Why Bridegan's Wife Pointed at His Ex the Night He Was Killed

The first witness the jury heard in the Jared Bridegan murder trial wasn't a detective. It was a woman named Jonelle Cruz who found Bridegan's two-year-old daughter Bexley alone in a car seat on a dark Jacksonville Beach road, shaking and asking about her dad.

Prosecutors opened Monday in a Duval County courtroom by calling the killing a targeted ambush. Mario Fernandez Saldana, a former Army drill sergeant who married Bridegan's ex-wife Shanna Gardner, is the first of three defendants to face a jury. He sat listening to the evidence without visible expression.

Assistant State Attorney Christina Simak Stifler told the jury Fernandez recruited a man named Henry Tenon for the job. GPS data from a vehicle linked to Tenon showed two trips along Bridegan's exact route before the murder on February 16, 2022. A dark blue Ford F-150 with a tire in its bed was seen near the road an hour before the shooting.

Stifler explained the motive: a family trust. Gardner's parents founded Stampin' Up!, a company generating hundreds of millions in annual revenue. An irrevocable trust blocked Gardner from becoming trustee while she had legal entanglements with Bridegan. As long as he was alive fighting for custody of their twins, she couldn't touch the money.

After Bridegan was dead, ten thousand dollars in checks from a company funded through the trust were deposited into accounts linked to Tenon. Phone records show thirty-five calls between Fernandez and Tenon in February 2022 alone.

Defense attorney James Hill pushed back. No eyewitness places Fernandez at the scene. No DNA ties him to the road. Checks the prosecution calls payment for murder carry memo lines reading landscaping and roof upkeep.

Bridegan's wife Kirsten took the stand and told the jury she knew who was responsible before police named a suspect. Bexley described the shooting in her own words: Boom, Boom, Boom, Daddy on the ground.

Three defendants face separate trials for one murder. Gardner's trial starts in September with Jose Baez as her attorney. What happens in this courtroom reshapes both cases that follow.

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