JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – The lead Jacksonville Beach Police detective in charge of the Jared Bridegan murder investigation will return to the stand on Wednesday morning, after spending most of Tuesday afternoon answering questions from the state about what led to the arrest of Mario Fernandez.
Fernandez, 38, is currently on trial for first-degree murder and solicitation of murder, accused of orchestrating the ambush shooting that killed Bridegan in February 2022 by hiring the alleged gunman Henry Tenon, who lived at a property on Potomac Avenue in Jacksonville that was owned by Fernandez and his wife, Shanna Gardner, who divorced Bridegan in 2015.
Detective Chris Johns recounted on the stand Tuesday the evidence his team collected during the investigation and how he said those pieces led them to Fernandez and Gardner, who is also charged in the murder.
During Johns’ testimony, prosecutors played a 50-minute video showing Fernandez’s interview with Johns and another detective after the murder, but before he was considered a suspect.
During the interview with investigators, Fernandez accused Bridegan of being difficult to interact with when it came to the care of the twins, a boy and a girl, that Bridegan shared with Gardner. The twins were 9 years old when Bridegan was killed.
Fernandez said Bridegan was a passive-aggressive person and called him a “keyboard warrior.”
“I remember reaching out to Jared (after marrying Shanna). ‘Now that I will be in the kids’ life more, let’s have a chat.’ Nothing. I got nothing,” Fernandez said.
He told detectives that the night of Bridegan’s murder, he had taken pain medication for headaches.
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Bridegan, a father of four, was killed on Feb. 16, 2022, when he got out of his vehicle to remove a tire that was placed in the road.
After spotting the tire, Bridegan, who was driving home to St. Augustine after dropping off the twins at Gardner’s Jacksonville Beach home, stopped his Volkswagen Atlas and put on warning lights to remove it.
But when he opened his door, he was shot twice.
Two other bullets (seen below in an evidence display) hit the SUV, with one missing his toddler daughter, Bexley, in the back seat by mere inches, investigators said.
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Testimony on Tuesday morning included a minute-by-minute timeline of video evidence leading up to the deadly ambush shooting.
The video evidence follows the path of a blue two-tone F-150 pick-up truck through Jacksonville Beach. Investigators say it was the vehicle used to transport the shooter to the scene of Bridegan’s murder.
Bridegan’s widow, Kirsten, became emotional when an evidence technician testified about the scene.
The prosecutor showed video the evidence tech took walking up to the dark scene; you see the tire in the road, shell casings and Bridegan’s body on the ground.
Another video shown in court Tuesday morning, taken near the scene, included the sound of gunfire.
Members of law enforcement who collected that video evidence and also DNA, the tire and bullet casings from the scene also testified on Tuesday about the process of cataloguing that evidence.
Johns testified about what was found inside the blue F-150, including business check stubs that were later matched to three checks Fernandez wrote to Tenon.
Johns also testified that boots and a jacket that belong to Tenon appeared to match those worn by the shooter, who was captured on video leaving the scene of the murder on foot.
JSO body camera video of Tenon walking inside the jail was also shown, and Johns said it was taken to show that Tenon’s distinct gait matched the gait of the shooter in the surveillance video the night of the murder.
Johns explained how investigators tried to use the announcement of Tenon’s arrest to “tickle the wire” and see if Fernandez and Gardner would be caught on wire taps talking to each other about the murder.
“It’s an event that is basically prearranged by law enforcement. So it spurs conversation about the actual crime that we’re trying to record,” Johns said, admitting that the effort was not successful.
Johns said Fernandez and Gardner were under surveillance at the time and were living in separate states: Gardner was in Washington state and Fernandez was in Orlando.
‘Absolutely no trust’
Kirsten Bridegan testified on Monday, the first day of the trial, describing the ongoing co-parenting tension between the couples that prosecutors believe was at the heart of the murder-for-hire scheme.
In her opening statement and while questioning Kirsten Bridegan on the stand, Assistant State Attorney Christina Stifler traced the bitter relationship between Bridegan and Gardner, who spent years after their divorce in contentious court battles over how to raise their twins, from disputes about religion to doctor’s appointments and even school conferences.
“It was pretty terrible,” Kirsten Bridegan said on the stand. “There was absolutely no trust so everything was in writing. Texts, email. We did not speak in person, like at school events. Didn’t do phone calls.”
Fernandez also mentioned the family communication in his interview with detectives that was played in court on Tuesday. He said the family was in a group text and had an arrangement to text when they arrived to pick up the kids.
Fernandez recounted in his interview what happened one time when he opted to knock instead of texting.
“I went to go pick the kids up like three years ago. I picked them up. The kids came running out. They are scared. ‘Dad said no one should knock on the door. You can’t knock.’ I can do what I want. I could see him; he refused to turn around,” Fernandez recalled. “I got a message (that) if I ever do it again there would be a restraining order.”
Prosecutors have pointed to the ongoing acrimony between the couples as a major motive behind Bridegan’s killing.
“When it was something where all four of us were at, it was very tense. You could just feel the tension,” Kirsten said. “Jared, he would kind of retreat into himself and be quiet and not want to make eye contact. So it was not a comfortable experience ever.”
When prosecutors went through the night of the murder with Kirsten, she choked up as she remembered the moment an officer -- and not Jared -- answered the phone she’d been calling repeatedly after Jared had not made it home.
She cried when the prosecutor showed her a photo of Jared and asked her to confirm it was her husband.
Prosecutors also showed Kirsten a video from surveillance cameras at the Jacksonville Beach Police Department headquarters.
A man is seen walking in front of the police station and then down the street. During opening statements, the defense indicated that man is believed to be Henry Tenon.
The prosecutor asked Kirsten if she recognized the man in the video, and she said no.
On that same video, just seconds after the man walks out of frame, Kirsten is seen arriving at the station in the family’s Suburban after speaking with the officer who answered Jared’s phone.
It was unclear if Kirsten had ever seen the video before or knew how close she’d come to the man police believe shot her husband that night.
‘Targeted ambush’
On day one, Stifler pointed to the tire in the road as proof of a planned attack against Bridegan.
“A targeted ambush, a planned tactical ambush with a tire in the road in a dark place where no one would see and no one would know and no one would trace it back to those responsible,” Stifler told the jury in her opening statement. “The architects of Jared Bridegan’s murder intended it to be the perfect crime, and it almost was.”
In her opening statement, Stifler told the jury that the fatal shooting of the 33-year-old Microsoft design manager on that dark Jacksonville Beach road was hatched by Gardner and Fernandez, after years of post-marriage strife over religion and how to raise the twins.
Gardner, 39, faces her own trial in September. The accused gunman, 65-year-old Henry Tenon, is slated to go to trial next year after backing out of a guilty plea.
Stifler said that while it took investigators time to put the pieces together after discovering the execution-style killing, those pieces now point to a murder-for-hire scheme.
“The killer was a stranger to Jared Bridegan. The murder was personal,” Stifler told the jury.
Stifler acknowledged there were no eyewitnesses to the crime but said surveillance video captured a man later identified as Tenon running from the scene -- and someone else driving away in Tenon’s truck.
Those videos were what law enforcement went over in detail during Tuesday’s testimony.
Defense attorney James Hill told the jury in his opening that the state can’t prove who was driving the truck.
“They don’t know who’s driving the truck. They don’t know who actually solicited Henry Tenon. There’ll be no evidence to suggest they do,” Hill said.
Defense attorney Jesse Dreicer reiterated that point during cross-examination of investigators on Tuesday, saying there was no proof that Fernandez was the driver of the truck, the person running from the scene, or the shooter. He also pointed out a gap of 32 minutes in the footage where investigators admitted they did not know where the truck was.
Hill also told jurors on Monday that Fernandez, an Army veteran, had no motive to get rid of Bridegan and his actions shortly after the killing, a road trip to Pennsylvania and back, didn’t resemble that of a criminal schemer “running from the law.”
“He had access to a lot of money, hundreds of thousands of dollars,” Hill acknowledged, referring to his wife Gardner’s trust fund. “He could have fled the country.”
Execution-style killing
Bridegan’s family was in court on Monday, and his siblings, sitting in the second row behind State Attorney Melissa Nelson, were visibly emotional during testimony from those who described the scene on the night Bridegan was killed.
The first trial witness, Jonelle Cruz, said that she comforted Bridegan’s daughter with a blanket in a separate vehicle while her boyfriend tried to figure out what had happened.
“She was shaking. She was very worried about her dad,” Cruz testified.
Prosecutors showed a video Cruz had taken with Bexley that night. When she asks Bexley what happened, the toddler says she heard a “Boom!”
Cruz said Bexley asked about her daddy, saying he was hurt and wanting to know if the police would help him.
Cruz’s boyfriend, Shane Borja, described Bridegan being found face down in a pool of blood next to his SUV. Borja was the one who found Bexley in the SUV, took her out and handed her over to Cruz, who kept her until detectives took her to the police station.
That’s where she was reunited with her mother, who testified that she followed her “gut instinct” and urged police to investigate Gardner and Fernandez.
Stifler said Gardner, who was from a wealthy family, relocated to Washington state with her children after Bridegan’s death. Fernandez, meanwhile, moved to Orlando.
“Ms. Gardner got what she wanted: full control over her children and the freedom to move out of Jacksonville, Florida,” the prosecutor said.
The first day of the trial ended with testimony from the medical examiner who confirmed what no one had disputed: That Jared Bridegan died from gunshot wounds and that his death was a homicide.
Second tire found
Stifler said during her opening that police discovered a lead a few months into the investigation “that blew the case open.”
A tire at a rental property owned by Fernandez was very similar to the tire that had blocked Bridegan’s vehicle when he was shot.
An investigator testified on Tuesday to finding the tire at the Potomac Avenue home.
“I actually got onto Google and started looking at the DOT numbers that are on the tire, and according to Google, and ultimately later through Bridgestone itself, they matched or they appeared to match at least the same date and manufacture, manufacturer plan,” he said.
Police said they matched DNA on those two tires to Tenon, who had a criminal record and financial problems.
Tenon was charged with shooting Bridegan and at first pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and agreed to testify against Fernandez and Gardner. But he withdrew the plea earlier this year and will have his own trial in March 2027.
Tenon is charged with first-degree murder, conspiracy to commit murder, child abuse, possession of a firearm by a felon and accessory after the fact.
Fernandez’s trial is scheduled to last through Aug. 28.
Gardner will go on trial after Fernandez, with jury selection from Aug. 31-Sept. 4, and the trial from Sept. 8-25.
Gardner is charged with first-degree murder, conspiracy to commit murder, solicitation to commit a capital felony and child abuse.
Neither Gardner nor Tenon will testify in Fernandez’s trial.
The case has garnered national attention, and Judge London Kite has repeatedly explained to the 12 jurors and four alternates that they can not look up anything about the case or talk about it with anyone.
As part of the preparation for trial, Kite previously ordered that the seated jurors’ names be kept anonymous until 60 days after the trial, which is typical in high-profile cases. The jurors were referred to only by their numbers during jury selection to protect their identities.
The checks: A central piece of evidence
Prosecutors highlighted checks Fernandez allegedly wrote to Tenon as key evidence in their opening statement, framing the payments as money paid to hide a murder.
“These checks were a way to hide money for a murder hidden in plain sight to make it look legitimate with the hope that Henry Tenon would never be identified and no one would ever look that deep,” Stifler told the jury.
Fernandez is accused of paying Tenon at least $10,000 for fatally shooting Bridegan.
When police obtained Tenon’s bank records, they found three checks totaling $10,000 written from First Choice Home Rentals LLC — all signed by Fernandez. They were for $2,000 and $3,000 dated March 28, 2022, and $5,000 dated April 4, 2022. The memo lines described work such as landscaping, roof upkeep and “Kickstarter Good Luck!!,” according to copies released by prosecutors.
“There are no eyewitnesses; there’s no video footage that captures the individuals or individual in the truck clearly enough to make them out. These things are all true,” Stifler said. ”But it cannot change the fact that there is no connection between the shooter and Bridegan other than this defendant (Fernandez). It cannot change that this defendant paid a man $10,000 for work that didn’t happen and a Kickstarter that doesn’t exist."
But the defense pushed back, saying there is video evidence that Tenon did do work at the property.
“Man, Henry Tenon, he’s a workhorse. That guy tilled up the front yard, chopped down trees. You’ll actually see video of him unloading tile from the back of his truck at Potomac, doing work,” Hill said. “Henry Tenon is a worker. Mario Fernandez has hired him to do work, not murder, tree work, roof work, landscaping, tile work.”
Hill argued the payments were legitimate.
“Mario Fernandez, who had at the time access to hundreds and hundreds and thousands of dollars, gave money to a guy that had helped him around his own house and invest in his business that he wanted to start,” Hill said. “That’s what the checks say.”
Gene Nichols, an attorney not involved in the case, said the checks are the hinge point of the entire trial.
“I think when it’s all said and done, what does the jury believe about the checks? That’s going to rule a tremendous amount,” he said. “That, to me, is going to be where this hinges — will a jury believe that those checks were written in order to commit murder, or were those checks written for the work that Mr. Hill said they were written for?”
He added that the burden of proof remains high.
“If the jury believes that they were for work that was done, or they take the position that the state didn’t prove that the money was for murder, then that’s going to sway a jury,” Nichols said. “In order to convict him, it’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt by all of those jurors.”
Timeline: How we got here
More than four years ago, Jared Bridegan dropped his then-9-year-old twin children off at the home of his ex-wife, Shanna Gardner, after a “date night” with their dad.
He left Gardner’s Jacksonville Beach home on Feb. 16, 2022, with his 2-year-old daughter, Bexley, strapped in her car seat in the back of his dark-colored SUV. They were headed back to St. Augustine.
But the 33-year-old Microsoft employee never made it home.
Following his normal route through the Sanctuary neighborhood, Bridegan suddenly had to stop in the area of Jacksonville Drive, America Avenue and Sanctuary Boulevard.
A tire was in the road.
When Bridegan stepped out of his SUV, he was ambushed by gunfire. At least one bullet missed Bexley by mere inches in her car seat.
In previous interviews, Kirsten Bridegan said Bexley described the loud noise of the gunfire, calling it “the boom.”
“She says, ‘Boom! Boom! Boom! Daddy on the ground,’” Kirsten explained.
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Neighbors’ surveillance cameras from the Sanctuary subdivision caught the sound of those gunshots just before 8 p.m.
Jared Bridegan was left lying in the street next to the SUV with the door wide open, and the shooter seemed to melt into the shadows just as quickly as he had launched his ambush attack.
None of the 911 callers that night mentioned seeing a shooter or a vehicle leaving the scene.
LISTEN: Press play below to hear 911 calls from night of Jared Bridegan’s murder (WARNING: May include graphic content)
They said that the shooter ran off on foot and someone else drove away from the scene in a pick-up truck. Prosecutors also said they have Tenon’s DNA on the tire that was left in the road.
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“When the victim was killed, there is a person that fled on foot and a person that fled in a vehicle. We know that Henry Tenon left his DNA behind on that tire. And we know that Henry Tenon was not driving the pick-up truck that fled the scene,” Assistant State Attorney Alan Mizrahi said during a hearing before jury selection began. He was arguing that this was proof of a deeper conspiracy in the case.
Eventually, detectives tracked down the man they say pulled the trigger.
Investigators say that it was all part of a murder-for-hire plot set in motion by Gardner and her second husband, Mario Fernandez. It was a conspiracy that began in November of 2021, according to court documents.
Interactive Timeline
Alleged murder-for-hire scheme
According to detectives, Gardner was tired of sharing custody of her twin children with Bridegan.
Fernandez, she knew, could “take care of him” because of his military background, Gardner told a friend. At least that’s what the friend told investigators as she detailed the strained marriage between Gardner and Fernandez and the contentious ongoing custody battle between Gardner and Bridegan.
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Investigators say that’s exactly what Fernandez did, hiring Henry Tenon, a tenant at one of his properties, to kill Bridegan.
In his initial interview with police in July 2022, Tenon told investigators that he had been renting a home from Fernandez in Jacksonville’s Biltmore neighborhood for several years.
Tenon’s original court records said he became involved in the conspiracy on Jan. 4, 2022 -- just over a month before Bridegan was killed.
The state says it has evidence of communications between Tenon and Fernandez in the days, weeks and “on the day of the particular crime.”
Investigators said when Tenon was arrested on an unrelated felony driving charge in August 2022, they questioned him about Bridegan’s murder and a Ford F-150 truck they had been searching for since the shooting.
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Tenon was later arrested in Bridegan’s murder, and investigators said the single link between Tenon and Bridegan was Fernandez.
State prosecutors initially said they would be seeking the death penalty against Gardner and Fernandez if they were convicted, but they have since taken the death penalty off the table, with the support of Bridegan’s widow, Kirsten, and his family.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.