A Florida jury found Mario Fernandez Saldana guilty of first-degree murder in the 2022 roadside ambush that killed Microsoft manager Jared Bridegan, a killing prosecutors say was born from a bitter custody fight and paid for with $10,000 in checks disguised as handyman work.
Fernandez Saldana, 38, was convicted on two counts, first-degree murder and solicitation to commit a capital felony, at the Duval County Courthouse in Jacksonville. He faces automatic life in prison. A judge ordered him to return to court October 5 to receive his sentencing date.
The verdict closes one chapter of a case that stretches back to a 2015 divorce and still has two more defendants awaiting trial. Fernandez Saldana's wife, Shanna Gardner, Bridegan's ex-wife, faces the same charges and is set for trial in September. The alleged triggerman, Henry Tenon, is scheduled for trial next year after withdrawing an earlier guilty plea.
Bridegan, a 33-year-old design manager at Microsoft, was driving in Jacksonville Beach on the night of February 16, 2022, when he stopped his SUV to move a tire that had been placed in the middle of a dark road. Prosecutors say the tire was bait. His 2-year-old daughter, Bexley, sat strapped in her car seat in the back.
Bridegan was shot twice at close range. He died on the asphalt. His daughter was not injured.
Investigators linked Tenon to the scene through DNA evidence found on the tire. Prosecutors told the jury that Fernandez Saldana paid Tenon $10,000 through three checks written to look like payments for handyman work. Phone records showed the two men communicated dozens of times in the weeks surrounding the killing.
Assistant State Attorney Christina Stifler laid the motive bare in her closing argument, as Breitbart reported:
"He was unarmed, unaware, exposed, vulnerable. He couldn't have known, on that cold asphalt in February of 2022, the architects of his murder had been making preparations for his death for months."
Stifler also told the jury that the conspirators chose the most extreme option available to resolve a family dispute.
"They fixed it by executing a man when they had other alternatives available to them. That's why we're here."
Defense attorney Jesse Dreicer pushed back on the prosecution's theory, telling jurors his client had no personal motive. "He certainly gained no benefit from the death of Jared Bridegan," Dreicer argued. The jury disagreed.
Prosecutors built their case on the financial trail, the phone records, and the DNA. The custody battle between Bridegan and Gardner had been acrimonious for years after their 2015 divorce. Gardner comes from a wealthy family, and prosecutors contend she and Fernandez Saldana conspired to eliminate Bridegan rather than continue fighting him in court.
A judge ruled the two co-defendants would face separate juries. Gardner was arrested in August 2023, months after Fernandez Saldana's arrest in March of that year. Both were indicted on the same charges.
Kirsten Bridegan, Jared's widow, took the stand during the trial. She described the hostile co-parenting dynamic between her husband and Gardner. "There's absolutely no trust," she told jurors.
She also recounted her last conversation with her husband on the night he was killed. As Fox News reported, Kirsten testified that something felt off in those final moments:
"It was strange. I remember feeling like it was strange because after I was like, All right, well, love you, I'll see you soon. He was just quiet."
Minutes later, Bridegan stepped out of his SUV to move a tire from the road. He never came home.
Gardner's September trial will test whether prosecutors can prove she was the one who set the plan in motion. Tenon's case adds another layer of uncertainty. He initially pleaded guilty and agreed to cooperate with the state, but he later withdrew that plea, forcing prosecutors to try all three defendants separately.
The withdrawal removed what would have been a cooperating witness, someone who could have testified directly about who gave the order and who handed over the money. Prosecutors will now have to rely on the same circumstantial web of checks, phone records, and DNA that carried the Fernandez Saldana case to conviction.
Fernandez Saldana's guilty verdict shows the evidence was enough for one jury. Whether it holds for two more remains an open question.
A 33-year-old father was lured out of his car on a dark road and shot to death while his toddler sat in the back seat. The people responsible for that deserve every year the law can give them, and the system owes that little girl nothing less than a full accounting.
