killed in an ambush murder in Jacksonville Beach.
Now, new evidence released this week suggested his murder was not only planned, it was also rehearsed.
Jared Bridegan, 33, was killed after he dropped off his older twins at his ex-wife Shanna Gardner’s house and had his 2-year-old daughter in the backseat. He was shot in the street amid a bitter custody battle after stopping to move a tire from the road.
Gardner and her estranged husband Mario Fernandez faced a judge in Jacksonville on Friday morning on first-degree murder charges as their lawyers continued to argue motions to dismiss the State Attorney’s Office from the case, to release Gardner on bond and to separate the cases.
The judge has not yet set a trial date. A third man, Henry Tenon, has pleaded guilty to being the triggerman.
Bridegan’s widow and loved ones were in court on Friday just feet away from Gardner and her estranged husband Mario Fernandez – both charged with an elaborate plot to kill him.
Bridegan’s family didn’t speak to News4JAX on the somber milestone, but a stack of newly released documents from the State Attorney’s Office give credit to investigators claims that the hit was calculated.
GPS evidence showed in the month before the murder, Tenon twice drove the murder route. Prosecutors labeled the evidence “a practice run of the homicide route.”
He left his home on the Westside and headed to Jacksonville Beach. He then went turn-by-turn where Bridegan would go on his way back to his St. Johns County home after leaving Gardner’s house, according to investigators.
Fernandez had been with Tenon, who rented a room from him, earlier in the day but it’s unclear if he was in the vehicle as Tenon drove the route.
Graphics showed evidence Tenon made two passes through the neighborhood where Bridegan was killed. The night of the murder, cell phone tracking matched with surveillance videos across Jacksonville Beach showed Tenon along the route driving his dark blue F-150 which police later found along with the spare tire that set up the shooting.
“In so many instances, that cell phone data that you get is the icing on the cake of building a case because it shows a timeline and it shows exactly where somebody is, how long they were there, where they went,” said News4JAX Crime and Safety Analyst Tom Hackney, a former JSO homicide supervisor.
He said GPS data, coupled with the physical evidence and payments between Fernandez and Tenon, tell a lot.
What is not seen is much of a trail leading to the ex-wife whom prosecutors said started plotting the murder nine years ago.
“It’s going to prove interesting to find out what the evidence that they’re going to present against her,” Hackney said.
There’s also heavily redacted evidence showing detectives are linking two more people to the plot, a former police reserve officer who may have provided the murder weapon and a man who lived in Fernandez’s rental with Tenon. Neither has been charged, but Hackney said they could be in the future.
Another document, involving conversations detectives pulled from a wiretap, shows Gardner hired not only a lawyer after the murder but also a public relations firm in Utah where her family runs a multi-million dollar business. The group and Gardner discussed Gardner taking a vacation and checking into a hotel under a fake name a consultant even suggested a fictitious story where a “gay lover” was actually the killer, according to prosecutors.
The warrant also said a relative of Bridegan told investigators that Gardner had commented about “hiring a hitman to take Bridegan out” back in 2017. The relative said Gardner “hated” Bridegan and was “frustrated by their custody arrangement and their differences in parenting choice.”
Gardner and Fernandez have pleaded not guilty. Their attorneys have said the details will come out in court.
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