JACKSONVILLE, Fla. (Court TV) — Attorneys for a man accused of plotting and funding a murder-for-hire that killed a Microsoft executive said that the prosecution failed to prove its case as they asked the jury to find him not guilty.
Mario Fernandez Saldana, 38, is charged with murder and conspiracy in the death of his wife’s ex-husband, Jared Bridegan. Bridegan, a Microsoft executive, was shot and killed after dropping off the two children he shared with his ex-wife at Fernandez’s home after a scheduled “date night.”
Mario Fernandez Saldana appears in court on Aug. 25, 2026. (Court TV)
“There is no question that the facts of this case are sad,” Fernandez’s defense attorney, Jesse Dreicer, told the jury in his closing argument on Tuesday. “There is no question that an innocent man was gunned down on a dark street on a night on which he least expected it. We concede that fact.”
Dreicer told the jury that the evidence they’d been shown pointed to Bridegan’s killer — but that wasn’t his client. “Jared Bridegan was murdered,” Dreicer said. “Henry Tenon murdered Jared Bridegan. Mario Fernandez had no motive. He had no desire. He had no reason and he certainly gained no benefit from the death of Jared Bridegan.”
Tenon, who was a tenant on one of Fernandez’s rental properties, is accused of being the hit man in Bridegan’s death. Tenon initially pleaded guilty and said he would testify against Fernandez and Fernandez’s wife, Shanna Gardner, but later withdrew the plea. No trial date has been set in his case. Gardner is also facing charges and has pleaded not guilty; her trial is scheduled to begin next month.
“There’s no doubt Henry Tenon pulled that trigger,” Assistant State Attorney Christina Stifler said in her closing argument to the jury. “But in this case, not just one person is guilty, because this crime is not a crime that is committed by one person.”
Stifler described Tenon as a “convicted felon who’s basically homeless,” telling the jury, “Henry Tenon didn’t have motive, means, or opportunity — absent one person.” That person, Stifler said, was Fernandez.
Prosecutors said during Fernandez’s trial that the plan to kill Bridegan was driven by an ongoing custody dispute over the two children the victim shared with Gardner. Stifler urged the jury to disregard the drama surrounding the custody issues. “It doesn’t matter if they were completely right about the situation or completely wrong,” she said. “What matters is how they fixed it. They fixed it by executing a man when they had other alternatives available to them.”
Fernandez’s defense denied that there were any custody issues that could have led to a murder plot. “When you hear the rhetoric that this is about a child custody battle, what you should be hearing is that when Ms. Gardner or Mr. Bridegan had any issues that they wanted to change, they went to court,” Dreicer said. “They filed pleadings, and they either agreed on their own, which is what happened in every single situation, or their intended purpose was to ask the court to rule.” At the time of Bridegan’s death, Dreicer said, the family law case had been closed for more than four months with no active disputes on the docket.
While Stifler urged the jury to put the pieces of evidence together to conclude that Fernandez was involved, Dreicer warned the panel to focus only on the evidence in front of them. “Today, at the beginning of Ms. Stifler’s opening statement, she said, ‘You can believe that, and you can believe that.’ She was like Oprah Winfrey handing out vehicles. ‘You get a car! You get a car!’ That’s not how it works. It’s not you get to believe this, you get to believe that. You have evidence. That’s what all of this is.”
Prosecutors had initially said they wanted to seek the death penalty for both Fernandez and Gardner, but changed course after Tenon changed his plea.
