JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — The Florida State Attorney’s Office just released bank statements, checks, and trust fund documents from local father Jared Bridegan’s ex-wife, Shanna Gardner, and her estranged husband, Mario Fernandez-Saldana.
The documents show checks paid to Henry Tenon, Bridegan’s killer, and Fernandez-Saldana, who’s charged with hiring him for the murder.
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Action News Jax has been following this case since Jared Bridegan was first shot to death in February 2022. Tenon admitted, a year later, to pulling the trigger.
New bank statements show Tenon received $10,000, in total, from Fernandez-Saldana’s home rental company in the two months after the murder. Tenon used to be a renter in one of Fernandez-Saldana’s homes.
In Mar. 2022, a month after Bridegan’s murder, Tenon got two checks from Fernandez-Saldana’s company, First Choice Rental Homes LLC, on the same day.
One of them is a $2,000 check to Tenon, with the for line reading, “landscaping and cleaning.”
The other is a $3,000 check to Tenon, with the for line reading, “keeping up with the roof.”
A week later, Fernandez-Saldana signed off on a $5,000 check to Tenon, with a for line reading “kickstarter…good luck!!”
Action News Jax’s Finn Carlin showed the checks to law and safety expert Dale Carson, who says the defense will try and pass off the checks as unrelated to the case.
“Clearly, the defense would argue they were for services rendered not related to a shooting,” Carson said. “There’s nothing that says you can’t pay someone with a check for something they’ve done for you.”
Carson expects the state to, of course, use the checks against Fernandez-Saldana, mostly because of how soon they were paid after the murder.
“[Tenon’s] credibility would certainly be in question because he is a cooperating witness, but the government could also prove there are no other reasons for the payment,” Carson said.
But Carson thinks it will take a lot for the state to make that argument, saying the state will have to prove the money wasn’t actually used for anything related to his home, since the for lines on two of them describe the money as being intended for home work.
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Either way, Carson says, hypothetically, giving checks to a killer who’s been hired for murder would be unusual because of the paper trail left behind.
“If that was the case, you certainly wouldn’t write a check. And that is exactly what the government is going to say happened, which the defense will say is ridiculous,” Carson said.
Another document shared by the state shows the agreement between Fernandez-Saldana and Shanna Gardner’s parents when they created a trust fund for her in 2019. A section of the agreement reads:
“When our daughter, Shama, shall have no further legal entanglements with her ex-husband, Jared G. Bridegan, she. may elect to serve as the Trustee, by delivering a signed and notarized document to the Trustee then in office.”
That means Gardner wouldn’t be able to manage the money in the trust fund until there weren’t any legal issues between her and Bridegan. The earliest bank statements for the trust fund shared by the state are from Dece. 2021, which said there was $253,447 in the fund at the time. The most recent statements are from Jan. 2023, which said there was $67,041 at the time.
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Carson says the state could argue the money in the trust fund as a motive to plan Bridegan’s murder, but says it isn’t certain.
“If there’s five thousand dollars in the trust, I wouldn’t think that would create a vehicle for a motive. On the other hand, if there’s five million dollars in the trust, it takes on a different character altogether,” Carson said.
Both Gardner and Fernandez-Saldana have pre-trial hearings scheduled for this Thursday morning.
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