Left: Jared Bridegan, who died when someone ambushed his car the night of Feb. 16, 2022 after he dropped off his twin children at their mother’s home, police have said. His two-year-old daughter was in the SUV. (Image: Jacksonville Beach Police Department)
Right: Shanna Lee Gardner plotted to have her ex-husband, Jared Bridegan, murdered, authorities said. (Mug shot: Duval County Jail)
More two months after her arrest, sheriff’s deputies have finally extradited a woman across the country to face charges that she plotted to murder her ex-husband, Microsoft executive Jared Bridegan, 33. Now authorities in Duval County, Florida, can prosecute Shanna Lee Gardner, 36, in earnest.
She waived her first court appearance and is scheduled for a hearing set for Nov. 3.
As previously reported, Gardner faces the death penalty along with her second husband and alleged co-plotter, Mario Enrique Fernandez Saldana, 35. Fernandez Saldana’s former tenant, Henry Tenon, 62, has pleaded guilty to second-degree murder as the actual gunman who shot and killed Bridegan.
Bridegan shared twin children with Gardner. On Feb. 16, 2022, he had a routine weekly dinner with the kids, then 9, as well as the 2-year-old daughter he shared with his second wife, according to authorities. After their meal, he dropped the twins’ off at Gardner’s home and before heading home with his younger daughter.
He would never make it. Police in Jacksonville Beach, Florida, said he encountered a tire in the road that evening in a dark area of Sanctuary Boulevard. Investigators believe someone put it there on purpose to make him stop. Bridegan opened his SUV door, presumably to move the tire.
“It was then that he was gunned down in cold blood,” Jacksonville Beach Police Chief Gene Paul Smith has said.
Mario Enrique Fernandez Saldana (right) helped murder his wife’s former husband Jared Bridegan (left), authorities said. (Images: City of Jacksonville Beach Police Department)
Charges against Gardner are murder in the first degree, conspiracy to commit murder, and solicitation to commit a capital felony. She and the other defendants were also charged with child abuse because Bridegan’s 2-year-old daughter faced danger during the shooting.
In a heavily redacted affidavit, authorities noted that Tenon and Fernandez Saldana had “35 phone contacts” in February 2022, 30 in March 2022, and “5-9” in May and June 2022. Investigators claimed to discover in bank records that Fernandez Saldana gave Tenon three handwritten checks.
Henry Tenon (pictured here) admitted to shooting and killing Microsoft executive Jared Bridegan, authorities said. (Mugshot: City of Jacksonville Beach Police Department)
Gardner’s twins and her mother were there on Aug. 17, 2023, when authorities arrested Gardner at her home in West Richland, Washington.
She denied wrongdoing in a June 30, 2022, interview with The Florida Times-Union.
She declined to discuss her divorce from Bridegan, in which she had accused him of “disturbing and abusive behavior.” He claimed she locked him out of the master bedroom and installed surveillance devices in both his car and the children’s bedroom.
“I don’t see any good in airing our dirty laundry,” she reportedly said.
A company owned by her parents said in March that she is separated from Fernandez Saldana.
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