Four chilling words uttered in the Jared Bridegan murder-for-hire trial that reveal desperation of Microsoft executive's final moments

In opening statements in the trial of Mario Fernandez, the man accused of first-degree murder and solicitation in the Florida murder-for-hire plot of Microsoft executive Jared Bridegan, the state was at pains to drive home the desperate nature of Bridegan's final moments.

Assistant State Attorney Christina Stifler faced the jury in Jacksonville's Duval County Circuit Courthouse. 'The Sanctuary neighborhood is exactly what it sounds like,' she said. 'A small residential enclave of nice homes with golf carts in the driveway.

'On February 16, 2022, it was anything but that for Jared Bridegan. Instead, it was a site of execution.'

Bridegan, 33, was shot when he stepped out of his car to move a tire from the road. It had been placed there as a trap. Two bullets struck him, two struck the car, tracking just inches away from his two-year-old daughter, Bexley – strapped in her car-seat while her father died, face down, on the asphalt.

He was, Stifler said, 'a man executed in front of his child by a ghost in the darkness.'

In the moments after the shooting, the car's infotainment system repeatedly lit up with the name Kirsten – Bridegan's wife, waiting at home, with their seven-month-old child, London. She called repeatedly and with growing unease.

But in the end, it was four words from a scared and confused little girl that brought home the horror of that night more forcefully than any amount of rhetoric could.

'I saw a boom.'

Kirsten, 34, sitting in the front row of the gallery, her long hair falling in waves over her shoulders, her dress black, dabbed tears with a white handkerchief as she heard her daughter Bexley's voice played out to the court.

Bexley's 'testimony' came in the form of a brief video made by Jonelle Cruz, the Good Samaritan who took care of her, wrapping her in a blanket and taking her into their car, after she and her partner made the awful discovery of Bridegan, lying in the road in a pool of blood.

When asked why she had made the video, Cruz, who briefly testified after lunch, said: 'Just for myself. She was just the cutest, bravest, strongest little girl I've ever seen in my life.'

She was, Cruz and her partner Shawn Borja, who testified directly after, said, 'panting and shaking.' 'She kept telling us that her daddy was hurt on the ground and asking if the police were going to help her daddy,' Cruz recalled.

Fernandez, 38, smartly dressed in a light grey suit and red tie, his once long hair cut short, looked on impassively. When Kirsten took that stand shortly after lunch and was asked to identify him to the court, he gave not a flicker of reaction as she pointed to him where he sat with his attorneys.

I have met and interviewed Kirsten many times over the years. Her grace and composure in the most dire and painful of circumstances have always been remarkable.

In court it was no different. There were only a couple of moments that offered a glimpse of the toll this ordeal must be taking.

First, when Stifler opened with the question, 'Are you the widow of Jared Bridegan?'

For a moment Kirsten looked stricken, as if all the wind had been knocked out of her. She struggled to find her voice before responding, 'I am.'

Later, when the court was shown a picture of Bridegan, beaming on his wedding day, Kirsten broke down and wept as she answered, 'Yes,' to the question, 'Is this your husband?'

She chose not to remain in the courtroom to hear the Medical Examiner's testimony detailing the nature and extent of her husband's injuries.

The night of Bridegan's murder, he had been returning to his home in Nocatee, Florida, having dropped his twins from his first marriage back at the Jacksonville Beach home that his ex-wife, Shanna Gardner, shared with her husband, Fernandez.

Bridegan was taking his regular route home after his 'date night' with Liam and Abby, then nine, as part of the custody agreement by which he and Gardner shared custody on a week on/week off basis. The parent who didn't have the twins on any given week took them out for a Wednesday night 'date night.'

He was less than two miles from Gardner and Fernandez's home when the fatal trap was sprung.

Kirsten revealed in testimony that she spoke with Bridegan just minutes before his death. 'It was strange,' she said. At the end of the call she told him, 'I love you see you soon.' And there was no response: 'He was just quiet.'

According to Kirsten, from that moment, she couldn't shake the feeling that something was wrong.

Fernandez is one of three accused in this alleged murder-for-hire plot. According to prosecutors, Gardner, 39, was the alleged mastermind and Fernandez the alleged conduit and link to Henry Tenon, 64, the man accused of being the shooter.

It is the defense's contention that it is Tenon, and Tenon alone, who committed the murder – who 'destroyed the life of Jared Bridegan, his wife and Mario Fernandez who stands accused.' Tenon will stand trial in March 2027.

But on Monday, Stifler laid out the case that will, she asserted, prove that Fernandez is the only link between Bridegan and Tenon – the only person who makes sense of Tenon's alleged involvement or actions at all.

Tenon once rented a property owned by Fernandez. He was arrested in January 2023. Three months later, he pleaded guilty and agreed to cooperate with authorities in return for a sentence of 15 years to life. Three check stubs, written by Fernandez in the weeks following the murder and amounting to $10,000, were found in Tenon's truck.

He was to have testified against both Fernandez and Gardner, but earlier this year Tenon withdrew from his plea deal, and his trial is now scheduled to take place early next year.

Over an investigation that took more than a year, Stifler said, officers pursued every lead they could – using cutting-edge technology and old-fashioned boots-on-the-ground police work.

Every lead, she said, brought them back to Fernandez and Gardner.

They alone, the jury was told, had a motive to kill Bridegan. They alone, she alleged, stood to benefit in their living circumstances and finances.

Bridegan and Gardner married in 2010, while both were in the Church of the Latter-Day Saints. They moved from Utah across the country, ultimately to Jacksonville Beach, Florida. But the marriage was not a happy one.

Bridegan was a devout Mormon, but Gardner had doubts. She wanted to leave the church and did not want her children raised in it as she had been. In the weeks leading up to Bridegan's murder, Kirsten testified that they had been preparing Jared's daughter from his first marriage for baptism into the Mormon church.

Bridegan and Gardner divorced in February 2015. Yet as Stifler pointed out, though time passed, 'the acrimony never did. Despite the fact that they both remarried.'

Bridegan met Kirsten on a dating app and they married in October 2017. Gardner married Fernandez in 2018.

But while Bridegan's was a love match, the prosecutor claimed, Gardner's was a 'marriage of convenience.' Gardner came from an extremely wealthy family and met Fernandez when he was the maintenance man at the local gym where she took CrossFit classes.

Stifler said: 'He married her to help with the kids and to help with the "Jared situation."'

Bridegan and Gardner co-parented but not amicably. Court records seen by the Daily Mail show that they were in near-constant litigation right up until just months before Bridegan's death. Gardner made no secret of the fact that she wanted full custody, not the 50/50 agreement they had.

Speaking to police after Bridegan's death, Fernandez said that the kids were 'better off without him.'

In another key moment, Stifler told the jury about Gardner's irrevocable trust. Many millions were set aside in a trust by her parents, Shelli and Sterling Gardner. Fernandez was the trustee. A clause in the trust stated that only when she had no more 'legal entanglements' with Bridegan could Gardner serve as a trustee and have authority over her own funds.

Before the crime, Fernandez and Gardner had been planning to separate. Then, Stifler said, Bridegan was murdered and the two, both charged with first-degree murder and solicitation to commit a capital felony, remain married to this day. Spouses cannot be compelled to testify against each other.

One week after Bridegan's death, the court heard that Fernandez transferred $50,000 from the irrevocable trust into his personal checking account. He and Gardner lived together for several months before separating – selling the house, bought by Gardner's parents, and halving the proceeds.

Six months after Bridegan's death, Gardner, along with the twins, moved to Washington State, into a home purchased by her parents.

According to the defense, this represented the life Gardner had long wanted, clear across the country. It was, the state alleged, a life to which Bridegan was a barrier.

The trial is expected to last two weeks.