The Bridegan Murder-for-Hire Trials: Two Juries, Six Weeks, One Ambush

The blue Tesla stopped on Sanctuary Boulevard in Jacksonville Beach because a tire was lying in the road. It was the night of February 16, 2022, and Jared Bridegan, a 33-year-old Microsoft executive and father of four, had just dropped off his twins at their mother's house. When he stepped out to move the tire, someone was waiting.

Four shots. Two hit Bridegan. Two hit the SUV — where his two-year-old daughter, Bexley, was strapped into her car seat.

Four and a half years later, the case built on that ambush finally reaches its main event: two murder trials, back to back, in the same Duval County courthouse — his ex-wife and her husband, tried by separate juries six weeks apart.

Who's who in the alleged plot

Prosecutors describe a murder-for-hire chain with three links:

• Shanna Gardner, Bridegan's ex-wife and the mother of the twins. The state alleges she wanted out of a custody arrangement she'd fought for years — and paid to make it permanent. She has pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder, conspiracy, and child-abuse charges.
• Mario Fernandez Saldana, Gardner's husband (the two are now estranged). Prosecutors allege he was the connection to the gunman — who was his own tenant. He has pleaded not guilty to the same core charges.
• Henry Tenon, 65, the man the state says pulled the trigger. His story is the strangest in the file — because he already confessed once, and then took it all back.

Every one of them is presumed innocent. As of this writing, no one has been convicted of killing Jared Bridegan.

The Tenon reversal

For two years, the state's case had a spine: Tenon's March 2023 guilty plea to second-degree murder, part of a cooperation deal that required him to testify against Gardner and Fernandez.

Then, at a 2025 hearing, Tenon announced he had given "false testimony." In February 2026 he told Judge London Kite directly — "I want a trial" — and the judge let him withdraw the plea. His charge sheet reset to the full stack: first-degree murder, child abuse, conspiracy to commit murder, accessory after the fact, and possession of a firearm by a convicted felon. His trial is now set for late March 2027 — six months after the juries decide Gardner's and Fernandez's fates.

That sequencing matters. The state must now try the alleged payers before the alleged shooter, without the cooperating-witness testimony the whole structure once rested on. What the prosecution does about the Tenon-shaped hole — his prior sworn statements, the evidence that corroborated them — is the single biggest strategic question of both trials.

Why there's no death penalty

Prosecutors originally filed intent to seek death against both Gardner and Fernandez. In November 2025, they withdrew it. Bridegan's widow, Kirsten Bridegan, publicly backed the decision: a capital verdict means decades of mandatory appeals, and the family said it chose finality for the children over a death sentence.

So the stakes at both trials are now the same: first-degree murder carries mandatory life without parole in Florida.

The two trial windows

• Mario Fernandez — final pretrial July 27; jury selection August 10–14 (pool of ~250); trial August 17–28, 2026.
• Shanna Gardner — jury selection August 31–September 4 (pool of ~500); trial September 8–25, 2026.

The trials were split by agreement in April 2026, largely over jury-fairness concerns — each defendant gets a panel that hasn't sat through the other's evidence. The practical effect for anyone following the case: two complete presentations of the state's conspiracy theory, six weeks apart, with the second jury drawn from a county that just watched the first trial on the news. Expect the Gardner selection process — 500 names deep — to be a fight of its own.

Pre-trial rulings have mostly gone the state's way: Judge Kite refused to suppress evidence from court-authorized wiretaps on Gardner's electronics, while granting the defense a second, tightly limited deposition of Kirsten Bridegan.

And at Fernandez's final pretrial hearing on July 27, one detail landed harder than any motion: his defense acknowledged having briefly discussed a possible plea deal with prosecutors. No agreement was announced, and jury selection remains on for August 10 — but in a case where the state's original cooperating witness already took his testimony back once, even the mention of plea talks two weeks before trial is worth watching.

What each trial will actually decide

The physical facts — the staged tire, the ambush, the shots past a toddler — are not seriously in dispute. What the juries must decide is who arranged it. The state's theory runs on money, phones, and motive: the custody war, the alleged payments, the connections between Fernandez's rental property and the man accused of firing the shots. The defense answer, previewed across three years of hearings, is that the state has a theory in search of proof — and that its original star witness now says he lied.

For the timeline of both trials alongside every other major case date this year, keep our court dates tracker bookmarked — verdict updates will land here as each jury comes back.

Why this case file matters

Bexley Bridegan was two years old, close enough to the gunfire that rounds hit the car she sat in. Her father's case has since produced a confessed shooter who unconfessed, a capital case that de-capitalized, and a conspiracy prosecution that must now be proven twice, to two different juries, without its original inside witness. However the verdicts land, the Bridegan trials will be studied for years as a test of how a murder-for-hire case survives the loss of its cooperator.

Case status as of this writing: Gardner, Fernandez, and Tenon have all pleaded not guilty and are presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty; no one has been convicted in Jared Bridegan's death. Trial dates reflect the court's July 2026 schedule and may change. This article is based on court records, hearings, and contemporaneous reporting. Photo: Gardner and Fernandez at a July 2026 pre-trial hearing, Duval County — court pool footage via News4Jax.